Brought to Book
The counselling session had gone well so far, but then came the moment Terry had been dreading. Doctor Milton (Terry still thought of her as that, even though she preferred him to address her as Stephanie during sessions) brought up the topic he wished he’d never mentioned to her: his hypnokink.
He sort of understood why she thought it was relevant. There was undeniably a sexual element to the issues that had brought him here: the self-neglect and self harm had started because of the guilt he’d felt when what was intended as a comforting hug for a distressed friend had given him an erection. But his shame over his inappropriate arousal had nothing to do with the fact that the idea of being hypnotised could also get him turned on.
It wasn’t just that the subject was irrelevant, either. Doctor Milton had somehow got the wrong end of the stick about it, and whenever she did bring it up, she started talking about things he didn’t even do. Which was why he had come prepared today, determined to at least clear up the misunderstanding. So the moment she mentioned self-hypnosis, he held up a hand like a policeman signalling to a driver.
“Can I just stop you there, please? You’re still not getting what this is actually about, so I’ve brought along something to help me explain.”
He delved into his bag and brought out a paperback book with a skeletal figure on the cover, two bookmarks sticking out from between the pages.
“It wouldn’t be a good idea for me to read out the relevant passages, considering,” he said, handing the book over to Doctor Milton, “So could you look first at section 292, and then 210, please?”
She opened the book at the second bookmark. It was a ‘Choose Your Own Adventure’—style book, and the two sections indicated by Terry described the reader encountering a female vampire and, lacking the resources to protect him from her hypnotic gaze, becoming her victim. Once Doctor Milton had read the paragraphs, she looked up from the page at Terry, raising a quizzical eyebrow.
“That sort of thing’s pretty much all there is to it,” explained Terry. “I read a passage like that, imagine myself in that situation, and it gives me a bit of a thrill. It’s nothing to do with self-hypnosis, just a little fantasising. And I really think there’s no need to keep going on about it, so I’m hoping that now I’ve cleared up the confusion, we can just drop it and focus on what’s actually reinforcing my negative self-image and all that.”
“Do you have many books like this?” It appeared that she wasn’t yet ready to let go of the subject.
“Oh, loads. Well, tons of gamebooks, but only some of them include that kind of sequence. I guess you don’t care about the others. But they’re none of them really relevant to what’s messing me up.”
“I’m sorry, but I need to judge that for myself. Do you think that some time early next week you could let me borrow a few more of those books, marking the pertinent material like you did with this one, so I can get a clearer picture of what you’re doing? Then, either I’ll agree to abandon the topic or, if there are still valid reasons for addressing it, I’ll be better equipped to explain to you why it matters. Is that all right?”
He sighed. “I guess.”
“And I’d like to hang on to this one for now, if you don’t mind.”
“Okay. Can we talk about something else for the last ten minutes, please?”
“Of course. Is there anything you’d particularly like to cover that we haven’t yet touched on today?”
During a gap between lectures on the Monday Terry dropped off a bag containing half a dozen cherry-picked books with Doctor Milton’s secretary. None with non-humanoid mind-controllers, none where the hypnosis led to an unpleasant death for the viewpoint character—he was trying to close off the subject, not provide fuel for further misinterpretations and risk opening up whole new cans of irrelevant worms.
As his next counselling session approached, Terry felt a mixture of hope (that they would finally abandon this tangent) and apprehension (about the possibility that Doctor Milton would draw the wrong conclusions from the books, and take things even further into left field).
On the day, Terry arrived at the Counselling Centre a little early. The secretary was not at her desk, and when he turned to the waiting room, he was slightly disconcerted to find it occupied. A slender young woman with short chestnut-brown hair sat on one of the chairs, looking through a sheaf of notes.
He made a nervous noise in his throat, and she looked up at him.
“Erm, if you’d feel… you know, uncomfortable having a strange guy in here with you, I can wait outside,” he mumbled.
She smiled. “That’s very considerate of you, but there’s no need. Why don’t you sit down?”
He looked around, trying to identify a chair far enough away from the woman that he wouldn’t be invading her personal space, but where he couldn’t be suspected of trying to sneak a peek up her skirt.
“Don’t worry, I don’t bite,” she said, patting the seat next to her. “Come on.”
That changed things. Now she’d indicated somewhere specific, he had to go there. If she was here because of issues relating to rejection, turning down her invitation could make things worse for her, and he didn’t want to hurt anyone. Muttering, “Thank you,” he sat down next to her.
