The sand slowly poured into the bottom of the hourglass. Bethany tried very hard not to watch it.
It wasn't exactly easy, though. The light seemed to catch each individual grain as it slipped out of the top bulb and fell in a glittering stream into the bottom. Every time Bethany thought she had fixed her gaze on the featureless tan walls or the pink polish on her tapping fingernails or just straight up at the white ceiling, she would find that after a few moments she was looking at the sand again. It heaped up in a tiny little mound at the base of the hourglass, slowly spreading as more sand tumbled out of the pinched curve of glass in the middle. Bethany knew it would take five minutes to empty the top half. That was how long she needed to resist.
And she would. She knew she would, because this entire thing was too silly by half. And because hypnosis didn't really even work at all, and it certainly didn't work like some kind of stupid magic spell that would melt her brain to mush in five minutes flat. And because she was a very strong-willed individual who didn't simply turn into a puddle of mindless arousal just because a certain extremely obnoxious boyfriend of a friend (ahem,
Jeremy...
) made claims that he was an 'master hypnotist' who could put anyone into a trance whether they resisted or not.
(Although honestly, she'd be a lot less surprised to find out that Letty was hypnotized into dating Jeremy than to learn that he actually had positive qualities that would attract women. What Letty saw in that perpetually jobless, constantly lecherous slob, Bethany would never know. Half the reason she'd risen to his barely-concealed taunts was the hope that once he thought she was 'hypnotized', he'd make a pass at her right in front of Letty and she could turn him down and show him up at the same time.)
But first she had to get through his little challenge. Which would be remarkably easy, because again, it wasn't as though she could really be hypnotized at all. She would just sit here silently in her chair, in this extremely boring, incredibly warm room that Jeremy had actually nicknamed 'the brainwashing chamber' (God, Letty could do better) and let him drone on while she watched the sand spill into the bottom of the hourglass. And at the end, she'd give him a good slap when he told her to do whatever inappropriate thing he was undoubtedly going to tell her to do, and she and Letty would go out for ice cream and wonder why the hell all their boyfriends kept trying to drag them into threesomes. In...something like four minutes? It was kind of hard to tell. There weren't any markings on the hourglass to indicate how far along she was in the challenge. She just had to watch the sand empty out until it was all gone.
Jeremy would no doubt tell her that her mind was emptying out right along with the sand, pouring down and down and down in an endless flow as her eyes locked onto the captivating sight of the slowly filling bottom bulb. Which was why she'd already tuned Jeremy out completely. Let him sit there and ramble on about 'deep, drowsy relaxation' and 'more and more focused on the sand the more you watch'. Bethany didn't need to hear any of it. It was just more of his half-assed hypnosis shtick that he probably picked up from one of those terrible online manuals on how to get women, nothing worth listening to at all. Even Letty looked bored sitting next to her, and she was probably used to it by now.
Then again, if he tried this crap on Letty often enough that they had a whole room for it, she had to be even more sick of it than Bethany. She certainly looked like she'd completely checked out of the whole boring challenge thing; Bethany noticed out of the corner of her eye that Letty had the vacant expression of someone who had long ago stopped even pretending to pay attention. Bethany suspected that Letty got that look a lot when Jeremy was talking. Bethany just hoped her friend wasn't so checked out that she wouldn't notice if Jeremy tried anything creepy-one of Bethany's very strong conditions to trying Jeremy's little dare was that she not be left alone with him. It wasn't that she didn't trust him, but-no, no, it was exactly that she didn't trust him.
If he was planning on trying anything, though, he certainly didn't seem to be in any great hurry to do so. He sat in his chair, talking to her in that weird soft monotone that she had no intention of listening to and watching her watch the hourglass. Occasionally she'd catch a word or a phrase, like 'you don't need to listen, just hear and obey' or 'my words slip past your conscious mind, sinking deep into your subconscious as you focus your fading thoughts on the trickling sand', but it never seemed to go anywhere or catch her attention. It was just more of his hypno-babble, more of the same patter that he had been repeating with only tiny variations for...God, how long had it been? The sand looked significantly lower than before, but without a clock or a watch she had no real way of knowing.
The more she thought about that, the more it started to get to her. Bethany started wondering if the hourglass was really a five minute timer like Jeremy had said it was, or if he'd swapped in something as part of a weird prank. It felt like she'd been staring at the hourglass for, well, hours. She thought about storming out, telling him that he was a liar and a cheat and a lousy hypnotist, but...but making a big scene like that would hurt Letty's feelings. Just contemplating it felt draining. Bethany let the thought slip away and continued to watch the sand fall. Arguing about anything felt too much like work, especially when no matter how long the timer took, it would have to run out of sand eventually.
Still, it was incredibly frustrating. Bethany could feel the urge to fidget and shift in her chair growing, and she reminded herself that she was supposed to be still and silent. She tried concentrating on her body one limb at a time, picturing the nervous energy draining out of her feet and legs, then her arms and shoulders. She kept circling around to each part of her body in turn, again and again, imagining each one sagging into relaxation in turn until all that tension was gone and she could focus easily and effortlessly on the hourglass again. It seemed to work-with every deep, slow, lazy breath it became easier and easier to pay more attention to the flowing sand and less attention to everything else. Jeremy's voice, the stifling closeness of the room, the way Letty's head was slowly slumping forward onto her chest...none of it seemed nearly as important as watching the hourglass now. The hourglass was all that mattered. She just needed to keep watching until it was all gone, and then she would win.
