Plink looked up at the "theater" he and his girlfriend were standing in front of. It called itself a theater, anyways, but if it was, it was the smallest one he'd ever seen. It wasn't much bigger than any of the other little shops around. The entire storefront of this one, though, was covered in big black-and-white spirals, and it looked extremely gaudy and incredibly out of place in the quaint little shopping center that it was located in.
Pulling the zipper up on his jacket to keep the cold out, Plink grabbed onto the hand of the pink cat standing next to him. What did she see in this dumb place, anyway? Shops like this had been popping up all over the city, but only recently did one finally appear close enough for Mawl to actually ask to go. And Plink, the great boyfriend that he is, knew that a voucher would be the perfect Christmas gift. Unfortunately, he really should have read what he was buying before he bought it. He had no idea he had bought a voucher for two, and of course once Mawl realized that, she was sure that it was for the two of them to go together.
Truth be told, Plink really had no desire to come to this place. He was more than a little intimidated by it. Only vaguely did he know what went on inside; he just had stories from his classmates and friends to go on, but those were enough to scare him. Plink didn't drink, didn't do drugs; anything that affected his body without his permission made him really on edge, and the stories that he heard about this place sent a shiver down his spine. Mawl, of course, was about the exact opposite. She wasn't normally into tripping out on weird stuff, but she was head-over-heels for this place, for some reason - and he had to be a good boyfriend and go along with it, at this point. It would look really tacky to bail out or try and take the gift back, anyways. So he stood in line, patiently, quietly waiting with his girlfriend. He tried not to be nervous, but the fact that his tail was almost sticking between his legs didn't leave his emotions very well hidden.
Plink was bad at that in general, really. He wasn't ever too hard to read, and Mawl secretly knew that this experience was causing her boyfriend a great deal of anxiety. Dogs were always so obvious! She just didn't let on one bit that she knew or cared. Finally, finally! She wasn't exactly sure what was gonna go on, but from what she understood, she was gonna get her boyfriend to do some really dumb stuff, and he was gonna make her do some really dumb stuff, and for some reason the idea made her so excited that she felt like she was either going to explode or collapse in on herself and like the only thing keeping her around was that she couldn't decide which to do first. She wanted her dummy dog boyfriend to be happy, of course, but she'd been wanting to try one of these places out since she'd first heard of them, and she wasn't gonna let an opportunity to drag her boyfriend along pass her by. Plus, from what she'd heard, the anxiety was going to be a necessarily temporary thing.
Mawl brushed Plink with her tail to get his attention back on her and off the clear dread. "Thank you so much, again!" Mawl's voice was much more shrill and high-pitched than any dog's voice, because cats have evolved annoyance on an anatomical level.
Plink broke out of his stupor to look over at his girlfriend. Her always-chipper demeanor did manage to pull a smile out of the dog, if only a short-lived one. "Yeah, no problem. I mean, you did wanna go." He squeezed the cat's hand, and then she was off to the races again with the questions.
"I wonder what they're gonna do in there. Have you heard anything? Everyone I've asked is just, like, really vague, but they all say it's suuuuuper awesome when I ask 'em if it is. Do you know? Did they tell you when you bought the thing?" She vaguely remembered asking him the same thing about twenty times before, but she was too excited to keep herself from adding one more to the count.
Plink gave her the same answer he had given her probably twenty times before. "I dunno, really. It's like a show, kinda? Like you watch a movie? But it's interactive, I think? I don't know. Everybody I talked to said it was pretty fun, but that they, uh, didn't really remember..." From the sound of his voice, it was fairly obvious that Plink didn't believe everybody he talked to.
It didn't take long at all before the two of them were next in line. Plink reached into his jacket and pulled out the slightly folded voucher, then handed it to the rabbit who was currently taking tickets. The rabbit happily accepted the coupon. "First timers, I assume?"
Plink looked over at Mawl, and then back to the rabbit. "Y... Yeah. First time!" He tried to sound excited. He didn't try very hard.
"Well, I'm sure you two'll have a great time! You'll be in theater 11. Third door on the right-hand side. Enjoy!" Trying not to look much like he felt, Plink grabbed Mawl and made his way through the double doors.
The inside of the building was just as gaudy as the outside, if not more so. It was like a zebra threw up all over a tiny movie theater lobby. There were weird, trippy pictures hung up on the walls, frankly bizarre decorations in the form of large black and white spirals that hung from the ceiling, and a concession stand. It was enough to give him a bit of a headache just looking around. The place was kempt and neat, at least. He'd definitely been in grosser movie theaters... Only this wasn't exactly a normal movie theater, was it?
"Third on the left, right?" He took Mawl down the only obvious corridor, making his way to the large double doors underneath a bright number 11.
He looked at the rest of the theaters around him. The doors all read, "Occupied, do not enter" on the digital display to the right of the doors. He didn't expect this place to be so high tech. He wasn't sure what he should have been expecting at all, though.
With a trembling hand, Plink opened the door for Mawl. "L-ladies first." Mawl clearly didn't need to be told twice. She dashed past Plink into the room, reaching back to grab him and pull him along behind her. The door shut behind them, and there was a little whirr and a soft click.
