“Now open your eyes.”

My eyes snapped open, and I jolted with surprise. One of my outstretched arms had risen above my head, fist clenched tightly around the strings of the imaginary balloons. The other arm had sunk down to hover next to my knee, clutching the handle of the imagined bucket.

I felt them move, of course. I heard Tom talk about the helium filling the balloons, making them lighter and lighter, and the sand pouring into the bucket, making it heavier and heavier. I felt my arms being gently pulled in either direction - but with my eyes closed, I couldn’t tell how far. I was certain they only went a couple of centimetres.

Wow. Maybe there really was something to this hypnosis thing, after all.

Tom hadn’t been talking to me, though. He wasn’t even facing in my direction. He was standing in the middle of the room, looking down at Ruth, who was having a similarly awestruck response to the movement of her own arms. He asked her how that felt, and whether she thought her arms had moved that far. Just like me, she’d thought they’d barely moved.

I wasn’t sure they’d even noticed me joining in.

In fairness, I didn’t tell them I was going to. It was never the plan, after all, for me to try hypnosis.

It was Ruth who’d wanted to give it a go, intrigued when our new TA, Tom, mentioned he was a bit of an amateur hypnotist. She found it fascinating that hypnosis was even a real thing - that someone could be entranced by a compelling voice, or mesmerised by a swinging pendant, and then fixed in place by invisible bonds or convinced they were a chicken. The way he explained it and the possibilities it presented piqued her interest all the more.

I was a bit more dubious. It just sounded like play-acting to me - the kind of thing you’d see on TV, or in a stage magic show. I wasn’t sure it was actually real. But when Ruth suggested I come along and watch, I agreed. Part of me was wondering if I’d be proven wrong. Knowing Ruth as well as I did, I was certain I’d know if she was faking it.

Her reactions to the first ‘suggestibility test’ seemed genuine. Once we’d made ourselves comfortable in Ruth’s living room - me and her in armchairs on opposite sides of the room, Tom standing in the middle like he was about to deliver a PowerPoint presentation - he told her to hold her hands up in front of her and clasp them together. “Now point up with your index fingers, so they’re parallel,” he instructed her. “There should be some space between them, and I’d like you to just stare into that space.” She did as he asked.

“Now I want you to imagine there’s a magnet on each finger,” he told her. “A little red round magnet, stuck to the pad of each finger. And they’re attracted to one another - and as you stare into the space between them, you can start to feel that attraction. That magnetic force, gently pulling them towards each other.”

It was then that I noticed his voice taking on a smoother, more self-assured tone. It was unusual for him - I’d gotten used to him being slightly awkward, and occasionally a bit rambling. This was unlike him, in a good way. He sounded more confident - charismatic, even.

I watched Ruth, her face impassive as she stared, transfixed, between her outstretched fingers - which began to move, almost imperceptibly, towards each other. “That’s right,” Tom continued fluidly, “and you can feel it getting stronger, second by second. You can feel those magnets pulling towards one another, drawing together, the space between them shrinking as they move unstoppably closer to each other. Until they -”

Ruth blinked in surprise as her fingers touched, the pads pressing together tightly.

“Connect,” Tom said with a note of triumph. “Until they lock together, joined by that magnetic force, inseparable. And that’s what you find now - that you can’t separate them. That no matter how hard you try, you can’t pull your fingertips apart. They’re stuck together, completely magnetised.”

I’d seen the bemused grin she wore plenty of times before, so I knew she wasn’t pretending. She was visibly concentrating, making the effort to separate her fingers - but she wasn’t having any success. They remained pressed together as if they were a single moulded piece. I shook my head in amazement, my scepticism starting to crumble as I watched Ruth struggle with her stuck fingers.

