"Sink Into Me"
"Wh-what are you doing to me?" The question sounds absurd, paranoid and naive at the same time, and Selena braces herself for the inevitable dismissal of her sudden, inexplicable fear. She knows that Lucia has a perfectly reasonable, perfectly innocent explanation for her behavior, because... because that's the way the world works. People don't really hypnotize and brainwash strangers they meet at bars, that's the kind of random bizarre shit you see in horror movies. The weird phrasing, the low breathy voice, the constant references to exhaustion and sleep and drowsiness... there has to be a simple explanation to it all. Selena just doesn't understand it yet. She knows she's going to feel so foolish once Lucia explains it all.
"I'm hypnotizing you, darling," Lucia says. Her facial expression doesn't even change. "I'm drawing you deeper and deeper into a helpless trance, isolating your thoughts from your body one by one before I erase them from your sleepy mind. It's already started. You can't resist. Just give in, sink into my eyes, and stop trying to think. It's going to feel so much better once you relax and stop struggling, pet."
The room seems to spin for Selena, the words somehow seeming so unreal and impossible that she can't fully process them. She tells herself that surely someone will notice, that there's no way that you could sit in the middle of a crowded room and hhh... Selena's mind recoils from the word, still unable to believe any of this is really happening. There's no way Lucia can do... this. What she's saying. Not in front of all these people, not to an unwilling subject. It's got to be a joke, a prank, one of those cheesy 'Candid Camera' type shows. You can't just walk up to someone's table, say, "Is this seat taken?", and start trying to, to...
"That's right, pretty girl," Lucia says, and Selena realizes she's been staring into Lucia's deep hazel eyes for almost a solid minute trying to come up with a reason why she couldn't be helplessly staring into Lucia's deep hazel eyes. "Just let my gaze fill your world, let everything around you fade away except the darkness at the center of my stare. You can imagine yourself sinking into it, slowly descending down and down and down into the silent depths of my pupil until everything in your mind is perfect, pitch black emptiness."
Selena shakes her head slowly, all too aware that her eyes seem to be moving in perfect sync to keep her gaze locked onto Lucia's stare. "N-no," she says, hearing a terrifyingly muzzy quality to her own voice. Like she's already started to doze off in her seat. She wonders how long she sat here, listening to Lucia ramble on about her long and exhausting day and the allure of her soft, warm, cozy, comfortable hotel bed, before it finally dawned on her that the words had stopped making sense and started appealing directly to Selena's subconscious. "I... I'm going to leave now," she said, wishing she could sound more forceful.
"No you're not," Lucia responds, the words as much a statement of fact as a command. "Because you're sinking deeper and deeper into the darkness in my eyes now, and it's so hard to find your body anymore. Everything else is fading away, remember? The more you gaze helplessly into the depths of my stare, the less you can think about anything else and the less important the world around you becomes. Your body is out there, out in the real world, but you've left that world behind to sink into me. It's so distant, so far away, that you can't possibly make your legs move now. It's too much like work to stand. Too much like work to lift your heavy, heavy limbs."
Selena tries. She really, really does. She tells herself that hypnosis isn't real, that it's all just mumbo-jumbo pseudoscience used by stage magicians and creepy characters on sop operas to ensnare the gullible and weak-willed. All she needs to do is shake off her lethargy, get up, and walk away. Maybe even give Lucia a slap for good measure, just for trying something so sleazy and manipulative. She should do that right now. Right this moment. Right this second.
But 'this second' seems to stretch out like taffy in her brain, convincing Selena that she's constantly on the verge of finding the energy to stand up and leave. She always seems to need just a little more time, just another moment or two to force her drowsy limbs into action, and Lucia never gives her that time. She keeps filling Selena's mind with images of relaxation and slumber, speaking in a steady cadence that lulls Selena deeper and deeper into helpless exhaustion.
"It's like the darkness has swallowed your body all up, my sweet little girl. You're so deep in my eyes now, sinking so deep into the warm, beautiful black center of my pupil that all you can see in your mind is that soft, sleepy darkness. There's no light to see yourself by down there, and it's almost like there's no 'you' to see at all. You know that if you turned, if you turned and looked back up out of my eyes you'd see your body looking back at you like it was miles and miles and miles away, but you don't want to turn away right now. You want to keep going deeper. You want to sink down... and down... and down."
Selena can picture it perfectly, as if her mind is at the bottom of a deep, sloping cavern and back up at the top, framed by the light of the real world, is her silent and slumping body. She tries to shout, to scream, to let the strangers in the upscale bar know that a strange woman is doing something to her head and she can't fight it much longer, but all that escapes her lips across the vast darkness and into reality is a gentle sigh of relaxation. Nobody's coming to help her. Nobody's going to rescue her. She's all alone in the darkness now.
Lucia's tawny brown hands stretch across the table, stroking the darker bronze skin on the back of Selena's hand in a lazy rhythm that almost seems to numb her flesh even as it stimulates Selena's nerves into drowsy pleasure. She keeps talking, pouring her words straight into Selena's confused and groggy mind without giving Selena even the slightest chance to collect her thoughts. "And as you sink deeper into me, the connection to your body grows more tenuous and faint and distant. Until somewhere along the line, without you ever really noticing, it fades away completely. You can feel your mind stretching back, you can feel your body growing more and more open and receptive... but my commands have slipped easily and effortlessly in between them."
Selena tries to shake her head, tries to insist that she's still in control of her own body... but nothing happens. She stares unblinkingly into Lucia's eyes, her breathing slow and steady and relaxed, and her muscles simply refuse to listen to her thoughts. She feels a flutter of panic in her brain, a realization that something is horribly and desperately wrong... but her body just ignores it, and without a quickening heartbeat or a sick feeling in her stomach, Selena can't sustain the fear. It melts away into passive, helpless fatalism as she listens and obeys.
"That's right, darling," Lucia coos, her hand reaching up and entangling into Selena's long dark hair to pull her slowly closer to those deep, sparkling eyes. "You understand perfectly now, don't you? You're so deep now, sunk so deeply into my control that your body doesn't even want to listen to you anymore. Your body wants to listen to me. You can feel the irresistible power of my voice plugging into your nerves, untangling your conscious mind from your muscles and replacing it with my will. I control your motions now, I control your sensation. I even control your speech, don't I? Say 'yes, Mistress Lucia'."
Selena tries to struggle her way back up through the darkness, tries to push her way back up through endless black fathoms to find her way back to herself, but it's no good. She hears herself whisper, "Yes, Mistress Lucia," and the words hit the core of her self-image like an axe blow. She's just followed a direct command, obeyed a hypnotic suggestion from a stranger, and it tips Selena's mind into utter defeat. She knows that she can't resist whatever's happening to her. She just tried and failed. Seeing the proof of her own surrender takes the fight right out of her.
