Elizabeth assumed that email she didn't remember sending to herself was spam, but the picture loaded before she had the chance to delete it.
It was her own face, with her dorm room in the background-- apparently taken from her computer's camera, last night.
Weird. Well, it was a new computer. Maybe she'd accidentally hit the button for the camera some time last night, and it had helpfully mailed the photo to the default address. At least it was a good default.
--
The next morning, she had another email. Basically the same. From around 11pm-- the first one was closer to midnight. She'd been studying for her Psych class, so, she'd been using the computer. She spent a little time poking around the buttons on the keyboard, trying to see if there was some obvious accidental key combination that would take a photo.
After a moment, she decided to make crazy faces while poking at the keyboard. Then, if she got a photo in the mail tomorrow, she'd know she'd taken it then.
--
Sure enough, next morning, crazy faces. Well, mystery solved. She still didn't know which button or buttons she was accidentally hitting. And the timestamp was still after 11 at night instead of a little after 8 in the morning-- so there was something funky with the time settings somewhere, too. But at least she knew where the pictures were coming from.
--
Over the next days, Elizabeth continued to get accidental self-portraits in email every morning. Only one each day, so whatever key she was mis-pressing, she wasn't doing it too often.
She started to look at the pictures as a running log of how she was doing through the semester. As the days wore on, she really was starting to look more and more glassy-eyed. She ought to consider getting more sleep. But she needed the study time.
Then, one morning, her picture from the day before showed her holding up a piece of paper. Written on it in sharpie, in her handwriting, were the words "I am deeply hypnotized."
--
Elizabeth panicked. Her roommate came in to find Elizabeth standing in the corner with a pot of coffee and a bottle of no-doz, staring at a lump of pillows in her bed which covered up her laptop. Which was unplugged, closed, and duct-taped shut.
"Not the best morning in Study-land, I'm guessing?"
"I..." Elizabeth stopped. Punishing her laptop for imaginary crimes was eccentric. Telling her roommate she thought she was being hypnotized every night to take pictures of herself, was... deeply embarrassing. She couldn't bring herself to do it.
"I think I need a break."
"You think?"
She threw her laptop in a bag and went walking.
--
At the library, Elizabeth took her laptop out-- peeled off the duct tape-- taped over the camera, and went searching for evidence of her nightly doings.
Her deeply hypnotized nightly doings.
Peeled away from the horror-movie set-up, one reason she couldn't face telling her roommate about being hypnotized was that something about the idea really turned her on.
This was *not* the place to be having those sorts of thoughts. She was in a study carrel deep in the library stacks, but still, it was public, and anybody could wander by at any time. She looked around, and listened, and reassured herself that at least there was nobody anywhere nearby right at the moment. She could face her embarrassingly horny thoughts about being hypnotized in private.
But it was scary, right? Someone had been controlling her, hypnotizing her, without her knowledge, every single day, for weeks.
It was scary... but it was also scary in a way that made her want to put a hand between her legs. Someone had been *hypnotizing* her. *Without her knowledge*. *Every day*. *For weeks*.
Whoever it was, didn't seem to have done anything... *to* her. She was obviously getting more... and more... deeply hypnotized. She thought about how glassy-eyed she looked in the most recent pictures, and blushed. But she was *clothed* in all the pictures. She wasn't being hypnotized to send naked photos of herself. Or to do... other things.
Right. So. Who had been doing this? Had she been talking to someone in a chat program? Running... some sort of program that hypnotized her? Watching videos or something?
Still half-unwillingly turned-on by the whole scenario, she opened her laptop and began to search through it.
--
Unfortunately, in addition to being hypnotized every night, she was apparently becoming very good at covering her own tracks. Elizabeth found, on looking into it, that she had no browser or chat history whatsoever.
She also didn't have any chat friends she didn't recognize. *But of course, it could be someone I know*.
A close examination of all the photos-- she really was getting more deeply hypnotized every day! More helplessly susceptible every time... -- showed that they were, in fact, taken at night. She could see a bit of her window in some of them, and it was dark out, the dorm lights reflecting off the glass. Even the funny-faces one. Maybe she'd admitted to trying to figure out where the photos were coming from, under hypnosis... and she'd been told to make those faces again...