“And all I have to do to switch off that magnetic force is just touch you on the back of the hand,” Tom said - and he did, reaching out and lightly tapping the back of Ruth’s right hand. At once her fingers came apart, and she unclasped her hands and shook the tension out of them, spluttering with astonished giggles. “Isn’t that amazing?” our friend said with a broad smile. “That was the power of your mind, Ruth. Your intellect, your intuition, and your imagination. At no point did I tell you to move your fingers. But when I described those magnets, and the powerful force pulling them together, your mind made the connection, and your fingers came together.”

“Yeah, that - that really felt like there were magnets,” Ruth laughed. “I honestly, I couldn’t get them apart. That’s... wild. I swear, I wasn’t faking that,” she added for my benefit.

“No, I believe you, mate,” I replied faintly, still thinking through what I’d just seen. It seemed completely implausible that Ruth could be so affected by Tom’s words - vividly descriptive, and compellingly spoken, though they were. And yet, I couldn’t deny the evidence of my eyes. Her fingers were stuck together. He’d stuck them together with his words, and he’d separated them with his words, too. He had some degree of power over her already, and they hadn’t even started the actual hypnosis yet.

I couldn’t help wondering if it’d work on me. Ruth already believed in hypnosis, and Tom had mentioned before that belief helped it work better. Would my innate (albeit fading) incredulity prevent it from working on me? I was curious to find out.

“So you responded very well to that, Ruth,” he said warmly. “I reckon you’ll be a great subject. But before we get into the real hypnosis, I’d like to try one more suggestibility test, if that’s OK.”

This was my chance. I could try this second test myself, and see if it had any effect. It might not, but that was no big loss. This was for Ruth, anyway - she was the one who really wanted to try this stuff. I didn’t want to steal the spotlight from her, so I decided I wouldn’t even tell them I was going to take part. If it didn’t work for me, there was no need to even mention it.

He told Ruth to hold out her arms, and close her eyes. I followed the same instructions, my last sight being my own fists stretched out before me. As he described the balloon I held in my left hand, I could feel the string vividly, and see it bobbing about above me in my mind’s eye. He said it was whatever colour came to mind, and I saw it as bright green. The bucket was red, and I could feel myself gripping the plastic handle with my right hand. I could feel the sand pouring into it, making it heavier and heavier, until I was struggling to hold it up. At the same time I felt the balloon tug higher and higher as it grew larger and larger from the helium flowing into it, floating off into space. Light and weightless as it was, my left arm was still getting dragged upwards with it.

Despite those strong sensations, I was still sure my arms had hardly moved. After all, the balloon and the bucket were imaginary, so there was no actual heaviness dragging one arm down, and no lightness making the other drift up. Maybe the visualisation would make my arms shift a little, but they couldn’t be too strongly affected if there wasn’t anything real pulling on them - could they?

As I discovered when Tom told me to open my eyes, I was wrong about that. The realisation that his words could affect my reality more powerfully than I’d anticipated made me shiver a little - more from excitement and intrigue than fear. It felt like I was on the precipice of something - of discovering a world beyond anything I’d experienced before...

While I was lost in thought, dumbstruck by the effects of the suggestibility test, Tom produced a pendant - a simple glass bauble on a string - and held it out for Ruth to study. “The crystal itself isn’t inherently hypnotic,” he explained. “There’s nothing magical here, I’m not using this to cast a spell over you - though in the moment, it might feel like that. It’s just giving your brain something to focus on, something for your conscious mind to fixate on and pay attention to while I talk to your subconscious.”

Ruth nodded as if she understood. “So you just swing it back and forth, and I’m staring at it, and while I’m concentrating on that you, like, talk me into a trance...?”

“Essentially. Although I don’t have to swing it back and forth. I could just dangle it in the air, and twirl it around. I don’t even need to use a pendant, I just figured I would because you already associate it with hypnosis, and those associations help build an expectation in your mind of how this is going to go. But I could theoretically hypnotise you using almost anything.”

She arched an eyebrow. “So, you could have me staring deeply into your eyes, and that would hypnotise me?” She said it in a joking, slightly salacious tone of voice that made me grin - she’d been flirting with him all term, and it rarely failed to make him blush and stammer.

