The ringing of the cell phone cut insistently through the fog in Charlotte's mind, refusing to let her sink back down into her relaxed, dreamy trance. "Yes, hello," someone said irritably as they finally answered it. Wait...trance? She cracked an eyelid open just a little, the act seeming to take a lot more effort than she'd expected. When did she go into a trance?
"Yeah, I really can't talk now," the man said as Charlotte tried to focus on him through eyes that were used to wearing glasses. She recognized the voice, though. The Amazing Paul Hammond, Master of Mesmerism. But she hadn't volunteered or anything...had she? She'd bought her ticket and watched the show, but she distinctly recalled being too shy to volunteer. She'd just sat in the crowd, listening and watching as he swung his pocket-watch, dizzying and dazzling the volunteers sitting on their stools as he told them to relax and let go, sink deeper and relax, obey and sink deeper, close their eyes and obey...
And it had been so soothing, so relaxing, and Charlotte had such a long day at work and it was such a goofy, silly way to spend an evening that she'd just felt her eyes closing, and when he'd told them to stand up, she'd just seemed to float to her feet...
"Yes, I'm with a girl," Paul continued. OK, that answered a few of her questions. But she wasn't on stage now, was she? Charlotte looked around a bit more, but the room wasn't the first thing she noticed. The first thing she noticed was that she'd stripped down to her bra and panties, and even her bra was only hanging on by one strap. That splashed a bit of cold water into her mind and helped her clear away the cobwebs, which was probably a bit of a mixed metaphor but she still felt a little muzzy from the trance.
"You always ask that, and I always say no," Paul said, his attention not on her at the moment. "Hypnotize your own, OK?" Charlotte started to stand up, still taking in details of the room around her. It looked like a dressing room; there was a bunch of 'normal' clothing hanging from hooks, probably Paul's outfits when he wasn't up on stage hypnotizing people. (Oh, God, he'd hypnotized her up on stage, and he'd taken her back to his dressing room afterwards...Charlotte racked her brains, trying to think of anyone she'd told about where she was going to be that night.) Her own clothes, though, had just been scattered over the small bed she'd been sitting on.
She started to gather them up when she heard Paul say, "Yeah, yeah, I'll talk to you later," and she spun around to face him. "I see you're awake," he said. "Sorry, I really should have set my phone to vibrate."
"Sorry?" she said, her voice choked with anger and fear. "If I hadn't heard that phone, I'd still be..."
"You'd still be deep and warm in a soft, soothing--"
"Stop that!" she shouted at him. "Don't say another word! You put me under, you snuck me back here, and if I hadn't woken up, you'd...you'd..." She was starting to cry, now, not quite wanting to believe the situation she'd wound up in. She didn't want to say it because then she'd have to believe it was all real. She'd have to believe that she was in a strange room with a strange man, almost totally naked and he was just staring at her and she didn't even want to look at him because she was afraid he might...might hypnotize her again.
But instead, he just put up his hands in a calming gesture. "Now hold on," he said. "I didn't do anything you didn't want to do."
She glared at him, wishing she could just get dressed and run out of the room but not wanting to put down the clothes she was holding up like a shield in front of her nearly naked body. "Wanted?" she shouted. "You think I wanted this?"
"Maybe not consciously," he said, still just sitting in his chair. "But yes, I think that you wanted this very much. You're a very willing subject, Charlotte. It's pretty common that an audience member goes under from an induction meant for someone else, but even so, you practically jumped into trance. And when I brought you up on stage, you seemed very willing to interpret every command in the kinkiest way possible, even adding a sexual element to the non-sexual commands. Which made for a good show, but I was a little curious, so I asked you to come back here with me afterwards. Something else you seemed very happy to do."
"That's because you hypnotized me!" Charlotte said, finally spotting her glasses on the floor. She crouched down very slowly, not wanting to expose any more of her body to Paul's eyes than she had to, and picked them up. "I had to do what you said! I had no choice!"
