Two days after WHO I REALLY AM (when i’m hypnotised) dropped on YouTube, Lizzie Winter’s blankly-smiling trance face appeared on the thumbnail of another video. The channel was called Rowan’s Tree of Knowledge, and the video was titled Youtuber Forgets Boyfriend While Hypnotised (Lizzie Winter).

Far fewer people watched Rowan’s channel, which had started as a teenager’s not-so-much-low-budget-as-no-budget Things That Are Interesting channel and gradually segued into recaps of drama with some perspective behind them. Rowan Oldworth was about five years younger than Lizzie, just moving toward her mid-twenties, but she’d started making videos around the same time Lizzie had.

It would be unfair to say she was bitter about just how much more success Lizzie had had from the platform, though; Rowan had made videos through her late teens without much expectation of financial success; they’d just been fun to make and they let her indulge her enthusiasm for talking about things she knew. That had started off as factoids about science, fiction, and occasionally about her tentative but enthusiastic investigation of pagan practises.

One day, though, she’d changed up her approach, and had made a video about life at her university - specifically, the drama that had exploded when the Secretary of the Evangelical Christian Union had been quite literally caught in bed with one of her Politics, Religion and Values lecturers.

Rowan had taken the time to look at everything being said about the case on-campus (more than most of the people she’d heard talking about it) and had tried to present as even-handed an approach as possible. She’d talked about the pressure ECU exec members put on themselves to be role models for their society, about how they struggled to do this while at one of the most emotionally-driven parts of their lives, and about what tended to happen when people who’d been denying themselves something finally snapped.

She’d looked at the lecturer’s part in all this and put together a convincing argument, based on what had and hadn’t been said in official and unofficial statements, that he’d been the one to approach the girl, and talked about the pressure an authority figure can bring to bear, without ever having to push - just capitalising on the desire to please.

It had mostly been a bunch of things she’d wanted to say as she watched people freak out and spew hot takes without thinking them through, and she’d recorded it so she could avoid being interrupted, and could take the time to put her thoughts in a clear order.

She’d been as surprised as anyone when that video went viral, not just at her university but being picked up by noisy, ‘hip’ content aggregators to drive clicks to their own websites.

By this time Rowan had actually been looking for answers to the question ‘what will I do to keep food on my plate once I graduate?’ and the reaction to that video made her wonder. Four years later and she’d diversified from local drama to any drama online that was interesting and which she could find out enough about that she felt she had something to say.

The video began with a view into her living room, which was obviously where she recorded; the characteristic glow of ring lighting showed in her eyes, and she sat easily in her computer chair, a mid-price microphone just visible at the bottom of shot. “Hey guys,” she began. “I’ve got a weird one here. You all know that usually I do all my research before I put the video out, and I only do more videos if there’s interest. But this one, I’m not even entirely sure there’s a story, and it’s not one I really understand.

“So anyway. I think probably everyone watching me already watches Lizzie Winter, and if you don’t, you probably have in the past?” A half shrug. “But we all know what to expect from her videos. There’s going to be some total honesty about her life. There’ll be something that makes the video relevant, something that shows why it’s on her mind. And it’ll be delivered in a way you can’t help but admire.” Roan smiled. “She’s really good, is what I’m saying. And for years now she’s had a totally open, totally transparent policy about discussing her life.”

She paused, looking a little sheepish, not meeting the camera’s gaze. “Which is why this one is… worrying me.”

The video cut smoothly to footage from Lizzie’s video. Lizzie’s hand was up on her forehead, she was slightly flushed, and she wasn’t meeting the eyes of anyone looking at her through the camera. “Oh, boy,” she said, trying to keep her tone light but definitely sounding embarrassed. “So… this is a weird one. But you might have noticed that I kept kind of… overlooking Mick this episode. I’d been prompted to give full answers but Mick didn’t really come up without prompting. I don’t know why. Maybe I’m a little flirtier than I should be, and part of that is playing down my relationships?” Her gaze finally met the camera’s lens. “That doesn’t sound right! But I did overlook him. And it’s…” She lowered her voice. “Recently things have been… very vanilla. A bit…” She trailed off, her voice faltering. Her eyes were wide as she glanced from side to side. “I don’t know. It’s not that things are bad between us. They’re basically fine. But it’s complicated all of a sudden.”

