This is a Valentine's Day contest story. Please vote.
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A man with a unique talent and a romantic ability, hypnotizes people for love.
He wasn't always called Dr. Valentine. His real name was Stephen Miller. He wasn't even a medical doctor nor did he have doctor of philosophy initials in some discipline after his name. He was just a regular guy, a successful salesman by trade, that is, until he retired from that for this new gig of delivering love to couples by hypnosis. Eventually, once he identified being a hypnotist as a career path, he registered, was certified, and took the proper training to get his license.
More than just an advertising and marketing ploy to ply his craft, a way for his customers to know what he was about, what he did, and what he could do for them, the name on his shingle and on his office door read, Dr. Valentine, doctor of romance and love. He would have chosen the name Dr. Cupid, but that name sounded too contrived, whereas Dr. Valentine could have been his real name, a name that coincidentally coincided with his hypnotic love craft. For sure, in the way that he found love, he fit the bill. A very romantic man, who saw life through rose colored glasses, if he was anything, he was all about romance and love.
He even had business cards made with little hearts and roses. Painted in red and white with red, plush carpeting, his office was decorated with items that made his clients feel love. The music that played in the background were all love songs, such as, I'm in the mood for love, Love Me Tender, When I Fall In Love, At Last, The Way You Look Tonight, Crying, Only You, When A Man Loves A Woman, et al. From white sofas and chairs, to flowers and hearts, to pictures of weddings, anniversaries, babies, kittens, and puppies, his waiting room put people in the mood for romance and love. From the very young to the very old, faces were his big thing, and he had a gallery of the happy faces of his clients on every wall space.
His life's journey started when he discovered that he had a unique ability to hypnotize people. Never having had a course in hypnotism, possessing a soothing voice and a calming manner, he just had a naturally relaxing way about him that put people at ease and put those, who were susceptible to hypnotic suggestion, under a trance like state of deep relaxation. His first victim was a woman that he was head over heels in love with, but who wasn't remotely interested in him. Eventually the woman became his wife but, without him realizing that was what he was doing, it all started with him putting her in a trance and, as a lark, giving her a hypnotic suggestion.
He'll never forget it. It happened so long ago, quite by accident and on Valentine's Day, of all days. It was his senior year at the university and, by surreptitious happenstance, he found himself alone with Priscilla, the girl of his dreams, after everyone sitting at their table in the school cafeteria finished eating and left. Priscilla was tall, blonde, and beautiful, where Stephen was short, average looking, and pudgy. The two of them together looked as much a contradiction as Christie Brinkley looked with Billy Joel. Much like putting a 4-cylinder engine in a Chevrolet Corvette, the two didn't go together.
Fortunately for Stephen, Priscilla was a slow eater or none of this would have happened and his life may have taken a different course, at the very least, with a different woman. A girl who thought she was fat, which, of course, she wasn't; she was just shallow. The head cheerleader for the school football team, she was just the opposite. She was quite shapely and in the way how Christie Brinkley felt about herself, the only one she loved was herself. She believed that the slower she ate, the fuller she'd be, and the less she'd be hungry for food in the course of the day. She was correct, to a point, and he supposed there was some logic to that, that is, if it took her much of the day just to eat breakfast.
Priscilla was one of those woman that other women hated. Except for other cheerleaders and other women who were equally as beautiful as she was, nearly all of her friends were men. Because of her high metabolism, she could eat anything and never gain a pound. Moreover, there could be a hurricane outside and she'd never have a hair out of place. She could be in a crowded supermarket ready to checkout, after buying her food, and the register in front of her, just as she passed by, magically opened. As if she was already a super model, a diva, and/or a princess, which was her dream to be all of those types of women, living a charmed life, luck was on her side.
One who always wanted the spotlight of attention shining upon her, she was so naturally beautiful that she could be doing anything, even eating, and men would stare, which is why she sat off in the far corner of the school cafeteria. She tired of being the center of attention, especially when she was doing ordinary things, such as eating. The only time she was secretive and uncomfortably shy was when she was eating. She confessed to her friends that she didn't like to eat in public. Women who looked as good as she did, always had some kind of eating disorder and she was no different.
An uncommon beauty, every man on campus wanted her and whenever she was in attendance, as she was in the cafeteria, men had a habit of making fools of themselves in their feeble attempts to make her to take notice of them. So there they were, Stephen and Priscilla, sitting together with the light from the window above raining down rainbows of sunshine upon her blonde head that gave her the appearance of wearing a halo. As if she was an Angel that basked in the glow of Heaven, indeed, she was a Heavenly vision to behold. Hard to ignore, even when she hid herself away, while eating, every man and even some women stared over at her. Yet, there she was, if even for a few more moments, sitting there with average Stephen, albeit at opposite ends of the long table.
Without exchanging any polite conversation, looking down, looking off in the distance, and/or looking through Stephen, she acted as if he wasn't even there. Mindlessly, she chewed her food, that is, until Stephen reached over and removed the decorative daisy from the small vase in the middle of the table. A way for him to hopefully entertain her, engage her, and make her laugh, perhaps, he didn't know what fate had in store for them, by this one silly, simple thing that he was about to do but, as it turns out, fate had a hand in bringing them together. Even though some would think that he tricked her and deceived her to fall in love with him, in reality, their connection was fated to happen.
"She loves me. She loves me not," he said, as slowly pulling off petals one at a time, as she ate her food, one slow chew at a time.
Hoping for lightning to strike and that she'd be so flattered that she'd be suddenly sexually aroused, she wasn't, of course. At first, Priscilla was amused with Stephen's sudden show and the little smile she flashed him gave him hope for a date with her. Yet, then, as if he had summoned up a thundercloud that darkened the sunshine that rained down upon her head, instead of her being his cosmic shooting star, she became annoyed.
Expecting rain instead of sunshine with her sudden cloudy day, expecting to be sitting in a small puddle, after she threw her glass of water in his face, it was a good sign that she didn't. The look on her face changed from annoyed to disinterest, another positive, he thought. Hoping for her clouds to disperse and to give her a sunny day, she was still overcast with gloom and troubled by his bothersome presence and with his dissection of the daisy. Instead of being entertained in watching Stephen's antics, she started chewing her food faster, going from a cow chewing it's cud to a dog eating it's meal. Trapped there alone with him and his crazy antics of hopeful love, it was obvious that she wanted to just eat and run.
"Ever so hopeful," she said, finally slowing down her shoveling of food in her mouth to speak. "I don't love you, Stephen," she said with a sour face but one without emotion.
Duh, no kidding, he thought. Yet, encouraged that he received a response from her at all, undaunted by her negative reply, he continued.
"She loves me. She loves me not," he said undiscouraged by her words.
"I will never fall in love with someone like you, Stephen. Look at you and look at me," she said sitting up taller, while waving her hand down, as if she was a model displaying a showcase on the Price Is Right.
"She loves me. She loves me not," he said with steadfast perseverance.
"Being that today is Valentine's Day, you'd have to be Cupid and shoot me in the ass with an arrow for me to have any interest in you at all," she said with a mean spirited laugh, while tossing her long, blonde hair.
For sure, he'd love to shoot her in the ass with his love arrow. When she laughed like that, as if a horse whinnying, and tossed her hair like that, as if a horse tossing it's mane, he couldn't help but think of her as if she was a thoroughbred horse and he was a jockey trying to mount her which, of course, he'd love to mount her.
