Zero Tolerance

Melissa’s euphoric feeling of relief lasted all of about thirty seconds. That was the length of time between the moment she walked into Dean Eleanor Taylor’s office and saw her lost purse miraculously sitting there on the desk, and the moment where the dean’s secretary closed the door behind her and locked it tightly. She had just enough time to squeal out, “My purse!”, but not enough time to get out any questions about where it was found or whether her wallet was still inside before she heard the sinister clicking sound of the key turning in the lock behind her. Melissa turned around, reaching out to turn the handle, but it only rattled uselessly.

Eleanor coughed meaningfully. “If you could please take a seat,” she said as Melissa turned back to face her, gesturing pointedly to the chair on the other side of her desk. She didn’t look like she was happy to be reuniting Melissa with her lost possessions. Her face was gravely serious, a far cry from the chipper Caucasian woman with the round, smiling cheeks that greeted the students every morning on the TV screen as they entered the halls of Kinnaird Community College for their daily classes. She looked like she was upset with Melissa over something… but apart from forgetting her purse in the student union, the younger woman couldn’t think what she might have done.

Eleanor rested her manicured fingernails on the brown leather surface of the handbag. “You’re absolutely sure that this is your purse, then?” she asked, her voice every bit as serious as her expression. “You’re not confusing it with another one that might look similar, or one that belongs to a friend?” Melissa felt a momentary twinge of apprehension–it almost sounded like Dean Taylor was giving her a chance to retract her statement for some reason. Was someone else saying it was their purse? Were they trying to claim that she stole it and put her stuff in it? It made no sense, but then neither did being called into the Dean’s office for something as simple as a lost item.

But even if there was a problem, Melissa couldn’t afford to pretend that the purse wasn’t hers. It had her student ID in it, her phone, all her cash (hopefully), her temporarily suspended debit card, her driver’s license, the tube of flamingo pink lipstick she bought last week that went with the dress she was planning to wear on Friday night’s date with Shamika… she decided to press on gamely, figuring that she could always resolve any ownership questions with the truth. “I know it’s mine,” she said. “There’s a little scrape just below the clasp where it smacked into the wall last month when I was running to get to class. I’d recognize it anywhere.”

Eleanor’s frown deepened. “I see,” she said. She opened up the bag and took out a small plastic bottle filled with little pink pills. They had a slightly pearlescent sheen to them under the fluorescent lighting, making them look almost like some kind of hard candy. She set them on the desk in front of Melissa, and they made an accusatory rattle as the bottle struck the hard wooden surface. “You are aware, Miss Keane, that we have a zero tolerance policy for illegal drug use here at Kinnaird? Unless you can come up with some explanation for this, I’m afraid your academic career with us is over.”

For a long moment, the sound of her heartbeat rushing through her ears was so loud that Melissa couldn’t hear herself think. She felt like she’d been dropped into some sort of bizarre prank show, as if at any moment some Z-list celebrity was going to come out and tell her that she’d been chumped or something. She couldn’t begin to even process the actual words that Dean Taylor had just uttered, let alone produce a coherent response. Illegal drugs? Expulsion? Her head spun trying to fit the concepts into her brain.

Finally, with a sickening awareness of just how unconvincing she sounded, Melissa managed to stammer out, “I, I’ve never seen those before. S-someone must have put them in my purse after I left it in the commissary.” It was ludicrous even to her–Melissa had no idea how much illegal drugs cost or even what this particular substance was, but there had to be at least thirty of the pink pills in that bottle. Nobody was going to just walk into a public place, see an abandoned handbag sitting next to an empty chair, and decide to plant something in it just for funsies. Even if they were the kind of sadist who enjoyed making a stranger’s life miserable, it would be too expensive to be worth it.

The irritated look on Eleanor’s face confirmed Melissa’s worst fears. “Is that seriously the best you can manage, young woman?” she asked, her face flushing with consternation as she pinned Melissa into the chair with her cold stare. “You admit that you recognize the purse, you admit that it’s yours, but you ‘don’t remember’ leaving a whole bottle of Jubilees in there? I very much think you’ll need to do better than that, Miss Keane. If not for me, then for the campus police at least. If you can’t name a supplier–”

“I, I don’t have a supplier!” A part of Melissa cringed at the thought of interrupting the dean, but at this point she couldn’t imagine that she had much to lose by being rude. “I don’t know where those pills came from, I–I didn’t even know they were called Jujubes until you told me!” She couldn’t shake the creeping disorientation that stole over her simply from being suddenly trapped in this absurd, impossible situation; her mind’s eye kept adding a Dutch angle to the room, and she gripped the arms of the chair tightly for fear that she’d simply tumble out of her seat.

Eleanor snorted disdainfully. “Jubilees,” she corrected. “As if you didn’t know. It’s becoming a depressingly common problem on campus–girls like you chasing the new high, trying to find something to get you buzzed when weed isn’t enough anymore. How many pills do you need to take now to get that click back, Melissa? How much of this bottle do you have to have just to get one night of happiness anymore?” She leaned back in her chair, shaking her head. “I see all the signs, Melissa. The nervous sweat, the flushed cheeks, the trembling. The way you’re clawing at the chair. You’re jonesing for another fix, aren’t you?”

