Electioneering

Betsy stepped out of her shoes, let her purse fall to the floor right next to the door, and walked over to the couch as if someone had turned up the gravity in her house. She flopped down onto the cushions with a whoosh of breath, and quietly resolved to herself that she wouldn't even think about moving for at least a few minutes. Even something as simple as finding the remote could wait--all her shows were Tivoed anyway, which was a good thing considering it was seven o'clock and she'd just now gotten home from work.

Betsy's stomach growled irritably, but she was in no mood to cook right now. "Screw it," she muttered to herself. Her diet could go to hell for one day; she'd probably burned off enough extra calories running up and down stairs to be able to scarf down a whole pizza without any noticeable effects. She closed her eyes. In a minute or two, she told herself, she'd get up, grab the phone, and order some food. In a minute. In just a...

The doorbell rang. Betsy opened her eyes wide in the manner of someone who realized that "a minute or two" had already turned into seven minutes and was well on its way to more, and stumbled to her feet. She felt a moment of disorientation as she wondered if this was the pizza getting here, but she remembered as she opened the door that she hadn't actually ordered it yet; besides, the woman at the door was definitely no delivery driver.

Internally, she groaned at the sight of the sharply dressed woman with her blonde hair pulled back into an immaculate bun. *Not another one*, she thought. Three days before the election, and it seemed like they were showing up on an hourly basis now. Betsy couldn't tell which party this girl was from; her campaign button just had a little display of blinking colored lights that spelled out 'VOTE'. Betsy hoped this one was just here to ask if she was registered--she'd had to get pretty snippy with the last one who'd wanted her to volunteer at the polling place. Twelve hour days (on a good day), six days a week, and they wanted her to volunteer?

Even so, she opened the door. It always seemed to take less time to talk to them than to wait for them to quit ringing the doorbell. "Hi," she said, hoping that the bleary look in her eyes and the exhausted tone in her voice would help to cut this short.

"Hi!" the girl said in a perky, yet somehow oddly forceful tone. "I'm Anna, and I'm with the Campaign To Get Out And Not Vote." She pressed a tiny stud on her button, and another set of blinking colored lights traced a circle around the word 'VOTE', then drew a line across it. They vanished, and began to trace again. "May I come in?"

"I, um, what?" Betsy blinked away a little of the sleep in her eyes as she stared in confusion at the blinking button. Had she heard that right? She must have, the button was crossing it out, but... "What?" she said again.

"Thank you," Anna said, stepping inside and taking Betsy's arm. "As you know," she said as she led Betsy to the couch, "at least a third of the country doesn't vote in the national elections every two years. We at the Campaign To Get Out And Not Vote think that if a third of the country doesn't care about something, it can't be that important, really. We're hoping on your support to not care about it either."

"I, but..." Was she still asleep? Was this a dream? Was it a joke, maybe, some kind of weird performance art? "But, um...voting's important," she said numbly as she sat down. If she was really on 'Candid Camera' or something, she at least didn't want to look stupid.

"Let me ask you," Anna said briskly, "do you know how many people live in the state of California?" Betsy started to speak, but Anna cut her off before she could even get out a word. "It's over thirty-six million. Your vote only counts as one three-hundred-sixty-thousandth of one percent of the electorate, Betsy. Statistically speaking, you're not important. You're insignificant."

Betsy felt a surge of irritation at that, but before she could respond, Anna said, "Now obviously, you're not insignificant anywhere else in your life. Why should you spend so much time and effort on something that just reminds you of how little choice you really have in all the important decisions that affect you? Why should you make such a long, tiring journey out to the polling place, work so hard and make all those decisions, when it's really not going to matter how you vote? Someone else is going to run your life, Betsy. It's easier to just accept it."

Betsy stared in blank incomprehension at the blinking lights on the button as they traced their endless circle, around and around. She'd had way too long a day to handle this kind of conversation. Her head felt all muddy and jumbled from too little sleep combined with the beginnings of a nap cut off as it was getting started, Anna was rattling off her speech so quickly that Betsy couldn't even get a word in edgewise, let alone think about what she was saying, and politics had never really been Betsy's strong suit anyway. "I--"

Betsy hadn't even figured out where she was going with the sentence before Anna trampled on her train of thought again. "You've already got so many decisions to make as it is, Betsy. It's exhausting to think about how much you have to decide every day. Just by the time you get to work, you've already made decisions about what to eat, about what to wear, about whether to get up or just call in sick. And every single one of those decisions tires you out a little bit more. Just imagine how many choices you've made over the course of your whole life, Betsy. It's a wonder you can even think at all anymore, you're so worn down."

Betsy was already feeling tired, like her head was full of cotton candy, but Anna kept right on going. "And now, think about how much effort it would be to make a choice about every single one of those candidates on the ballot, Betsy. Every one of those choices, wearing you down a little bit more, and none of it matters. You don't decide who wins that election. You don't decide who makes the laws. You don't decide what those laws are. Someone else already makes so many choices for you, why not go ahead and let them make a few more?"

"Um..." It occurred to Betsy that she hadn't really said a single coherent sentence yet to Anna. She didn't really know what she would say if she could. She felt like she should refute some of the stuff that Anna was saying, but everything she could think of to counter Anna's web of words just sounded like empty rhetoric from her high school civics class. "I...you should go," she said thickly. She'd figure out what was wrong with all this later, she decided, after Anna was out the door and she'd had some time to eat and sleep and concentrate.

