Summoning Hypnos
A supernatural summoning goes awry.
- VOICE
… You’re awake.
She steps into view. An attractive woman with short, sharply cut black hair, wearing a thin, nearly transparent white wrap and sandals.
- WOMAN
Good. (Clicking on a nearby video camera.) Patient… Zero dash Zero Nine. Male, American, mid to late twenties. Blonde. Approximately six feet. Unconscious seven and a half hours. Give or take. Drug beta effective within about ten minutes of administration.
We see for the first time our surroundings – a far-from-sterile room that resembles, strangely, a Tibetan temple more than a laboratory, with peculiar esoteric symbols covering the stone walls, floor and ceilings. The man – 0-09 – is bound, naked, arms and legs to a large x-shaped platform currently in a vertical position. He has no idea where he is… or, for that matter, who. It is a most uncomfortable form of disorientation, but chemicals running through his system keep him from panicking.
- WOMAN
(running a hand gently over 0-09’s chest) Specimen appears reasonably healthy. Internal tests haven’t been run yet. Preparing drug beta phase two.
- 0-09
(still groggy, blinking still heavy eyes) … What’re…?
- WOMAN
Shh. Don’t worry about it. It won’t do you any good. (To recorder.) Subject is trying to regain conscious awareness of situation. (To 0-09:) Do you remember how you got here?
- 0-09
… No.
- WOMAN
Your name?
- 0-09
… No.
- WOMAN
Who I am?
- 0-09
No.
- WOMAN
(Smiling.) Super!
- 0-09
… I’d love it if you explained what was going on here.
- WOMAN
My name is Elizabeth. We are preparing you. (She retrieves a syringe from a nearby tray.) That’s all you need to know.
Elizabeth mutters a strange phrase in a language that hasn’t been spoken by more than a handful of people in over a thousand years, finds a vein in 0-09’s left arm, and injects him with the syringe, smiling serenely the whole time… 0-09’s eyes grow heavy and a lassitude spreads over him… he suddenly doesn’t care much where he is, or why, and then falls into a deep, deep slumber. Elizabeth watches him for a time. She’s pleased.
She runs a hand gently down his gently rising and falling chest, down his thigh and then inward, where she lightly caresses his cock till it begins to fill and rise…
We are transported back in time, by about a day. Elizabeth, wearing a smart-looking black dress and heels moves purposefully through a large crowd of drunken party goers. They are at some outdoor concert, in between bands. It is evening. Elizabeth grabs two drinks from a nearby tray, surreptitiously placing a pill in one. The pill dissolves. She approaches the man that will be 0-09, an unlikely looking prophet of the apocalypse to be sure, a teacher by trade, she understands, invited to the party by one of Elizabeth’s agents, a fellow teacher, Jane, and already succumbed to Elizabeth’s techniques.
So it’s only a matter of acting the part of Jane’s good friend Elizabeth, handing Jane and 0-09 the drinks. As he sips Elizabeth watches him from the corner of her eye; as she and Jane trade mock pleasantries and pretend friendliness she can see his eyes begin to glaze over. Soon their words are nothing more to him than random sounds, and she and Jane lead him away from the crowd, to Elizabeth’s car. He is placed in the front seat, Jane settles in back.
- ELIZABETH
Jane? Look at me.
Jane obliges. Like she has any other choice.
- ELIZABETH
Sleep, Jane.
Jane looks surprised, first, then deeply pleased as she sighs and slumps over. Jane was a convenient tool, nothing else, really, just a pretty woman with access to 0-09, and she would be dropped off at her home and have no memory of the night beyond what Elizabeth tells her to remember.
Meanwhile, 0-09 is staring blankly ahead, unaware. Elizabeth climbs in the drivers seat and regards him more fully than she has been allowed to so far, outside of surveillance video and photography, that is. He’s handsome, in a nebbish sort of way. She pulls a small syringe out of her purse and carefully injects him in his neck, putting him to sleep as well. She wonders what it will be like to fuck him…
She finds out soon enough. We are back in the present. 0-09 is unconscious still, but this time on a peculiarly marked slab, his restraints gone. She has already disrobed and climbed onto his sleeping, erect member. When he first comes he is still asleep, but his eyes open. The magic of the room begins to animate the unwitting vessel of fate; he grabs Elizabeth by the waist and begins to buck along with her. She is breathing hard, muttering.
