Make dinner.

After a few minutes, I had caught my breath. Glancing over at my dull-eyed partner, I smiled. I was suddenly starving, but I wondered how she felt. "Chloe?"

A beat passed. "Yeah?" she said thickly.

"Are you hungry?" I scanned her face, wondering if she would betray any sign that her body needed food. Now that I had a willing participant, I realized that I desperately wanted to know how this worked.

It took her a long time to respond. So long, in fact, that I was about to repeat the question when she finally answered. "Yeah." she said, still no sign of emotion or cognition on her face.

I got out of bed and began to put on my clothes. Chloe continued to lay there, so I gave her instructions. "Chloe, get out of bed and get dressed." She clumsily got up and stared at the ground for a second. I took a step away from her, then another. She blinked. I stepped back again, and she raised her head to look around in confusion. She turned to me and stared uncomprehendingly.

"Clothes." I said. "Pick up your clothes."

She furrowed her brow. "What?" I repeated the command. She looked down at the shirt on the floor. "Clothes." she said and bent to pick it up. She slowly returned to standing, staring at me.

"Put it on." She stared at the shirt dumbly. When she didn't move, I stepped back a few more times. My back was now against the wall. "Put it on." She turned it over in her hands, marveling at it. "Um, put it on?" She looked up at me as though she needed an explanation.

I sighed. "Walk to the that corner of the room." She did so, and I walked to the other corner. When she got there, she turned to face me and I could see that she was slightly more aware. "Put the shirt on."

"Oh, yeah. Ok." She pulled it over her head, her breasts straining against the thin fabric. "I should put on my pants." she said, walking forward to get them. She'd barely taken three steps when she stopped in her tracks and looked up at me. "...what?" She asked dully.

I rolled my eyes. I was ready to get on with dinner. I stepped out of the room and away from the door. I heard her moving around inside as I got a farther away. Finally she spoke. "Holy shit! That was incredible!"

The door opened and she appeared in the frame, smiling. "I hope you enjoyed it." My effect was slightly apparent on her. Her wild enthusiasm had been replaced with mellow satisfaction.

"I did. I wish we could have you at least a little more lucid, but that was still amazing. You have an incredibly body, Chloe." She looked down and blushed. "I had no idea you were still a virgin."

She shrugged. "I guess I never really found the right guy. This... this is what I've been searching for. I don't want to be lucid for sex, I just want to be a mindless doll and enjoy every minute of it. I hope that's what you want, too."

I wasn't sure that was quite what I wanted, but that's the best I could get. I didn't want to burst her bubble, though. "It's exactly what I want. You're perfect, Chloe. Now let's get some dinner."

Chloe insisted on making dinner, so I stood at the far end of the living room. She looked through the food we took and put together a basic stir-fry while we talked. I told her my story - how I discovered what I can do, how I'd been living ever since. She filled me in on her background. She was a suburban kid who did a semester of community college, then dropped out. She didn't really have many long-term plans. "Not until now," she told me with a wink.

She dished up the plates then turned to me. "How do you want do this?" I asked. My assumption was that we'd eat as far away as possible from each other, but she had other plans.

"I kinda want to see how close I can get to you and still be able to, you know, function." she told me. "It's not just a sexual thing, you know. I can get pretty anxious sometimes. My mind races and I can work myself into a panic attack just worrying about the future. But when I'm near you, that all sort of... goes away. My mind slows down and I just concentrate on the task at hand."

"So being near me gets you high?" I'd never thought of it like that. I assumed that it my influence was a neutral experience for people at best.

She smiled sheepishly. "Yeah, kind of. It just feels nice, you know. To let go of everything, to feel my mind slow down. You know, I can't be bored, or tired, or unhappy. I just sort of exist." She looked thoughtful. "Obviously I can't function when we're too close together, but maybe we can try moving a little closer while we eat?"

Why not? I agreed and sat down at the table, waiting for her to approach.