Interview With...

"Much better," she whispered into his ear, and a sense of beatitude from obeying her washed over him.

His gaze followed the woman as she returned to her throne, crossing her legs idly, regarding the reporter with a gentle smile. Despite his anger, he caught himself giving her a once-over, wondering how this potential world-class model ever became a kingpin of crime.

"I don't...I mean..how?"

She patiently waited for him to find his words, looking at her watch, subtly reminding him of the unallotted interviewing time. Neither of them knew how it could be, so McKinley took in a deep breath, her jasmine scent still wafting over him from their close proximity a moment ago. Feeling defeated, and hoping he had enough time, he opened with his customary question for every interview or story he's ever done.

"Start from the beginning."

"My, that goes pretty far back for me," she began, realizing it'd been years since she revealed anything detailed about her past. "I was born and raised in Kenya, a happy child from a rather poor, but peaceful village. Unfortunately, the poor part led to the erosion of the peaceful part, as it sometimes happens in the world. Sometime after I was born, fighting began between rebels and the government; it took years for any conflict to reach my part of the country, but once it did, it was not pretty. Surrounding villages reported of soldiers of either side recruiting people against their will, even taking spoils in the form of vulnerable females, of any age."

The Kenyan's expression began to turn sullen, and McKinley watched as she spoke candidly about her past.

"They came across me one night as I headed back to my village, foolishly thinking I would be safe out by myself around sunset, and...I cannot remember running so fast in my life. They saw me before I saw them somehow. To this day, I wonder which soldiers tried to have their way with me that night, but thankfully I never tried to look back to see who they were affiliated with. I hid myself well for a while, but they did not let up their search. The sun had set fully by the time they found me again. They caught me in an open field, held me down and started to rip off my clothes. I screamed for help, and screamed at them to stop. My clearest memory of that night is how I screamed at them in my mind, and felt a connection to them. In that connection, they just stopped starkly. I crawled away, crying and scared out of any wits I had left, but still feeling that connection. Afraid that they would come after me again, I cried for them to run away in my head, and stopped to see them running in the opposite direction of me."

"Jesus," McKinley whispered without thinking.

"You would think it was that, that he descended from Christian heaven just to grant me this one miracle of avoiding a horrible, maybe fatal fate. Maybe he came down instead to give me this power, though I still believe that this was something in me that just manifested itself when I needed it the most."

"So, it's just night-time darkness that does it, or...?"

"My understanding of it up to now is that it depends on someone's perception of dark. Whether it is sunny out or not never makes a big difference for me. For example, if you were to close your eyes for a moment, you might see something surprising."

"If I were to...?"

"You seem skeptical, but I doubt that will impede on your thirst for knowledge. The proof is as simple as shutting those eyelids for a few seconds."

McKinley closed his eyes and mentally counted to ten, expecting to feel some intrusive presence in his head, but nothing changed that he could notice. Chuckling from her direction made him ask

"What's so funny?"

"Your...uh...'frontpiece' is showing."

He peered down to see his fly was opened and his cock was out, harder than he'd ever seen himself. Adrenaline stimulated his cock against his will from the exposure.

"What did you do to me?" he nearly screamed. He closed his eyes again to concentrate on braking his bonds, still a fruitless effort and still affect by the earlier wave of calming, but it scared him to imagine what further embarrassment or torture he might be subjected to. Upon opening his eyes again, he looked down to see his pants as they originally were, zipped up, still containing his genitals that grew a little past half-mast from the shock. It took a minute for him to control his breathing and calmly analyze what happened.

"Was..was that in your mind or your suggestion that did that?"

"Could be a little bit of both."

"And you saw that? You had a connection to me to allow you to see the illusion. Hans wasn't aware; just you and me?"

"Mm-hmm. The way you took to it, looks like you wanted to do more expose than an expose on me."

"Your humor seems very suggestive of someone not of legal age in the state of New York. It's hard to tell from your looks, but as a matter of professional pride, please don't tell me I'm under the captivity of an adolescent."

