If she hadn't felt the muscles of her eyelids move, she might not have even realized she had opened her eyes. Minnie groaned softly, a dull throbbing pounding through her head as she looked around. Or rather, as she tried to. Wherever she was, it was pitch black; not a single ray of light seemed to enter this space. There was no sound, either, other than her own breathing.

She tried to remember what had happened, but everything was a blur. She remembered coming home from work, her key turning in the lock. She remembered reaching to open her door, and then...

Shit.

She remembered a sharp pinching feeling in the side of her neck, and a cold feeling like ice spreading through her veins. And everything after that became a blur. She had vague memories of being carried into a van, and then nothing.

Fuck, fuck, fuck!

Her breath was coming rapidly now. The confusion was giving way to panic. She'd been abducted by...someone, and now she was somewhere she didn't know, in total silence and darkness. And judging by the pressure against her back, she was sitting in a chair. She couldn't move much; what felt like leather straps held her arms, legs, and even head firmly in place. She pulled, kicked, pushed with all her might, but it was no use. Whoever had bound these, they'd done too good a job. The realization was crushing. She wasn't getting out of here, not until whoever the hell did this decided she was.

The panic was beginning to become overwhelming, her arms and legs beginning to strain harder as her mouth opened to scream for help. But she never got the chance. IVs that she hadn't yet realized were in her arms began to flow, and she felt something enter her body. It was different, this time. Not cold; numbing. She felt her body begin to sag, as if movement was something impossible to attempt. The panic she was still feeling became muted, distant, something she was observing now more than experiencing. She tried to hang on to the feelings, the memories, the rational knowledge - this is bad, I have to get out of here - but her rational mind was smothered under whatever had just flowed into her system.

And then the light came.

Blinding, bright white light radiated from every inch of the room around her. Even as sluggish as she was, her eyes snapped shut at the sudden intensity. A low tone, an oddly soothing hum, began to emanate throughout the room. She slowly opened her eyes to look for the source, and saw the room clearly for the first time.

Seemingly every surface of the room was covered in a screen of some kind. The floor, the ceiling, the walls, all glowed brightly with digital light, displaying the same image; a swirling mosaic of spirals and colorful lights, spinning and streaking and swirling across every surface. She tried to look away, but her body barely responded to her, and the straps kept her body firmly in place. Not that there was anything else to look at anyways.

Through the fog of chemicals, the distant part of her that was still alert desperately tried to reassert control. Her eyes clamped back shut, as tight as she possible could. The light was bright enough that it didn't help much. The faint outline of spirals and colors still danced in her vision, but it was something. It was all the resistance she could manage.

"Relax, Minnie. Open your eyes."

The voice seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere. She hadn't seen anyone in the room with her, but that didn't mean anything. What did mean something was the way her body betrayed her. Without meaning to, even as her distant awareness screamed at her not to, whatever had permeated her senses and addled her mind made the thought of saying no seem so unbearably difficult. And so she found her eyes opening again, the barrage of colors and spirals and lights filling her vision.

"You are safe here, Minnie. No danger will find you here."

The voice was calm, soothing, friendly. It sounded male, though she could barely focus on it enough to tell. She knew, logically, that the voice was a liar. She knew she'd been abducted, and it wasn't hard to figure out that someone, something, was trying to hypnotize her. She knew she was in danger. She knew she shouldn't listen.

It didn't matter.

Between the tone still humming in the background, the soothing sound of the voice, and whatever was running through her system, she felt her body begin to relax. The panic, already muted by drugs, was fading fast. Her own internal protests were ignored by her body entirely.

"You're doing so well, Minnie," the voice continued. "There is no need for fear. No need to worry. You are safe here."

Safe. Each time the voice said that word, it became harder for her to refute it. No one had hurt her yet. And the voice sounded so nice.

"You can relax, Minnie. The chair is comfortable. So very comfortable."

It was. She hadn't noticed it until the voice told her it was. But the voice was right. It was so very comfortable.

