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A.K.A. An Apple A Day, Part 1

All four of them were brainwashed.

They sat in the Benson sisters' house - their own house, but with a new owner. None of the girls wore any footwear, as was their Master's preference. Each of them knew they would make no attempt to go against what their Master wanted from them.

Every girl showed it differently on their face. Faith and Colby wore smiles, Faith's was an empty-mouthed grin and Colby's was the demure, neutral smile of someone in the service industry. She was in the service industry, of a kind, now. Carthi and Shelby were stuck in blank expressions, without any stimulus to respond to they had reverted to a complete void of thought and feeling.

The sisters shared a spiralling image reflected in their eyes. Even now, they saw the world through that beautiful filter their Master had given them. It was a constant reminder that they had no free will, which was needed to keep their minds suppressed. Every new thought which threatened to surface would be washed away by the spiral and never come to the slave's attention. The Bensons could only think something which came from the other side of the spiral - a command from their Master which would immediately be transferred into their thoughts and acted upon.

There was no hope for them any longer. Each of the women had the spiral completely ingrained in her mind. Even if they were separated from their Master, it would blank out any thought which wasn't about how to be by his side again.

The Bensons were completely enchanted and obedient, and they always would be.

FOUR DAYS EARLIER

Carthi Benson didn't really understand Instagram.

As a member of a growing rock/pop group in the year 2020, it was basically essential to have a social media presence, and in America at least Insta was the go-to for artists of any kind. It gave them a chance to reach out to their fans and receive their comments directly.

And, especially as a girl group, it gave them a chance to entice new fans with an endless barrage of selfies of four attractive women. Well, in Crimson Apple's case, it was more two attractive women in Faith and Colby, with Carthi and Shelby only sometimes joining in, and even then only when coaxed or coerced.

But yeah, Carthi had a little bit of experience of uploading selfies and reading the comments. She'd even done a few 'normal' posts when there was a new music video dropping or an album release. What she hadn't done is ventured into the realm of the little arrow in the top corner of her screen. Faith had always referred to that zone as 'the dee ems' with the same tone someone would refer to the creepy woods just outside the reasonable travel distance of a police car from town.

That is to say, she had come upon the message by accident. Her thumb had moved to press on the little red number before her brain could fully process the action and its potential consequences.

The message was an image, from someone whose username wasn't a real name, just a letter and something about hype and onz. Probably the abbreviation for their favourite band, Carthi thought. She couldn't tell what it was, but it was clear it wasn't one of... one of those pics that she had heard Colby complain about over dinner more than once.

So she was a little curious. What was it that was so bad about these messages? She wanted to know more than she feared the outcome, especially since the picture seemed blurred.

She clicked and enlarged the image. Then it started moving.

First, she was shocked. That was natural for someone who didn't realise that stories could be shared via a direct message, and that stories could be videos. It was just a momentary lapse, a fraction of a second where all her thoughts stopped as the stimulus she was expecting suddenly changed completely in form. She didn't quite let out an audible gasp, but her eyes did open slightly wider.

But the image had her attention, and her thoughts had stopped.

Even if it was just for a moment, it was enough .

Faith Benson was doing what she always did when there were no new songs to practice - she was building her brand on Insta.

For now, that was just by posting thirst traps on her band's account. That was just the start, though. Once they had made it big (perhaps through a thirst trap actually snaring some big label mogul or something, she could dream) and it was time to move on, it would be time to capitalise on that fame and become the next big fashion icon.

It wasn't that she didn't like being in Crimson Apple. Drumming was still fun, and supporting her sisters' dreams was about as important as her own. Actually, since those were three people who were half identical to her, in total they were 50% more important than her dream. But that was maths! And this was not the time for maths, this was the time for selfies!

Anyway, the point was that Faith was going to give her all to this business. They would work together and achieve both her dream and the band's dream. They weren't big yet, but with hard work and a family bond, there was nothing she didn't trust they would achieve.

... Nothing barring, apparently, knowing how to use Insta.

Carthi had just sent a selfie from the official Crimson Apple account to some other random account. Did she not know how to switch accounts!? She was going to walk over to the other side of the house to chew her younger sister out for the unprofessionalism of it all (they weren't going to build any of that valuable thirst if they dm'd random dudes!), but her seat in the studio was way too comfy to get out of, even for such a slight against the unwritten laws of social media clout-generation.

