Free Controlling the Girl Next Door (The Magic Remote Book 1) by Nadia Nightside

Author's Note: All Characters Depicted Herein Are 18 Years Of Age Or Older.
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Controlling the Girl Next Door
    J ared couldn't believe what he had found, cleaning out his grandfather's trunk in his closet.
    His parents had assigned him any number of odd jobs to take care of. This was number one hundred and seventeen, and he was getting a little nervous. There were only one hundred and thirty things on the list, and once he stopped taking of them, he was afraid they were going to start charging him rent.
    Up until this point, everything in the old trunk had been fairly dull stuff. Old outfits with gross color combinations and wide collars, packets of letters from pen pals in Germany and Australia, dusty old parts of models of trains and small wintery towns, that sort of thing.
    Then he came upon a videotape. It was tied with twine to a thick remote the size of a chalkboard eraser and a weird-looking helmet apparatus, gold metal with little violet glass pieces inlaid upon it.
    It was all odd to him: the apparatus, the clicker, and especially finding a videotape—his grandfather would have already been quite old by the time VHS had even been invented.
    Maybe that was why Jared immediately went downstairs from the attic, into his bedroom, and dusted off his old VCR from his closet.
    Jared had gotten the VCR as a birthday present when he was about ten. The very next year, DVD took off, and he had to save up and get a player of his own seven years later, as his parents had been scared off from buying any media-output device from then on.
    Now, Jared was twenty-five, still living in his parents home. Five months ago, he had been laid off from his telecommunications job. It was a kind of blessing, as he had never liked it very much, but he did miss the regular paycheck.
    He also missed the freedom of being on his own and doing whatever he wanted, when he wanted. Living with his parents, now, was humiliating. They didn't charge him rent, and his mother made home-cooked meals every night, and somehow that made it all even worse.
    Sitting down in front of his small flat screen television, he popped in the VHS to the old VCR. He was happy to find that both of the old artifacts still worked.
    The video flickered on, showing some kind of interview session in a white room. There was a woman sitting on a chair.
    A man's voice said, “Is it on?”
    The woman said, “Yes. I see the light. It's blinking.”
    “Wonderful.”
    A face came into view—his grandfather's face! Younger, though. Much younger than Jared had ever seen him. He was wearing the same crown that Jared had in his hands. His grandfather adjusted the camera for a moment, and then moved back behind the camera.
    “All right,” his grandfather said. “I have this remote here. We are testing it, yes? Seeing whether it works.”
    The woman nodded. She was strikingly good looking—wearing a dark blue pantsuit. Her lovely brown hair was done up in a thick ponytail above her head.
    “I want you to tell me how you feel about me,” his grandfather said.
    She shrugged. “You're a nice man. You pay me well. You don't ask for unreasonable things.”
    “And in a romantic sense?”
    She blanched. “Really, Doctor?”
    “This is for science, my dear. Please.”
    “Fine. I don't really have any romantic feelings toward you. When I first worked here, you asked me out, and I declined. You were very professional about it, which I appreciated then and now.”
    “Wonderful,” said the doctor.
    Jared heard a clicking sound, and then a deep humming, and then a bright purple light flashed across the screen.
    “How do you feel now?” his grandfather asked.
    The woman just moaned in response, staring forward blankly.
    “You feel wonderful,” said his grandfather.
    “Wonderful,” the woman echoed, nodding happily, smiling.
    “You always feel wonderful when I'm around.”
    “Always wonderful when you're around.” Her smile grew wider, a flush moving up her neck.
    “You've