The Erotic Mind-Control Story Archive

“Cool man, thanks,” Ryan said, taking the tickets from the guy. He was a little on the creepy side—late 30s, early 40s—and had this strange vibe about him, like he was eyeing us up or something. But, he’d been nice enough to offer us each a couple of drink vouchers to a nearby bar, so who were we to complain? A drink’s a drink, right? Especially to a college kid.

We’d gotten into the city only a few hours before, quickly dumped our bags in our hotel and immediately headed downtown. Night was halfway fallen and the sky had only faint traces of glow left from the day. Already the streets were teeming with whooping young guys and girls in skintight shorts. I was surrounded by some of the wettest pussy this side of the Mississippi. It was going to be an awesome Spring Break.

“Not bad, huh?” asked Josh.

“That guy was creepy, man,” muttered Ryan. “I think he was checking us out.”

Of the four of us, Ryan was by far the most stereotypical frat boy—he worked out constantly, drank too much, and was keenly attuned to any and all non-masculine behavior. Usually, he was able to keep his homophobia in check, but occasionally it bubbled to the surface. It wasn’t that big a deal for me—I’m not gay. But, my roommate first year in the dorms was, and I have a couple friends who are, so I’ve learned there’s nothing to get so upset about. It’s only guys like Ryan, who are always worried about everyone knowing how macho they are, that really get bent out of shape about it. It’s an annoying habit of his, but I can live with it. He’s pretty cool otherwise.

“Don’t knock it, man. Free drinks ain’t gonna be easy to come by this weekend, especially for guys. Come on, let’s hit up that bar and try to figure out our game plan.” That was Hector, Ryan’s best friend, and a lot more sensible. In contrast to Ryan’s bulky frame, Hector’s got a real nice muscle tone all over. He had on cargo shorts and a wifebeater at the moment, in contrast to Ryan’s t-shirt and designer jeans—you get the idea.

“Fuck yeah, let’s go,” said Josh, leading the pack. He tends to be kind of the organizer. He’s a little scrawnier than the rest of us—a swimmer rather than a football or baseball player—and kind of the psycho-obsessive type. He planned the whole trip, for instance, and generally seems to take charge—funny since he’s sort of the pipsqueak.

And then there’s me, Mike. Sometimes, I feel like the odd guy out in our group. Well, not quite that, but... the most overlooked. I’d say I’m handsome, in a boy-next-door kinda way—at least as handsome as Hector, Ryan and Josh, maybe more. I’m toned like Hector, too, with a nice body I keep well conditioned playing baseball and soccer. But, I’m kind of quieter than the rest of them, and definitely more studious. I’m the only one among us with a minor, for example (creative writing), and, in contrast to them, my major’s no slouch, either—Econ. Maybe since I’m a little less rambunctious than they are, it seems like I get lost in the fray, or pushed a bit to the side.

“I guess this is it,” said Josh, gesturing at the black exterior of one edifice among many lining the street. There were no windows save for one, which was tinted, making it hard to see anything but the glinting of liquor bottles in the bar it was stationed next to. It seemed like any anonymous bar. There was a small stand on the sidewalk advertising happy hour, the day’s drink specials, and “Special Guest Entertainment.” A group of a few slightly older girls and guys were already entering, talking and laughing excitedly, and we slipped in behind them.

Inside, the bar had a surprising kind of nightclub feel. The bar area was slightly raised, and there was space to mingle before a railing with some tables lining it, which overlooked a slightly depressed area with more tables in kind of a nightclub decor—wood tops, a little table lamp in the middle, and people sitting around them with drinks. At the far side of the room was a stage with curtains, with lighting reveling a single, straight row of chairs running down its length.

“Wonder what’s going on here,” said Josh.

“Some drag show, I bet,” huffed Ryan.

“Come on Mike, help me grab drinks,” Josh said as we hammered down everyone’s orders. Hector and Ry went to grab a table.