Melissa’s mouth opened and closed in wild, incoherent shock. “I… you….” It was no good, she couldn’t even find a way to start scaling the vast wall of errors and false conclusions in front of her. Of course she was flushed and sweaty and trembling–she was suddenly facing expulsion and jail time out of absolutely nowhere! Anyone would look nervous under those circumstances. But when Melissa looked into the dean’s cold, imperturbable eyes, she knew that she would get nowhere pointing out something so simple and obvious as the truth. “I’ve never taken those,” she whimpered, her voice suddenly small and quiet. “Not even one.”

The dean raised an eyebrow. “So you’re telling me you’ve never tried jubilee in your whole life, then,” she said, her voice thick with skepticism. “You haven’t built up any kind of tolerance to them, you don’t even know what the effects would be if you took one. You’re just some naive innocent girl who’s walked the straight and narrow path, only to fall victim to some nefarious plot by a total stranger to ruin your academic career and send you to jail?”

Melissa looked down at the floor, unable to meet the dean’s gaze. She thought about admitting to the Saturday nights she spent as a teenager, getting drunk with the older kids who were able to buy beer and trying not to let the alcohol make her so bold that she tried to kiss Suzy Conover. She wondered if she should confess to the joint Shamika gave her during that first study session they had together that turned into a makeout session by the end of the night. She wanted to be honest–wasn’t the truth the best defense? But in the end, common sense won out and she narrowed her honesty down to just the specific answer to Eleanor’s question. “No ma’am,” she said. “I’ve never tried jubilee.”

The dean reached out and opened the bottle, shaking a single pill out onto the desk. “Prove it,” she said, pointing to the little pink capsule. “If you really don’t know what these are or what they do, then it really shouldn’t take more than just one. If you’re a habitual user, well… I’m sure you’ll try your best to pretend that one jubilee can still knock you on your ass, but I’m confident that I’ll see through any deception. I’ve judged the intramural one-act play competitions for the last ten years running, I know a performance when I see one.” She folded her arms. “Well?”

The Dutch angles were back, steeper than before. “You want me to take drugs… to prove I don’t take drugs?” Melissa asked, her brow furrowed in confusion. She couldn’t believe that this wasn’t some sort of trap, that the dean wasn’t planning to wait until she’d swallowed the pill before immediately hustling her off to a lab to pee in a cup and prove that Melissa was every bit the addict Eleanor claimed her to be. But… but why even go to all this effort to entrap her? Why bother with a B student who she probably only saw walking down the halls hand-in-hand with her girlfriend every so often? Even if she was a rampant homophobe or a racist who didn’t approve of interracial relationships, there had to be easier ways for the top authority figure at Kinnaird to ruin Melissa’s life. This couldn’t all just be an elaborate deception.

“I want you to verify your story,” the dean replied coolly. “Nothing more, nothing less. They’re not habit-forming; if you take one and find yourself… affected, then I’ll know you were telling the truth and we can put all this behind us. If not, well.” She glanced meaningfully over at her telephone. “We can always bring in the campus police to have this conversation in a more formal setting. Perhaps they’ll believe what you have to say.” Her tone made it utterly clear that she expected nothing of the sort.

That settled it. Whatever the risks of taking the pill, it seemed obvious that they paled in comparison to being framed by a stranger, expelled, and sent to jail for dealing illegal drugs. Melissa scooped the tiny sphere up with a sweep of her hand and swallowed it before she lost her nerve.

She’d thought that she might need to ask for a glass of water to wash it down, but the pearlescent coating dissolved almost immediately on her tongue, leaving behind a liquid that tasted vaguely chalky in her mouth. Melissa swallowed hard, trying to get rid of the strange flavor as quickly as possible, and within moments the only sign that she’d taken it at all was a nervous hyperfixation on every single signal her body was sending to her. “Wh-what’s it going to do?” she asked, anxiety suffusing her voice. “How long does it take to have an effect?”

Eleanor leaned forward, her eyes glittering with anticipation. “Not long,” she said, smiling hungrily at the younger woman. “Perhaps a minute. Don’t worry, I promise you we’ll know when it happens.” She seemed suddenly very interested in Melissa’s reactions to the drug, and for a terrified instant Melissa wondered if she hadn’t taken some sort of a placebo pill instead. Perhaps that was the dean’s plan all along–give her something harmless, and when she couldn’t fake the effects of the real jubilee convincingly, blackmail her with the threat of expulsion?

But then Melissa felt a slow, wafting drift of euphoria settle onto her brain, and she knew everything was going to be alright. It was all going to be just fine; the drug was kicking in, and it felt absolutely wonderful. All the stress and tension of the past few minutes was melting away, leaving behind in its wake a peace and contentment so complete and total that Melissa sagged bonelessly into her chair and allowed her head to loll on her shoulders with ragdoll ease. There was nothing to fear anymore. She was a complete and total lightweight, unable to handle whatever the fuck was in those pills, and she was proving it with every flutter of her eyelids and every dribble of saliva that dripped from her slack, nerveless jaw.