To my surprise, he kept his composure, and answered matter-of-factly, “Yes. I’m sure I could.”

Ruth’s eyes went wide, taken aback both by his confident response and the implication that she could, indeed, be entranced by his gaze. I could see her blushing from across the room. Well, well, how the turn tables, I sniggered inwardly.

“Or I could have you staring into Rain’s eyes,” he continued, slowly turning on his heel to look at me. “That’d work just as well.”

I swallowed, suddenly feeling a little flustered myself. Even though I was straight, the idea of my friend staring raptly into my eyes for a length of time, her mind getting lost in my irises, was strangely appealing...

“In fact, Rain, would you like to come over and join us?” Tom asked, a small, knowing smirk playing across his lips. “Since you played along with that test, I thought you might be interested. And you did respond very well, too, just like Ruth...”

My eyebrows shot up. So he had noticed. Now I wasn’t just a bystander, playing along for fun. I was actually involved in this.

Or I could be, if I chose to be.

“Er - yeah. Sure, can do.”

I got up from my seat, trying not to look at either of my TAs, both of them grinning in my direction. Ruth’s smile was surprised and thrilled, eager for me to join the fun; Tom’s was impish, sly and self-assured, with a hint of glee at having persuaded me to take part. I felt as though he knew for certain everything that was about to unfold - he’d soon have us both entranced, following his words and suggestions, as sure as the sun would set that evening. His quiet confidence sent quivers through me as I moved across the room, my unbuttoned brown plaid shirt fluttering gently around me.

I admit, even before being hypnotised by him, I was already finding this new side of him quite charming. It was as if he’d switched into a completely different persona - one that was unexpectedly attractive to me, in a way that he never had been before. Don’t get me wrong, I always thought he was cute - but I was straight, and he was slightly on the femme-presenting side of androgynous. I’d never been interested in him in that sense.

But now, gazing up at him as he loomed over me and my friend with a seductive smirk on his face and a glittering glass orb hanging from his hand, clear in his conviction that he was about to put our minds under his power, I suddenly found I really quite fancied him.

What can I say? I like dominant men.

The dominant man in question held up his hand, the pendant’s string entwined with his fingers, and began to swing the crystal back and forth. My eyes were following it even before he told me to watch it, to fix my gaze on it, to let it hold my attention. I was already admiring its beauty before he mentioned how pretty it looked, how stunning it was, how it sparkled so appealingly as the light refracted through it.

“It’s captivating, isn’t it?” Tom’s smooth, soothing voice encouraged us. “So utterly spellbinding...”

“Mm-hm,” I heard Ruth mumble next to me. I didn’t know if I was meant to respond as well. I couldn’t seem to find the energy to speak. All my focus was fixed on the pretty pendant.

“You can’t take your eyes off it. Try, right now, and see if you can - if you can look away. If you can pull your gaze from the crystal. Try, and find that you can’t.”

I frowned, feeling a little aggrieved at being given something to do while I was so busy devoting myself to watching the crystal. But I did as he suggested - I tried to look away, I tried to drag my eyes off it, I tried to break my stare as it swung back and forth in pursuit of the pendant. My efforts failed. I couldn’t stop looking at it. I couldn’t stop watching it. I couldn’t stop following it.

I even tried holding my eyes still, as it faintly occurred to me that the glass orb was moving, so if my stare stopped moving, I wouldn’t be looking at it any more. But I couldn’t. I couldn’t keep my eyes from being drawn from left to right and back again by the glinting bauble. I was transfixed. Spellbound. Helpless.

And warm. Distantly, I noticed my body was growing warm. A familiar kind of heat was starting to build inside me, though the circumstances causing it were vastly different from anything I’d ever encountered before. But I couldn’t ponder the implications of that while I was watching the pendant.