"Interesting word selection, that," Paul said, steepling his hands together. "Are you familiar with the concept of the 'hidden observer'?" Charlotte shook her head cautiously. "On some level, no matter how deeply hypnotized you become, a part of you is awake. They call that the hidden observer. It shapes the way you respond to commands when you're under hypnosis. No matter what I tell you to do, your hidden observer holds a kind of veto over it."
Charlotte put her glasses on, just in time for him to fix her with a piercing stare. "Your hidden observer didn't stop you from coming back here with me, Charlotte. It didn't stop you from taking your clothes off, and from the sound of things, it didn't even care whether or not you remembered what happened while you were hypnotized, and I have to tell you that hypnotic amnesia is actually pretty difficult for most people. Now, why do you think that is?"
For a long moment, Charlotte couldn't speak. She knew why that was, just like she knew why she hadn't told anyone, not even her closest friends, that she was going to an R-rated stage hypnosis show. She knew that no matter what she told herself about wanting to wait for marriage, she still couldn't stop herself from having needs, urges...and fantasies. "That's not fair," she said. "There are a lot of things that I might want, but I don't do them because they're not right. You put me in a position where I was vulnerable..." She paused, momentarily distracted by the delicious, erotic sound of the word 'vulnerable'. "And you were getting ready to take advantage of the fact that I wasn't thinking straight to make me do things I wouldn't have done if I was clear-headed."
Paul smiled a little. "Yes, I think that's all pretty much true. Well, I might quibble over the statement that sex isn't 'right', but everything else sounds pretty fair. But none of that changes the fact that you really did want this, Charlotte. And I'm betting you still do."
"No I don't!" Self-consciously, Charlotte inched up her hand and reattached her bra strap.
"Alright," Paul said, "I'm a sporting man. Let's put this to the test." He pointed to the dressing room door. "You're awake right now, right? There's nothing stopping you from walking out that door if you don't want to do it. So if you leave, I promise you that all the suggestions I put into your mind will immediately end and you'll be back to your normal old self again." Suggestions? He'd put suggestions into her mind? Charlotte tried not to panic at the thought and instead focus on what he was saying right now. "If you don't leave, well...that must mean that you're here because you want to be here. And that means you must want me to hypnotize you. To put you into a deep, erotic trance and do all the things you told me you wanted me to do to you, Charlotte."
Charlotte wondered nervously what she'd told him. It all seemed so hazy now... "Alright," she found herself saying, almost before she could give the matter any thought. Still, it seemed like a good deal. After all, she was wide awake right now, and he couldn't do anything to keep her here. Unless he grabbed her or something, she realized suddenly. "But you have to sit right there in that chair until I say you can move," she blurted out.
"Sure," he said. "If that's what it takes to make you understand. Whenever you're ready, Charlotte."
She nodded confidently. Time to make him feel like an idiot. She turned and headed for the door without a single word. Five seconds, that's how long it'd take her to walk out of here, Mr. Paul 'I'm Secretly A Date Rapist' Hammond!
His words stopped her cold in her tracks, though. "You're not going to leave without putting your clothes back on, are you?"
Charlotte flushed bright red as she realized what she'd been about to do. She'd been so busy insisting that she wasn't a bimbo slut, and here she was about to give everyone in the building a free show! She pulled her shirt out from the little bundle of clothes she'd been holding and set the rest down on the floor, then began pulling it over her head.
"You sure you don't want me to come over there and help you?" Paul asked. "I don't know if you still remember how to wear clothes after some of those suggestions."
"Oh, no," Charlotte said. "You just sit right where you are. I don't want you--" She struggled with the thin fabric of her t-shirt, trying to find the hole her head went through. "--Don't want you coming over here and copping a feel, telling me you're just 'trying to help me put my clothes on'." Goddamnit, she thought, there has to be a second hole somewhere on this thing! "I am a twenty-year-old woman, I think I am fully capable of putting on my own..." Aha! A hole! She pulled, but it seemed to have gotten too small for her head. No matter how hard she tried, she couldn't fit her skull through the opening. "My own..." Must be an armhole. She shifted her body around, trying to fit her arm through the hole, but it seemed to have unaccountably vanished. "My, um..."