She looks off to one side. “Ivan did ask me a couple of other questions you guys had sent in that were just about my relationship with Mick. I’m not going to be showing those. I don’t say anything bad about him, but it’s got me thinking. And I’d rather… you know, I’d like to figure this out in private before talking in public. I know you and me, we kind of have this agreement that I don’t do that. But it’s not just me involved this time. It’s Mick too. So we’re not showing those questions.”

As the camera came back to Rowan her sheepish expression had become actually uncomfortable. She took a sip from her pastel pink mug of tea and set it back down out of shot. Looking back to the camera, she gave a wincing smile. “That’s not like her, is it?

“So… what gives there?” She held up her hands in a tight shrug, arms close against her body so that she was entirely in shot, fingertips splayed wide. “I don’t know, but I know that there’s an obvious answer, which is something to do with her being hypnotised.

“At the same time, it might not be that. And Lizzie and Mick have always been lovely together. If they’re really splitting up I don’t mind talking about that. If they’re not, I don’t want to make things worse. Add in the fact I just plain don’t know if hypnotism works or if it’s even real, and I wanted to turn to all my viewers. And to Lizzie and Mick and even Ivan, if they’re watching.

“Is this something I should do a video about? If I do, do I focus on Lizzie? On this video? On what hypnotism is and how it works, and make things a bit more general? Let me know what you think in the comments.” She smiled for a moment, and the camera cut away to a different moment as Rowan took another sip. “On to some news where we’re on more concrete ground,” she continued. “Gavin Laurence. We’ve covered a bit of this before - and obviously, some of the things he’s said in his videos are just unacceptable. But yesterday and today his situation got worse…”

*

Rowan had been entirely unsure when she made the video whether she should even make the appeal, let alone name the video for Lizzie - but it was definitely the single biggest question in the video, and she’d struggled to persuade herself anything else made sense for the title once she’d recorded the appeal.

She knew it was going to get reactions, but she wasn’t dumb enough to think all attention was necessarily good. She had more likes than dislikes on the video, and a lot of the comments were either about the other stories she’d reported on, or were reasonably fair. There were still a couple of actual threats, and more of the same on his social media feed - not from Lizzie, not from Mick, not from this hypnotist, just from people who had an opinion to share. She’d known Lizzie’s fanbase was fiercely protective, but she hadn’t realised quite how willing they were to see bad intent where it didn’t exist.

According to these people, even asking the question was making things worse. It was obvious to them that Rowan was bitter, was jealous, of Lizzie’s relationship (as proved by a seven-month-old video where she’d offhandedly mentioned being frustrated by her single status while talking about a celebrity cheating on his girlfriend) and of Lizzie’s success (as proved by the fact Lizzie was more successful, so clearly Rowan must be).

Just three hours after she posted the video she shut down her computer, turned her phone off, and sat down to stare at Netflix without taking anything in until it was time to sleep.

The majority of comments wanted to understand more about the things that were confusing Rowan, but the rest…

She didn’t sleep too well that night. It wasn’t the first time she’d got abuse, but when you get abuse after a decision you weren’t sure about, it can cut a lot more deeply.

After putting it off for the early morning, Rowan logged into her accounts on the computer and glanced quickly through the rest of the messages, just in case there was anything in there of any interest.

To her surprise, something stood out immediately. A message from Lizzie Winter herself.

Rowan swallowed, suddenly much more nervous than she had been. Just opening the message was nervewracking, but she did - and all that was in it was an ID on another piece of software, one more designed for video calls and text messaging than Twitter’s awful DM system.

Rowan’s mouth was dry as she sent a friend request. Nothing happened at first and her heart sank, but after maybe three quarters of an hour, she got a popup saying she’d been added and then, a few moments later, that Lizzie was calling her.

Suddenly this was all much more real, and Rowan felt her nerves as a shiver in her stomach. She accepted the call, and saw Lizzie’s smile, bright but uncertain. She gave her signature half-wave, and for the first time it struck Rowan that this wasn’t a mannerism she’d learned for her videos; this was Lizzie Winter, and this was just how she behaved when she spoke to a camera.