The silence felt awkward. Terry turned his head to face the woman. “So…” ‘Don’t ask her what she’s doing here, idiot. That’s personal, and none of your business.’ “What are you studying?”
“Psychology. I’m here about a case study, actually. And you?”
“I…” In the nick of time he realised that she meant ‘What are you studying?’ rather than ‘Why are you at the counsellor’s?’
“I’m doing Modern Languages with Business Studies. Not as exciting as Psychology. We don’t get to do any wacky experiments. Sorry, shouldn’t say ‘wacky’. I guess there’s always a good reason for them, even if they do look a bit odd to outsiders.”
She smiled. “No, I think ‘wacky’ is perfectly reasonable a lot of the time. I’m sure there are some that don’t prove anything beyond ‘Is my tutor going to let me get away with doing this?’”
Terry chuckled. “Any examples?”
The two of them chatted for several minutes, Terry’s anxiety subsiding as the Psychology student (whose name was Katie) recounted a few of the more bizarre things her fellow students had done or got their experimental subjects to do. He was disappointed when a haughty throat-clearing noise drew his attention to the secretary, standing in the doorway.
“You can go through now, Mr Leon.”
He stood up. “Nice talking to you.”
Katie smiled up at him. “Likewise. Hope to see you around.”
When he entered Doctor Milton’s office, she surprised him by saying, “Don’t sit down just yet.”
He came to a halt in the middle of the room. Doctor Milton moved away from her desk and stood in front of him. Though she was a couple of inches shorter than he was, he felt slightly intimidated by this.
“Thank you for the loan of the books. They’ve given me a much clearer understanding of what’s going on with the self-hypnosis.”
“I’ve already explained, it’s not…”
This time she held up a hand. “I heard you out last week. Now please allow me to correct your misapprehension.”
“Very well,” he sighed.
“Immersing yourself in a fantasy to the extent that you’ve been doing is a form of self-hypnosis. Don’t assume it’s something different just because it lacks any of the stereotypical lines or accoutrements.
“Now, you gave the impression that you often reread these passages, enjoying the same fantasies over and over again. Is that right?”
“Yes,” he said, unconvinced by her argument. It seemed to him that she was just messing around with definitions rather than admit that she’d made a mistake.
“Every time you reenact one of those fantasies, you reinforce the neural pathways created by the initial act of self-hypnosis,” she told him. “If you do it often enough, you can make it possible for others to make use of the same mental connections to hypnotise you.”
“I don’t…”
Doctor Milton widened her eyes and stared directly up into Terry’s. Taken by surprise, he gazed into their depths.
“I stare fixedly at you,” she intoned, “and you begin to feel a terrible desire to surrender seize you.”
Terry recognised those words—well, most of them. Doctor Milton had taken one of the passages he’d highlighted in the books, and tweaked it slightly to make it a better fit for their circumstances. And though he realised what she was trying to do, and the eyes that filled his vision were a light blue rather than blood-red as in the book, he found that, just like his character in the fantasies he’d acted out based on this scene, he couldn’t resist. He fell to his knees, and in counterpoint his penis stood upright, creating a massive bulge in his trousers that he could do nothing to hide.
Doctor Milton looked down at him and spoke gently. “Do you understand what I’m saying now?”
“Yes,” Terry whimpered.
She stepped over to her desk and pressed a button on the intercom. “Well?”
The secretary’s voice came back, “Yes.”
“Excellent. I just need a couple of minutes to explain things, and then she can come through.”
Doctor Milton turned back to Terry. “You can get up now.”
He stood, hunching forward to try and make his erection less prominent.
“Your reluctance to discuss this aspect of your sexuality indicates that you’re ashamed about it, and there’s no need to be. Many well-adjusted individuals have similar or complementary inclinations. In fact, I know a dominant woman who’s interested in hypnosis as part of a healthy sexual relationship, and she’s just confirmed that she’d like to explore that with you.”
Terry couldn’t believe what he was hearing. He wanted to ask if he was going to be allowed any say in the matter, but before he could speak up, Doctor Milton said, “Now turn to face the door.”
He swivelled round.
“It’s all right,” called Doctor Milton. “You can come in now.”
The door opened, and Terry felt a rush of mixed feelings as Katie stepped through. The fact that the dominant woman was someone he’d met, and liked, made the situation a little less nightmarish, but the realisation that when they’d talked back in the waiting room, she had been covertly sizing him up as a submissive sexual plaything felt like a betrayal.
Katie’s eyes, a darker shade of brown than her hair, met Terry’s. She gave a small, embarrassed smile, which somehow made him feel a little better about the way she’d led him on.