It didn’t take long to get the bartender’s attention.

“I think just four Buds to start us out,” said Josh. “A guy outside gave us these,” he added, proffering the tickets.

“In from out of town,” observed the guy behind the bar. Probably in his mid 40s, he had the same kind of leer-y vibe the guy with the tickets had had, but a warm smile and welcoming manner that put me more at ease.

“Yeah,” Josh said. “Any tips on where to party? I’ve heard a few of the beaches get pretty wild, but a local would probably know best.”

“Well, I know it’s probably not what you’re looking for, but we’re just about to start a show here if you guys wanna stick around. It’s a pretty popular event we hold every year at this time. You’ll probably get a kick out of it. Starts at 9 and shouldn’t take too long. You can be out of here by 11, even if you stay for the whole thing.”

Josh looked skeptical. “What is it? Strippers?” He looked hopeful, despite the row of chairs which would have seemed to indicate otherwise.

The bartender laughed as he began pouring the last beer. “You never know. It’s a hypnotist show.”

“Hypnosis?” asked Josh incredulously. “What the fuck for?”

“Well, to be honest I’m not quite sure myself. We brought him in one year and it was kind of a hit. Been bringing him back ever since.”

He handed us the last of the beers.

“Like I said, probably not what you’re looking for, but for some reason a lot of the guys seem to like it, I guess because of all the girls. Anyway, it’s totally free and you can leave whenever you like, so just an idea. Starts at 9. As far as beaches, I’m not sure what to tell you. Never really been my thing.”

“Thanks man,” said Josh, handing over the four drink slips and a couple bucks’ tip. The guy smiled and nodded, walking away.

I checked my watch. 8:50. “Fuck, man. We better plan quick. It probably starts getting noisy in here.”

“Yeah, I knew there had to be some stupid catch. Oh well, we’ll chug-a-lug and then high-tail it if there aren’t any pretty bitches up there,” said Josh as we pulled up to the table.

“What’s the word?” asked Ry, grabbing his beer and taking a swig.

“We better down these fast, bro,” said Josh. “They’re starting some gay-ass hypnosis shit in a few minutes.”

“Aw, fuck me, man. Grab the maps,” said Hector, reaching into his cargo shorts and pulling out a printout with some info about the beaches.

Well, of course, we got so involved arguing over where we were going to go that the damn show was starting before we even knew what hit us.

“Ah, shit,” Ryan muttered as an MC stepped out on stage.

We were sitting at a high-chaired table in the middle of the sunken area.

“Chill, dude, we can keep figuring it out. Just down your beers quick and let’s try to get out of here,” said Hector, always the officiator.

The music had lowered and the MC had dragged a mic on a cord out into the middle of the stage. He was probably in his mid-forties, fairly well put together, a black dress shirt, sleeves rolled up, dressy jeans, hair neat.

“All right ladies and germs, settle down. For a lot of you, this is what you’ve been waiting for all year, but for everyone in from out of town, we’ve got a very special guest here tonight. Regulars will recognize him for sure, but for the uninitiated, tonight—and the whole week, in fact—our special guest is Devin Rosco. Devin is a comedy hypnotist who’s been working for over ten years now. We were lucky enough to have him here seven years back, and he’s been a fixture ever since. The show’s totally free, so I’d encourage everybody to stick around for at least a bit and give it a try. He’s a funny guy and he puts on a great show, as any of our regulars know—”

This elicited a ton of cheers from a good 80 to 90% of the bar.

“Give it up for Devin!”

