Concentration
“Ugh, I can’t stare at this gibberish anymore!” Sadie says, throwing her arms up in the air in exasperation. She’s been working on her calculus problem set for the last forty minutes, making far less progress than she’d hoped.
From the futon set along the far wall, a slim brunette looks up her at with an expression of concern behind a pair of thick, black-framed glasses.
“I said I wouldn’t mind helping you...” Emily mumbles, in a soft, gentle voice.
“Yeah, let the dork handle it!” a third girl teases, sitting up on Sadie’s twin bed. The smirking redhead is the final occupant of the small, mildly cramped single-person dorm room.
“Natalie...” Sadie admonishes her. Always quick to a joke, her friend has a tendency to push things a little too far, which could be particularly harmful in the case of the kind, timid Emily.
Natalie rolls her eyes, tired of always having to tiptoe around the sensitive one in their friend group.
“Sorry...” she sighs. “You know I’m just kidding around, Em.”
The blonde Sadie turns to the girl on the couch. “I appreciate the offer. But unless you can find a way to sneak into the classroom whispering the answers in my ear on Tuesday, I need to figure this out for myself.”
Emily nods, and looks back down to her own assignment.
Sadie shoots another look at Natalie. She’s felt like the mediator between her and Emily for a while now, ever since the two girls started drifting apart in high school. Long gone were the days of hanging out at the mall and late-night sleepovers. If she was honest, it was getting a bit tiring. Sometimes she just wished Emily would stand up for herself.
Sadie looks back down at her textbook, and tries to focus. After a few minutes, she mutters in a frustrated tone, “How the fuck am I supposed to remember that the derivative of a tangent function is secant squared? I swear someone just made that up...“
Natalie laughs. “Can’t you just, like, type a cheat sheet on your phone, or something?”
“That might be your approach, but no.” Sadie drops her head into her hands. “I want to be a nurse, so why do I need to know this crap?!“
The redhead looks over at the girl on the couch. ”Ooh, Em, do you think you could help her with that thing you mentioned the other day?“
Sadie raises an eyebrow. “What thing?”
“Our resident psych major has a new...what was it? Specialty?” Natalie replies.
Emily shakes her head. “It’s a concentration.” She pauses for a moment and chuckles. “Actually, now that I think about it, that’s kind of funny.“
“What is?” Sadie asks.
“You know how I’ve been working with one of my professors to start my thesis early?” Emily explains, drawing another subtle eye roll from Natalie. “Well, I’ve decided to focus my research on hypnotherapy.”
Sadie looks mildly surprised. “Seriously? What made you choose that?”
Emily shrugs. “It just seems really interesting. Like, how the human mind itself can be used for effective therapy, to minimize the use of pharmaceuticals and other more invasive treatments.”
“Wow. That’s really cool!” Sadie says, in earnest. “But how would that help me?“
“She could, like, hypnotize you to remember all those equations and stuff” Natalie suggests, as if the answer is obvious.
Sadie’s eyes widen. ”Seriously? Is that kind of thing even possible?“
“Well, I couldn’t make you into a math genius, or anything like that,” Emily replies, with a little smile. “But you seem like you’re having trouble focusing, and if there’s a memorization aspect...it could be effective, yes.”
“Huh.” Sadie is understandably caught off-guard by the unusual suggestion. She almost laughs out loud when an image of herself, clucking like a chicken, flashes through her mind. Glancing down at her book, she starts to feel tempted.
“I’m not sure...”
Natalie grins, zeroing in on her friend’s trepidation. “Aw, are you nervous?” She teases.
Sadie rolls her eyes. “I’m not nervous...,” she replies.
“Em tried to practice on me the other day, and I didn’t feel anything at all. Must be my iron will,” Natalie jokes. “You’d probably zonk out in, like, ten seconds, tops.”
“I would not!” Sadie insists, inwardly chastising herself for falling into one of Natalie’s classic traps. Her friend always knew how to take advantage of her intensely competitive nature.
Meanwhile, Emily frowns. “I’ve only been studying it for a few weeks...,” she mumbles.
“There’s only one way to prove it!” Natalie hums.
Sadie ponders for another moment, then looks at her friend sitting on the couch. “Well, if you really think it could help...“
“Like I said, I can’t guarantee anything,” Emily replies, in earnest. “But it certainly couldn’t hurt. Want to try?”
