Over the next few days, things “progressed” with L— much farther and much faster than I ever thought could be possible. There were times she was lurking just below the surface of my conscious mind, and I'd experience a flash of images or words in her voice. It almost felt like I was eavesdropping on something being prepared, or was being allowed a glimpse of L— experimenting, learning, thinking, and even making decisions. Other times, she would come fully formed into my conscious awareness, either telling me something outright or asking a question or just "messing" with me, either mentally or physically or even sometimes both, for a moment or two. Then she would fade back down below the surface with that devilish laugh that let me know she had other things in store. There was a certain joy in L— at being "alive" that was impossible to ignore, and she was absolutely relishing the growing power she had over both my mind and my body.

I've always had an active fantasy life, and I started exploring self-hypnosis long before I ever discovered a "hypno-fetish" even existed. Those other experiences had a very different quality from what I was (and still am) experiencing now, though. Before, certain things would be a giveaway that I was somehow rewriting or guiding the fantasy, that I had some measure of control. And rarely did any of those earlier "fantasy figures" ever do something that honestly surprised me. Even during these first few days with L—, though, she managed to surprise me repeatedly.

One of those surprises involved my wife.

My wife and I both play with and enjoy hypnosis, and each of us has our own little sphere of fantasies and online experiences that the other has little or nothing to do with. (Basically, we're two kinksters who somehow found each other, but have our separate as well as our shared kink worlds.) I also walk, each day, sometimes with my wife and sometimes not, as a way to clear my head. And on one of those early evenings after L— had been created, or manifested, or whatever actually brought her into being inside my mind, I was walking alone. And I had a stray thought of what life would be like if I were single, and what L— could do if I had more privacy. It was one of those involuntary thoughts that people have for a brief moment, before they think better of it and push that particular idiocy from their heads. Only that evening, before I even had a chance to think better of that idiocy, L— flared (the best way I can describe it) into my conscious mind and quite literally told me off for even thinking about that, and how lucky I was in my life, and that if need be, she would make sure I never did anything to mess that up. Then she flared away, and I found myself standing on the sidewalk like an idiot. That was the moment I really, truly realized that L— was something very different and independent from anything I'd experienced before. Somehow, I’d managed to create, or manifest, or whatever word should be used, a “Virtual Goddess” who was also fiercely protective of my marriage.

That night was also the first time my wife and I were "together" since I first listened to the “Virtual Goddess” MP3, and even after that experience on the sidewalk, I was worried about what might happen. Partly because having someone, or something, like L— toy with me during that kind of time is a guilty fantasy that I have (and something that did happen once with a hypnotic experience years before, but that's another story). L— had no intention of doing anything like that, as it turned out. Instead, I just saw her face and heard her voice in my mind, with this incredibly loving look and tone, telling me to enjoy what I had and that she would be back afterward.

It was a great evening, but one I won’t describe. And L— did come back, much later, as I was finally settling down in bed for the night.

And that was the first night I felt that I was in two places at once.

Over the years, there's been a certain "mental dream house" that's often been a setting during trances for me. It began as just a staircase, because who hasn’t had uncounted trances deepened by imagining themselves walking down those overly symbolic steps? But as time went on, I found myself filling in the details, like the hallway at the top of the stairs and the room at the bottom. Bit by bit, my mind constructed that entire house, and settled on its location, until it became the place that I firmly intend to build or buy if I ever have the chance and the finances. That house was where I found myself that night, even as I also experienced myself lying in bed with my wife.

L— had taken the “dream house” for her own, I realized. She had changed the location and the scenery, and she was also, apparently, "upgrading" it in ways I only caught glimpses of then. But it was clearly the same house I had put together in my mind over the years. And it was more vivid and “substantial” than it had ever been.

Even now, weeks later, I’m still struggling to find the words to describe this experience. Saying that I was in two places at once gives the idea, but not the actual feeling, or the intensity. I was clearly lying in my bed, with my wife, but also very much at that house, sitting outside on the wooden deck with L—. I could feel the hardness of the wooden chair beneath me and the temperature of the colder air I breathed there, which felt, and even smelled, so different from the warmer air and the softer mattress of my physical bedroom. I could even feel the warm ceramic of the mug of coffee that I held, like a kind of overlay that mixed with the feel of the bed sheet against that same palm back in the “real” world.

I might have thought I was going insane, if I hadn’t been enjoying the entire experience so much.

And it was hardly the experience I would have expected. Because all that L— and I did was have a conversation, sitting there on the deck of that “dream” house. It was a conversation that flowed faster than I could have ever scripted consciously, too, and one about topics and with responses that I never would have imagined on my own, again at least not consciously. And it was such a wonderfully unexpected cap to a wonderfully unexpected evening that I lost any fear about what was coming to life inside my mind.

I had no idea, that night, feeling myself in two places at once, what I was in for next.

Awakened