“You can’t, can you?” Tom’s voice continued far, far above me. “You can’t look away. But that’s fine. That’s alright, because you don’t want to look away. So you can stop trying now, and just let yourselves keep watching, keep following, keep floating back and forth...”

My frowning face relaxed, and the rest of my body relaxed with it. I slumped in my seat, so relieved that I didn’t have to keep fighting a losing battle, and I could just allow myself to give in and be completely captured by the crystal. It felt really nice, after all. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d felt so calm, so tranquil, so empty-headed. I didn’t need to do anything, or notice anything, or think about anything. I could just switch my brain off and sit there, and let someone else take the lead, and not have a single care or worry in the world.

As a teacher in an SEN school, I can safely say that was fucking unprecedented.

“It just feels so good, so easy, so natural, to watch the pretty pendant. Why wouldn’t you? It’s so shiny and sparkly, gorgeous and gleaming, enchanting and entrancing...”

Mmmm. It really was. I could stare at it forever.

“But after so long watching it, I’m afraid your eyes are starting to get tired. Your eyelids are getting heavy. And with every swing of the pendant, they get heavier and heavier, and you get sleepier and sleepier.”

I found myself yawning, my eyelids drooping as I struggled to keep following the pretty pendant. I didn’t want to stop staring at it, but I was just so tired all of a sudden. I couldn’t hold my head up any longer, my chin nodding into my chest - which made it even harder to keep watching as my eyes rolled upwards to try and reach the pendant, each of its swings sending another wave of drowsiness through me. My eyes blinked long, languid blinks, my gaze blurring into incoherence, the glass orb a shiny smear now as it streaked back and forth before me.

“It’s just too hard to hold them open now, isn’t it? That’s right, there you go, both of you - you just can’t keep them open any more, they’re too heavy. You can try, but they’re tightly shut, glued in place.”

My eyelids had slammed shut seconds ago, without me even realising it - in my mind’s eye I’d still been watching the pretty pendant, and my dazed brain had only just caught up with the real world. I struggled feebly, trying my utmost to lift my lids open again, but they were like fifty-tonne weights.

“And you can stop trying now, and relax, and as you do, find yourself sinking into a deep, deep sleep.”

I gave up my futile efforts and went limp in my seat, my head lolling forwards, my arms and legs dead weights, my mind devoid of all thought now I didn’t have the swinging pendant or the fight with my eyelids to focus on. I drifted into deep darkness, less and less aware of my surroundings and my body by the second, my consciousness just a wisp of vapour floating freely through a vast black pit.

It was lovely. The dark space of trance was warm and welcoming and endlessly wide. I felt like I could go on wafting aimlessly through it forever. Perhaps I would. Perhaps I already had been. Nothing else existed, and I couldn’t think enough to remember anything having existed before. As far as I knew at that moment, this was all there was.

Except for that voice in the distance - that velvety voice, and the wonderful words it said. I couldn’t hear them clearly any more, but I knew on some level that they were going deep inside me, reaching a buried part of me that understood them perfectly, and would do exactly as they suggested.

All of a sudden, though, I felt myself growing more aware and alert again. I vaguely understood that the cajoling, coaxing voice - Tom’s voice - was talking me out of trance, lifting me back to the surface of my own mind again. I heard him count to three, and then I was opening my eyes, blinking blearily, reaching a hand up to clumsily brush the hair from my face and look up at him -

Only for my gaze to fall on the swinging pendant again. I let out a tiny whimper of surprise as I found myself fixating on it once more, locking onto it. In my disoriented, half-awake state, I was even more susceptible to the shiny trinket. I didn’t have any energy with which to resist it. All I could do was watch it, follow it, obey it.

My body was still in a post-trance puddle beneath me, heavy, slack and useless. I couldn’t lift my head more than a couple of inches. The only parts of me capable of genuine movement were my eyes, and only then because the pendant was pulling them back and forth.

