Domineighbour
I’d moved everything out of the van and into my new house, and was just trying to make up my mind what to start unpacking when there was a ring at the doorbell. Answering it, I found a petite woman with a cascade of dark brown hair standing on the doorstep, a large carrier bag in one hand.
“Welcome to the neighbourhood,” she said in a soft voice. “I figured that by now you’d probably have reached the stage of wanting a drink, but not yet having things set up to make one, so I brought the essentials.”
Now that she came to mention it, I was feeling a bit thirsty. Thanking her for her thoughtfulness, I invited her in, shifting boxes off a couple of chairs to clear space for us to sit down. From the bag she produced a thermos flask, two mugs, a few sachets of coffee (instant, but good quality), some teabags, a small bottle containing milk, and a tiny jar of honey.
“I don’t use refined sugar, so that’s in case you take your drinks sweet,” she explained.
I made the drinks (coffee for myself, tea for her) and launched into an introduction.
“I’m Mark. Moved down here because I got a job doing admin stuff at the new renewable energy place just outside town. Not noisy or rowdy, I’m sure you’ll be pleased to hear.”
She shook my hand. “Sarah. I live right next door,” she inclined her head to indicate the house on the right, “and I’m a hypnotist.”
I must have reacted visibly to that last revelation in some way, because Sarah’s manner immediately became more guarded. “Do you have a problem with that?” she asked in tones so icy that I half expected her tea to freeze in the mug.
I thought for a moment about how best to answer her. “Not the one you’re thinking.”
She arched an eyebrow. “So what do you think I’m thinking?”
“Well, actually I guess there are two possible misconceptions you might suspect me of holding, but I don’t have either of them.
“The first is that there’s no such thing as hypnosis, that it’s all just fake, and therefore anyone who claims to be a hypnotist must be running some kind of con or scam. And I don’t believe that.”
The eyebrow lowered. “And the second?”
“That it is real, but it’s evil or harmful or dangerous, or mind control. And that’s nonsense.”
A thaw appeared to be setting in, but she remained guarded. “But you do have a problem, or you’d just have said no. So what is it?”
I took a deep breath. I’d never spoken about this with anyone before, and it seemed crazy to do so now with someone I’d only just met, but if I wanted to remain on good relations with my neighbour, I was going to have to say something, and I couldn’t think of any plausible lies that would fit. Which only left telling the truth.
“For many years I’ve had a f—, a fascination with hypnosis.” Careful there, I inwardly warned myself. That was almost way TMI. “And a while back I tried out some hypnotic recordings on the internet, but I just couldn’t achieve trance. Then I had a bad experience with one script, and decided I’d best quit trying. So when I flinched or whatever I did when you said you were a hypnotist, it was just a bad reaction to being reminded of my own failings and that last traumatic incident.”
Her defensiveness was gone, replaced by sympathy. “I’m sorry to hear that. I’ve had clients who struggled with the initial drop, so I can understand your frustration.”
She sipped her tea and, a mischievous smile playing on her lips, asked, “Can you remember any of the… practitioners whose recordings you tried? Purely out of professional curiosity.”
I gulped. What if she didn’t approve of the specific branch of hypnosis that appealed to me? Thankful that I could at least remember a couple of mainstream-sounding names, rather than being forced to admit to having sampled the handiwork of women with professional names like ‘Mistress Mesmeratrisha’, I mentioned a couple.
She grinned. “My kind of hypnotist. So did you ever try me? Sarah Whyte, with a ‘y’.”
I thought back. The name was vaguely familiar, but surely I’d have remembered if I’d heard that voice before. “I don’t think so. I was working my way down a list of links I found on someone’s website, and you might have been on it, but if so, you must have been after the one that put me off. Sorry about that.”
“No need to apologise.” She leaned forwards. “Would you mind doing something for me?”
“Er, what would that be?” I hedged.
“Please don’t visit my website. I know you’d stopped checking them out anyway, but meeting me might have revived your curiosity, and… Well, it would just be a bit weird, now we’re neighbours.”
“Oh, absolutely,” I agreed, relieved that she didn’t want me to review her material.
We chatted for a while longer, and before leaving she invited me for a meal that evening. I eagerly accepted, and once she’d gone, I busied myself with unboxing stuff and starting to get the house into some semblance of order.
The place was still in a pretty chaotic state, but starting to look liveable, by the time I called it a day. After several hours of lugging heavy boxes and furniture around, I thought it best to have a shower before going next door, and I also wanted to pop to the shops and get something to express my gratitude for Sarah’s welcome and hospitality. Not knowing whether or not she drank alcohol, I was tempted to see if her website provided any indication one way or the other, but I had given my word not to look at it, so I wound up buying a couple of bottles, one wine, the other fruit juice, to give her a choice.
“You’ve obviously been busy,” commented Sarah as she showed me into her lounge. “You look worn out.”
I sank gratefully into the armchair. “Still a lot to do, though. I hope I’m not going to be too tired to be good company this evening.”