“Do it. Do it,” Natalie chants in a low, pestering voice.
“Oh, fine! But I swear, if it really does work and I find out you let Natalie mess with me...,” she warns, pointing a finger at Emily.
Emily smiles and nods. “Don’t worry, hypnosis doesn’t work like that. If you do go into a trance state, you won’t be compelled to do anything you don’t want to do. It’s more like...guided meditation.”
Satisfied, Sadie lets her friend direct her into a comfortable chair in the middle of the small room. Emily then closes the blinds, blocking any residual light from the setting sun.
“Can you get the switch?” She asks Natalie, while rummaging around inside her backpack.
Natalie chuckles. “What am I, the hypnotist’s assistant now?”
Despite the joke, she hops off her bed and turns off the overhead light, leaving the room illuminated only by a small desk lamp.
From her backpack, Emily pulls out what appears to be a jewel pendant hanging from a silver chain.
“Ooh, of course!” Sadie says. “Is a pocket watch too old-school for you?“
“There’s no single, ‘right’ way to do it. I just think this is pretty!” Emily chirps.
While Natalie sits back down on Sadie’s bed to watch, Emily moves behind her seated friend and holds her arm out, dangling the pendant about a foot in front of the girl’s face, just above eye level.
“Are you ready?” Emily asks.
“I guess so,” Sadie nods. “I can’t believe I’m resorting to this just so I can pass a calc midterm...“
Emily laughs, then leans over and presses a button on her phone. A steady beat begins emanating from the speaker.
“It’s just a metronome app” Emily explains. “Now, take a deep breath, and relax. Focus your eyes on the pendant...”
She begins swinging the shiny object in perfect rhythm with the beat, back and forth in front of Sadie’s face. The blonde’s eyes look upwards and follow its motion...left, right, left, right.
“That’s it, nice and relaxed...,” Emily says, in a soothing tone. “Follow the pendant. Back and forth...and back and forth. Smooth and steady. It’s so easy to let it guide your eyes, isn’t it?“
Sadie nods, never taking her eyes off of the pendant. As it swings, it also spins a little, reflecting—almost amplifying—the soft light coming from the desk lamp, turning it into a rainbow of colors.
“As you follow the pendant, you feel your entire body relaxing...every muscle...every finger...every toe...,” Emily continues, her voice seeming to soften with every word she says. “You feel yourself relaxing so much, that you’re starting to feel tired, aren’t you?”
Sure enough, Sadie’s face is beginning to slacken, and her eyelids droop just a little. Her breathing slows, and her body seems to sag back into her chair.
Natalie notices, and snickers quietly to herself. Never breaking stride, Emily shoots her a look, and shakes her head. The redhead rolls her eyes and nods, folding her arms across her chest.
“The colors are so pretty, don’t you think?” Emily coos, refocusing on her subject. Her voice acquires a kind of dreamy, singsong quality that suggests hours of practice. “So sparkly and so shiny. You find that you can’t think of anything else...except the colors...and the sound of my voice...“
Every time a bright, colorful flash reflects through the pendant’s rotating and swinging prism, Sadie’s eyes twitch and widen just a little, as if mesmerized by it. When the sparkle passes, it feels like her lids droop even lower than they had been before.
“You’ve been thinking so hard...it’s time to let your thoughts just fall away. All you need to do is listen to my voice...guiding you...taking away all of your worries...”
Emily is speaking in voice barely above a whisper now, directly into the ear of the completely transfixed Sadie. She lets the pendant swing for another minute without a word, until the girl’s eyes are slits. Then, she lifts her other hand and places it just behind Sadie’s head, continuing to whisper.
“You realize that you don’t even need to need to keep your eyes open...the pendant is already there in your mind. Swinging back and forth...back and forth. With all its pretty, sparkly colors. Can you see it?”
Almost imperceptibly, Sadie nods and mumbles, ”Yesssss...“
“Very good...imagine the pendant swinging in your mind. You know there’s no more need to keep watching...you can simply close your eyes and sink into deep, deep relaxation...” Emily whispers.