Doctor Milton quoted from the first book Terry had shown her, describing the irresistibly hypnotic gaze that held the hero transfixed. Just like the vampire in the book, Katie held out her arms and began to approach Terry. Again the familiar fantasy overwhelmed him, and he stood transfixed, both desiring and fearing the imminent embrace.
As Katie wrapped her arms around Terry and drew him to herself (and that felt so good, so comforting), he wondered how far this recreation of the scene was going to go. Was she actually going to bite him on the neck? Or at least give him a hickey?
Instead, Katie gently kissed him on the lips. This close he could smell her perfume, a floral scent that evoked memories of a passage in a different book. This had, doubtless, been the plan, as Doctor Milton now switched to that very sequence and explained the effect that the kiss had on him.
“You find yourself gazing into her eyes and wondering how you could doubt the good intentions of such a wonderful and perfect person.”
While Terry couldn’t have quoted the original text verbatim from memory, he was aware that it had been changed in places. Doctor Milton must have anticipated that he might resent having been set up, and had replaced lines that didn’t fit the current situation with suggestions designed to make him more accepting of Katie’s subterfuge. And even though, on some level, he understood how he was being manipulated, it was still working. He wanted to forgive Katie, even to apologise for having thought badly of her. When Doctor Milton told him that he felt as if he would do anything to please her, he accepted the words without a struggle.
Katie let Terry go, and motioned with her head towards the padded leather couch in the corner of the office. They moved over to it and sat side by side, facing each other.
Terry didn’t need to hear Doctor Milton’s paraphrase of the text to feel a surge of joy when Katie smiled at him.
“As a sign of your esteem for me,” Katie said, “I would like you to make love to me now.”
That was quite a deviation from the source material. Enough, it seemed, to break the spell.
“Look, I like you a lot,” Terry told her, “and you’re a beautiful woman, but I’ve only known you for around ten minutes, and I don’t think it’s right to get that… intimate so soon. If we’d taken the time to get to know each other properly first, I’d love to, but… I should go.”
He stood and turned towards Doctor Milton. “I don’t think I should see you any more, Doctor.”
Doctor Milton watched calmly as Terry began to walk across to the door. Katie was more nervous. She cast her mind back to the conversation she’d had with Stephanie the day before, when she’d come to learn her ‘lines’.
“Don’t you think this is a bit weird?” she’d asked. “What’s wrong with a conventional induction?”
“It wouldn’t work,” Stephanie had answered. “He’s so conflicted, the very thought of letting anyone hypnotise him will trigger a load of subconscious barriers. These books may have fuelled his fetish, but they’ve also reinforced a negative perception of hypnosis, with their focus on corruption and slavery.”
“If they’re so bad, why are we using them? Can’t we find some other approach that won’t provoke him into fighting us?”
“You have no idea how long it’s taken just to get this far. At the current rate of progress, he’d most likely have to stay on for a Masters and a PhD to give me time to bring him round to the idea. This should work. Just think of it as a form of shock induction carefully tailored to his mind.”
“Hmm.” She hadn’t been convinced, and her doubts had grown as she’d read on. “Hang on a minute! This bit says he resists. If we are using these books, we should at least go with one where it works.”
“You haven’t got to the end of the paragraph. He puts up a bit of a struggle, but willingly gives in at the last moment.”
“Oh. Yeah. I see. Still, wouldn’t it be better to pick a scenario where he just submits straight off?”
“Definitely not. He may have other issues that have yet to come to light. That brief window of resistance will give him the opportunity to articulate any concerns. If he raises a valid objection, we can put the whole thing on hold until we’ve found a way around it. Otherwise, he plays out his part and submits, and any worries he has are out in the open rather than festering away in the depths of his mind.”
Terry reached for the door handle. Katie bit her lip. Had Stephanie been wrong? Was he going to just walk out and give up on the counselling? He might even raise an official complaint.
His hand fell to his side, and his shoulders drooped. Turning back towards Katie, he allowed her eyes to once more capture his, and moved back towards her. “Take me.”
As Katie again wrapped her arms around him, Stephanie grinned triumphantly and opened the door. “I’ll leave you to it.”
Over the course of the next twenty minutes or so, Katie confirmed that, just as the hapless hero of the book ended up willing to do anything for the enchantress under whose spell he fell, so Terry would do whatever she asked of him. He obligingly used his tongue to get her juices flowing, and was only too happy to let her go on top when they fucked. At her direction he fondled her pert buttocks while she rode his bulging cock, and they climaxed within moments of each other.
