"Secret Journey"
Diane felt a hand tap her on the shoulder. "Zo, my dear," she heard from behind her in a comedy German accent, "vould you like to go on a secret journey?"
She turned to see three people looking at her with expectant expressions on their faces. It wasn't hard to figure out which one of them had spoken; the man in the middle wore a tweed suit that looked like it came straight out of the 19th century, chunky horn-rimmed glasses with bushy eyebrows taped to them, and an obviously fake goatee. She might have been jumping to conclusions, of course. It could have been the Frankenstein Monster standing next to him. But she was pretty sure it wasn't the sexy vampire girl holding the Monster's hand, not unless that costume concealed an Adam's apple amazingly well.
She quirked an eyebrow at them. "Is that a euphemism for sex?" she asked. She said it with a smile, though. Take away the comedy psychiatrist costume, and he'd definitely be...well, naked, for one thing, but also handsome. And the possibilities that came to mind for combining those two attributes sounded fairly enjoyable. It'd depend on his response, though. Even at a kink party, nothing turned a girl off of a potential foursome like a tacky jerk who thought that group sex was a right, not a privilege.
He affected a mock wounded expression on his features for a moment. "Sometimes, madam," he said, "a cigar is just a cigar."
She looked down at the brown cylinder in his hand. "But that isn't a cigar. It's plastic."
He looked down at it too. "Oh," he said, in an accent that was more Midwest than Munich. "Yeah." His smile returned. Diane decided she wanted it to stick around. "Seriously, though, it's not a euphemism for sex. It's a euphemism for hypnosis. See, my friends here, Frank and Carmilla, they heard me mention that hypnosis was a hobby of mine, and they wanted me to demonstrate it a little. And for some reason, neither one of them wanted me to demonstrate it on them."
'Carmilla' grinned, showing off a set of excellent false fangs. "I was perfectly willing to volunteer my boyfriend up--you can blame him for chickening out."
"He probably got it confused with fire," Diane said with a fangless grin of her own. "So, 'Frank' and 'Carmilla'...and you are?"
"So sorry," the would-be hypnotist responded, his German accent back again. "Where are my manners? I, of course, am Sigmund Freud. But you can call me Siggie."
Diane rolled her eyes a little. She somehow doubted those were their real names, but what the hell. So long as they came when you called, what was the difference? "I should probably call myself Margaret Hamilton," she said, gesturing at her own low-cut witch costume, "but my name is actually Diane."
"Pleased to meet you, Diane," 'Sigmund' said. "In any event, my friends here are interested in seeing me hypnotize someone who isn't them, and you look like a bright, imaginative young woman. So we thought we'd take you off to someplace more private, and I can show you how to go down on us. Er, for us. Into hypnosis. Sorry, me-ian slip, there."
Diane gave them a skeptical look. "So what you're suggesting, then, is that I let three total strangers who won't tell me their real names drag me off to an unoccupied bedroom and hypnotize me into doing God-knows-what?"
All three of them looked a little lost for words at that. 'Frank', in particular, just stared at her like he'd just been hit with a fish. Diane was starting to suspect that his choice of costume had been just a little too appropriate. "Um...we're nice strangers," 'Sigmund' responded sheepishly.
Diane shrugged. If you couldn't experiment at a kink party, where the hell could you experiment? "Sure," she said. "Why not?"
It did take them a minute or two to find an unoccupied bedroom--this was a kink party, after all, and even though their host had a nice big house, they did walk in on more than one interesting scene before they finally found a quiet place to themselves. (Luckily, nobody seemed too upset to be walked in on, and Diane suspected that more than a few enjoyed it. This was a kink party, after all.)
"So how do we do this?" Diane asked, as 'Frank' and 'Carmilla' cuddled up together on a love seat. "Do I 'look into your eyes', or do you just say, 'SLEEEP!', or what?" She knew she was probably letting her sarcasm meter run a little high, but underneath it all, she was a little nervous. She wasn't afraid, or anything--Diane prided herself on being a good judge of people, and these three weren't giving off any signals that suggested that they were looking for anything but a good time and maybe a roll in the hay if the evening went well. They seemed like the sort of people you could try something new with and not have it blow up in your face.
But it was something new, and despite 'Sigmund''s nonchalant confidence, Diane wasn't entirely sure if she could be hypnotized. She'd feel kind of bad if they all really wanted her to go into a trance, and she couldn't do it and it kind of put a damper on the evening. Idly, Diane wondered if this was how guys felt about their erections sometimes.