She had been so annoyed by that blatant breach of etiquette that it was only after a few moments of fuming that Faith realised that she had buried the lede on that thought.

Carthi had just sent a selfie to an instagram user.

Did this mean her little sister had all grown up? There was only one way to find out.

What Shelby would have probably done in this case would be to go into the dm convo herself and scroll up to see what she could find out about the guy. Faith was a more direct woman than that.

With her excited pace she reached Carthi's bare-walled room in moments. The smallest room in the house was also by far the least visually exciting, just a little white box with a few pink pillows, some stickers on a laptop and phone case, and a plushie to give it any colour at all. But there Carthi sat, trying to make the best of it as she arranged her furnishings to give a cute background to her pouty face. Not that she needed to focus on the expression that much with a top that low-cut...

"Hey, Carthi?"

"Faith!" The pink-haired girl sprung up from the duvet. "You've gotta help me!"

Faith had taken a step back out of pure shock. Her eyes had even widened for a moment, the question forming in her head lost completely when the surprise overtook her thoughts. Carthi was never this excited about anything.

This guy must have been something else.

"Yeah?" Faith was honestly slightly unnerved by her sister's slightly-higher-pitch-than-usual-voice, and the way she was bouncing up and down slightly like an overeager child. But she loved her family, and she knew she wanted Carthi to be happy. So immediately she felt like she needed to help Carthi with whatever this was.

"I need you to teach me how to take good selfies!"

Faith was already nodding along, and Carthi embraced her in a breathless hug. "Right away, please please please!" The younger sister said immediately after.

So Faith sat her down on the bed, and talked her through finding her good side, how to position the lighting (she had to run back to her own room to get a desk lamp, but every moment she wasn't helping her dear sister out set a tremendous pressure pounding inside her head... her conscience, she supposed), and how to choose a good filter once all was said and done.

All through her lesson, Faith felt a fluffy stirring in her stomach. It wasn't quite the nice feeling of doing a good deed for her sister, it was slightly uncomfortable too. Like an overly full stomach after a long and amazing Thanksgiving meal. There was a tension to it, some sort of unresolved but deeply instinctual need.

And, just as purely instinctually, a question came out of Faith's lips.

"So, who's the lucky guy?"

Carthi turned to her. Faith had expected her eyes to be full of stars like any young woman in love, her cheeks to be immediately flushed as she thought about the man who had stolen her heart.

Instead, Carthi's eyes were dull, unfocused even. Her mouth was a straight line, and her voice was slow (especially compared to her three-sentences-per-breath pace from before) and emotionless.

"I can't tell you yet."

Faith felt an eyebrow raise, and an unfulfilled rumbling deeper within her. "Why not?"

"Only one apple a day."

The answer made no sense. But Carthi had said it with such understated uncertainty.

"Everyone knows that. An apple a day."

They had both stood up. Her little sister practically pushed Faith out of the door. She stood there for a moment. Her head hurt slightly. She understood what Carthi said. It made sense, it was literally common sense that a man should only have one Apple a day. But she was still confused by it for some reason.

So she went to do what she usually did when the feelings got too much. She drummed herself into a stupour in the practice room for the rest of the day.

And, somehow, despite the excitement of the morning, she didn't think about Carthi's new boyfriend(?) for one more second.

THREE DAYS EARLIER

Faith was very suddenly pressed against the corner of the corridor between the practice room and the kitchen. Cornering her (literally) was Carthi. But it wasn't quite the Carthi she knew. This Carthi wore a literal cocktail dress, and a smirk to match it.

"You're going to help me find someone, Faith."

There were more polite ways to ask, to say the least. But she couldn't think of any good reason not to help her sister. She just meekly nodded and let herself be dragged to her own room.

"You're good at all that social media stuff, right?" Carthi was sat on Faith's spare chair, one leg over the other despite her very short dress. It was as if she was posing like that by pure instinct.

"Yeah, I generally run the accounts for us, right?" Faith laughed nervously. There was a weird tension in the room, so much that it was affecting her. There was a light pounding in her head, and a strange feeling like a cross between butterflies and a full stomach in her abdomen.