Thunderous applause as a guy stepped out from backstage, the presenter slinking off with the mic. This Devin guy was a lot younger than I expected, and a lot suaver. I guess the stereotype people have of hypnotists is some old guy in a tux with a top hat, curly moustache and big gold pocket watch or something, but this guy was nothing like that. It was kind of hard to believe, in fact, that he had been doing this for over ten years, since he barely looked older than we were, probably in his upper twenties. He was dressed very stylishly—gray dress shirt with a tight black vest over the top, emphasizing a stout build; skintight black pants suction-fitted to long, powerful legs; fashionable, well polished black boots; and a matching low-key fedora to top it all off. A few chains dangled from pockets of the suit. I wondered if one of them connected to the stereotypical pocket watch. That would have been the only thing conventional about this guy. He looked more like one of the hip art kids I’d pass going to Intro. to Drawing than the hypnotist I was expecting.

“Nice to be here,” he boomed into a handheld mic in a voice that was powerful and commanding, yet inviting and congenial at the same time. It’s a voice everybody knows. We all have a friend who possesses it—who clamps a hand on your shoulder when he says hello, who makes you feel like he’s listing to no one in the world but you as you make conversation. He looks you dead in the eye, speaks with confidence and cheer. That guy who everybody likes, who has a thousand friends on Facebook.

“This is my seventh year here, and I swear to god, these shows get better each and every time. So, to those of you who come out and support it, thank you, I really appreciate it. And for those of you who bring new victims, I appreciate it even more.” He grinned a wicked grin and the audience all laughed. The guy was a showman.

“Seriously though, for anybody new here, hypnosis is nothing to be afraid of, and I think it’s something everyone ought to try at least once.” He went on into a little lecture, some of which I recognized from a freshman Introductory Psych. course I’d half slept through, about naturally occurring states and not making you do anything you didn’t want; about some people being more susceptible based on nature, but everyone being capable in theory; about it speaking to your creative capacity; etc. I was kind of getting lost in the whole thing—like I said, the guy was a born showman and could really command attention—and I hadn’t realized how long I’d been listening until Josh started elbowing me:

“Mike. What do you think, man, where are we gonna go? Shit, you barely drank any beer. We wanna get rolling.”

I took a big gulp of my drink. “I don’t know, man. What does it say has the most girls? I haven’t gotten head in three weeks.” It was the unfortunate truth.

“What I want everyone to do is simply clasp their hands together in front of them, index fingers pointing straight ahead, like so,” the hypnotist continued. Around us, a few people stood up, holding their hands out as indicated.

“Come on now, don’t be shy. Everyone deserves to at least find out their suggestibility.” A few more people joined in. “I’m not gonna start ’til everyone gives it a shot,” he teased. “If you really don’t want to, it’s not going to work anyway, so you’ve got nothing to lose.”

There were some giggles. Most everyone was standing up now in the stance.

“Ah fuck, guys, come on, let’s get out of here. We don’t have time for this shit,” Hector muttered.

Some giggling to the side caught my attention. To our right stood a group of three girls, arms held out, fingers pointing forward. There was a blond and two brunettes, all of them really looking fine, though the one closest to us was the real knockout. She had really nice C- or D-cups stuffed into this halter top, fine legs in these tight, tight booty shorts, and really sexy long brown hair. I had a split-second vision of her marching around like a zombie, glassy-eyed, staring at Captain Art School’s dangling gold pocket watch, or maybe gyrating around a stripper pole and flashing those gorgeous tits. After all, the guy at the bar had said the show was special, and that the guys always came for the girls. Maybe this was one of those things that got really wild. It was Spring Break, after all.

I elbowed Josh back. “Guys, did you see those girls over there?”

Ryan gave me a death glare. “Fagatron, are you fucking serious? We spent more time talking about them than what we’re gonna do. Are you seriously just noticing them now?”

“Let’s play along,” I whispered. “I wanna see if they get hypnotized.”

Hector groaned. “I’m not gonna go up there and cluck like a fucking chicken, man. Let’s get out of here, this shit is gay.”

I wasn’t used to Hector talking like that. I think his brother is gay, as a matter of fact. Being around Ryan tends to bring out the worst in him.

“Come on, just fake it,” I whispered. “We see if they get up there and if they don’t we split.” I stood up, clasping my hands and holding them out in front of me.