“I’m sure you’ll be fine once you’ve had a few minutes rest.”
She was right, and we had a lively discussion over the course of the meal. Afterwards, as we were finishing off the wine, she changed the topic of conversation.
“I know it’s none of my business, but I wondered if you wanted to talk about that unpleasant business that made you quit looking for a hypnoteuse. It’s obviously caused you some distress, and if you feel up to it, sharing might be of some help.”
I closed my eyes. “I don’t know what the problem was, but for some reason I just reacted really badly to the induction. There I was, lying down, listening to her saying how relaxed I was becoming, and all the while I was just getting tenser and tenser. I was like one big clench—if I’d been in a superhero movie, that would have been my supervillain origin moment, transforming me into a living embodiment of stress.”
She chuckled, then caught herself. “Sorry, I shouldn’t laugh.”
“No, that’s okay. I can see the funny side now. Wasn’t so amusing back then, of course. I just got to the point where I couldn’t take it any more, and switched off the recording. It took me a while to come down, and after that I just didn’t want to risk anything like that ever happening to me again.”
“Quite understandable,” she reassured me.
“Actually, that wasn’t the only funny-in-hindsight thing that happened while I was trying to get myself hypnotised.”
“Tell me more.”
“It can only have been about the second or third one I tried. And it almost worked. I came so close. But then… You know that thing where you’re dozing off and in a bit of a dream state, and then in the dream you fall down or bump into something, and your body responds to that by giving a big start, and bam! You’re wide awake again.”
“A hypnagogic jerk,” she said, hurriedly adding, “That’s the technical term for the phenomenon you described. I wasn’t calling you any kind of jerk.”
“Well, I’ve learned something, then. Anyway, getting back to what happened, I was on the verge of trance. Just about to go under. And then she snapped her fingers to drop me, and it triggered a massive hypno-whatsit jerk and jolted me right back into full wakefulness.”
“No!” She stifled a giggle. “Oh, poor you.”
We sat in a comfortable silence for a few seconds, and then she asked, “Any more amusing anecdotes about your misadventures in attempted hypnosis, or is that the lot?”
I fidgeted slightly in the chair. “Well, there is one more incident I could mention, but…”
“Go on,” she urged me.
“The thing is, it doesn’t reflect that well on the hypnotist. I know that hypno-dommes sometimes work together on projects, and I wouldn’t want to say anything bad about someone who might be a friend of yours.”
“Now you’ve got me curious. Come on, dish the dirt.”
“If you insist. I had quite high hopes, beforehand. She had a good reputation in the community, and I thought this could be the time it clicked for me. In a good way, I mean, not like the finger-click that triggered that jerk. So I settled down, started to listen, and…”
“And…?”
“It was just so dull. For around ten minutes I stuck with it, listening to her droning on and on and on about what an amazing, wonderful trance she was going to put me into, and then I came to the conclusion that she must be trying to bore me into submission, only it wasn’t working, so in the end I gave up on it.”
Sarah had a definite smirk on her face. “I think I can guess who that hypnotist was.”
“I’m not telling.”
She named a name, and though I tried to give nothing away, something told her that she was right. This time she didn’t even try to suppress her laughter.
“That is priceless! Oh, I wish she could hear that for herself. I can just imagine the look on her face…”
Observing the look on my face, which was distinctly embarrassed, she calmed down a little. “Don’t worry, I won’t tell her. Or anyone else, much as I’d love to share it. And I will admit that her approach works just fine for plenty of people, but she does get a bit… full of herself, and it’s an absolute delight to hear a testimonial that’s not gushing about how divinely perfect she is.”
We chatted for a little while longer, but the tiredness was making a comeback, so I thanked her for a very pleasant evening and returned to my house. Too weary to make it as far as the bedroom, or even to get undressed, I crashed out on the sofa and was asleep within seconds.
Over the next few weeks I settled in at the house and the job. Most days I encountered Sarah and chatted at least briefly: sometimes she was gardening when I got home from work, on a few occasions our paths crossed while shopping, twice she was out when a parcel delivery came for her, and the courier left the package with me for her to collect when she got back… We soon came to regard each other as friends, and I found myself experiencing a twinge of disappointment on the few days that I didn’t get to have a word with her. On one such day I very briefly contemplated taking a peek at her website as a substitute for the missed interaction, but rapidly rejected the idea. Going against her express wish would have been bad enough back on day one—by now it would be a betrayal of our friendship.
Like me, she lived alone, and I got the impression that she was single too, but she’d never said anything specific on the subject of relationships, and I didn’t like to pry. For all I knew, whatever went on with her clients met any needs she had in that regard. She was undeniably attractive, and a couple of times I found myself wondering ‘what if?’, but when such thoughts entered my head, I quickly changed the subject. I’ve seen friendships wrecked by ill-advised attempts at turning them into romances, and didn’t want to risk that happening here.