“Um,” Rowan said. “Hi.”

“Hi,” Lizzie replied. And then there were a few moments of silence in which neither person looked directly at their camera.

“This is weird,” Lizzie said. “I just want to say, I didn’t see the video until after my Twitter exploded.” Her smile was warm and sympathetic. “I think maybe you regret offering to talk about it?”

Rowan nodded, just fractionally. She wasn’t sure a nod that small would even show up on video calls, but figured the way she was blushing would make the point well enough anyway.

“Well… just to say I don’t want you to feel you can’t,” Lizzie said. “If you want to. And I could honestly do with an independent perspective on this - and we’ve never met.”

“Right, but that being the case - why trust me?”

Lizzie gave that muted half-laugh which often bubbles up when something’s just amusing, not funny. “Well, it turns out there’s a lot of videos out there showing your thought process…”

“You’ve watched a lot of my videos?”

“I have now,” she said, and paused. “It’s been complicated, the past couple of days.”

“Because of Mick?”

“Who?” Lizzie asked with what sounded to Rowan like genuine surprise and confusion. “No, there’s just all these messages… I’ve seen the public mentions you’re getting on Twitter, so I figure you can understand.”

Rowan found her voice enough to say “I mean, yeah, but I meant Mick your boyfriend.”

“Oh, him,” Lizzie said, and flapped a hand. “He’s not important right now.”

Rowan felt a sudden chill crawl down her spine. That sounded so incredibly suspicious. Try to play it cool, she told herself. You can’t help her if you push her away. “What’s important, then?”

Lizzie exhaled. “Well… my relationship’s in a bad place, not that I’m blaming you - I don’t think there’s anyone to blame here - and it feels like everyone’s getting attacked. You for talking about it, me for it happening, and Ivan for being invited to help me out.”

So… her relationship’s in a bad place, but her boyfriend isn’t important? And she didn’t mention him, either…

“Alright,” she said slowly. “I’m happy to try. But, ah… do you mind if I record our conversation?”

Lizzie shook her head. “Not if you don’t mind me doing the same.”

Both women then spent a silent minute or so booting up their software, making sure things were recording, and giving themselves a mark for audio sync. After a few moments, Lizzie sat back. “So.”

“So,” Rowan said, and cast around for a beginning. “I guess my first question is, do you think your relationship is in trouble? And second, if you do, when do you think it started?”

Lizzie blinked for a moment. “I don’t know about in trouble,” she said thoughtfully. “More like… I don’t really care if it does. I’ve been with… with…”

She trailed off, and with gritted teeth, Rowan supplied “Mike.”

“Right, with Mike… for years now. And it’s been… you know, fine. But I’m bored now. I mean, I keep imagining it’s over - that’s kind of a bad sign, right?”

Put like that, Rowan felt like she understood. She nodded. Obviously emboldened, Lizzie carried on. “And because it’s just… like that… I don’t really know when it started.”

Which was plausible, even if this whole thing made no sense. Rowan nodded again. “So to be clear, you don’t think this has anything to do with you being hypnotised?”

“I don’t see how it could,” she said with a shrug. “What would that even look like? Hypnosis is lovely.”

Rowan took the conversational redirect happily enough, as this was getting uncomfortable. “So what’s it like?” she asked.

Lizzie’s face split open into a broad, innocent smile. “Oh, hypnosis is bliss,” she said, and Rowan was struck by the fact even her voice seemed to have changed. “Like, you do that thing I do, I bet, where you don’t get to stop thinking about work. Your head’s always checking off ideas and making sure you have what you need for your next video and worrying about analytics and when’s best to draw money from Patreon and all the rest, right?”

Rowan nodded. She knew all too well.

“But hypnosis? Hypnosis is blank.” Her voice had definitely changed now; there was a purr to it, a joy that was almost sensual right from the off. “It’s peaceful, and it feels so good…”

Lizzie was sitting upright now, a broad smile on her lips. She turned in her chair, paying no attention to her own screen anymore and instead watching the camera with that giddy, happy, almost vacant smile. “You can feel a tingle running across your scalp that tells you your head is starting to pay attention to different things. And either because you’re casually drifting, just two friends talking about something sweet and pleasant, or just suddenly because you’re told, everything else stops being important - not just the world outside you but that nagging voice that says you should be doing something.