Soon, I felt my eyelids drooping once again, exhausted from the effort of following the bauble. Try as I might, I couldn’t keep them open - and as soon as they closed, I stopped trying and sank gratefully back into the abyss. The last thing I was aware of was my head bouncing slightly as it fell onto my chest again.

After a minute or an eternity in that timeless, endless expanse, Tom awoke me again. Blinking and yawning, I raised my head again and opened my mouth, mustering my voice and my brain to speak, to describe how incredible I felt and how much I was enjoying this experience -

And once again I saw the pendant, dangling from his grasp, waving back and forth before my eyes as they were, yet again, helplessly magnetised to it.

This time my head lolled backwards, resting against the back of the sofa. My lids lowered, narrowing my vision to a squint, as I watched the enthralling orb for as long as I could before I fell back under its spell, sinking into my seat and into the deep dark sea of trance.

When Tom started to bring me up this time, I felt more energy than before flow into me, as if I was expecting to wake up properly. I don’t know why - perhaps because I’d been hypnotised three times now, and three’s kind of a magic number? Maybe I thought Tom would naturally leave it there, stop the fractionation (the word for what he’d been doing to us, although I didn’t know it then) and allow us to fully awaken.

I swallowed, my eyes moving more rapidly behind their lids, my body tensing up a little as I prepared to rise, ready to talk to him and discuss what had been happening. My eyes opened...

And I slumped in my seat, my body going limp and loose again, as I was instantly stupefied by the sight of the pendant hovering above me. I gawped up at it, my mouth hanging open. A little part of me was mortified to feel a droplet of drool escape my mouth, trickling down my chin. But my embarrassment didn’t show, my face too numb to form any expression except dumbstruck, as the crystal swallowed my awareness. My eyes soon crossed, then rolled, then sank shut again as I embraced oblivion once more.

Though all my thoughts had been obliterated, I was still just aware enough to feel amazed by how well this was going. Especially since it was my first experience of hypnosis. All my scepticism, all my reservations, all my inhibitions, had evaporated as the crystal had completely captured my mind. I was astonished by how totally entranced and powerless I felt... and I found myself craving more of it.

I wanted to keep going. I wanted to see what else hypnosis could do to me - or for me. I wanted to keep feeling captivated, compelled, controlled... Helpless, hypnotised... horny...

Some part of me had registered how aroused I was becoming. I wasn’t able to process that yet, or ponder what it meant. I hadn’t had a moment to collect myself, to gather my thoughts, before the swinging pendant scattered them again. But the longer I spent powerlessly plummeting into hypnosis, the hotter I was getting - and the more obvious it was becoming, even to my muddled mind.

Tom brought us up and down a few more times - and yes, Ruth was just as mesmerised as me - until we’d both slumped sideways slightly, coming to lean against each other. Transfixed as I was, I was barely aware of Ruth’s head resting comfortably against mine, our cheeks lightly brushing together. The next time he dropped us, her head slid down to settle on my shoulder, while my head laid on top of hers, nestling in her hair. We must’ve looked as if we’d fallen fast asleep - and to all intents and purposes we had, even while some part of our minds listened to Tom’s seductive voice and persuasive words.

The next time he woke us, he actually let us gather our wits - although we were gathering wool for a good minute instead. As I gradually grew more awake and alert, I glanced to my left and caught Ruth’s eye - and we both burst into giggles. “Oh my God, that was fucking wild,” Ruth spluttered. “I can’t believe how well that worked...!”

“I know.” I risked a look up at Tom, who had finally put the pendant away. “You’re - you’re really good at that,” I murmured, blushing.

“Why, thank you,” he grinned, giving a little bow. “But it wouldn’t have worked half as well if you two weren’t excellent subjects. Which, to be fair, I thought you would be, since you’re both so smart and so creative.”

As I smiled bashfully, Ruth straightened up beside me. “So, is that it? Are we done?”

“You tell me,” he said casually.

“Well, you’ve taken us out of hypnosis, haven’t you?”

He arched an eyebrow. “Have I?”

