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subliminalbointext · 2 years ago

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Alphas #1: It Starts With a Pledge

Corbin is already waiting for me when I get to the café. It’s one of those hole-in-the-wall businesses wedged between a convenience store and a ghost town of a pizza joint that everyone says is the best near campus. Everything on this block is Romero’s best kept secret and that makes this as good a place as any for a secret meeting. I try to hide my frustration when I exit the café with my latte and take my seat on the patio next to Corbin.

We’re both wearing nondescript hats and chunky sunglasses, the private detective’s uniform. So inconspicuous it’s suspicious. Our clandestine wardrobes break the tension between the two of us. We share a laugh, and it feels good to smile with Corbin. I decide not to tell her how this makes me feel, her tagging along on every little investigation.

I’ve been working for Corbin for six months. We’ve broken three major stories together—a campus rapist, a drug dealing TA, a professor taking favors for grades. The Carpenter Watchblog is peaking in popularity, and now Corbin faces a burden unique to success: her readers expect a bigger story every time. She tells me that she isn’t chasing clout. She’s only started the blog because she wants to make a difference. I believe her.

“Corbin?”

The young woman stands in the doorway with her arms crossed. She speaks softly, but in a way that feels more confident than I’d be if our roles were reversed. Her name is Emily Reid. Her tip came through the Watchblog’s email and it was too interesting to pass up. Corbin gestures for her to take a seat. She hasn’t purchased anything at the café. I offer to buy her a coffee.

Emily politely waves off the offer and says, “I won’t be long.”

Corbin shows an unfamiliar level of restraint in not forcing the girl back into the café just to keep up the appearance of three friends catching up. She simply provides her warmest smile as Emily sits down. Maybe I’m rubbing off on her.

I ready my laptop for notes as Corbin slouches casually back in her chair and listens. In contrast, Emily is sitting straight-backed. She clears her throat and releases a little puff of air through her nose like she’s about to give a God, Flag, and Country speech.

Her story begins with the decision to pledge to a sorority—Alpha Delta Theta.

“Everything was normal at first,” she says. “Just a regular, fun group of girls. They were nice and supportive. They treated me like I’d always been a part of their group. That’s what it’s all about, you know. Helping girls adjust to college life, creating a community for strangers. I’d found my home away from home. And then the hazing started.”

Emily was doing her best to remain strong, but I caught the glint of tears in her eyes.

“They gave each of us a pair of underwear. It was the first test for pledging. We had to wear it for one week. When I slipped mine on I—well I can’t describe the feeling. The thing is, I guess, I didn’t really feel anything at all. Maybe weightlessness, or numbness. It was an absence of some kind. But not in my body—in my mind.”

Corbin shoots a glance at me as she reaches for her cup. I nod back in understanding, quickly typing a note: Obedience by Fleur.

“I knew what I was doing,” she continues. “When I accepted the underwear, they told us what it was, what it would do to us. They called it ‘slave for a week.’ We were each assigned to an upperclassman and had to obey their every command. We didn’t have a choice.”

“Did you feel pressured to accept?” I ask.

Emily bites her lip before answering. “The thing is that this underwear is the hot new thing, right? Everyone around campus is playing with it.”

We’re aware of the stories. We have emails flooding our inbox from concerned parents and right-wing student organizations appalled by a fetish suddenly entering the mainstream. Even Corbin, as hip as she is, has her concerns about the lingerie that mind controls you. Emily is our only first-person testimony, but if people are out there abusing Obedience by Fleur, why would their victims come to us?

“It just seemed like a fun joke, you know? And it’s college. We’re supposed to fool around.” Emily’s gaze darts away for a moment as we consider how to interpret that last sentence. She continues, “A part of me even thought…well, you know, with homework, and papers, and midterms…it’s nice to lose control for a while.”

“I know,” Corbin nods. I wonder how much she does. So much of Corbin is still a mystery to me. “It didn’t stop at slave for a week though, did it?”

Emily shakes her head. She wipes a tear from her cheek. “It isn’t just the underwear. There’s something going on in that house. Every night she takes someone to the basement and when they come back they’re different.”

Corbin straightens up in her chair. I lean forward over my laptop. We’re getting to the details now.

“She?” I repeat.

“Madison,” Emily replies. “Our president. I was too out of it for that first week to notice. Fuck, maybe I did and I just didn’t care. Madison has this power over the sisters. They love her like a mother and fear her like a god. If you look passed the partying and the booze and the bullshit college drama you start to see it: The Alphas aren’t a sorority. They’re a cult.”

Spooky shit. In the distance the weekly Romero air siren test announces that it’s noon on a Wednesday. The sound pulls Corbin from rapt attention. She starts a little. I feel chilly and I look down to see goosebumps on my arms.