“One of our last holdouts,” beamed the hypnotist, wrenching my focus away with a jolt. I hadn’t had any idea attention had been on us. “Come on guys, what’s it gonna be? These fine people want to give it a try.” I noticed a few tables in the room had emptied since the initial call and the discovery that he was serious about everyone giving it a shot. A surprising amount of people were giving it a try, though. As a matter of fact, the only ones not in the position were the bartenders and staff.

My friends looked around at each other nervously, then rose, awkwardly, and joined me in the stance.

“I’m seriously gonna kill you, man,” Ryan mumbled through gritted teeth. I turned my attention forward, mostly to escape his laser glare.

“Awesome,” beamed the hypnotist. He was replicating the gesture himself, to illustrate. “Now this is a simple suggestibility test, just to see how good you would be as a hypnotic subject. There’s nothing to worry about. But you may find you have a greater aptitude than you thought.

“Now, all you need to do is simply focus your attention on the point between those two fingers. Fix your gaze on the space between those fingers, and imagine a powerful force, like two magnets, one in each finger, pulling them together, stronger and stronger, more and more irresistible by the second. In fact, even if you don’t think that’s true, one of the most amazing things about this exercise is the way you can begin changing negative will into positive energy. Imagine the strength of that negative belief, that confidence that there are no magnets there, that there is no force. But the force of that belief is stronger than that, stronger than a magnet, stronger than anything. That disbelief multiplied by 100 could never even begin to rival the power pulling those two fingers together, and you’ll find the more you disbelieve, the more you say that this can’t be true, the more powerfully and totally your fingers will be pulled to meet in that space, that space from which you cannot remove your eyes no matter how hard you try. No matter how hard you struggle, that struggle just gets channeled into the point, into the strength with which it holds all things. Your fingers, your gaze, everything is drawn inescapably to that point, and the power of your focus draws your fingers closer, and the closer your fingers draw, the more impossible it is to pull away, because you’ve never seen something like this. And when the fingers touch, that force is multiplied by one hundred, cementing them, gluing them together with the strongest bond imaginable—stronger than glue, stronger than atoms, stronger than your will itself. And that feeling spreads to your hands now, oozing between your fingers like glue, stronger still, hardening, until all of it is fused together in one solid, immovable mass—your fingers, your hands, your gaze all locked at one inescapable point. And as you try to wrench them apart, you find your disbelief only grows stronger; and you know now, against all odds, the stronger that unbelief is, the tighter that bond ultimately becomes, because even if you don’t believe it, it’s what’s happening.

“Try now. Try as hard as you can. Pull at those hands and fingers. And the harder you pull, the more powerfully and totally they fuse. The harder you pull, the harder you stare; the harder you stare, the more powerfully you try to see them pull, and the more you can see them clamping together, tighter and tighter, one mass now, one block, your hands and fingers fused into a solid piece of flesh, your gaze held like a rock, unflinching, immovable.”

I barely registered his pause I was so wrapped up in the Chinese finger-trap dilemma of the opposing forces in my hands cancelling each other out. It never occurred to me that all I had to do was simply loosen one arm and the other would tug it away, or loosen both arms and simply put my hands down by my sides. I realize now I’ve made no description of my own struggle through this whole process, but that’s because it wasn’t necessary. What he said is exactly what happened, down to the last detail. I also realize my original vision of standing there, pantomiming tugging on my hands while I stole glances at the table beside us, bore absolutely zero resemblance to the reality of the situation. I was anchored like a rock, just like he said.

“I’m going to say a special word now and cut a thread,” said the hypnotist. “That word is ‘snip.’ You’ll find it had no power when I said it just then, because you didn’t know what it was going to do; and it will have no power after, because it’s already been done. Only once, the next time I say it, the next and only time, will it have this special power, this special power to break the bond forged between your gaze and your hands. And the cutting of this bond will only lend more power to the point, because now it holds two things instead of three; and you will still feel the pull, that inescapable pull tugging those hands together harder than ever. But your gaze and your mind will suddenly be free. Free to look around, free to see all your friends in the room, everyone just like you, with such a great talent and receptivity for hypnosis. And you’ll be proud to see you have this imagination, this capacity for creativity and focus, this ability to give yourself over and relax. At the count of three, I’m going to say that special word.

