"And you find that your eyes can easily follow the pendant, without even thinking about it. It's the most natural thing in the world to watch its motion as it swings back and forth...back and forth."
Emma peered over at Sophie, slightly unsettled. Her friend's eyes were now fixed on the pendant, her face expressionless.
Could this really be happening?
Emma wondered. When Sophie had told her that she was actually considering letting Michael hypnotize her, Emma had thought she'd known how this would play out. Michael would swing that ridiculous blue pendant of his in front of Sophie's face and say some mumbo jumbo about how she was "under his power" or some nonsense like that, and Sophie would play along for a little while, but eventually it would become clear that all his claims about his "hypnotic powers" were complete bullshit, and they would leave and laugh the whole thing off. But when Michael started swinging the crystal, Sophie's blue eyes had locked on to it almost immediately, and before long it seemed like her friend was no longer aware of anything except for the pendant.
Emma could see why Sophie found the pendant so captivating, though. The crystal seemed to catch the light in a hundred different ways, even swing revealing new depths to its blue as it moved back and forth. Back and forth...
"And as your eyes follow the blue of the pendant, everything else slowly fades away. All the unimportant background details, all those little distractions, just slip out of your mind. Nothing matters except the blue, and my voice."
Emma blinked and quickly looked away from the pendant. She was pretty sure she couldn't get hypnotized, not when she didn't want to and when Michael's words weren't even directed at her anyway. Still, seeing how quickly Sophie had dropped into her placid state made Emma slightly nervous, and she didn't want to take any chances. She was here to watch over Sophie after all, to make sure that Michael didn't try anything with her while she was under, and Emma couldn't exactly do that if she accidentally got hypnotized herself. Emma shook her head, trying hard to look at anything other than the pendant.
It was a good thing Sophie had asked her to come along. Sophie may have trusted Michael, but Emma sure as hell didn't and, despite Sophie's insistence that she and Michael were "just friends", Emma could see the way Michael looked at her. Even when Emma was convinced that the Michael's hypnosis thing wouldn't actually work, she wouldn't have wanted to leave Sophie alone in a room with Michael. And now that Sophie was seemingly powerless, completely captivated by Michael's blue pendant that caught the light in such fascinating ways...
Emma blinked again. Despite her best efforts, her eyes kept being drawn back towards the blue crystal. She needed something else to concentrate on, something to prevent her from getting distracted by the pendant. Eventually, she fixed her gaze on Sophie's eyes.
Almost immediately, Emma found that it was easier to focus. Sophie's eyes were blue, almost the same shade as the pendant, in fact, and once Emma focused on them, she found it was easy to avoid getting distracted by the pendant. In fact, it was easy to avoid getting distracted by anything. Emma hadn't even realized how much of her mental energy was taken up by little details in the room, the way the furniture was arranged, the way the candles flickered, those strange pictures that Michael seemed to have everywhere, but now she barely noticed any of them. That was good. Sophie needed her there for her, and Michael might slip in a sneaky suggestion if Emma allowed herself to get distracted. So, she stared into Sophie's blue eyes as they followed the pendant, and listened carefully to Michael's words. Nothing else mattered.
"And as your body relaxes, your mind relaxes too. With each breath you take, your cares and worries slip away, leaving you more calm, more soothed, more relaxed."
Sophie's breathing was now slow and even. Emma didn't think she'd ever seen her friend this relaxed; her limbs were limp, and her expression was that of someone without a care in the world.
It was then that Emma began to realize why someone might actually want to be hypnotized. She had initially been confused when Sophie had told her that she'd asked Michael to hypnotize her. Michael had offered to hypnotize Sophie and Emma each many times (sometimes Michael even told them that he'd already hypnotized them, and made them forget about it, which never failed to elicit an eye-roll from Emma), but they'd always turned him down before, and eventually he'd given up offering. Emma hadn't understood what had caused Sophie's sudden change of heart. Even if Sophie had believed that Michael's hypnosis really worked, Emma just couldn't see the appeal of letting someone else mess around with your head like that. But now, seeing how calm and peaceful Sophie was as her blue eyes followed the pendant, Emma almost wished that it was her who had asked to be hypnotized.
Emma realized then just how tense she was, worrying about what Michael might do to Sophie, worrying about getting hypnotized herself. Surely, there was no harm in allowing herself to relax a little. After all, she wasn't in any danger of getting hypnotized, not as long as she stared deeply into Sophie's eyes and listened closely to Michael's voice. So, she let herself relax, and allowed her breathing to slow until it matched Sophie's. As she did, warm relaxation flowed through her body, soothing the tension from each muscle. Emma could see why Sophie looked so peaceful and happy, being so relaxed. It felt so good that she wondered why she had been so worried about getting hypnotized herself. Those anxieties seemed distant now, as if they were part of a bad dream that she was already forgetting.
"And as long as you can hear my voice, you know you can feel this safe and relaxed. You know you can trust my voice, and so you can allow my voice to slip into the back of your mind, remaining completely focused on my words, without thinking about them at all."
Sophie was nodding slightly in response to Michael's words, mouthing words in reply that Emma couldn't make out. It was clear that she trusted Michael completely. And why shouldn't she? Michael clearly wasn't going to try anything with Sophie; he'd even allowed Emma to come along just so she could be sure of it. And so far, all he had done had been to make Sophie feel safe and happy and relaxed. Besides, his voice sounded so soothing, and so trustworthy. Emma's previous distrust of Michael seemed almost silly now.
Idly, Emma realized she wasn't listening as closely to Michael's words anymore. Something about that didn't seem right, she remembered she was supposed to pay careful attention to Michael's words, to make sure that he...
But as Emma took another breath, and relaxed even more deeply, she felt that concern fade away like all the others she'd had. She knew she could trust Michael's voice. Besides, even if she wasn't consciously paying attention to his words, she knew her subconscious mind would remember everything he said perfectly.