As Katie held him to her afterwards, he plaintively asked, “Did I please you?”
“You did very well.” ‘For a first timer, at least.’ There was room for improvement, but with him so willing to accept her instructions, she had no doubt that she could train him into an excellent lover.
Remembering what had been arranged, she told him, “Now I’m going to kiss you again, and when I do, you will fall into a deep sleep. You will remain asleep until you hear me or Stephanie address you by name, and then you will return to this conscious but receptive state. Is that clear?”
“Yes.”
She pressed her lips to his forehead. His eyes closed, his body relaxed even more, and his breathing slowed a little. She kissed him again, this time on the mouth, before putting back on the clothes she’d had him remove from her.
Moving to the desk, she activated the intercom to let Stephanie know they were finished. A short time later the counsellor joined her in the office.
“How did it go?”
“Very well, thank you.”
“I’ve been thinking, and on reflection, he may have had a point with what he said about wanting to know you better first.”
“It’s a bit late for that now. We’ve had sex. We can’t un-have it.”
“He doesn’t need to know that.”
It took a moment for the implications of Stephanie’s words to sink in. “No, you can’t. Not his first time…”
“Do you care about him? Would you like this to turn into something long-term?”
“Yes. To both. But still…”
“Then I think you’ve got more chance of making this work if I take away his memory of what happened in here today and allow him to think he’s getting what he believes he needs.”
“What if it doesn’t work? Isn’t hypnotic amnesia unreliable?”
“I can add a suggestion to make him think that any memories which do resurface are just dreams or fantasies. It’s not as if he hasn’t spent plenty of time imagining being hypnotised and seduced. And while I’m at it, I’ll see what I can do about making him more receptive to the idea of letting you hypnotise him. Maybe even get him to ask for it when he feels ready, to save you wondering if it’s too soon to raise the topic.”
“Very well. So what will he remember?”
They worked out a viable alternative to the events of the past half hour, and then Katie returned to the waiting room to prepare for synching up reality with what would be Terry’s perception of what had happened. Stephanie took her seat next to the couch.
“Terry? Can you hear me?”
“What are you doing here?” The sound of the secretary’s voice jolted Terry into awareness, and he realised with some embarrassment that he hadn’t taken in a word that Katie had said for the past who knew how long.
He turned towards the secretary. “I’m here for my appointment.”
“Didn’t you get the message? Doctor Milton had to cancel. A migraine.”
“No, I didn’t hear… I hope it’s nothing serious.”
“She should be all right again by the end of the weekend. Do you want to reschedule?”
Once he’d booked a new appointment (and winced to see how long he’d been chatting with Katie without being aware of the passage of time), he turned to leave, and was pleasantly surprised to see Katie waiting by the door.
“No point in me hanging around here either if she’s off.” She opened the door and they both stepped through and began heading towards the central hub of campus. “So, as I was saying before we were so rudely interrupted, would you like to come round and see the project?”
He wasn’t going to be able to bluff his way through here. “I’m very sorry, but I kind of lost the thread of the conversation back there. Got caught up in your eyes.”
To his relief, she didn’t seem offended. “I was explaining about my psychology experiment. Maybe if you’re looking at the actual data you won’t get so distracted.”
With an impish smile, she added, “Unless you’d prefer some more of the same distraction.”
Was she flirting with him? He could scarcely believe it, but he appeared to have found a woman who was funny, smart, and pretty, and actually seemed to enjoy his company. “Um, that’d be great.”
“Which, the project or the eyes?”
He gulped audibly. “Either. Both. Whichever you prefer.”
She grinned. “That reminds me of the guy who got people to fill out a multiple choice questionnaire where all the answers meant the same thing.
“I’m free all afternoon, and my digs are around ten minutes’ walk from here. Is now a good time for you?”
“I’ve got a class in…” He checked his mobile. “…just over an hour. Will forty minutes be enough?”
“Long enough for you to get to grips with the essentials. And if that gets you interested, you can always come back again later.”
She put her arm through his and steered him towards one of the exits from the campus grounds.
Terry waited on the lone chair in Katie’s room while she prepared drinks in the kitchen. His eye roved across her bookshelves, and he felt a mildly guilty thrill as he saw how many of the book titles mentioned hypnotism. Maybe if they continued to get on so well with each other, he might dare to admit to his own interests in that area, find out if she agreed with Stephanie’s assertion that there was nothing abnormal about them.
Possibly, just possibly, if she really was interested in him that way as well, he could even try to find out if she’d be willing to have a go at hypnotising him…