“One.

“Two.

“Three.

“Snip.”

It was almost like waking from a dream. I looked up around me, having forgotten the entire room was there—the bar, the audience, even the hypnotist. It was like I knew he was speaking, but it wouldn’t have even occurred to me that that voice was coming from somewhere, anywhere beside my own head. Everything had completely vanished.

I imagined my face probably looked like a lot of the other faces in the room—smiling, laughing nervously, everyone looking around, bewildered their hands were still clasped before them but relieved to see that they were far from alone. Indeed, around the room we had good company. I could see maybe 30 people, or a few more, with their arms clasped out in front of them, a fairly even mixture of guys and girls, though with a few more men in the mix, I’d say.

Girls.

I turned to the table beside me. Sure enough, they all had their hands clasped, giggling nervously. The brunette looked over at me and our eyes connected for a split second. We blushed, embarrassed but a little bit comforted we were both in this together.

We. Me. Oh shit. I had my hands clasped in front of me. Somehow I sort of knew this while neglecting to know it. I had been aware on coming up, but became so focused looking for others with the same “condition” that I sort of forgot I had it too. Fuck, the guys were going to kill me. I’d made a fucking idiot of myself. They were never going to let me live this down.

Unless...

I turned around.

Bingo. Though at the same time, my jaw almost dropped. All three of them stood there, staring nervously around just like me, looking to see who else had been a big enough dumbo to fall for this crock of shit. I was relieved that we were at least all in it together. Privately they were still never going to let me live down getting them into this, but at least publically the secret would be safe. I was dead sure none of them wanted this getting out.

My eyes caught Hector. I knew he had decent definition, but the struggle in his arms showed off musculature I never knew he had. Every ounce of muscle was stretched tight as a cord beneath his flesh.

“What the fuck, dude?” he hissed.

“It’s just a test, man. We’ll get outta here when it’s through.”

It suddenly occurred to me how long it seemed we’d been standing around staring. I wasn’t sure if it was just me, or if the guy on stage really had been letting things run that long, but he seemed to know exactly how long to let us find our bearings before speaking up again.

“Well, I can see by the looks on many of your faces you had no idea what good hypnotic subjects you were. I hope it comes as a pleasant surprise, because it should. It means you’re all open, thoughtful, and creative individuals with a great aptitude for concentration and focus. In just a second, I’m going to perform one final test of your susceptibility. But first, anyone with their hands stuck, please come join me on stage and I’ll be happy to help you.”

We looked around nervously. No one seemed to want to go up.

“Don’t be shy. After all, you don’t want to go through life with your hands fused together, right?”

I guessed I didn’t. I also figured I was the one who’d gotten us into this mess, so I’d better man up and lead the charge. I started toward the stage. My friends looked around and followed, and the girls at the next table joined them. Great, I thought. With my luck, the three of them will end up scoring out of this, and I’ll be left in the dust. Good old forgettable Mike.

Everyone else with their hands clasped was following suit, and a couple of businesswomen at a table in the front row even ended up in front of me, just due to placement. We climbed a small set of wooden stairs leading up to the stage, forming a line as we approached the hypnotist.

He looked the first woman dead in the eye, a paragon of absolute confidence, and said softly, gently, into his mic, “What about you, ma’am? Do you wish to join us tonight?”

She wasn’t too bad for a cougar, I’d say. Nothing to write home about, but... I sorta wished she would, if we stayed for the rest of the show (not that I was terribly confident the guys would be willing to do that after being publically humiliated here), as I wouldn’t mind seeing what happened to her, but instead she replied with the slightly shaky voice of someone declining an unwelcome invitation, “Oh...no. I’ve got a conference tomorrow and I really should be getting back...”