"Allow yourself to relax, Minnie. Relax your body. Relax your mind. Let your anxieties and worries drift away."

A small sigh escaped her lips as that distant observer, the small part of her inside her mind who still registered the danger, fell silent. It really is better to just relax, after all.

"Allow your eyes to focus on the spirals, Minnie. On their swirling colors. On the lights that dart around them. They are so very fascinating. So easy to focus on. So easy to let your mind clear of your worries as you watch. As you focus. As you listen."

It was. God, it was.

The voice kept talking, but the words began to blur together. She wasn't quite sure what it was saying anymore, only that the more she stared and focused and listened, the more relaxed she became. It really was so easy, just like the voice said. So easy to just relax, to focus, to-

"Sleep, Minnie,"

The world "sleep" cut through the fog of relaxation, piercing her mind like a beam of light. And as quickly as she registered it, it, and the voice, and everything else, fell away into darkness.

The Voice, whoever they were, knew that about an hour had passed. Minnie, on the other hand, knew nothing of that. She knew remarkably little about anything right now.

She was still sitting in the chair, but her restraints were gone. The spirals, the lights, all still swirled in her vision, the only thing she could see. The Voice still spoke in her ears, the only thing she could hear. The only things that were real. 

Her back was straight against the chair, her shoulders slumped slightly, her mouth slack and parted. Her eyes were open, but she didn't see anything, not really. Glassy, dilated eyes stared wide open at the endless mosaic that absorbed every inch of her focus. But the sight no longer elicited thought, nor did the Voice. There were no thoughts.

"You are being hypnotized."

She was. The Voice said she was, and that made it true. The Voice's words were the only thing she knew right now.

"It feels so relaxing to be hypnotized. You want to be hypnotized."

She did. Not consciously, but her body knew it without thought. Being hypnotized felt good. She was relaxed. She didn't have to think. Didn't have to worry. The Voice would tell her everything that mattered.

"Allow your mind to empty now, Minnie. Emptier and emptier. So very relaxed. So deeply hypnotized. There is no need to think right now. Thoughts are difficult and messy, and hypnosis is relaxing and easy. Empty and blank, Minnie. Relaxed. Empty. Hypnotized."

Her eyes remained locked on the cacophony of spirals and colors as her head slumped forward, drool trickling unheeded from her slack mouth. There wasn't enough of her left right now to notice. Noticing would have required thought. Care. Will. And the Voice had told her to let those things go.

The body that usually contained the mind of a girl named Minnie sat ramrod straight in the chair. Her wide eyes stared straight ahead at the spirals, glazed and dilated. The light of the screens, the swirling patterns of the colors, reflected back across the glassy irises, but there was no hint that any of it was registering. She didn't fidget, didn't look around, didn't twitch or speak or move a muscle. Only the slow, steady pulse of her breath and the occasional, reflexive blink of sightless eyes provided any indication that it was a person occupying that chair. Not that she was a person right now. Not in any way that mattered.

The Minnie who existed outside this room, the girl who worried for her appearance, the girl who played video games; that girl was gone. Locked up in some tiny corner of her mind, silent, asleep, forgotten. The Minnie who sat in the chair now wasn't her.

She wasn't anything at all.

"Hypnotized girls are obedient."

That made sense. Or it would have, if any part of her was processing anything at all.

"You are hypnotized."

She was. She knew that without thought. It was the only truth in the universe. It was all she was.

"Therefore, you are obedient."

She was. The Voice said she was. There was no other option.

"Raise your right arm."

The arm was in the air the moment the command was uttered. It lowered only when the Voice said to. The Voice said to do other things, too. Stand, sit, walk, turn, testing her obedience. The responses were immediate. The Voice spoke, and her body obeyed. She didn't think about it, or wonder why, and she certainly was no longer worrying about where she was or what was happening. Those were things that required a mind, required thought and self and curiosity and memory, and those were things Minnie no longer possessed. Things that she may as well have never possessed. Things that may as well have never existed at all.