“Letting yourself go blank so you can’t hear that voice is bliss,” she continued. “You can understand that, right?”

Rowan nodded again, her focus given over to her screen. It would be so good to not be worrying about where her next video was coming from, where her career was going. Bliss seemed an overblown word, but Lizzie was coming across very persuasively.

“It just feels so good. And the more you’re ready to let go, the better it feels when you do. Like, when Ivan hypnotised me last I was so keyed up, so anticipatory, and it felt better than ever, you know?”

Once again, Rowan nodded, telling herself the tingle on her scalp was only there because Lizzie had put the idea into her head, not truly understanding what it meant when ideas were put into heads.

“But the other thing is there’s no confusion left. I know that feels like it’s obvious from the whole thing about how hypnosis is blank, but it’s worth saying on its own. It’s so peaceful; there’s the thing to do, no questions or anything. And that’s freeing. No confusion. No embarrassment. You’d like that, right?”

Rowan nodded again. She was smiling now, she realised, warm, wide and welcoming. But what Lizzie described was appetising. Wonderful. And it was focus and peace. There was no way that could be wrong. She was confident she’d know if there was.

“And then before you know it you’re ready for another level to drop,” Lizzie surged on, eyes innocently wide with enthusiasm and love. “You begin to wonder just how good it can get when you drop all the way. You remember how I dropped when you watched the video?”

Rowan nodded again, sitting forward slightly in her chair.

“Rowan?”

Rowan nodded the question.

“Sleep now,” Lizzie said, and Rowan felt herself dropping, a giddying high that felt like the floor had fallen away from below her. Her scalp and spine tingled with excitement at just how different everything felt as her sight blurred and was lost altogether. Her head hit the padded headrest on her computer chair as she flopped backward and almost bounced. Her head stayed nestled in the headrest and didn’t turn, her eyes on the screen, locked on Lizzie’s own eyes.

She was looking directly into Lizzie’s eyes as the other YouTuber held her hand up, thumb against her middle finger. Lizzie snapped her fingers and Rowan saw her new friend’s eyes glaze into blank emptiness.

Lizzie’s shoulders slumped and she seemed to sag slightly without her head actually dropping. Her eyes remained locked and level against the camera she faced, and therefore remained locked on Rowan’s eyes. Rowan felt locked in place herself in consequence, as if the two of them hung suspended from an invisible bar that held them both.

Lizzie began softly murmuring words. Rowan couldn’t make them out, and found herself without the energy to work hard at doing so, but years of watching YouTube videos to dissect had made her surprisingly adept at lipreading.

“Being hypnotised is best. Being hypnotised is bliss. Being hypnotised is arousing.”

Rowan’s scalp continued to tingle as the words seeped into her mind. Yes - this all made perfect sense.

“Being hypnotised is best. Being hypnotised is bliss. Being hypnotised is arousing.”

Lizzie continued to repeat this mantra, her voice quieter with each repetition.

“Being hypnotised is best. Being hypnotised is bliss. Being hypnotised is arousing.”

She almost seemed to be mumbling, tripping over her words, and Rowan was surprised when she heard it more clearly again. There was no shock when she realised that her own voice was the one she heard, because shock was completely against the spirit of how hypnosis had been described to her.

“Being hypnotised is best. Being hypnotised is bliss. Being hypnotised is arousing.”

As Lizzie got quieter, Rowan’s voice grew louder, echoing through her blank, hypnotised mind as the truth of her words took hold. Lizzie’s glassy, empty eyes seemed to be waiting for something, and perhaps she found it in the tone of Rowan’s voice, in the certainty that filled her as she intoned the words.

She started up a new recitation.

“Hypnosis makes me open, malleable, suggestible. I want to be open, malleable, suggestible. It’s safe and satisfying to be open, malleable, suggestible.”

Rowan felt a short-circuit of confusion for a time, and then went with the new words. Lizzie wouldn’t be telling her these things unless they were important.

“Hypnosis makes me open, malleable, suggestible. I want to be open, malleable, suggestible. It’s safe and satisfying to be open, malleable, suggestible.”