Emily raises her voice a little to project over the siren. “I tried to talk to my Big about it. I wanted to know what Madison was doing in the basement. She told me that Madison had a vision for us. She said that I needed to trust in her wisdom. When I said that wasn’t good enough, that I was seriously considering leaving the sorority if I didn’t get a real answer, she said that I was breaking my pledge by asking questions. ‘Good slaves only listen.’”

I don’t know if I say it, or Corbin, or the both of us, but the word just lingers there in the air between the three of us. “Jesus.”

“Weren’t you wearing it?” Corbin asks.

“Yes,” Emily says. “But after a few days…I didn’t like the way it made me feel. Or, I guess, I didn’t like how I felt without it. In the shower, all I could think about was getting it back on, going back under. It’s like an addiction. I couldn’t imagine surviving a whole week. I knew if I kept wearing it, at some point, I’d never be able to walk away. I’d be a slave forever.”

“So how did you stop it?” I ask.

“On the third day, when I was getting dressed for class, I ripped the chip out of the lining of the bra and panties.”

“And that’s when you start asking questions,” Corbin nods.

“Yes,” Emily says. “And I start noticing the pledges. One by one, they’re taken to the basement. They’re gone for hours, my friends. And when they come back, they have that look. The same one all the sisters have when they talk about Madison’s plan. And suddenly they’re interested in his her and serving her vision. I knew that I was running out of time. Sooner or later she would get to me too.”

“So you left,” Corbin says.

“I just walked out in the middle of the night. I left most of my stuff behind.”

“Do you have anywhere to stay?” I ask.

“I have a friend,” Emily says. “She’s from my stats class. Thinks the whole Greek life thing is dumb. Her dorm is cramped, but it’s better than losing my mind.”

I don’t have much, but I offer my couch. Again, she waves it off. “I’m only here to get the word out about Madison. As far as I’m concerned that’s my part, and this is the last I ever plan to talk about it.” She turns her attention away from me and onto Corbin. “Just publish the story, please. To most of us, you’re the only voice that matters.”

Corbin doesn’t know how to take compliments. She squirms a little and makes a sound that I don’t recognize. A laugh? A groan? It stretches for a second too long before segueing into, “Thanks.”

“Thank you,” I smile. “There isn’t a story Corbin can’t blow wide open. I promise this is the last you have to think about the Alphas until you read about it on the blog.”

Sometimes I feel less like an investigator and more like Corbin’s PR team.

We return to Corbin’s apartment to work out the details of the story over lunch. First, we debate pizza. But this will be takeout two days in a row, so Corbin guilts me into making ramen. She watches from the bar overlooking her tiny kitchenette. The noodles are taking their time to boil.

“I wish you hadn’t told her I’d publish the story,” she finally says.

I turn away from the pot to see the expression on Corbin’s face. It’s a look that I recognize, one she only has when she’s about to take the weight of the world onto her shoulders. I’ve tried to remind her that that’s why she hired me. I’m here to lift the burden.

“That’s what you do,” I say. “You publish stories.”

If I’m being honest, the blog is in a rut. It’s been weeks since Corbin’s last story and copycats are popping up around campus. We’re dangerously close to irrelevance. I’m worried about her. I don’t know if she’s losing interest or if it’s something else. The last story, the one about the professor taking favors from students, ended in his garage. Carbon monoxide. Is she doubting her work?

She said that we were lucky that he only hurt himself. Maybe she’s still spooked about the drug dealer. I set a meeting to catch him in the act, met with him face to face. She hated that he knew who I was, that I’d put myself out there like that. It was easy enough getting herself into trouble but now she’d pulled an innocent bystander into her pattern of self-destruction. I had to remind her that I’d volunteered for this.

Whatever it is, something has Corbin on edge. She rubs her face with her hands and I can almost see the anxiety rubbing away. She enters journalist mode.

“She uses the underwear initially to control the new pledges,” she says. “But she needs something more permanent, something that can’t be taken off.”

“Hypnosis?” I ask.

“Maybe,” Corbin nods. “Whatever it is, it takes time. She has a system. A way to break a person and bend them to her will.”

“I bet we’ll find the answer in the basement of that house,” I say.

Corbin is already shaking her head. “Absolutely not,” she says. “A house crawling with brainwashed sorority sisters? I can’t send you into that.”

“Allegedly brainwashed sorority sisters.”

After a bit of back and forth, I reluctantly agree to hold back and wait for more information. Corbin will do her thing—shake some trees and see what turns up. I must have had the conversation with her a dozen times now. I know that she didn’t want to take me on, but she did take me on, and now I’m wasting time on the bench.

I was a sheltered child, youth group weekends and bible camp summers. I didn’t understand the real horrors of the world back then, not until I left for college. I don’t know if it was one thing. Maybe the gender theory classes or the daily campus crime texts, but something awakened inside of me. When I discovered Corbin’s blog, I realized that I couldn’t be silent anymore. I’d spent so many years as a good church girl parroting back opinions like, “If she hadn’t dressed that way,” or “Guilty people don’t run.” It wasn’t just a morbid curiosity for true crime that drove me to Corbin. I wanted to make right with the world.

