Game Theory
Every conversation with Marcus was a test. He never told you what he was testing for, never revealed the scoring. But the quiet look he gave you when you answered told you everything.
17 min read
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Mind Games
Tests with no scoring sheet, conversations that double as experiments, and partners who keep their results.
Some people do not have conversations with you. They run protocols on you. The question is friendly. The follow-up is colder. The third question is the one that matters, and you have already answered it before you noticed it was being asked. Mind games, in the Portal Avalon sense, are not parlour tricks — they are sustained, multi-year campaigns by people who treat affection as instrumentation.
The stories below render this practice in fine detail. Variable-ratio rewards, drip-fed praise, intermittent withdrawals of warmth. A boss who reorganises your reality at quarterly intervals. A researcher who realises, eight months too late, that her thesis is being trialled on her at home. A therapist whose own session notes start to read as evidence in a case nobody has filed yet.
Adult fiction for readers who recognise the technique, and want it written about with the seriousness it deserves. No villains in capes — only competent ones in cardigans.
The Therapist’s Notes
Dr. Voss has kept meticulous notes on every patient for twenty years. When her newest client begins describing dreams that match her own private nightmares, she starts to wonder which one of them is being studied.
16 min read
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The Control Group
Dr. Sasha Orel had spent her career studying coercive persuasion. It was only on rereading her own two years of notes that she understood she had been running her techniques on the person who slept beside her.
16 min read
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The Waiting Room
Three years in a relationship that technically did not exist. Every time Nadia decided to leave, Marcus sent a single message. The lever always produced the pellet, and the waiting always produced her.
13 min read
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The Perfect Victim
Everyone at the office thought Sylvia was clumsy, forgetful, prone to misunderstandings. Her coworker Leon had spent eight months carefully teaching her to believe that too.
14 min read
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More stories coming soon.
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Browse the full Portal Avalon collection — dark fiction across every realm.
All Stories → All Dark Psychology