"Cool, you gotta find a guy for me. We've been talking, but he won't tell me some details about himself yet. Can you use your, like, stalking skills to track him down?"

That was... a lot of new information at once. Faith's head already hurt more just from the shock of it. Given that there was too much to process, her brain took the path of least resistance and agreed to help out. "Sure, yeah. What's his account name?"

"Just look on the Crimson Apple account messages... I kiiinda messed up and messaged him through there. It's kay-"

"Yep, got it." Faith had already entered the conversation, and immediately shielded her eyes from a barrage of images she did not need to see of her little sister. Already she regretted this. "Just tell me when to stop scrolling up holy shit!"

And yet she didn't drop the phone and go to the bathroom to, erm, bleach her eyes or something. She just had a feeling that if she got to the bottom of this already-too-much mystery, she would feel better. It was like there was some empty part of her somewhere which could be filled if she just got to closure on this.

"There, that's where the conversation starts." Carthi's voice was just a bit too jovial for someone whose older sister just saw her lewds.

Faith was going to get this over with. She lowered the hand that was covering her face, and saw a single shared Story, and then the first (very bad, to be honest) selfie from Carthi.

"Wow that must have been one hell of an opening line..." She sighed, it could have ended up far worse for her little sister. Clicking a link from a random guy on the Internet? Just really unsafe behaviour. But she supposed it had all worked out in the end. Except for the mystery about the guy. "But I can't work out who he is from just this. I need some sort of name or profession..." The headache was subsiding, though. Maybe she didn't need to solve the mystery after all?

But then what was going on here?

Carthi's hand reached over her shoulder and her finger touched the screen.

Faith's eyes widened in shock. Any questions filling her mind were, in that moment of sudden new stimulus, completely lost. Her brain, even if just for a microsecond, completely shut down.

Well, all except one part of her brain. The part which had been pushing her to the end of this road.

At the sight of the spiral, those sleeping memories took hold.

"An apple a day..."

It was Faith's own voice. Monotone, automatic, and acting completely on its own.

She didn't know what was going on, but the thought that she didn't know what was going on was already being smothered by a shifting, circling, infinitely replaying image on the phone in front of her. The pale arm holding her phone had gone stiff, holding it at just the right angle that she would need to turn her head completely to get away from the image.

A very big part of her, the cowardly self-preserving part, was telling her that she needed to do that. To escape whatever weird, unbelievable trap this was.

But a smaller part remembered how happy Carthi had been yesterday. It remembered that Carthi was basically half of Faith anyway, so it was a pretty good indicator that letting the same thing happen to herself would lead to happiness. She didn't have the mental energy to do the maths, but Carthi's firm touch on her shoulder somehow seemed to confirm it.

Her headache had gone numb. A sensation like pins and needles rippled through her skull. Her thoughts battled against each other.

Carthi said "Trust me."

Faith trusted her family.

And she wanted it to end.

She remembered it was just common sense.

One apple a day. He would get one of them every day.

Today, Faith had been the lucky one to be picked.

She knew she should be happy, just like Carthi had been. Faith had been chosen by someone powerful and wonderful. So wonderful he brought Carthi out of her shell. So wonderful he had broken Faith's pointless ambitions. She didn't want to be a star.

She wanted to be his slave.

----

Gosh, this one took a while! Work has been busy again, and it kinda drove me into a writing slump, which made it really slow to get this one going. I've finished most of it in one sitting though, and I think I hit a good groove with finding the theme I wanted to run through it, and make it more than a by-the-numbers serial hypnosis. Hopefully you all feel the same!

So you know how I mentioned how weird it was I hadn't done a floofnosis story after years of friendliness with fur fetishists?

This is another one that's been a long time coming. It's no secret to anyone who stalks my favourites folder that I love me some of that Dormiria spiral-manipping. The least I could do would be to give him a Crimson Apple hypno-story out of it. The reasonable amount for me to do would be to give him two.

I'm only human though, so the second part is coming later.

Anyway, stan Crimson Apple. www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZmPqNz… . This is legit their best work I've been exposed to so far, and good low-budget MV energy.

Errata: An expert witness has informed me that Carthi is in fact older than Faith. For the sake of factual accuracy, I will note that, but since that is actually relevant to the story I'm not going to remove it. AU where the two sisters were born in the opposite order? Maybe!

