“Babe, you know spirals don’t really work on me.”

“No no, just watch!” my partner said.

We were both sitting on our bed. We’d tried this song and dance so many times. She’d put a spiral on a computer screen or a VR headset, and it’d only ever give me a headache at worst, or some unpleasant visual dizziness at best. Tonight, she wasn’t even trying; just a gif on her phone, and a poor quality one at that.

“Oh! I forgot something, sorry. Here.”

She slipped a couple buds into my ears, with some soft binaural beats and subliminal recordings of her voice just barely audible. Stock induction phrases, spoken in a stereotypical hypnotic huckster voice.

“You’re getting very sleepy… take nice deep breaths… TRANSPARENCY MODE ACTIVATED.”

That last one was louder than the rest.

“Sorry! Sorry,” I heard her hurriedly chuckle, tapping at another phone resting on the bed.

“If I didn’t know any better,” I smirked, “I’d say you were phoning this induction in on purpose.”

“Oh, come on, why would I do something like that?”

“I don’t know. Maybe you need a distraction—”

“Sink.”

The spiral gif phone suddenly shoved into my forehead, in a surprisingly not-painful way. My body slumped back on the bed, caught off guard.

The binaural beats intensified. The subliminal recordings took on a new, much more effective tone, shifting their language to disorient me.

“Surprised?” the subliminals whispered. “My sweet subject. Of course I phoned it in. You fell into my trap and now you’re sinking helplessly for me…”

“Look at you,” my partner purred, barely audible above the bombardment of subliminals. “You’re so cute when you’re unprepared. My inductions work every time. And now you’re falling helplessly… Go ahead and close your eyes, sweetie. You don’t need to work so hard to keep them open.”

My eyes drifted shut, the visual dizziness from the crappy spiral lingering behind my eyelids and sending my now-vulnerable mind careening into trance. The binaurals guided me down as the subliminals effortlessly subsumed my thoughts.

“Now…” she said. “Let’s have some fun.”