Her mind knew only one truth, and that was the Voice. It told her what she was, what she did, what was true. Even the spirals that still spun and the lights that still swirled were little more than background noise, a focal point for eyes as empty as the mind behind them.

The Voice told her to return to the seat. To stare into the spirals. To allow her mind to empty further and further with every breath. To let everything within her disappear.

She obeyed.

There was no more Minnie. There had never been a Minnie. The Voice told her that she was White Rose, that this was the name for her current state, for the blissful relaxation that comes with letting go, with allowing herself fall so deeply into hypnosis and forget everything except obedience. And so that was all she was. Right now, it was all she would ever be and ever had been.

"Whenever you hear my voice speak the words 'The summer rains fall', your mind will find it so easy, so effortless, to return to this state of deep hypnosis. To empty itself of all thought and will and become White Rose again. And when you do, you will respond with 'And the flower blooms and obeys'. Confirm your command, White Rose."

White Rose's voice spoke for the first time in unknown hours, time as foreign a concept to her hollow mind as thought.

"White Rose obeys."

Three simple words, spoken without tone or emotion, that sealed her fate. Three words that handed the keys to her mind to someone else.

"Good. You are doing so well, White Rose," the Voice continued. "While in this state, you will be as mindless and obedient as you are now. Your mind will empty of all thought, all will, all memory. You will allow your mind to be filled. You will allow yourself to be told what to think. What to believe. What to say. What to do."

Of course she would. The Voice told her who she was, what the world was. It told her what to do. It told her everything. The Voice was her mind was the Voice.

"Your mind will always accept what it is told. You will remember what you are told to remember. You will forget what you are told to forget. Your waking thoughts, your memories, your desires...you will allow them to be open. Changed. Controlled."

The command hardly needed to be stated. It was already true, already self-evident. Her mind bent to the Voice. If it told her the sky was green and her name was Roger, then the sky was green and her name was Roger.

"Listen carefully, White Rose. You will be instructed. It is essential that you listen and obey."

Her mind remained a smooth, placid lake, her features blank and undisturbed. But somewhere in the hollow depths of her mind, her subconscious lit up, just enough to etch every word the Voice spoke into its own foundations.

"Minnie will never know of White Rose's existence. When you are out of trance, you will have no memory of ever entering it. You have never been hypnotized."

She had never been hypnotized.

"Your mind will obey its instructions, but Minnie will always believe she is acting of her own will and volition. Confirm, White Rose."

"White Rose obeys," the shared voice of White Rose and Minnie responded, signing her mind away into an obedience and control it will never know.

The Voice continued, repeating its cycle of brainwashing over and over, for what may have been minutes or may have been hours. Time meant nothing to White Rose. There was only the Voice, and whatever it commanded of her.

Minnie groaned as her alarm clock went off. She reached an arm over to her nightstand and grabbed her phone, thumbing at the screen until the alarm went to sleep. She was not ready to get up yet.

Five minutes later, it went off again. She gave another groan, kicking her blankets off and rolling over to turn the alarm off. She sat up, yawning deeply and rubbing her head. She wasn't sure why she still felt so groggy. She hadn't done anything last night. She'd come home from work and...

Wait, what had she done?

A brief flash of confusion ran through her. She felt like something had happened last night. Something bad. But that didn't make any sense. She'd been at home, right? She thought she had been, but now she wasn't so-

Her phone dropped to the bed as her body went slack. Her mind dropped deep into trance, just long enough to erase the thoughts she wasn't supposed to have, to bring the programmed memories to the surface.

Minnie blinked and shook her head. Man, she was tired this morning. She wasn't sure why. She'd come home from work like normal and had a pretty boring night. Made dinner, played some video games, even gone to bed a little early.

She let out another yawn as she climbed out of bed. I hope I'm not pushing myself too hard at work, she thought. That had to be it, though. After all, it's not like anything had happened to her.

It must have just been a long day.