Jarrod had spent Saturday morning alternatively sweating and denying that he had really stepped over the line this time. His previous victories consisted of minor adjustments in peers that he felt were unappreciative of his qualifications. This was a whole new ball game, one that would either make his life much more pleasant, or put him in a federal prison (they did, after all, work on the government's dime). There was nothing he could do at this point, he decided, and his yard and sidewalk got the full nervous energy treatment. In the yards around him his neighbors slaved away on their "honey do" lists, each bringing their yards up to the "Jones'" snuff.

Around eleven in that morning he realized he shouldn't have worried, as a beat up old econo-car drove up rather sloppily and parked by the walkway by his driveway. With neighbors around and across the street, work came to a screeching halt as Christmas Jones, Ph.D. came wobbling out of the car and towards him with a calm, relaxed body posture, leaning most yearningly towards the hungry. She came up to him, almost touching chests, and stopped. In her skin-tight pants and the half-shirt, she looked, he apprised, most luscious.

"I'm here, Jarrod," she breathed, reeking of vodka, "to learn to be my best." Jarrod took a half step back, then picked the brown paper bag out of her hand and glanced at the bottle inside. 'Hmmm,' he thought. 'That wasn't part of the plan...' But neither was her delay.

"Good to see you, Dr. Jones," he responded. "Please come inside; we have to continue our discussion." He turned and walked up the front walk and into the house, scrubbing his sneakers as he came in. Christmas, he noted, came straight through, distractedly. He closed the door behind her and turned to her.

"Ex-mas, darling," he said, and she immediately, and gratifyingly, slumped into a trance, her shoulders slumping, face falling forwards as her eyes slammed shut. She wavered for a moment, and Jarrod put his hand out to her to steady her. "Open your eyes and follow me into the study," he said, and turned down the hall, past the staircase, and into a dark room off the main corridor. Christmas followed silently on his heels, spiraling spaghetti patterns whirling behind her eyes. Jarrod opened the wood paneled door, then turned to take Christmas by the arm and guide her into the drape-darkened room. He shut and locked the door, then turned back and walked the entranced woman to an easy chair set directly before a state-of-the-art home theater system, taking her by the shoulders and gently pushing her down into the seat. Then he pulled the footrest lever, propping and straightening her feet onto the leather rest. Then, squatting behind the chair and setting his eyes at about her level, he eased the chair back until she was at eye level the dark screen. From the magazine rack beside the chair he drew out a pair of oversized headphones, and carefully pulled her hair back from around her ears and placed the headphones on her head. Then he moved in front of her, arranging her slack arms on the armrests. Satisfied, he stepped back, then gave into temptation for the first time, and stepped back forward. Gently he put his hands, palms downward, onto her collarbone, then slowly moved them down, stopping at her firm breasts, then cupping, kneading them. Christmas' nipples came hard, but her eyes never wavered from her forward-looking, glazed stare. He drew his hands down around her hips, then bent forward, almost kneeling into her lap, and breathed deeply, trying to smell her aroma. She lay still, unresponsive, and he stopped; necrophilia was not his bag: He preferred his women awake and engaged. A niggling voice at the back of his head chortled at that thought, as if mind control counted as 'awake and engaged.' He shook his head, then stepped back, scooping up the theater remote from the magazine rack.

From a video cabinet he pulled out an unmarked tape, and inserted it into the player. He fiddled with the jacks, set the timer on his watch, hit the power for the TV, the 'play' button on the VCR and lifted one of her earphone muffs to say "Christmas, you will look at this tape, and continue to relax with each breath. This tape is very important to you, Christmas. If you listen carefully to everything in it, you will become the best at whatever you set your mind to."

Christmas Jones nodded, just barely, and Jarrod set the earphone back over her delicately formed ear as the screen started to flicker. He turned away from the screen, and slipped out the door, setting his watch alarm for four hours. Then he returned to the front of the house, set up his laptop computer, and reviewed again his notes on the capture and retraining of Dr. Christmas Jones.

In the darkened study, Christmas felt sucked into the huge 60" monitor, the sounds in her hears tracking with the undulating colored threads that seemed to move in patterns she could barely see. Under the swelling and rolling music there was someone talking calmly to her, and she redoubled her efforts to both spy the pattern and hear the words that would bring out the best in her. The more she saw the more the words made sense. 'Yes,' she thought, 'I can do these things; they're easy, and I'll be a lot better at what I do.' 'I can obey Jarrod, he will be good for me, and his pleasure is my pleasure. His happiness is mine.' She couldn't feel the deep feeling of anger and betrayal, lurking deep beneath her, biding its time.