My uncertainty about Sarah’s relationship status led to some awkwardness when it occurred to me that I should at least offer to return her hospitality. I’m no gourmet chef, but I like to cook, and I’m pretty good at it. Well, at around half a dozen dishes, but they’re all proper recipes, not just heating up something from a packet. So once I’d put the house in order (or at least relegated the disorder to one room which guests weren’t going to see), I raised the subject when our next conversation was winding down.
“By the way, I was wondering if you’d like to come round for a meal some time soon. You’re welcome to bring a… friend, if you’d like to. Or not, if you prefer. I’m okay either way. Just as long as I know the numbers, so I can cook the right amount.”
“You’re supposed to make a meal of the ingredients, not the invitation,” she teased. “I’d be delighted, thank you. When were you thinking of? I can’t do Wednesday or Thursday, but any other night is fine.”
“Friday, then? Around seven o’clock?”
She nodded. “It’ll probably be just me, but I’ll let you know if things change.”
I got slightly held up at work on the Friday, and had to hurry home and rush through the final stages of preparing the food, so I was in rather an anxious state by the time Sarah rang the doorbell.
“Something smells good,” she commented as I let her in. She sniffed the air. “Is that moussaka?”
I nodded, slightly reassured. If she could recognise it from the aroma, I couldn’t have gone too badly wrong.
As it turned out, the food was fine. After dessert, we moved to the lounge to finish off the wine that Sarah had brought.
Out of nowhere, she asked, “Do you ever regret having given up trying to get hypnotised?”
I thought for a moment before answering. “‘Regret’ is too strong a word. I’d like to have experienced hypnosis, but it wasn’t worth risking another stress-fest like the one I told you about. I’ve accepted that I’m not a good subject, and moved on.”
“I think you underestimate yourself. There are two essentials for hypnosis, and it looks to me like you have both.”
Though unconvinced, I indicated for her to keep talking.
“The first one is suggestibility. And you are definitely open to suggestion.
“On the day we met, when you came round to my home, I commented on how tired you looked, and you just sagged into a chair. I had to tell you you’d perk up again, or you’d have been practically inert all evening. And tonight, when you opened the door to me, you were clearly in quite a state, so I gave you some encouraging affirmations, and you brightened right up.”
Somewhat taken aback at Sarah’s revelation that she’d been playing mind games with me, I said something clever like, “Oh.”
“The other key ingredient is trust, and I suspect that that’s been your problem. Too many naughty films and stories about wicked women entrancing men in order to break, humiliate, and exploit them. So every time you tried out a hypnotic recording, some part of you was putting up barriers in case the hypnoteuse was like those villainesses.”
“It’s a possibility,” I conceded.
“I’d say it’s more than just that. In fact, I strongly believe that if you were with a woman you’d learned to trust, one who avoided the standard tropes so as not to evoke those negative associations, all she would have to do to drop you into trance would be to go…” She clicked her fingers, and at the same time emphatically said, “Sleep!”
My eyes slammed shut and I slumped back in my chair.
Trance wasn’t exactly as I’d imagined it would be. I still had some awareness of what was going on around me, could hear what Sarah was now saying to me.
“And now that you’ve been hypnotised once, you will always be able to go back into trance, if you want to, when you hear me snap my fingers and say, ‘Sleep’. You’ll also be able to let yourself go into trance when listening to hypnotic recordings. And if any hypnotist, even me, tries to make you do something you really don’t want to do, or makes you feel too uncomfortable, you’ll snap straight out of trance and reject any suggestions you’re not happy with.
“Now I’m going to count to three, and when I reach three you’ll be wide awake again, feeling bright and refreshed. And I hope you’ll forgive me for springing this trance on you, but that must be your choice.” She took a deep breath.
“One, coming back up for me now.
“Two, starting to move and stretch a little.”
I felt my shoulders shifting against the back of the chair.
“Three, wide awake.”
My eyes opened. For a moment I stayed where I was, mentally processing what had just happened to me. Sarah was seated across from me, her eyes fixed on me, her body tense.
My voice trembling with emotion, I whispered, “Thank you.”
The tension flowed from her. “I’m so glad you’re all right with that. I did sort of ask permission, but I couldn’t be too obvious in case it triggered those subconscious defences of yours.”
I cleared my throat. “How can I repay you?”
“I don’t want payment, but…” She looked down. “Up until now I’ve never been in an intimate non-professional relationship with a submissive. And I’ve been thinking that I would like to try it. So when I learned that you were into erotic hypnosis, I wondered… That’s why I didn’t want you looking at my website. If you became a client, anything else wouldn’t have been appropriate.”
Her eyes met mine. “You didn’t, did you?”
It was such a relief that I could honestly answer, “No.”
“Good boy,” she whispered. “So, would you be interested in becoming my… In becoming mine?”
I fell to my knees in front of her. “I would love to. How should I start? Should I call you Mistress? Or some other title?”
“Good question. It ought to be something different from the honorific my paying subs use.” She wiggled her toes. “Why don’t you start kissing my feet while I think about it?”
I happily complied, and have never had cause to regret the choice I made that day.