Description

A.K.A. An Apple A Day, Part 1

All four of them were brainwashed.

They sat in the Benson sisters' house - their own house, but with a new owner. None of the girls wore any footwear, as was their Master's preference. Each of them knew they would make no attempt to go against what their Master wanted from them.

Every girl showed it differently on their face. Faith and Colby wore smiles, Faith's was an empty-mouthed grin and Colby's was the demure, neutral smile of someone in the service industry. She was in the service industry, of a kind, now. Carthi and Shelby were stuck in blank expressions, without any stimulus to respond to they had reverted to a complete void of thought and feeling.

The sisters shared a spiralling image reflected in their eyes. Even now, they saw the world through that beautiful filter their Master had given them. It was a constant reminder that they had no free will, which was needed to keep their minds suppressed. Every new thought which threatened to surface would be washed away by the spiral and never come to the slave's attention. The Bensons could only think something which came from the other side of the spiral - a command from their Master which would immediately be transferred into their thoughts and acted upon.

There was no hope for them any longer. Each of the women had the spiral completely ingrained in her mind. Even if they were separated from their Master, it would blank out any thought which wasn't about how to be by his side again.

The Bensons were completely enchanted and obedient, and they always would be.

FOUR DAYS EARLIER

Carthi Benson didn't really understand Instagram.

As a member of a growing rock/pop group in the year 2020, it was basically essential to have a social media presence, and in America at least Insta was the go-to for artists of any kind. It gave them a chance to reach out to their fans and receive their comments directly.

And, especially as a girl group, it gave them a chance to entice new fans with an endless barrage of selfies of four attractive women. Well, in Crimson Apple's case, it was more two attractive women in Faith and Colby, with Carthi and Shelby only sometimes joining in, and even then only when coaxed or coerced.

But yeah, Carthi had a little bit of experience of uploading selfies and reading the comments. She'd even done a few 'normal' posts when there was a new music video dropping or an album release. What she hadn't done is ventured into the realm of the little arrow in the top corner of her screen. Faith had always referred to that zone as 'the dee ems' with the same tone someone would refer to the creepy woods just outside the reasonable travel distance of a police car from town.

That is to say, she had come upon the message by accident. Her thumb had moved to press on the little red number before her brain could fully process the action and its potential consequences.

The message was an image, from someone whose username wasn't a real name, just a letter and something about hype and onz. Probably the abbreviation for their favourite band, Carthi thought. She couldn't tell what it was, but it was clear it wasn't one of... one of those pics that she had heard Colby complain about over dinner more than once.

So she was a little curious. What was it that was so bad about these messages? She wanted to know more than she feared the outcome, especially since the picture seemed blurred.

She clicked and enlarged the image. Then it started moving.

First, she was shocked. That was natural for someone who didn't realise that stories could be shared via a direct message, and that stories could be videos. It was just a momentary lapse, a fraction of a second where all her thoughts stopped as the stimulus she was expecting suddenly changed completely in form. She didn't quite let out an audible gasp, but her eyes did open slightly wider.

But the image had her attention, and her thoughts had stopped.

Even if it was just for a moment, it was enough .

Faith Benson was doing what she always did when there were no new songs to practice - she was building her brand on Insta.

For now, that was just by posting thirst traps on her band's account. That was just the start, though. Once they had made it big (perhaps through a thirst trap actually snaring some big label mogul or something, she could dream) and it was time to move on, it would be time to capitalise on that fame and become the next big fashion icon.

It wasn't that she didn't like being in Crimson Apple. Drumming was still fun, and supporting her sisters' dreams was about as important as her own. Actually, since those were three people who were half identical to her, in total they were 50% more important than her dream. But that was maths! And this was not the time for maths, this was the time for selfies!

Anyway, the point was that Faith was going to give her all to this business. They would work together and achieve both her dream and the band's dream. They weren't big yet, but with hard work and a family bond, there was nothing she didn't trust they would achieve.

... Nothing barring, apparently, knowing how to use Insta.

Carthi had just sent a selfie from the official Crimson Apple account to some other random account. Did she not know how to switch accounts!? She was going to walk over to the other side of the house to chew her younger sister out for the unprofessionalism of it all (they weren't going to build any of that valuable thirst if they dm'd random dudes!), but her seat in the studio was way too comfy to get out of, even for such a slight against the unwritten laws of social media clout-generation.