"Such hyperbole. Also, not very gentleman-like to ask an adult lady her age. You Americans surely do wear your impoliteness on your sleeve."

"I think you're adapting to us remarkably well then," he told her, giving emphasis to the chair he was restrained to.

"But since I promised full disclosure, I will be 35 soon. A decade's difference from you if I remember correctly."

"Pretty young," McKinley spoke in surprise. "For a woman of your reputation, I mean."

She sighed. "I suppose there was bound to be a bit of ageism and sexism there, even from you."

"What?"

"You seem surprised that the one in charge was a woman, and that she could be so young."

"Well typically, heads of crime organizations or syndicates like yours average age is around 55 statistically. The gender aspect..."

"Is constantly assumed to be a man in-control," she finished.

"Call me old-school for thinking that if you go high enough, you'll always find one man."

"I must deem your old school painfully antiquated. You are just confirming your own bias if you find a man at the top and then end your search there. Even older-school, and a more sensible line of thinking should come from the quote "there is a great woman behind every great man."

"Supporting the great man, I think they meant."

The Kenyan shrugged. "A code word for women in the know. Much like your country's president - a figure-head meant to be the face of leadership, not the brains."

McKinley could've fired back with something for the sake of arguing, but she'd obviously looked him up, and knew she'd have a few opinion pieces he's written on the status of the U.S. presidency and special interests groups would be thrown right back in his face.

"So you discovered this power when you were young, and it probably saved your life. Did you repress those powers out of fear, or did you keep using them, experimenting...I guess that's an apt way of asking," he mumbled the last part.

"More the latter than the former. After my attack, I went home and crawled into bed, avoiding facing my parents. I tried to sleep it off. I never told them what happened, and tried to pretend for the next few days that no such event happened. But I soon became curious enough. I tested it on pets around the village, and on some of the young children that were my age. At night, I made dogs howl in a chorus while boys danced dances that only girls traditionally would. It was fun to use, but I was afraid of people finding out what I could do. No one seemed to catch onto the fact that they had even been manipulated, so I kept my abilities to myself. My parents died in a car accident sometime later, and I was sent to live with grandparents in another village who took care of me into my late teens."

"When more conflict started appearing in their area, we all attempted to flee, but left too late as a rebel patrol raided our village, and hurt both my grandparents. I ran away and was pursued into a dark forest, and used that darkness to my advantage. The ones that chased me returned to my village with orders to stop the other rebels there. The in-fighting among them started while I tried getting my grandparents to safety. A few villagers I knew were killed in the crossfire, and in retrospect, I should have acted to rob the village of any light so everyone would be under my control. I took my grandfather to the closest hospital. They did what they could for him, but we knew he would succumb to his wounds, as bad as they were. The night he died, I blocked all the light I could from his bed and flooded his mind with thoughts of peace and painless silence. He died as comfortably as I could make him."

McKinley looked away from her, not expecting her biography to have a rather tragic origin.

"I'm sorry," he told her.

"I appreciate that. But I made sure someone else was more sorry after that."

That peaked the reporter's morbid curiosity greatly.

"Several nights after the attack on my grandparents village, I spoke to several soldiers I ran into late at night. They were looking for a good time with me, but they had an even better time giving me the information I wanted - information of who instigated hurting my family. A week later I found myself in a warlord's manor, clearly dressed to entice. Every piece of information pointed to him. I took what I knew to get a chance to be alone with him. He touched my leg and smoothly tried to invite me up to his private bedroom. I led him on well enough, he thought I wanted as much as he did. When we got to his room, I tried to turn off the lights, but he stopped me, claiming he wanted to see me as we fucked."

"How did you get out of that?"