- ELIZABETH
That’s – hnh! – right…
They struggle and struggle. Eventually Elizabeth gives in to 0-09 – no, not 0-09 anymore, is he? – gives in anyway, to the thing the being the power now riding 0-09’s body, as he/it turns her over onto her back, locking her wrists down with his/its hands, inserting him/itself now with more forcefulness and rapidity and she bites her lower lip and shuts her eyes and –
- ELIZABETH
… God!
She comes, but he/it’s not done yet. She becomes lost in something. Their fucking has ceased to be mundane sex. When he finally comes he changes. Hypnos, the so-called “demon lord of sleep”, is present in full, a kind of glowing afterimage hovering behind 0-09’s physical form.
- HYPNOS
(Speaking with a voice behind 0-09’s regular voice.) Look into my eyes.
This isn’t how it’s meant to go…
- ELIZABETH
(Still breathing heavily…) Wha?
- HYPNOS
Look into my eyes, Elizabeth.
- ELIZABETH
No, I can’t…
The sensation is altogether new for her. She is used to being on the opposite side. Her job was to summon him, not to become enthralled to him. Even so she feels her eyes gliding slowly towards his… He is still solid inside of her. He surges forward and she gasps.
- HYPNOS
Elizabeth, look into my eyes.
- ELIZABETH
I… (She does, in spite of herself, in spite of her training and know how.) Oh god… (She sighs.)
- HYPNOS
You will sleep now, Elizabeth. Sleep a deep sleep.
- ELIZABETH
… no… I…
Her eyes begin to flutter, to roll back…
- HYPNOS
That’s right… Deep, deep sleep. You are mine now, Elizabeth. Sleeeeeeeeep…
She does. Or, at least, part of her does.
In this, the summoning has gone awry.
Her unconscious body is fucked until he comes again; then her eyes open as something infuses her. The two separate quietly and position themselves, cross legged on the slab, staring into each other’s eyes.
The video cameras watch this, but catch very few of the nuances. Agents come to interfere but are overcome with a weird lethargy and eventually slumber when they encroach too close. The two leave, stealing some clothes from the sleeping agents when they do – Hypnos’ earthly avatar, and his first priest in over a thousand years.
They cut a trail of weird one-night stands across the country, then across Europe on their way to Hypnos’ homeland: loners suddenly find themselves in orgies they can only slightly remember the next day upon waking; whole bars slump over more or less simultaneously, only to find in the morning that they’ve paired off with some stranger for copulation and maybe eventually more; strange dreams offer premonitions to the those tuned to the right frequency…
Nights the two spent causing such mayhem, gathering strength and giggles. Days they sleep, in hotels paid for with stolen money or apartments or homes borrowed from enraptured minds, entwined and dreaming their own dreams of the New Times coming once their work is done.
Agents from Elizabeth’s former employers track them, naturally and, naturally, fail. In particular, there’s Elizabeth’s encounter with her old colleague, Anna –
Anna spies Elizabeth walking alone down and alley back to the couple’s latest digs. Unwisely she steps out in front of her, aiming a tranquilizer gun dead on at Elizabeth. Elizabeth smiles…
- ELIZABETH
Hi, Anna.
- ANNA
Come back willingly, Elizabeth.
- ELIZABETH
Or… (She makes eye contact with Anna.)
- ANNA
Or I shoot this at you and you’re out for the next month while the lab boys run tests on you until you don’t have a brain left worth speaking of.
- ELIZABETH
No, I meant, or you could just keep looking into my eyes like a good girl.
- ANNA
(Too late realizes.) I …
- ELIZABETH
… and, like a good girl you could shoot that dart into your thigh for me.
Anna stares blankly and aims the gun at her right thigh and without so much as a thought fires it. The drug courses through her system and in an instant she crumples unconscious to the pavement.
Later. Much later, as the drug begins to wear off…
We see Anna’s eyes gradually open, still heavy. She is naked, bound to a dingy hotel bed. We hear a voice…
- ELIZABETH
…You’re awake.
She runs a single finger gently up her belly and along her breasts, lightly tweaking a nipple on the way to cupping, almost lovingly, Anna’s cheek.
- ELIZABETH
(Smiling.) Good.