Sadie’s eyes finally close, and the moment they do, Emily gently pushes her head forward. If a firm voice, she says, ”SLEEP.“
The blonde puts up no resistance whatsoever when her chin hits her chest. Her head lolls to the side as her entire body appears to deflate, causing her hands to slide off of her lap and dangle listlessly by her sides.
“Oh my fucking God!” Natalie whispers. “She’s really under?”
It’s a very strange feeling for Sadie. She’s not asleep...but she knows she’s not fully aware, either. She can hear Natalie speak...but it’s like her words don’t register. It just feels so wonderfully nice to relax. To only think about the pendant, and its pretty sparkles...
“Shh!” Emily reproaches. Sadie appears to be completely out of it, but there’s no sense in taking any chances.
Natalie nods, more eagerly this time, captivated by the clearly entranced girl sitting in the chair.
“That’s it, nice and relaxed...” she murmurs. “Listening only to the sound of my voice as all your other thoughts just float away...“
Gently, she lifts Sadie’s left hand above her lap, then releases it. Without the slightest bit of resistance, it falls and lands between her thighs with a soft thud. She repeats the action with the girl’s other hand, confirming that she’s undoubtedly in a deep trance state.
“Very good, Sadie. Keep listening to my voice...deeper and deeper...” her voice carries on, guiding the seated girl down and down.
Emily’s words sound far away, but Sadie can still hear them clearly.
Empty...she doesn’t even have time to register the idea, before it disappears from her head.
Deeper...Sadie’s entranced mind obeys instantly, catapulting her further into oblivion.
She doesn’t even notice when Emily has to gently push on her knees, guiding her back into the chair after she’d almost slumped onto the floor. A quick instruction solves that unforeseen problem, and the hypnotized girl’s posture rights itself properly.
Emily turns off the steady beat of the metronome app, knowing it’s no longer needed.
“Oh my God, she’s so fucking out of it!” Natalie giggles, sitting on the edge of the bed, so her legs dangle off the side. “I know we said we wouldn’t, but we have to mess with her a little, right? Like, you could tell her to meow like a cat every time I clap my hands, or...“
Emily sighs, and whispers something into Sadie’s ear. She then stands upright and faces the babbling, wannabe prankster.
“Natalie,” she snaps.
The other girl immediately falls silent, and her eyes lock onto Emily’s with an unusual quickness.
“Nap time,” Emily firmly states.
Natalie’s face barely has time to register surprise, before it slackens into a completely blank expression. Her head slumps down against her chest, but her unfocused eyes remain open, staring at the floor through stands of reddish hair. She remains sitting upright, but her crossed arms fall from her chest, thumping softly against her sides.
Emily smiles. Much better.
Sadie might have once been shocked by what just happened, but she certainly doesn’t appear to be now. Because it doesn’t matter. Because nothing matters. Because that’s what Emily told her. And all she has to do is sit there and relax so, so much, and think about the colors, and...
The thoughts barely form in her entranced mind, before being wiped away by another swing of the imaginary pendant.
Emily approaches the entranced Natalie, and cups her chin in her palm. Lifting it up, she gazes into the redhead’s vacant, dilated eyes with a look of pride. She giggles, seeing that a little dribble of saliva has already begun to form at the corner of the girl’s mouth.
“Iron will,” Emily hums. “Suuuure. You went under even faster than Sadie! Thanks again for letting me practice on you, dear...“
A flicker of something less-than-innocent flashes in Emily’s dark brown eyes, as she regards the stupefied girl with a look of clinical detachment.
“You followed your instructions well,” Emily says, brushing a strand of hair out of Natalie’s eyes. “Baiting Sadie like you always do, and not even knowing why you were doing it...“
What Emily did feels a little sneaky, but she knows it’s for the best. Sadie has been grumbling a lot about her study troubles lately and, like a good friend, she wants to help. But she also didn’t want to be like ‘hey let me drop you into a mindless trance so I can program you to focus better!’. So she decided a teeny-tiny bit of deception was in order and, of course, Natalie was happy to help.
She releases Natalie’s chin, letting her head loll back down to her chest. Approaching the now thoroughly hypnotized Sadie, she taps her on the forehead.
“You can listen again, dear. Focus on my voice...staying so relaxed and blank...” she hums. “Can you hear me, Sadie?”
Sadie nods silently. Her empty mind registers the command and immediately obeys. Oh, sure, it’s time to listen to Emily!