"Quick, desperate thinking. I thought about trying to run to shut the light off, but he was in-between me and the switch. Running toward it would make it seem like I was running away, to which men like him become forceful and violent. I watched him carefully and thought about how I could use darkness somehow. I saw him light some incense and candles, and he closed his eyes to take in the scent of them. I wondered if shut eyelids made a difference, and tried using that. The next candle he lit and sniffed, he blew it out before opening his eyes, not even realizing it. When he reached the last candle in the room, I took full control of him, made him come directly to me, making sure his eyelids stayed shut far beyond his control. I mentally whispered over and over to him, unsure of how much was enough. I freely admit the man was handsome, and had he been anyone else, I may have been smitten enough. Instead of going for the light switch like I originally wanted to, I had a devious thought and ran with it."

"And that devious thought was?"

"I pulled his head into my bosom, and kept him there while I worked out giving something like...what do you call it..a brain aneurism."

The shock on McKinley's face was anticipated.

"Yes, I imagine he had the same look, without the wide-open eyes. He struggled in my grip, but I would not let him go. I just imagined some part of his brain suffocating, spasming, and that is exactly what he did, muffled pleading until he breathed his last breath. I laid him down on the bed and watched a trickle of blood flow from his nose."

She noticed her captive audience's face, full of renewed fear. Her M.O. as he knew was rarely about killing, and he wondered about the untold number of deaths that could be attributed directly to her powers. He'd been regaled with dozens of stories of mob hits and some assassinations, but the strange angle, or strange weapon of choice added to this story wasn't easy to take in.

"I will admit I took some joy in what I did, avenging my family, but I feel more than justified for the lives I probably saved from ending his."

"And afterwards, you just walked out?"

"No, the rest of my plan went off without a hitch. Before I left the room, all the power at the manor went out, because I had someone cut off the electricity at a certain time. With everyone exposed to darkness, I reached out to everyone I could. Anyone not a soldier, I commanded them to leave the premises. Anyone that was a soldier, when everyone else left, they were filled with an urge to beat every other soldier around them bloody, to the point of unconsciousness. More retribution for me."

"How did those soldiers fare afterwards, waking up to a melee they inflicted on each other that they couldn't remember, with their boss dead in his own bedroom."

"Never cared. Still do not."

"Ok, so after that how long did you stay in Kenya?"

"Just a few more years. Rumors started popping up after the manor massacre, as some called it. I did not necessarily propagate the rumors, but I did use them to my advantage. My myth stared in my home country, loosely translated to something like a ghost or demon, a whisperer of evil deeds someone once called me."

"You ever take offense to those titles?"

"No. It was from those titles, and watching people react to those titles, that I learned the value of anonymity. Everybody knows you and fears you, but is unaware of how to dispatch you, if they were brave enough to try. Being the 'helpless' gender in my country made for an even better cloak. I could claim, or have someone claim that they represented the myth, wielding influence as subtly as I could. I secured enough funds for me and my grandmother to live comfortably and safely in a place of our choosing. She never asked where the money came from, but I always assumed she knew I had something do with it everything surrounding it."

"Did she ever confront you about it?"

"Never out loud, but not out of fear. Occasionally a stern look from her came about when she heard about some act of humiliation or debauchery I may have caused. But no matter what, I always got a kiss on my forehead before she went to bed; she knew the kinds of conditions we escaped, and how we could be dead and buried if it were not for some intervention. Till the day she died, she always had a way of telling me she loved me and understood, even if I sometimes lacked her approval."

"She was your last living relative?"

"Yes. After she died, I found myself questioning if I really wanted to stay in Kenya. I could have, quite comfortably, but I had always wondered what the rest of the world was like. I was much more confident with my powers by then to make any move I wanted happen."

"So where did you go next?"

"Europe, but I think the more interesting question would be who got me there."

"Ok. Who got you there?"

"Enter a man who went by the name Phillips. Ex-CIA who lost the official ties to his government, but not the skills, contacts, or the expertise. He made his way to Kenya, curious about the tale of the manor massacre. Apparently there was some carelessness on my part with my connection to the myth as he tracked me down while I was still debating where to depart. He was subtle, breaking into my so-called secure home, respectfully acknowledging and admiring my accomplishments, cordially offering me an opportunity. But it was clear how dangerous he was, and how the choice of joining him was an illusion."