"See?" Anna said triumphantly. Instead of leaving, though, she sat down right next to Betsy. "It took you all this time, all this effort to make even one decision, Betsy, and when you did make it? It didn't matter. Someone else made a different decision, and you're stuck with the results. For all the good it did you, you might as well have not even tried to think about what you wanted. You tired yourself out, wore yourself down trying to decide what you wanted, and you would have been so much happier if you'd just let me decide what you wanted for you."

"But--but--but--" Betsy stammered helplessly as her brain locked up. She'd told Anna to go! That meant she was supposed to leave, not stay here and keep telling her things that confused her because they made sense in a weird way.

"And now you're trying to decide what to do next, and that's only tiring you out even more," Anna said, steamrollering right over her objections. "Every time your brain tries to sort through your options, you get more and more exhausted, more and more numb, until your mind runs out of gas and your brain shuts down. And you know that none of those options are going to do any good anyway. None of your decisions mean anything. I decide things for you. So your brain runs on from choice to choice to meaningless choice until it finally gives up and lets me make the right choice, the choice that's going to happen anyway. Doesn't that sound so much better to you?"

Betsy stared vacantly at the blinking lights, trying to find some way out of this. She could say no, but Anna would just keep talking. She could say yes, but that would mean giving up and letting Anna think for her. She could tell her to leave again, but Anna wouldn't do it. She could...could... Desperately, she cast around for any idea she could latch on to, knowing that each effort drained away a little more of her precious energy, but she already felt too sleepy to think.

"Doesn't that sound good to you, Betsy?" Anna said firmly, pushing her back into the couch cushions with her left hand.

Betsy's breath went out in a whoosh as her mind simply sputtered and died. "...yes," she said vacantly.

Just saying it felt amazing, like someone was pressing a hand to the crotch of her slacks and rubbing firmly. She almost wondered where Anna's other hand was, but wondering was too much like thinking and thinking was too much like deciding and she was too tired to decide anything right now. Anna could do that. She'd rather simply agree with what Anna said.

"And doesn't that feel good to you, Betsy, sitting there and letting someone else tell you what to do?"

"...yes..." The rubbing felt even better, now, and Betsy arched her hips up into it.

"It feels good when someone tells you what to do..." Another rub. "What to say..." Fingers on her nipples now, pinching and tweaking them through her clothes. "What to think..."

"yes..." Betsy couldn't deny it--someone was telling her what to do, what to say, what to think, and it was swamping her mind with bliss. Her legs slowly drifted apart, and she smiled dreamily when she realized that even that wasn't her own decision; her body was doing it all on its own.

"Feels so liberating," Anna whispered in her ear, her voice now a husky purr instead of a brisk chirp, "so relaxing..." She punctuated each phrase with an extra-firm caress, and Betsy's eyelids fluttered as she tried to keep them open, but then she realized that she didn't have any say in that either, and they slammed shut.

"yesss," Betsy groaned out, not even sure of what she was agreeing to anymore, but knowing that whatever it was, she had to agree with it. Making choices was just too much work. It felt so easy, so good, so effortless and relaxing and liberating to simply obey. Why had she ever even tried to think for herself? Why hadn't she given in and let someone run her life long before now? She couldn't answer that question, of course. That would mean thinking.

"Take off your clothes," Anna said, and Betsy found herself stripping naked almost before she realized it. That felt wonderful, she realized. It was like she was a passenger in her own body now, relaxing and enjoying the ride while someone else did all the work of driving. Anna could make all the hard decisions like what Betsy should wear, what she should eat, when she should "Lie on my lap, face down." It made everything so much easier.

She felt Anna's left hand stroking her hair, her back, her shoulders, soothing her deeper down into this strange, empty trance while Anna's right hand found its way into her pussy and began to pump two fingers in and out. They slid so easily into her wet opening, and Anna's knuckle felt so good when it brushed up against her clit on every downstroke, and Betsy was so pleased to know that her grunts and moans of pleasure were utterly involuntary. Anna was dragging every sigh and whimper out of Betsy's sleepy, mindless body, and that meant she was obeying and agreeing, and that made the pleasure so much better still...

And it felt so good to know that her body wanted more of the pleasure; her body arched up into Anna's touch, her butt rearing up in the air and quivering in need without her mind needing to involve itself at all. She could just watch and listen and feel, as Anna explained even more about how good it felt when someone else decided things for Betsy. Betsy wanted that, now, but she understood that the best part of all was that she would want whatever she was told to want. That felt so good that she couldn't help herself, she clenched her pussy tightly around Anna's fingers and came and came and came. And when she realized that she really couldn't help herself, she came again, even harder.

"Good girl," Anna said at last. "Now, listen carefully, Betsy. I'm going to tell you what to do."

*****

Jerry rolled his eyes when he heard the knock on the door. It was almost ten o'clock! Didn't these stupid volunteers ever get any sleep? He stormed to the door, ready to tell whoever it was to fuck off because he was voting for the other guy, but his words died in his throat when he saw just how beautiful this particular volunteer was.

"Hi!" the girl said in a perky, yet somehow oddly forceful tone. "I'm Betsy, and I'm with the Campaign To Get Out And Not Vote." She pressed a tiny stud on her button, and another set of blinking colored lights traced a circle around the word 'VOTE', then drew a line across it. They vanished, and began to trace again. "May I come in?"

THE END