I snarl out the password to the man leaning against the entrance to the alley, knowing full goddamn well he recognizes me from at least a dozen previous visits and just gets off on his one tiny bit of authority by holding me up like this. Honestly, I'm in more of a mood to punch him right in his smug face than I am to jump through all the fucking hoops it takes to get into Andy's grimy little hole-in-the-wall speakeasy, but the problem is I'm in even more of a mood to just switch my entire frigging brain off and if I don't give the password then I don't get to do that. So I bow and scrape like a good girl, and the asshole lets me wander between the two buildings until I come to what looks like a boarded-up door.

It's not, of course. My fingers find the concealed latch with the practiced ease of one of Andy's regulars, and I slip inside and close the door behind me quickly before the hostess gets a chance. "Hiya Sam," she blurts out, a flush of red blossoming on her dimpled cheeks as she sees me enter. "Good to see you again!" Krissie's got a crush on me, I know, and even though it's not exactly mutual that's probably not going to matter in a couple of hours. That's one of the reasons she's so excited to see me. She knows my usual, and she knows she's going to get her chance with me pretty soon. I can't say I care too much. You take your chances when you drink at Andy's.

Speaking of Andy, she's back behind the bar tonight, a faint sheen of sweat on her tattooed arms as she works some complicated distilling equipment that looks like it uses a lot of muscle to handle. A lot of the girls around here think Andy and I have to be related--we've got the same build and pretty much the same fashion sense, even though my hair's a little bit more coppery than Andy's close-cropped orange sideshave--but no. We never even met before one of my ex-girlfriends told me about this place.

Not that we were exes at the time. I didn't start coming here until after our breakup. But I've been a regular ever since.

"Give me a Mind Eraser, neat," I snap out without preamble as soon as the machine whirrs to a halt, sliding a twenty across the bar and not expecting any change. "No chaser, I have to be up in the morning." Andy gives me a look, but she knows better than to question my order when I've got an expression like this and a shiner to match. She doesn't indulge in her own product, but she knows enough about the people who drink it after six years to understand that sometimes people just need to obliterate their own thoughts for a while.

She cranks the distillery to life again, pouring out a viscous black liquid only a little bit thinner than coal tar into a shot glass before sliding it back across the bar to me. I knock the whole thing back in a single gulp, shuddering at the taste--that's half the reason people drink it with alcohol, to have something to wash that nasty funk out of their mouth. The other half is that whatever the hell Andy puts into her special drinks breaks down when you combine it with alcohol, so it helps to moderate some of the effects of the drug, but I had to work in the morning and you can't afford a hangover when you're dealing with heavy machinery. And the one thing I'll say for Andy's shit is that it wears off without any side effects.

The other thing I'll say for it is it comes on fast. Especially when you have an empty stomach like I do. It's not two minutes before the fog of simmering rage begins to break up into little pink bubbles of giggly euphoria, leaving me with a dopey grin on my face that matches at least two of the other patrons sitting next to me. The third is already slumped forward, head resting on her arms while her hips slowly and sleepily grind at the air like she's humping an imaginary pillow. She's probably been here longer than the others, but we're all going the same way soon.

And I know--just about anyone who sees me would think I'm probably the kind of woman who buys Mind Erasers for other girls, not who drinks them herself. The tank top, the sleeve tattoos on my fifteen-inch biceps, the crooked nose and yeah okay maybe the frequent bruises from all the fights I get into with guys who don't know how to treat a lady... it all says butch as fuck. Gals like me aren't supposed to want to drink a glass of who the fuck knows what and turn themselves into dumb, giggly airheads who like to spread their legs for anyone who asks.

But one of the things I've learned the hard way is that you can't just punch away your anger at the world. There's just too many faces that need rearranging, too many injustices that never get addressed, and sooner or later if you keep swallowing up that rage it eats you from the inside out. I know I should probably get therapy or something, but a therapist costs eighty bucks an hour and a Mind Eraser makes me happy for a whole fucking night for only twenty bucks.

Or forty. "Give me another," I say, passing a second twenty across the bar and fixing Andy with a hard stare when she shoots me a questioning look. I can tell she's thinking about cutting me off--my first drink hasn't even fully kicked in yet, and she knows better than anybody just how hard this shit can hit without alcohol to tamp down its effects--but she also knows it's not going to do anything permanent if I fuck myself up to the point of passing out. And she knows I'm real fucking easy when I get a few Mind Erasers in me.