Rowan had always considered herself a strong-willed woman, someone who knew herself. She’d said occasionally on social media that it was her certainty in herself that gave her the perspective she needed to make her videos.

“Hypnosis makes me open, malleable, suggestible. I want to be open, malleable, suggestible. It’s safe and satisfying to be open, malleable, suggestible.”

By the third repetition their voices had synchronised entirely, and both remained loud enough to be audible, though there was a little less clarity in their pronunciation.

“Hypnosis makes me open, malleable, suggestible. I want to be open, malleable, suggestible. It’s safe and satisfying to be open, malleable, suggestible.”

On the fifth repetition, Lizzie’s hand rose again, and she snapped her fingers once again. Immediately she dropped hand to keyboard and Rowan heard three quick sets of keystrokes, then Lizzie rolled her chair back until not just her head and shoulders but everything above her midriff was visible.

“Hypnosis makes me open, malleable, suggestible. I want to be open, malleable, suggestible. It’s safe and satisfying to be open, malleable, suggestible.”

Rowan could hear a ringing tone in the background and knew Lizzie must have called someone. This was not a bad thing, though. Nothing was a bad thing. She understood now why Lizzie enjoyed being hypnotised so much. Being hypnotised was bliss. (Being hypnotised was best.) Anyone Lizzie was inviting to share in this open, malleable, suggestible chorus was just fine by Rowan. (Being hypnotised was arousing.)

“Hypnosis makes me open, malleable, suggestible. I want to be open, malleable, suggestible. It’s safe and satisfying to be open, malleable, suggestible.”

And yes, she realised, it was. Just sitting in her chair she could feel wetness sopping through the pyjama bottoms she hadn’t bothered to change out of. Her thighs clenched together and she ground against her seat. Meanwhile, Lizzie had drawn her hoodie top up over her breasts, making them clearly visible for anyone in the call. She slipped her arm out of one sleeve, then the other, and turned the garment so it would hang down over her back, leaving her body fully on display.

“Hypnosis makes me open, malleable, suggestible. I want to be open, malleable, suggestible. It’s safe and satisfying to be open, malleable, suggestible.”

It was hard to know what to do with this arousal. It wasn’t directed. It didn’t attach to anyone. It didn’t drive anything. Or, she supposed, it didn’t drive anything yet. Lizzie’s visibly hard nipples seemed somehow, to Rowan, to suggest her own arousal was directed. Managed, if that was the right word. (It couldn’t be, could it?) Having your arousal directed to something seemed better, but perhaps that was just because it was happening with Lizzie and was therefore obviously a better, more appropriate idea.

“Hypnosis makes me open, malleable, suggestible. I want to be open, malleable, suggestible. It’s safe and satisfying to be open, malleable, suggestible.”

The call was answered, and the screen rearranged itself to put a third camera into the call. The feeling that her gaze was locked with Lizzie’s was gone as her new friend’s face shrank and shifted on the screen, and Rowan slumped back into her chair.

“Good girls,” was the first thing Rowan heard Ivan say directly to her. Her and Lizzie, of course, but Rowan was the one discovering for the first time just how beautiful praise could feel when it was presented to someone so deeply entranced they can’t shrug it off. If her body hadn’t been so completely limp, she thought, she would have preened, but a thrill ran down her spine just as if she had.

“Lizzie, you followed your orders very well,” Ivan said. “Who is your hypnotist?”

“Ivan is my hypnotist. I am under Ivan’s control.”

“Good girl,” Ivan said again. Lizzie’s hands rose dreamily and began to toy with her nipples, as if they’d been awaiting permission. Perhaps they had.

“Now,” he said simply. “Introduce me.”

“This is Rowan,” Lizzie offered eagerly. “She has a channel of her own.”

“Ahh.” Ivan chuckled. “I believe I’ve seen some comments about this on your Twitter.”

“Yes,” Lizzie and Rowan both acknowledged at once.

“Well, then,” Ivan said, and leaned forward in his chair with a smile, “in that case I think you and I need to talk, Rowan. But it’s important you don’t wake up first. Understand?”

“Yes,” said Rowan again, feeling small and helpless and loving every bit of it.