I don’t push the subject. Instead, we eat our ramen at the breakfast bar and talk about literally anything else. Corbin’s eyes glaze over when I start to speculate about the plan for Marvel’s phase three. She pretends to snooze, begs me to watch “Literally any other movie.” I compare her to an annoying film professor. We laugh. It’s a fun night as long as we avoid the mind controlled elephant in the room.

Stepping out of her apartment, Corbin grabs my arm and looks at me with those serious mom eyes. “Stay away from the Alphas,” she says. “At least until I get some more information.”

“I promise.”

I hop on a bus, and on the ride back to campus I pull up Twitter and start following Alphas. I soon connect with a bubbly blonde named Tina. I tell her that I’m interested in joining her sorority. Pledge season is ending, she says, but there’s never been a better time to be an Alpha. Nice and supportive, just like Emily said. By the time the bus reaches my apartment, Tina’s already invited me out for drinks.

I think about Corbin, my promise. Ask for forgiveness, they say. Go big or go home, or some other cliché.

I quickly send Tina a pair of clinking glasses emojis, then I type, “Where’s the party?”

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subliminalbo · 2 years ago

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Alphas #1: It Starts With a Pledge

“Corbin?”

Emily politely waves off the offer and says, “I won’t be long.”

Her story begins with the decision to pledge to a sorority—Alpha Delta Theta.

Emily was doing her best to remain strong, but I caught the glint of tears in her eyes.

Corbin shoots a glance at me as she reaches for her cup. I nod back in understanding, quickly typing a note: Obedience by Fleur.

“Did you feel pressured to accept?” I ask.

Emily bites her lip before answering. “The thing is that this underwear is the hot new thing, right? Everyone around campus is playing with it.”

“It just seemed like a fun joke, you know? And it's college. We're supposed to fool around.” Emily's gaze darts away for a moment as we consider how to interpret that last sentence. She continues, “A part of me even thought…well, you know, with homework, and papers, and midterms…it’s nice to lose control for a while.”

“I know,” Corbin nods. I wonder how much she does. So much of Corbin is still a mystery to me. “It didn’t stop at slave for a week though, did it?”

Corbin straightens up in her chair. I lean forward over my laptop. We’re getting to the details now.

“She?” I repeat.

I don’t know if I say it, or Corbin, or the both of us, but the word just lingers there in the air between the three of us. “Jesus.”

“Weren’t you wearing it?” Corbin asks.

“So how did you stop it?” I ask.

“On the third day, when I was getting dressed for class, I ripped the chip out of the lining of the bra and panties.”

“And that’s when you start asking questions,” Corbin nods.

“So you left,” Corbin says.

“I just walked out in the middle of the night. I left most of my stuff behind.”

“Do you have anywhere to stay?” I ask.

“I have a friend,” Emily says. “She’s from my stats class. Thinks the whole Greek life thing is dumb. Her dorm is cramped, but it’s better than losing my mind.”

“Thank you,” I smile. “There isn’t a story Corbin can’t blow wide open. I promise this is the last you have to think about the Alphas until you read about it on the blog.”

Sometimes I feel less like an investigator and more like Corbin’s PR team.

“I wish you hadn’t told her I’d publish the story,” she finally says.

“That’s what you do,” I say. “You publish stories.”

If I'm being honest, the blog is in a rut. It’s been weeks since Corbin’s last story and copycats are popping up around campus. We’re dangerously close to irrelevance. I’m worried about her. I don’t know if she’s losing interest or if it’s something else. The last story, the one about the professor taking favors from students, ended in his garage. Carbon monoxide. Is she doubting her work?

Whatever it is, something has Corbin on edge. She rubs her face with her hands and I can almost see the anxiety rubbing away. She enters journalist mode.

“She uses the underwear initially to control the new pledges,” she says. “But she needs something more permanent, something that can’t be taken off.”

“Hypnosis?” I ask.

“Maybe,” Corbin nods. “Whatever it is, it takes time. She has a system. A way to break a person and bend them to her will.”

“I bet we’ll find the answer in the basement of that house,” I say.

Corbin is already shaking her head. “Absolutely not,” she says. “A house crawling with brainwashed sorority sisters? I can’t send you into that.”

“Allegedly brainwashed sorority sisters.”

Stepping out of her apartment, Corbin grabs my arm and looks at me with those serious mom eyes. “Stay away from the Alphas,” she says. “At least until I get some more information.”

“I promise.”

I think about Corbin, my promise. Ask for forgiveness, they say. Go big or go home, or some other cliché.

I quickly send Tina a pair of clinking glasses emojis, then I type, “Where’s the party?”

#mind control #controlled #hypnotized #brainwashed #series: alphas #hope y'all appreciate a slower pace for this one #less mind control than usual but this series has always been about building character before the mind control payoff #really really want people to like it lmao #hypnokink #hypno story

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