She had been so annoyed by that blatant breach of etiquette that it was only after a few moments of fuming that Faith realised that she had buried the lede on that thought.

Carthi had just sent a selfie to an instagram user.

Did this mean her little sister had all grown up? There was only one way to find out.

What Shelby would have probably done in this case would be to go into the dm convo herself and scroll up to see what she could find out about the guy. Faith was a more direct woman than that.

With her excited pace she reached Carthi's bare-walled room in moments. The smallest room in the house was also by far the least visually exciting, just a little white box with a few pink pillows, some stickers on a laptop and phone case, and a plushie to give it any colour at all. But there Carthi sat, trying to make the best of it as she arranged her furnishings to give a cute background to her pouty face. Not that she needed to focus on the expression that much with a top that low-cut...

"Hey, Carthi?"

"Faith!" The pink-haired girl sprung up from the duvet. "You've gotta help me!"

Faith had taken a step back out of pure shock. Her eyes had even widened for a moment, the question forming in her head lost completely when the surprise overtook her thoughts. Carthi was never this excited about anything.

This guy must have been something else.

"Yeah?" Faith was honestly slightly unnerved by her sister's slightly-higher-pitch-than-usual-voice, and the way she was bouncing up and down slightly like an overeager child. But she loved her family, and she knew she wanted Carthi to be happy. So immediately she felt like she needed to help Carthi with whatever this was.

"I need you to teach me how to take good selfies!"

Faith was already nodding along, and Carthi embraced her in a breathless hug. "Right away, please please please!" The younger sister said immediately after.

So Faith sat her down on the bed, and talked her through finding her good side, how to position the lighting (she had to run back to her own room to get a desk lamp, but every moment she wasn't helping her dear sister out set a tremendous pressure pounding inside her head... her conscience, she supposed), and how to choose a good filter once all was said and done.

All through her lesson, Faith felt a fluffy stirring in her stomach. It wasn't quite the nice feeling of doing a good deed for her sister, it was slightly uncomfortable too. Like an overly full stomach after a long and amazing Thanksgiving meal. There was a tension to it, some sort of unresolved but deeply instinctual need.

And, just as purely instinctually, a question came out of Faith's lips.

"So, who's the lucky guy?"

Carthi turned to her. Faith had expected her eyes to be full of stars like any young woman in love, her cheeks to be immediately flushed as she thought about the man who had stolen her heart.

Instead, Carthi's eyes were dull, unfocused even. Her mouth was a straight line, and her voice was slow (especially compared to her three-sentences-per-breath pace from before) and emotionless.

"I can't tell you yet."

Faith felt an eyebrow raise, and an unfulfilled rumbling deeper within her. "Why not?"

"Only one apple a day."

The answer made no sense. But Carthi had said it with such understated uncertainty.

"Everyone knows that. An apple a day."

They had both stood up. Her little sister practically pushed Faith out of the door. She stood there for a moment. Her head hurt slightly. She understood what Carthi said. It made sense, it was literally common sense that a man should only have one Apple a day. But she was still confused by it for some reason.

So she went to do what she usually did when the feelings got too much. She drummed herself into a stupour in the practice room for the rest of the day.

And, somehow, despite the excitement of the morning, she didn't think about Carthi's new boyfriend(?) for one more second.

THREE DAYS EARLIER

Faith was very suddenly pressed against the corner of the corridor between the practice room and the kitchen. Cornering her (literally) was Carthi. But it wasn't quite the Carthi she knew. This Carthi wore a literal cocktail dress, and a smirk to match it.

"You're going to help me find someone, Faith."

There were more polite ways to ask, to say the least. But she couldn't think of any good reason not to help her sister. She just meekly nodded and let herself be dragged to her own room.

"You're good at all that social media stuff, right?" Carthi was sat on Faith's spare chair, one leg over the other despite her very short dress. It was as if she was posing like that by pure instinct.

"Yeah, I generally run the accounts for us, right?" Faith laughed nervously. There was a weird tension in the room, so much that it was affecting her. There was a light pounding in her head, and a strange feeling like a cross between butterflies and a full stomach in her abdomen.