It was smaller than a normal theater, that was for sure. Instead of tiered rows of seats behind them, there was just one couch. It was a big couch, though - Mawl supposed people came in larger groups, sometimes. The seat cushions weren't much larger than normal movie theater seats, and without the armrests in between them, there was room to accommodate quite a few people who were willing to sit practically on top of one another. And then there, in front of the couch, there was the big screen that Mawl had been dreaming of for weeks. It was blank and large and imposing.
Suddenly, the reality of how little she knew about this caught up with her, she was nervous. What exactly were they walking into? She knew that it was some kind of group hypnosis session, and it was more fun than a therapist's couch, but who was running the show? Could she trust them? She was sure enough that she could trust Plink not to hurt her while she was... Out? Under? Wherever. The people actually putting them under, though...
She shook the worry out of her head. Everyone else she'd talked to seemed to be coming back home safe, and the idea of doing this with Plink made her inexplicably excited. Still, she shivered a little as she took a seat in the middle of the couch. "Well, come on, sit down!" She beamed up at Plink and patted the seat next to her. "The, er, show? Whatever, it's gonna be starting soon, probably!"
Plink cleared his throat and looked away from her to the now-locked door. Fuck. He could instantly feel his adrenaline pumping. His tail fwip'd right down between his legs and he felt a little dizzy. Panic attacks were definitely not fun. This was supposed to be fun! If it was supposed to be fun, why did he feel so absolutely terrified? At the very least, his moment of panic let him notice a little holder on the wall next to the door. It appeared to be full of some kind of sunglasses, and there was a little sign above the holder that read "One per person, please." He grabbed two pairs out of the holder and walked into the larger part of the theater.
"Hey, Mawl, you, uh, missed these." He handed her the other pair of glasses. "Maybe it's a 3D movie?" Plink sat down, having to consciously adjust his tail to keep it from sticking up from between his legs. He glanced over at Mawl, looking for some kind of guidance here, even though she knew just about as much as he did as to what was going to happen. "Y-you know, I kinda think I need to u-use the restroom, and..." Just as the excuse was coming out of his mouth, the lights in the house dimmed. It seemed like the show was about to begin.
The screen in front of them flickered on. It seemed like a very, very nice screen. The picture was more crisp than any screen Plink had seen in his life. The words "Welcome!" slowly scrolled down from the top of the screen, stopping about halfway. A little tune played in the background from the surround sound speakers as a little cartoon rabbit hopped into frame and waved down at Plink and Mawl. The welcoming text faded away, and it was shortly replaced with a new set of words. "Please assign each person in your party a number starting from one. When your number is shown, please take off your protective glasses and stare directly into the center of the screen." The little cartoon rabbit put on a pair of sunglasses. "If your number is not on the screen, follow the instructions on the screen! Or, if you're a veteran, feel free to come up with your own suggestions!" The rabbit gave a thumbs up, then hopped back off screen. "Remember to relax, enjoy yourself, and most importantly, have fun!" The words faded from the screen to be replaced by a timer counting down from 60. Plink scrambled to get his sunglasses on, dropping them on the floor at least twice before managing to stick them on his face. He looked over at Mawl. "W-wanna be number one?"
Mawl nodded so vigorously that her own glasses bounced off her nose and into Plink's lap. She was a little scared, too, but he was clearly more afraid than she was, so she put on a brave face. "I'll go first, yeah," she said, plucking the glasses off Plink's leg and adjusting them back into place on her face, dimming her vision again and looking very silly, because she was a cat in tinted glasses. She sat back into her seat and took hold of her boyfriend's hand, squeezing it tight. "It's gonna be fun," she said, to herself as much as to him. "It's gonna be great!"
For the next twenty nine seconds, though, she was quiet, anxiously awaiting whatever came next. Three... Two... One. Zero. The zero stuck there on the screen for a little while as the happy tune faded away. The speakers replaced it with a low, steady rumble of quiet sound. Suddenly, the zero seemed to fold in on itself and then blossom out into a black-and-white spiral that spread and spread until it touched every corner of the big screen. It was... Just a spiral. Nothing special. They had called them protective glasses... But what was there to fear? Mawl had been looking at "hypnosis" videos on the internet when she was researching this place - they interested her a bit more than "research" implied, but nevermind that - if just a spiral could really hypnotize her, Mawl would have been drooling her brains onto her keyboard every night watching this kinda stuff on YouTube. But it had never worked before; why should it work here? A voice spoke over the low, rumbling noise.
"One."
At the same time, a big number 1 faded into view on the screen and lingered there. Mawl took a deep breath, still squeezing her boyfriend's hand, and she whispered, "Here goes," then took her glasses off.
Her hand that was holding the glasses dropped heavily into her lap almost at once. The spiral wasn't black-and-white at all; it was every color of the rainbow, pulsing out from the center of the screen in thick rings. She could feel it working on her like a drug; it was happening so fast that she wanted to bolt, but she couldn't move at all. The designers of these things hypnotized thousands of people a day with these theaters, and they'd gotten very efficient at it. Within seconds, the world just didn't make sense any more to Mawl. Nothing around her was really there. She just was, and that was it, and there was nothing to think about. "I'm..." she murmured, but the thought fell off abruptly. "Woah."
She was hearing things in the sound, now, as if the spiral was acting like some sort of crypto-key that let her understand its messages. The messages were coming hard and fast.
Sleep and obey.