“There we go, pretty girl,” Eleanor cooed gently. Her voice seemed to echo strangely in Melissa’s ears, as if it was coming from a badly-tuned loudspeaker. “See, that wasn’t so bad, was it? You’re very relaxed, feeling very happy and suggestible, and that feeling’s just going to keep getting stronger and stronger as you listen to my words and let go of all those silly thoughts.” She sounded so calm, so soothing compared to the earlier brusqueness, and it was all Melissa could do not to let the tide of peace and pleasure carry her away on those soft words.

But… suggestible? That sounded–no, wait. That didn’t sound. That didn’t sound right, even though Melissa wasn’t sure exactly why. She was, was she… was she supposed to be suggestible right now? “Mwhuhhhh,” the younger woman forced out through numb lips, distantly astonished by how slack and loose her thoughts were getting already. “Mwuhuhuzzuhuh?” She didn’t even know if her garbled mutters were making any sense, but she knew she needed to try to say something before the drugs kicked in any further and she forgot what she was going to ask.

Eleanor stood up and pressed the intercom button. “She’s just about ready, Linda,” she said, her face fading in and out of focus in Melissa’s rapidly blurring vision. “You can come on in. Lock the door behind you.” The dean stepped around the desk, approaching Melissa’s chair and cupping the younger woman’s chin in her hand. “I’m afraid I haven’t been entirely honest with you, dearie. Not that you mind right now. You’re very happy I tricked you into taking that pill, aren’t you?” Melissa felt her head bob loosely up and down. She didn’t even realize it wasn’t her nodding.

“Jubilee is a… well, let’s just say it’s a memory aid some colleagues of mine have been developing. It helps form specific neural pathways in the brain, allowing you to process and information with perfect clarity of understanding and acceptance. So Melissa, when I tell you that you won’t remember anything that happens in this office the instant you leave, you’re going to have no problem believing that statement implicitly, isn’t that right?” Melissa burbled affirmatively, her eyes traveling in different directions as she tried to focus her gaze on Eleanor long enough to show that she understood.

“That’s what I thought, good girl.” The door opened and closed, and the dean’s receptionist came up on the other side of Melissa’s chair and began to undress the limp woman. “And when I tell you that every Tuesday at precisely five o’clock in the afternoon, after all your classes are over, you’re going to return to this office without wondering why, you’re going to accept that instruction perfectly. Isn’t that right?” Melissa whimpered in mindless agreement. She could feel the other woman, Linda, taking advantage of her proximity to Melissa’s pussy to slowly caress the student’s slick labia.

Melissa was so wet, she realized. She didn’t know why or how, but she was absolutely fucking soaking wet.

“You’ll make any excuses you need to. You’ll make sure you come alone unless we tell you to bring someone to us, and that nobody knows where you are. And whenever you’re in this office, you’ll obey any instruction that Linda or I gives you without hesitation or question. Isn’t that right?” Melissa no longer even thought about Eleanor’s words. They were simply truths she accepted, as clear and obvious as the law of gravity. She returned to this office every Tuesday, she obeyed while she was here, and she forgot when she left. Of course she did. Her thin t-shirt went up and over her head, and a few moments later she felt Linda peel away her bra. She was entirely naked now, but somehow that didn’t feel like anything she needed to question either.

“That’s my pretty little slut,” Eleanor purred, gathering Melissa’s supine form in her arms and helping her to lie down on the plush carpet. “You get so horny when you obey us. It makes you so eager to be fucked and brainwashed that you’ll beg to be programmed some more.” Eleanor was naked too, her flesh warm against Melissa’s skin. Melissa had no idea when that had happened, but the thought slipped away almost faster than it could form.

“I’m afraid the drug has a few side effects,” Eleanor said, her elegant fingernails tracing patterns onto Melissa’s nipples. On the other side, Linda was crouching down to lick the slippery moisture away from Melissa’s throbbing cunt. “You’re not going to be in any kind of fit condition to reciprocate, not this time. But when you return to us tomorrow, pretty girl, you’re going to be very happy to show us just what you and Shamika do when you’re alone together. Isn’t that right?” Melissa couldn’t nod. Her muscles were too loose and limp to even move. But she knew that the answer to Eleanor’s questions was always ‘yes’, every single time.

Eleanor leaned down, her hot breath teasing Melissa’s nipples. “And when you leave here, pretty girl, you’ll have a very special pill to feed your gorgeous girlfriend. And even though you won’t remember… you’ll know exactly what to do with it.” There was no question of resistance. There was no sense of betrayal. Melissa simply accepted drugging and brainwashing Shamika as another truth in her empty, obedient brain. And the climax she experienced, the first of many that day, showed her just how perfect compliance could truly be.

THE END