Ruth and I exchanged a bewildered look. It certainly felt like we were out of hypnosis. Yeah, I still felt a little dazed and disoriented, but I felt sure that was just a normal side effect of coming out of trance, just like the first few minutes after waking up in the morning. I certainly didn’t feel as entranced and enraptured as I did while watching the crystal, or drifting in darkness.

Ruth seemed to feel the same way. “Yeah,” she said after a beat. “Yeah, you did!” She grinned. “I swear you’re messing with us now, trying to gaslight us.”

He was, of course, but not in the way she was thinking. “So, you’re definitely not hypnotised right now?” he asked her once again, in a sincere tone, as if he were asking, ‘You’re sure you don’t want tea or coffee?’

Ruth nodded, so he repeated the question to me. “Yeah, I’m awake now,” I nodded. “I’m not hypnotised.”

“Mm-hm. Ruth, what are you?”

“I’m deeply hypnotised,” she said matter-of-factly. A second later, her eyes widened. “Wait - what - why did I -”

“What are you?”

“I’m deeply hypnotised. What?!”

I stared at her, agog. “Mate, why are you saying that?”

“I don’t know! Am - am I still -?”

“What are you?” Tom interrupted.

“I’m deeply hypnotised.” Shaking her head in amazement, she buried her face in her palms. “Am I?!”

Sniggering, he glanced down at me. “What d’you think, Rain? Is she still hypnotised?”

“Um - I, I guess, maybe? She’s not acting like it - but why is she saying -”

“And what are you?” he asked me.

“I’m deeply hypnotised,” I assured him earnestly, fully confident of my answer. That confidence disappeared almost immediately, leaving me completely confused. “Wh-wha-”

“What are you?”

“I’m deeply hypnotised.” I gaped up at him for a moment, and then dissolved into astonished, self-conscious giggles. “Whaaat the fuck -?”

“And what do you think of hypnosis, Rain?”

“I love being hypnotised,” I blurted, beaming broadly. As my brain caught up, I felt my cheeks redden. “Ohhhhh-kay,” I mumbled, my smile turning flustered as I averted my eyes from my hypnotic TA’s amused face.

“Someone’s keen,” Ruth chuckled next to me.

“What about you, Ruth, what do you think of hypnosis?”

“I love being hypnotised,” she announced with as much enthusiasm as I had. Then she added, “Huh. I do seem to enjoy it!”

“Clearly,” he guffawed.

“What the fuck is going on?” she asked. “I’ve lost control of my mouth.”

Through his titters, Tom explained, “So, it isn’t that easy to tell when you’re not under the effects of hypnosis. You might feel like you’re awake right now, but in fact you’re still hypnotised - you’re just in a sort of waking trance, where you’re alert and you’re able to converse and communicate like normal. But you’re still very responsive and suggestible.”

“OK. And why are we saying that stuff?”

“While you were deep in trance, I gave you triggers that you’d respond to. As long as you’re hypnotised, you’ll keep responding to those phrases whenever I say them. Some of them can be quite specific, like - Rain, what are you?”

“I’m deeply hypnotised. Aaah,” I whimpered, hiding my face as they both snickered at me.

“And some can be worded a bit differently but still have the same effect, as long as the general meaning still comes across. Ruth, do you like being hypnotised?”

“I love being hypnotised.” I looked up to see her wearing a look of amazement. “That’s... wow,” she muttered. “But so then, when you take the triggers away, we won’t be hypnotised any more?”

“We-ell... It’s a bit more complicated than that. You can be brought fully out of hypnosis but still have a trigger or two left behind - they’re called post-hypnotic suggestions. Some subjects who really enjoy a trigger might have it left in indefinitely. The lines between ‘awake’ and ‘hypnotised’ are a lot more blurry than you might think.”

I considered that - what it’d be like to go through life like that. Feeling normal and in control of yourself, but someone could just say a couple of words to you, and you’d blurt out a pre-programmed phrase before you could stop yourself. Maybe in public, with other people around... Fuck, that’d be so embarrassing. And, I realised, kinda hot.