“I want you to look me in the eyes. In a second, all the tension in your hands is going to flow into me, when I say one special word... RELEASE.” He had clapped a palm on top of her hands when she first approached him, and as he said the word, he pushed down with a sharp shove. Her hands spread apart instantly, and she marveled at the individual fingers, curling them, awed at their renewed dexterity.

With a blush and a smile she turned and headed past us, down the line of embarrassed fools, trying to pretend she hadn’t just been part of it as she quickly headed back to her seat. There was no way she was leaving just yet. Not with a seat in the front row. A little time was required to be put in, to save face. Not to mention she had to wait for her partner.

The woman she had been with wasn’t up to the even fairly low standards I’d set for her. She was chubby, with short, firey red hair. Not my type at all. The guy repeated the same routine with her. She gave the same excuse—the conference—and with a quick shove he released her. Fuck, I couldn’t wait. I was just a little speech and a gentle nudge away from rushing back to my seat, tail between my legs, a little bit older and a lot wiser, secure in the possession of a valuable life lesson: don’t fuck around with hypnosis.

I nervously stepped up to my stylish savior. I gave an awkward, pursed lipped smile, like a stupid kid who’d gotten caught in a Chinese finger trap—essentially what had happened, though the trap was all in my head. I was waiting desperately for him to ask the question.

He smiled. “What’s your name?”

He leaned in a little so my voice would reach his mic. “Uh, Mike,” I said nervously.

“Ladies and gentlemen, let’s give Mike a hand. His seem to be otherwise occupied,” he said, turning to the audience with a flourish. There was a brief, polite applause.

He turned back to me. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen anybody straining quite as hard as you. Look at these arms.” He placed a hand on one of them and gave it a gentle push. The whole structure in front of me dipped slightly, quickly bouncing back into place. I hadn’t really thought about the fact I was tank. You could see my arms just as well as Hector’s—every embarrassing, straining inch of them.

“This here indicates that Mike is an excellent candidate for hypnosis. In fact, I could probably have him under in half a second. Have you ever been hypnotized before, Mike?”

I shook my head.

“How ’bout it? You want to join us up on stage?”

His voice was so warm and congenial part of me almost blurted out yes. Sure, I’ll join you on stage. That doesn’t sound so bad. Sit around, have a beer, talk about sports, girls, make me cluck like a chicken.

The thought of humiliating myself in front of my three best friends brought me crashing back to earth. Yeah, that was what I wanted—to single-handedly make them two hours late to a spring break orgy we’d been waiting our whole lives to attend, and on top of that, to spend the whole time giving them an endless arsenal of shit they could record and tease me about.

I smiled slightly, just enough to be polite. “Nah thanks, man. I’m good.”

He pursed his lips briefly and frowned a bit. “It’d really be a shame to do a show without you. You’re one of the best subjects I’ve seen.”

“Sorry man. I think I’d rather just sit this one out.” He seemed like a nice enough guy. I felt a little bit bad about disappointing him, but there was no way in hell I was giving the guys behind me ammo like this.

“All right, Mike,” he said. “I’ll make you a deal. You see those chairs over there?”

He pointed to a long row of chairs covering the length of the stage. “All you have to do to get your hands unstuck is sit down in that furthest chair, all the way down on the left, see? The second your butt hits that seat, your hands are going to become unstuck. They’ll just pop right apart, completely unglued. Go ahead,” he said, giving me a slight pat on the shoulder to send me on my way.

I started across the stage. What a weird day. I never thought I’d spend my first day of break with my hands stuck together, learning how good I was at hypnosis. I felt a little bad about disappointing this guy, who seemed pretty cool, but if all I had to do was jump through a quick hoop for him, I guessed that was okay. Besides, I was the asshole asking for help unclasping my hands. I was basically at his mercy.