"Just sit down on the bed and get comfortable," 'Sigmund' said. Diane kicked her shoes off and complied, lying back against the pillows in a semi-reclined position. She must not have looked that comfortable, though, because 'Sigmund' smiled warmly at her and said in reassuring tones, "Relax, Diane. That's what hypnosis is all about, really. It's about relaxing and letting go. All that 'look into my eyes' stuff? You've been watching way too many cheesy movies." He took a pocket-watch out of his vest and started to swing it in front of her face. "That's really going to help me a lot, honestly."
Diane couldn't help herself; she let out an involuntary snort of laughter. "A pocket-watch? Kind of cliché, isn't it?"
"Yes, I suppose it is, just a bit," 'Sigmund' said. "Everyone knows that hypnotists use pocket-watches to entrance pretty young girls. Everyone knows that when a hypnotist dangles a pocket-watch in front of your eyes and lets it sway back and forth...back and forth as it catches the light...that over time, you find yourself unable to look away. It's such a cliché that you know it's going to happen, Diane. Because it always happens. You always find your eyes following the watch on its endless journey."
Diane suddenly felt nervous all over again, but for entirely different reasons this time. Because now she felt all too sure that this really was going to work and he really was going to hypnotize her, and she realized how much of her adventurousness in coming into this room stemmed from her belief that this was nothing more than a clever pick-up line. "But--but it's just a watch," she stammered out, not sure whether she was trying to convince 'Sigmund' or herself. "It can't really do...do anything to..." She realized that her eyes were following the watch as it swung on the chain, exactly like he'd said they would, and that astonished her so much that she lost her train of thought for a second. "To, um, me," she finished weakly.
"But your mind can, Diane," 'Sigmund' said in warm, soothing tones that felt like they could melt in Diane's mouth and mind. "You know that the watch can hypnotize you, and so the watch can hypnotize you because you know it can." Diane tried to parse that sentence, but she was also trying to pay attention to what he said next and her eyes were fixated on the watch, and splitting her concentration between three things seemed kind of difficult right now, for some reason.
"But how do I...I..." Diane trailed off. It was already so hard to concentrate on everything that she was seeing and hearing that she didn't have the energy to finish a sentence of her own. She realized that the other people in the room would only see her trailing off into silence as she watched the watch, just like the victims in all those cheesy horror movies, and something about that made her feel flushed and warm. She squirmed a little, but she seemed to be too lethargic to move much.
"You know with the deepest certainty that the watch will hypnotize you, and so it's just a matter of time before your deep certainty sends you into deep hypnosis." Diane gave up trying to figure out the meaning of what he was saying, and it felt so good to let that go. It felt like she had set down a heavy burden, and now she felt so light that she was almost floating. She could simply listen to what he was saying, and watch the watch as it swung back and forth and back and forth. That seemed so much easier.
"There's no escaping it, Diane. You know that. You were lost as soon as you saw the watch, because who ever heard of a pretty young girl watching a swaying, dangling watch and not going into hypnosis? It's impossible, Diane. It's impossible not to be hypnotized, when you watch the watch. You don't even try to fight it, Diane, because you know that it just happens." Diane felt her head bob up and down absently, but she had other things on her mind. The watch seemed to be rising, or maybe her head was sinking, but her eyes couldn't look away from it. It was hard to follow the watch with her eyes rolling up into her head like that. Her eyelids kept wanting to close.
"And you know that it's the idea of the watch that hypnotizes you, Diane," 'Sigmund' said as she struggled to keep her eyes open. "You said it yourself, the watch can't do anything to you. It's your mind. So even when you close your eyes, even when you can't see the real watch, you'll see the watch in your mind until I tell you to stop, and it will always sway, always catch the light, always send you deeper and deeper."
With a sigh of relief, Diane let her eyes finally close. That felt so good, giving up that endless, exhausting fight to keep them open. She was so grateful to 'Sigmund' for giving her a way to keep watching the watch while relaxing even deeper. She tried to say so, but all that came out was another sigh.
"That's right, Diane," he said, stroking her hand. "Deeper and deeper with every moment. Because you've been hypnotized, just like those girls in all those movies, and you know what that means, don't you, Diane?"
Her head felt loose on her shoulders as she nodded. "'m in...your power..."
"That's right!" he said, and his hands felt warm through her costume as he petted her arm. "You're in my power, Diane. I control what you see...and hear...and think...and do...how does that make you feel, Diane?"