"How much did he know of your powers?"

"He theorized, but was only somewhat right. I never fully clued him into what I could do."

"So, he tried to turn you into an asset?"

"I did become an asset for him."

"You mean you let Phillips intimidate you? Why?"

"Refusing was an option, telling him to hit the road and forget about me in a persuasive manner, but he was a prime example of someone who understood the world I planned to venture out into. One where I have an advantage, yet know little of how it operates. In addition to the fact that he found me, at the time I decided to work for him, learning everything I could, feigning being a young country bumpkin who became lucky."

"I bet that translated to him becoming your asset."

"Over time, certainly. He used me much of the time for his own pursuits of acquisitions, taking me all over Europe, sometimes America, China, the Middle East speaking with so many important people that I could barely keep track. No matter what propaganda he spewed about seeking independence and autonomy from the rest of the world, Phillips was in it to become a criminal kingpin of his own, and used me to secure knowledge, intel, and persuade if necessary. Occasionally, he suggested I see a specialist or two who could help understand my powers. I turned him down most times, except once. I indulged him and saw some brain researcher who dealt with abnormalities. The guy liked to blink a lot, like he had something in his eye. I helped him by slowing down how often he succumbed to his habit, letting him rest his eyes and succumb fully. We talked and I got some intel of my own as to what Phillips was after. Not surprisingly, he wanted at least a way to understand my powers, and best a way to control me against my will. Luckily, by then, I was gaining assets of my own within his organization, and the doctor became one of them."

"So what happened to Phillips?"

"For all his savvy and government-learned smarts, the man could be insufferable, 'a real asshole' as men like you would put it at times. Even racist; one night he got more than a little tipsy and made a crack about my skin tone and my powers, eluding to a very...unflattering connection. What followed then, more or less was reconstructive surgery."

"You mean, like, he needed it after what you did to him?"

"His attitude needed reconstruction more, but I gave him a solid hour of feeling reconstructive surgery as if it was happening to his face and only his face. No anesthesia. He could run around, writhe on the ground, move his hands across his face, but could not escape it."

"Christ."

"He spoke of that name nearly every minute of that hour before I stopped. He woke up convinced that he just had a horrible nightmare after a night of hard liquor."

"Even after something that traumatic, he would just easily forget like any other victims of yours?"

"I do not agree with the term 'victims,' but I understand the use of it in his case. And no, I did assist in making sure that his punishment faded from his memory. He knew something bad happened, but could not tell what, and never associated it with me. The alcohol took care of what led up to his experience."

"These illusions you create, they're supposed to be 100% believable?"

"As far as I know, as far as the person experiencing it knows."

"Has it ever manifest itself in reality?"

"In some ways, yes. Phillips did not bleed or anything, but the nerves across his face lit up with the pain he felt, especially when he got a look in the mirror. Your little bout of indecent exposure minutes ago, you must have seen how hard you were, full your testicles look, how you might have orgasmed if a slight breeze hit it. My own eyes could not see what you saw, yet I watched you approach that full arousal slowly, deliciously. If there is such thing as a mind's eye, that is where I saw what you saw, from our connection. And I must retract my earlier statement - for a white man, you seem more than decent."

He kept his eyes on her, waiting to see if her tune would change on her compliment, but also to keep from shutting his eyes in annoyance, not willing to be manipulated any more than he had to. The overhead light flickered a little bit, and it finally came to his attention that there was a sliver of difference in the lighting, just a little bit darker. The bulb above was easier to see as it produced light. Worry filled McKinley again as the endgame still plagued him despite her engrossing origins.

"Midnight is not yet upon us; I would keep your questions going Cinderella."

"Is that supposed to make you Prince Charming?"

"Not a prince, but not even you can deny the charm." She looked point blanked into his eyes, while he indecisively glanced in her direction a few times.