"3...2...1...Wide awake!" Michael said, snapping his fingers.
Sophie blinked and looked at him, confused. He was staring at her, grinning as if he had just told a joke that, as usual, only he understood.
"Well? Are you going to start now?" she asked, annoyed.
He feigned surprise. "What do you mean? We've already started; you've been under for about twenty minutes now. Don't you remember?"
Sophie groaned internally. When she had agreed to let Michael try to hypnotize her (if only to get him to shut up about it), she thought he was going to make her look at a crystal pendant while telling her that she was "under his power", or something stupid like that. But it seemed like he wasn't even going to try, and this whole thing was just another of his dumb pranks.
"Ha, ha. Very funny. Are you actually going to try to hypnotize me, or can I go now?"
"You're already hypnotized. I can put you back under any time I want."
"Oh really? How?"
Michael snapped his fingers again.
Sophie felt a moment of disorientation. Hadn't Michael been standing slightly to the left a second ago? She couldn't remember seeing him move. Then her confusion turned to irritation. He was giving her that stupid grin again.
"Is that really all you're going to do? Just keep snapping your fingers over and over and pretending that you've already hypnotized me?"
"Oh no, I'm just getting started. Now that I've tested out your basic triggers, we can get on to the interesting stuff. You have no idea how much fun I'm going to have with your mind."
Sophie rolled her eyes. If there was one thing that Michael was known for, it was carrying on with a joke long past the point when anyone else found it funny (not that his jokes were that funny to begin with).
"Well, if your plan was to waste my time, then it's succeeding." She tried to look at her watch, before remembering that he'd made her remove it when they started, claiming that he didn't want any 'distractions'.
Michael smiled when he saw her glance at her wrist. "Oh, if you're wondering what time it is, I can help with that," he said, then snapped his fingers.
Sophie was vaguely aware that there was something wrong with what had just happened. She had just been facing Michael, but the snap she'd heard had come from behind her. Had Michael moved?
No, she realized, she'd moved. But why? And why was she now kneeling in front of the grandfather clock? And why was it so hard to think as her eyes followed the pendulum as it swung back and forth, back and forth...
Suddenly, she remembered. She'd wanted to check what time it was. With some difficulty, she looked away from the pendulum and up at the face of the clock, then did a double take. She could've sworn that they'd only started a few minutes ago, but the clock showed that almost half an hour had already passed.
"It's impressive, isn't it?" Michael said from behind her. "How hypnosis can make it feel as though no time has passed at all."
"I'm not hypnotized!" Sophie insisted, standing up. Michael had probably just changed the clock before she came here. It wouldn't be out of character for him to put way too much effort into one of his dumb pranks. But however long it had been, she'd had enough.
"I'm going to leave now," she said, walking towards the door.
"OK, that's fine," he replied. "But, before you go, can you answer one question for me?"
"What?"
"What's your name?" he asked, snapping his fingers.
"My name? It's S..." she paused. This was ridiculous; of course she knew what her name was. It was...it started with an 'S', she was sure of that.
"S...?" he asked, smiling innocently.
"S..."
Come on
, she thought. It was right there, on the tip of her tongue, but every time she tried to say it, there was just a blurry space in her mind where it should have been. But...whatever, just because she couldn't think of her name at this exact moment didn't mean that she'd been hypnotized. This was probably just some trick to make her
think
that he'd hypnotized her. She wasn't going to give him the satisfaction of letting him know that it had almost worked.
"I know what my name is. I don't need to tell you."
"Really? Well then, do you know what my name is?"
"M..."
She thought back to the conversations they'd had over the previous few days. Surely, he must've mentioned his name at some point.
"M..."
Most of those conversations had revolved around hypnosis, in some way. She remembered very clearly the way he described how he could put someone completely within his power, mindlessly obeying his commands, without ever realizing that they were obeying...