“That’s it...listening to my voice...finding it so easy to let me guide you...” Emily continues. “Now, when I count to three, you will open your eyes, but remain in this perfect state of total relaxation. You can blink when you need to, but otherwise you will still be completely in trance. Do you understand?”
“Yessssss,” Sadie barely whispers.
“That’s it. One...two...three.“
Sadie opens her eyes, and her blank, dilated pupils appear to stare past Emily at something imaginary, far beyond her.
Emily smiles. “Now, let’s talk about your study habits...”
“I said, how’s it going over there, Sadie?” Emily asks casually, from the couch.
Confused for a moment, the blonde girl shakes her head and blinks. “Huh, I must have zoned out for a second,” she replies. Glancing back down at the textbook, she sees that she’s on page 41. “I swear I was just on 39...”
She doesn’t hear Emily stifle a giggle, as her dark glasses peek up over her own book.
“I skipped the whole section on the power rule?” Sadie asks herself, growing more puzzled by the second.
“Oh, I remember that one!” Emily chirps from the couch. “It’s like, what’s the derivative of ‘x’ to the fourth power?”
“Four times ‘x’ cubed...” Sadie mutters, but then her head snaps up from the page with a start. “How the fuck...“
She knows she probably could have come up with the answer if she thought about it, but it’s like she hadn’t needed to. The answer had just somehow popped into her head.
Emily watches her bewildered friend trying to make sense of the situation, and grins. “You can remember now, Sadie,” she says.
The blonde lets out a deep sigh, and her eyelids flutter. All at once, the memories hit her. Natalie suggesting she be hypnotized. Sitting in the chair. Relaxing into that peaceful nothingness. Listening to Emily’s voice. It all comes back.
“Holy...fucking...shit” she whispers, looking over at the smiling Emily with an expression of awe.
“I guess it worked!” The brunette beams, clasping her hands together. “Oh, and you can see, as well.“
For the first time since she snapped out of her daze—Sadie supposes now, her trance—she notices Natalie sitting on the edge of her bed, slumped over and gazing vacantly at the floor.
Sadie gasps, and her hand flies to cover her mouth in surprise. “I thought it didn’t work on her!”
Emily giggles. “Yeah, I just told her to think that. The truth is, she went out like a light,” she replies. “The science isn’t super clear on what qualities makes a person a good subject. Some studies suggest submissiveness helps, so...I’ll go with that for Natalie. Because it makes me chuckle.”
Dumbfounded, Sadie looks over at her entranced friend, whose mind appears to be on another planet.
“D-did I look like that...?” She whispers.
Emily stands up from the couch. “Well, sort of. But you were much more graceful about it” she replies, with another laugh. She takes a tissue from the box on the side table, and uses it to wipe the string of drool from Natalie’s open mouth before it drips down onto her leggings.
“Fuck me...” Sadie mutters, shaking her head in amazement.
“Hey, can we keep this between us?” Emily asks, gesturing to the expressionless girl. “I kind of want to save the big reveal for when she really gets on my nerves.“
“O-oh...yeah, sure,” Sadie replies. She smirks and adds, “I guess she sort of deserves that, huh?”
Emily smiles and nods. “Thanks.” After a short pause, she adds, with a playful wink, “Because I’d rather not make you keep it a secret...“
The simple joke sends a shiver down Sadie’s spine. Could she really...
“Anyway, let me wake Natalie back up. Holding this posture can’t be good for her back,” Emily muses. With some effort, she pushes the entranced girl back into toughly the same position she was in before unwittingly starting the whole chain of events.
That comment makes Sadie wonder. “Uh, how long was I...?”
Emily chuckles again. “Only like twenty-five or thirty minutes. I just gave you some basic deepeners, then some suggestions on how to focus and stuff,” she explains. “As you can probably guess, I also had you read a couple of pages in your textbook. It’s amazing what the mind can absorb when there are literally no distractions.“
Sadie imagines her hypnotized self, walking like a robot from the chair in the middle of the room, back over to her desk. Creepy...but effective, she thinks.
Emily fixes Natalie’s hair, and places her phone back into her limp hand. Then, she whispers a few things into her ear, and returns to the couch. She places a finger over her lips in a ‘shushing’ sign for Sadie, and says, “Wakey, wakey, Natalie.”