That's honestly half the reason I came down here this close to closing time. Yeah, I know I'm probably going to get bent over the bar after everyone's gone home for the night and railed by Andy and her thirteen-inch strap-on, but at least I know Andy and Krissie and the others. They might have a little fun with the customers after they lock up for the evening, but they're not going to take them off to some nice quiet hotel room and whisper in their ears while they're too dopey and gullible to think for themselves. They don't need to, not with so many women eager to come back night after night and melt their brains to goddam mush.

While the girls who come by early... I watch, already blissed out to the point of apathy, as someone walks up to the semi-conscious woman slumped onto the bar and rocks her forward on her stool until her crotch is exposed. She begins to gently pet the woman's pussy through her panties, rubbing with just enough intensity to make the doped-up slut mewl like a kitten with arousal, all the while murmuring something I can't quite catch into her ears. It doesn't take long before she's moaning and humping the stranger's fingers like a bitch in heat.

Like I say, you take your chances when you drink at Andy's. She tells everybody the risks when they first walk in, and after that you're on your own. If you want a Mind Eraser knowing that it's going to make you dopey and suggestible and horny as fuck, you probably want to be a stupid slut for somebody before the end of the night even if you don't know for sure how it's all going to turn out.

And if you want to drink two, well... you're probably either a glutton for punishment, or you've developed a tolerance for Andy's shit. In my case, it's both. I take another gulping swallow of the stuff, fighting the urge to spit the residue onto the floor, and lean back to watch the floor show while the tiny little bubbles of giggly bliss slowly colonize my brain.

It doesn't take long for the doped-up slut at the bar to cream her panties under the stranger's touch--Mind Erasers make you a whole lot more sensitive, for reasons I don't understand even after getting a long explanation from the PhD chemist who invented the stuff. The grunting, gasping woman manages to open her eyes just long enough for me to see that they've rolled all the way back in her head with pleasure, and then her eyelids flutter right back shut again and her face goes slack. She's still got that dreamy smile, though, and I know from experience how she has to be feeling. She is out of her fucking mind with lust right now.

The other woman helps her to her feet, supporting so much of her weight that she's practically carrying her, and the two of them head for the door. I catch a little bit of the murmurs as they walk past, a low soothing voice saying, "You love to be a good girl and do as you're told," and it says a lot about how much I'm already beginning to sink into drugged-up bliss that I catch myself starting to slide off the barstool and follow along behind them. Honestly, the only thing that stops me is I'm too wobbly on my feet to stand up properly.

Erinn, one of the waitresses, helps me up off the floor. "Whoa, sweetie," she coos sympathetically, "looks like you need to find somewhere to lie down," and I realize the time distortion must have already kicked in because when I look around I don't see any other customers. I don't remember sitting there for very long, but it must have been at least an hour and I see the staff starting to put up the chairs for the night. Holy shit. I am so fucked up right now.

But even being fucked up feels good when you're right in the middle of a Mind Eraser high. "I need to find somewhere to lie down," I burble dreamily, only barely realizing I'm just saying what Erinn said right back to her, and it suddenly hits me how easy it would be to permanently push new thoughts into my gullible little brain. I kind of wonder if that's how I got to be a regular, but it's too hard to hold onto the notion with all these little pink bubbles in the way and I forget what I was thinking after only a few seconds.

I blink a long, slow, lazy blink, and when I open my eyes again I'm in one of the private rooms in the back with my legs spread and my clothes missing. Krissie's down between my thighs, rubbing my pussy and telling me how pretty I look when I'm all dumb and blank and submissive like this, and I feel my whole body tingle with pride at pleasing her so well--I don't think it's having a permanent effect on me to get praised and pampered like this while I'm doped up on slut juice and getting my sensitive cunt finger-banged, but then again I would think anything Krissie told me to think right now. And god does that make me so fucking wet.

I can feel all my cares and worries evaporating under the force of all that pleasure, literally feel it as if it was a physical weight getting lighter and floating away, and I grunt in ecstasy as an orgasm takes me almost totally out of nowhere. It occurs to me that I don't really know if these drugs are addictive, or even really how they work--my only information comes from the woman giving them to me, and the warm hazy undercurrent of bliss I feel every time I think about trusting her feels just a little bit too familiar if I'm being totally honest.

But I can't really think about that for very long, not when every nerve in my body is lighting up like a Christmas tree wherever Krissie touches me, and pretty soon the only thing in my head is happy pink bubbles and orgasm after orgasm after intense fucking orgasm. Krissie kisses her way up my taut belly and small, sensitive breasts before settling her pussy onto my face, and I hear myself mewling in desperate lust for a few moments before Andy crawls into the spot she vacated and pushes her big thick strap-on into my hungry cunt. That's about when I lose track of things... but the warm, hazy fog of ecstasy that replaces my memories is better than thinking anyway.

THE END