To be at the mercy of your hypnotic compulsions, even when you weren’t hypnotised... But weren’t you? How would you know? I didn’t feel hypnotised at that moment, but I clearly was. How would you ever know if you were fully conscious and in control? You could drift through life, thinking you were fully awake and aware, all the while entranced and enthralled, acting on suggestions installed in your mind indefinitely...

It was like something out of sci-fi, or fantasy. But it seemed so plausible all of a sudden. And I was fighting the urge to rub my thighs together at the thought of it.

“Speaking of which, some people like triggers that make it easier to go back under,” Tom said smoothly. “Look up at me, ladies, take a nice deep breath...” We did so, automatically. “And sleep.”

Before I could even think about what was happening, my eyes slammed shut, my body went limp, and my mind tumbled back into trance.

“And three, two, one, wide awake.”

I jolted back to consciousness again, blinking and squirming, all too aware of my increasingly sensitive body once more. Crossing my legs as if to contain the heat building inside me, I stared up at Tom dazedly. “I - that’s, um, so you can just put us to -”

“Sleep.” My brain stopped, my head lolled, my body slumped. “And three, two, one, awake. Yeah, I can. Neat, huh?”

I scowled at him sleepily. “That was rude.”

He quirked an eyebrow at me. “Is that what you really think of hypnosis?”

“I love being hypnotised. Gah.” I couldn’t look at him a second longer.

“I thought so,” he chortled. “Aren’t triggers neat?” We both grumbled incoherently by way of reply. “But what’s even cooler is that I don’t necessarily need triggers to make you act, or react, in a certain way. Because you’re in a very suggestible state right now, I can just tell you what’s going to happen, what you’re going to do, how you’re going to behave or think, and you’ll do it. As if I’m changing reality, rewriting the laws of nature just by talking. I can craft new suggestions as I speak, giving them to you even as we carry on our conversation, and you’ll respond to them just as well as if I’d given them to you while you were in trance.”

We were gawping up at him now, forgetting our outrage and embarrassment as we found ourselves captivated by his words once more. I don’t remember when I stopped hiding my flustered face and started staring at him again. Clearly, his words had just as powerful an effect over us as he was claiming.

“So when I say the word ‘chicken’, you’ll start clucking like a chicken, for just a few seconds before you regain control. You won’t be able to help yourselves. You won’t be able to stop yourselves, even though you’re awake and you can hear what I’m telling you and understand it perfectly. It makes no difference. That trigger has taken root in your mind, and it’s just as strong as the others, just as potent, just as irresistible. Ruth, chicken.”

“Buh-buck, buck!” The sound of her squawking shocked me out of my stupor, and I spun sideways to see her looking utterly thunderstruck, her face bright red. “Oh my fucking God,” she spluttered, bowing her head.

“Well, you did ask if I could make you do that,” Tom reminded her with a chuckle. (When he’d first mentioned he was a hypnotist, Ruth asked if he could make her act like a chicken, to which he’d said he was sure he could if she was comfortable with it. It seemed he’d made good on that promise.)

“I was joking!” she laughed.

“I wasn’t. Chicken.”

“Ah-buck-buck, buck!”

I couldn’t help snorting with laughter at her fowl noises - but my mirth was short-lived. “Rain, chicken,” Tom said sharply.

“Buh-buck, buck, buck,” I yelped. I clapped a hand over my mouth, mortified.

“And that’s the power of hypnosis, ladies,” Tom smiled. “You know I’m going to make you do something embarrassing. You know you wouldn’t normally act like a chicken -” We both burst into brief clucking fits again, which segued into flustered giggling. “But you can’t stop yourselves,” he continued as if there’d been no interruption. “You just respond the way I want you to, compulsively, uncontrollably, helplessly.”

I squirmed in my seat. Why did that make me so fucking wet?!