I got to the seat and turned around to plop down.

“It’s a weird thing, though,” he started. What on earth could he be talking about now?

“The second that glue leaves your hands—”

He said it as I was falling. My butt hit the seat. I suddenly and immediately felt my arms completely relax, my hands pulling apart easily and cleanly.

I looked up, to say thanks I guess.

“—it moves to your ass,” he finished. I blinked, not quite sure what he meant.

“And your butt is glued to the seat,” he concluded, face dead serious.

I looked down at my lap—seemed fine. Looked up. All eyes were on me. Even my three friends were staring at me, rapt at what was about to occur.

I looked down again. There was really no glue on the seat. I didn’t know what he was talking about.

I moved to rise, to smile and cross the stage and give him a hearty handshake for a good scare. Nice one, man.

But I didn’t rise. My ass was fused with the chair below.

I looked down again, pushing against the sides with the palms of my hands. I wouldn’t budge. I was stuck, just as my hands had been. I looked up in panic. Everyone was staring at me, mouths either fully agape or mixed with a half smile. Even the hypnotist had a slight grin, that of an artist really enjoying his craftsmanship. Our eyes connected. Mine were pleading for his help. But any request choked in my throat. Not admitting my helplessness was the last scrap of dignity I had.

“I forgot to tell you something about that hand,” he said.

I picked up my right hand and turned it palm up, examining it. What was he talking about?

“The thing about guys like you who are such good subjects,” he said,” is that their hands actually want them to be hypnotized—that’s why they stick together so well. And as you’re sitting there, you’re going to start to notice your right hand has a mind of its own. That it’s moving toward you. And that the second it touches your forehead, it’s going to hypnotize you. Your entire body is going to go limp, every scrap of energy and tension draining away, just like when your hands came apart. Only it’s going to be your whole body, your whole mind coming apart, slipping away into that loose, limp nothingness.”

I was staring in horror at my right hand, which was doing exactly as he said. The pointer finger had extended and the others half curled in, and it was indeed creeping up toward my forehead, just as he had promised. I was paralyzed with fear, except for my hand, which had a mind of its own and was no longer a part of me.

“You can try to stop it if you want,” he continued, and I realized I had completely forgotten the left hand was still free. I grabbed the wrist of my right and forced it back with all my might, but it continued unabated.

“But it’s just like when they were clasped together,” he continued as I struggled, his calm voice an eerie counterpoint to the violent life or death battle raging up on stage. It hadn’t even occurred to me to wonder why no one was helping me. It was just me and the hand, with a voice droning on in the background.

“The force is too strong. You can’t resist it. And the more you fight it, the more it wins. The more power you give by struggling against it.”

It was true. I felt like the hand was plowing toward me now. There was zero question of what was going to occur.

“That same point that was in the middle of your hands is right in the middle of your forehead, drawing that finger forward just as powerfully as it kept those hands clasped together. And the second they touch, you’re going to collapse, and everything’s going to fade away. And you know it’s true, because everything I’ve said so far has happened, hasn’t it?”

I didn’t realize it at the time, but I even unconsciously nodded when he asked that rhetorical question. That’s how deeply I was focused on everything he was saying, how perfectly and exactingly I was following his instructions. He was playing me like a fiddle.

But at the moment, all my conscious mind could think about was that finger, now mere inches from my forehead. I knew it was going to happen, knew it was imminent, knew nothing could save me except some unimaginable deus ex machina. Yet I knew none would come.

My finger inched closer. My left arm fought vainly, the bulging muscles of my bicep throbbing with exertion as I pushed against my wrist.

Two inches away. One inch. My eyes crossed now to track the progress. I leaned all the way back. My ass remained plastered to the seat. I must have looked ridiculous.

I gave one last desperate push. The finger inched forward. It grazed my forehead. With a great whoosh of relief, I felt my entire body collapse into blackness.