I hadn’t expected the coin to work so easily, but unless Ally was just playing along to prank me, it had genuinely hypnotized her in seconds. I waved my hand in front of her a few times. She didn’t react.
Well, if this was really I happening, I was gonna make the most of it! Ally was always teasing me about something; my height, my hobbies, my lack of girlfriend, and recently my getting into furries. A little payback wouldn’t hurt.
“You’re feeling very sleepy…” It’s cliche, but it’s a good start, “I’d like you to remember a time you were teased.”
“Back in third grade… Jennifer was always making fun of my freckles, and that I still liked princess stories.”
“And how did that make you feel?”
“Angry, frustrated…”
“From now on, whenever you feel like making fun of me, thoughts of those times in third grade will come back. And the feelings will come back too. And you don’t want to feel like that again, do you?”
“No.”
“So, the easiest way not to feel like that again is to stop teasing me. So you don’t want to tease me again so you won’t feel like that again.”
“I don’t want to tease you again.”
Sweet! That was easy! But while I still have her listening to me, maybe I can get a little more out of this… Well, dad asked me to take care of a couple chores. I’m sure Ally wouldn’t mind helping.
“When I wake you up, you’ll want to mow the lawn in my place, as a way of saying sorry for making fun of me for so long. And when you’re done, you’ll come back and see me again. Wake up on the count of three. One, two, three.”
Ally blinked. “Sorry about coming into your room without asking, Kyle. I’m gonna mow the lawn for you, like you asked.”
“Are you sure?” I asked, trying to test how deeply this had worked. “Dad had asked me to do it. It’s not like you have to.”
“Yeah, I want to. It’s like you said, it’s a good way to make up for teasing you.”
As she walked out of the room, I couldn’t help but grin. This was going great! I was a little surprised she remembered what had gone on when she was in trance though. Since I had a little time before Ally would be back, I took a look at Magika Inc.’s website, to see what sort of info was available on this thing.
I found a section on that hypnotist guy’s show, Entrancing Entertainment. I didn’t see anything about this coin specifically, but I did find some useful information in the F.A.Q.’s section:
Question: Is hypnosis real?
Answer: Hypnosis is as real as sleep itself. It is sometimes used in therapy to help people get over unwanted habits, form good habits, or to aid in recalling repressed memories. Though our show focuses on more entertaining uses for the practice, everything Mr. Dormitabis features on our show can be done by a sufficiently skilled hypnotist.
Question: Could I use hypnosis to make people do whatever I want, if I learned how to do it?
Answer: That depends on what you want. Hypnosis is not exactly mind control; you cannot make a hypnotized person do something they do not want to do. That said, a hypnotized person is in a very suggestable state, so if the trance-ee has no strong objections to doing the Chicken Dance in front of an audience, and you suggest that they might enjoy doing that, they will do just that.
The limits of what you can make a trance-ee do will vary from person to person. For instance, some people are so shy that they wouldn’t do something they would consider embarrassing in public unless you suggest to them that the audience isn’t really there. And there are certain things that the overwhelming majority of people will never consider doing in trance. For example, you will probably not be able to convince a trance-ee to have sex with a stranger, unless that individual is extremely casual about sex already. And telling someone to harm or kill themselves or others while in trance is a good way to break both the trance, and the trust of the person in question.
Additionally, you cannot make a person do something in trance that they don’t know how to do. If you ask a person who has never heard of the Chicken Dance before to perform it, you’ll only get confusion from them at best. If you ask someone who doesn’t know all the moves of the Chicken Dance to do it, they are not any more likely to do it correctly in trance than they would doing it while awake. Similarly, if you ask a person to act like a maid, or some other role, they will act the way they believe that role should act, not necessarily how such a person would actually act.
On a related note, most people won’t actually forget what happens to them while in trance, unless you suggest that they should. That being said, because so many see people forget being hypnotized in fiction, there are some people that believe they are ‘supposed to’ forget whatever happens in trance, and this belief makes that a reality for them. In such cases, if you want them to remember the trance, simply suggest that they do so.
The rest of the F.A.Q. was more about the background of the lead performer, and stuff like how to sign up to be a part of the studio audience. Well, now that I knew a little more about how this worked, I just needed to decide what I would do next. Maybe make his sister act a little younger when she got back? Or possibly make her think she’d turned into an anthro or animal for extra payback? Or maybe I should invite my friend Tom over. He was interested in furries, and hypnotizing him to think he’d become his fursona could be fun. Or maybe there was another target he could test his new toy on?
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Meanwhile, across town, Alfred Dormitabis, the host of “Entrancing Entertainment” rummaged through his dressing room, going through the pockets of every suit and coat, and rifling through every drawer.
“Where is it? Where is it!?” He muttered to himself.
The “it” in question was one of dozens of “Coins of Control” Magika Inc. had released as merch for his show. They were simple coin-shaped wind up toys with a spinning spiral. Most of them were perfectly mundane, and no more useful for hypnosis than any other mundane spiral or pendulum. Needless to say, however, this one was not.
This one had been enchanted by an old friend of his, one who had dabbled in the magic arts. It had been enchanted with two powerful spells. The first was an “entrancement enhancement” which could render a person hypnotized in seconds regardless of the hypnotist’s skill, knowledge, or rapport. The second was a “mind masters matter” spell, which caused the hypnotic subject to make a suggestion real. If they were told they had the strength of ten men, the subject could lift cars with ease. If they were told they were a dog, they’d grow fur and a tail.
Mr. Dormitabis didn’t need the coin for his show; he was knowledgeable enough about non-magical hypnosis to have hosted his show for years without the coin. But the old gift had its uses, and its power was not to be trifled with.
The old hypnotist looked through his last drawer, and closed it up again. This was no good at all. It wasn’t here, it wasn’t at home… The only conclusion he could come to was that he must have dropped it during one of his commutes. He dreaded to think about what others might do with such a powerful trinket.