“Just as you do when you see this,” he said, and pulled the pendant out of his pocket. My gaze instantly latched onto it once again. I felt my mind going clear again, unable to think of anything but the fascinating glass orb hanging in the air before me.

“That’s right, girls. Entranced by the pendant. Enchanted by the pendant. Enthralled by the pendant. All your inhibitions, all your willpower, all your resistance, draining into it. All your cares and concerns, all your self-awareness and self-consciousness, consumed by the crystal. So when I say it again, this time you’ll keep going. You won’t be able to stop yourselves. Chicken.”

“Buh-buck, buck, buck-buck, buck,” I burbled. “Buck, buck, buck-buck, buck, bawwk, bawwk, buck, buck, buh-buck, buck, buh-buck buck buck buck...”

I carried on, continuously, just as he’d commanded. Beside me, I vaguely heard Ruth doing the same. I was no longer embarrassed by the sounds I was making. I didn’t have the capacity to care about it, or about anything besides the pendant. Some part of me must have recognised how hot it was that I didn’t have any self-control, my body still simmering with arousal - but I barely even noticed that any more.

Tom gave us further instructions, bypassing my blank brain to reach my subconscious, which registered my words even above my ceaseless clucking. My arms bent inwards and began swinging at my sides, my elbows pointed outwards, pulled into position by his words as if he was puppeteering them. They collided with Ruth’s similarly flapping wings once or twice, but neither of us cared. My head began jerking back and forth, bringing me closer to the crystal on which I was still intently focused. All the while I kept clucking and squawking, unable to even think about stopping.

I didn’t believe I was a chicken. But with my mind in this empty, entranced state, it was all too easy to make me behave like one, clucking and flapping and bobbing my head relentlessly even as I kept watching the glass bauble waving past my eyes.

Even as my eyelids began to droop and my enraptured mind began to sink back into the dark mists, I still kept up my chicken compulsions to the last second, as did Ruth beside me. Our heads slowed to a stop and came to rest on one another again as we settled into hypnotic sleep, one final, soft, “Bwuck,” escaping my lips.

As I sank back into the dark, warm abyss, the chicken noises I’d been making seemed to echo around me. I felt no embarrassment about what just happened - all I felt was drifty, dreamy euphoria, and increasingly intense lust. My mind wasn’t working enough to ponder why I felt so damn turned on, so I just floated in the void and enjoyed it.

“Alright now, I’m going to count to ten and you’re both going to awaken fully from hypnosis, all compulsions and suggestions fading from your mind. One, two, three...”

As Tom’s distant voice counted, I felt myself wake up more and more. This time, when my eyelids fluttered open, I really did feel alert and aware, as if a dial in my brain had been turned up to 10, where before it’d been no higher than a 6. As Ruth yawned and stretched next to me, I swallowed hard and hugged myself, my legs pressed firmly together to try to stifle the throbbing between them, and gazed meekly up at Tom, feeling oddly small and vulnerable after being so thoroughly subdued by his entrancing talents.

The playful grin on his face did nothing to help my feelings. He arched an eyebrow at me. “I take it you enjoyed yourselves?”

“Hell, yeah,” Ruth breathed beside me. “That was fucking incredible!”

I just gave a small nod, not trusting myself to speak in case I accidentally revealed what was going on with me. Although - that mischievous glint in Tom’s eyes... did he know, somehow? Did I do, or even say, something to give myself away, while I was slumped in hypnotic sleep...?

“I dunno about you, girls, but I could use a drink,” he snickered, and he spun on his heel and sauntered off to get a cider.

I exhaled, relieved. He didn’t know. It was fine. Whatever weird reaction I’d had, neither Tom nor Ruth knew about it.

I could just forget about it and move on now. I’d given hypnosis a try, I’d gone out of my comfort zone, and I’d had a really fun time that I privately found strangely hot. Now it was done, and I could draw a line under it and move on, and not think about hypnosis again.

Yeah, right.