Natalie blinks, looking momentarily confused, but then her eyes fall back down to her phone. She’s a little unsure why her screen has suddenly locked, but the thought is easily brushed aside, and she resumes scrolling through her Instagram feed.
While Natalie appears totally unaffected, Sadie is astonished. Just moments ago, her friend was sitting on the edge of her bed, drooling like a mindless zombie. Are Emily’s hypnosis skills really THAT powerful...? What’s to stop her from...
But then something in her mind clicks, and she loses the train of thought without even realizing it. Sadie turns her attention back to her textbook, and resumes studying in earnest.
Sitting on the couch, Emily’s mouth curls into a devilish smile. It’s almost too easy, she thinks.
After a minute, Natalie sets her phone down. “Ugh, I’m bored. Don’t you two do anything but study?” she complains.
“Don’t you ever study?” Sadie retorts, with a grin.
Natalie scoffs. “Fine, be like that,” she replies. “But we’re still going out later, right?”
Sadie nods, but Emily looks unsure. “I don’t know,” she says. “After this, I still have to write that paper for my film class. I thought it would be an easy ‘A’, but the professor assigns an annoying amount of work.”
“What’s the paper supposed to be about?” Sadie asks.
“It’s open-ended, thankfully. We can analyze any film from the last twenty years. I was thinking of doing mine on Inception...“
The redhead perks up. ”Ooh, you’re finally showing some good taste, Em!” She jokes. Natalie has always been a film buff, and Nolan is one of her favorite directors. She slides off of the bed, and drops her phone in her purse. “Well, if you finish in time, you should join us.“
“Oh, I thought you were going to offer to write it for me!” Emily giggles.
Natalie laughs along in reply, on her way to the door. “Yeah, sure. Like I want to write a paper on a Thursday night.“
Emily smirks, unable to resist. ”Nap time, Natalie,” she states.
Caught in the middle of her stride, the other girl stumbles slightly before righting herself. She remains standing, but her head drops to her chest as her eyes mist over.
Sadie remains focused on her textbook, not reacting at all to the spoken trigger phrase, or the sudden change in her friend’s demeanor. Because Emily had told her not to worry about silly things like that.
Still smirking, Emily nimbly retrieves the assignment sheet from her binder, and stands up from the couch. Walking to the frozen Natalie, she folds the paper in half, and drops it in the other girl’s purse. Then, she leans over, and whispers in her ear.
After less than a minute of listening obediently, Natalie simply mumbles, ”Yes, Emily.”
This is so handy, the young brunette muses.
She then speaks aloud in a quiet voice, “Okay, so I was kind of fibbing about the whole ‘you won’t be compelled to do anything you don’t want to do’ thing. Because I’m pretty sure you don’t actually want to write a boring assignment. Sorry about that. But you forgive me, don’t you?“
Natalie remains staring down at her feet, with her lips slightly parted. Sadie continues her studying, ignoring them both.
Emily never intended to assert this kind of control over her friend, it had just sort of...happened. She honestly didn’t expect her to fall so hard—literally—for a simple hand drop induction, but poor Natalie had nearly crumpled to the floor! And when Emily saw that blank look in her entranced eyes...it had caused a strange flutter in her stomach.
She blushes, feeling that same, warm tingle as she observes the empty-headed girl standing in front of her. She looks so tranquil; her mind ready to accept any suggestion, her body ready to obey any command. Emily bites her lip and shakes her head. She knows it’s not right to have such power, and yet...the back of her hand grazes Natalie’s arm.
No, stop it, says a voice inside her head. It’s just fun to get a little payback for all of her teasing. I’m helping Sadie with her coursework, and now...Natalie will help me with mine. Just a little. Once. End of story.
Emily tucks a strand of her motionless friend’s hair behind her ear, then returns to her seat. Opening her book, she announces nonchalantly, ”Wakey, wakey, Natalie.”
On command, she blinks, lifts her head, and continues walking towards the door as if nothing has happened. But Emily knows that at some convenient point later that night, Natalie’s eyes will glaze over, and she’ll begin typing a paper she’ll never remember.
“Later, dorks!” Natalie says, as she leaves the room.
Emily’s eyes narrow imperceptibly at the gibe. Okay, maybe I can change just ONE more thing...