"Cool, you gotta find a guy for me. We've been talking, but he won't tell me some details about himself yet. Can you use your, like, stalking skills to track him down?"

That was... a lot of new information at once. Faith's head already hurt more just from the shock of it. Given that there was too much to process, her brain took the path of least resistance and agreed to help out. "Sure, yeah. What's his account name?"

"Just look on the Crimson Apple account messages... I kiiinda messed up and messaged him through there. It's kay-"

"Yep, got it." Faith had already entered the conversation, and immediately shielded her eyes from a barrage of images she did not need to see of her little sister. Already she regretted this. "Just tell me when to stop scrolling up holy shit!"

And yet she didn't drop the phone and go to the bathroom to, erm, bleach her eyes or something. She just had a feeling that if she got to the bottom of this already-too-much mystery, she would feel better. It was like there was some empty part of her somewhere which could be filled if she just got to closure on this.

"There, that's where the conversation starts." Carthi's voice was just a bit too jovial for someone whose older sister just saw her lewds.

Faith was going to get this over with. She lowered the hand that was covering her face, and saw a single shared Story, and then the first (very bad, to be honest) selfie from Carthi.

"Wow that must have been one hell of an opening line..." She sighed, it could have ended up far worse for her little sister. Clicking a link from a random guy on the Internet? Just really unsafe behaviour. But she supposed it had all worked out in the end. Except for the mystery about the guy. "But I can't work out who he is from just this. I need some sort of name or profession..." The headache was subsiding, though. Maybe she didn't need to solve the mystery after all?

But then what was going on here?

Carthi's hand reached over her shoulder and her finger touched the screen.

Faith's eyes widened in shock. Any questions filling her mind were, in that moment of sudden new stimulus, completely lost. Her brain, even if just for a microsecond, completely shut down.

Well, all except one part of her brain. The part which had been pushing her to the end of this road.

At the sight of the spiral, those sleeping memories took hold.

"An apple a day..."

It was Faith's own voice. Monotone, automatic, and acting completely on its own.

She didn't know what was going on, but the thought that she didn't know what was going on was already being smothered by a shifting, circling, infinitely replaying image on the phone in front of her. The pale arm holding her phone had gone stiff, holding it at just the right angle that she would need to turn her head completely to get away from the image.

A very big part of her, the cowardly self-preserving part, was telling her that she needed to do that. To escape whatever weird, unbelievable trap this was.

But a smaller part remembered how happy Carthi had been yesterday. It remembered that Carthi was basically half of Faith anyway, so it was a pretty good indicator that letting the same thing happen to herself would lead to happiness. She didn't have the mental energy to do the maths, but Carthi's firm touch on her shoulder somehow seemed to confirm it.

Her headache had gone numb. A sensation like pins and needles rippled through her skull. Her thoughts battled against each other.

Carthi said "Trust me."

Faith trusted her family.

And she wanted it to end.

She remembered it was just common sense.

One apple a day. He would get one of them every day.

Today, Faith had been the lucky one to be picked.

She knew she should be happy, just like Carthi had been. Faith had been chosen by someone powerful and wonderful. So wonderful he brought Carthi out of her shell. So wonderful he had broken Faith's pointless ambitions. She didn't want to be a star.

She wanted to be his slave.

----

Gosh, this one took a while! Work has been busy again, and it kinda drove me into a writing slump, which made it really slow to get this one going. I've finished most of it in one sitting though, and I think I hit a good groove with finding the theme I wanted to run through it, and make it more than a by-the-numbers serial hypnosis. Hopefully you all feel the same!

So you know how I mentioned how weird it was I hadn't done a floofnosis story after years of friendliness with fur fetishists?

This is another one that's been a long time coming. It's no secret to anyone who stalks my favourites folder that I love me some of that Dormiria spiral-manipping. The least I could do would be to give him a Crimson Apple hypno-story out of it. The reasonable amount for me to do would be to give him two.

I'm only human though, so the second part is coming later.

Anyway, stan Crimson Apple. www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZmPqNz… . This is legit their best work I've been exposed to so far, and good low-budget MV energy.

Errata: An expert witness has informed me that Carthi is in fact older than Faith. For the sake of factual accuracy, I will note that, but since that is actually relevant to the story I'm not going to remove it. AU where the two sisters were born in the opposite order? Maybe!