The Hypnotist
By Casey Blumenstock
Copyright 2013
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Table of Contents
About the Author
Contact the Author
The Hypnotist
About The Author
Casey Blumenstock is an author of several short stories and a stay-at-home mom from Farmington, Missouri. When she’s not working on her novel-in-progress, you will find her chasing her two little girls― who pack way too much sass and cynicism for only being 3-feet tall― and blogging about the hilarity that comes out of their mouths. When she’s not chasing kids or cleaning up after her husband, Casey also takes classes and is in the process of earning a Bachelors degree in English.
Contact Casey
Twitter: https://twitter.com/cblumenstock
Blog: https://sassylittlegirls.blogspot.com
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About a year ago my mom went for a night swim with her boyfriend in the lake behind our house. She died a week later from a parasite that was contracted from the lake water. The unfortunate situation changed me drastically. In my mind, there are parasites everywhere. There are potential invisible killers around every corner. How can you be safe from something that you don’t know is there? This is my dilemma and the reason why I’ve been unable to leave my home without an oversized bottle of Germ-X and my near-debilitating paranoia of the world around me.
After much research— yes, I’m one of those self-diagnosing Googlers— I’ve decided to try hypnosis. I want to face some of my stronger, more-likely-to-kill-me-than-a-parasite phobias and see if facing these fears head-on will help alleviate some of the terror. I want my life back and I’m taking drastic measures to do so.
Walking into this stranger’s home takes every ounce of perseverance that I can muster, but I step over the threshold and follow this unfamiliar man, the hypnotist, through his tidy, but scarcely furnished home. My hands are clenched tightly, my knuckles a ghostly white against the blackness of my shirt and I can barely register the pain of my fingernails digging into my palm over the swell of panic that’s building in my chest. The smell of boiled cabbage permeates the main floor of the house and does nothing to calm my roiling stomach. Bile rises in my throat and I swallow it down, ignoring the bitter taste and the burn that it leaves in its place.
The hypnotist is a young, gangly man with stringy, greasy black hair that he continuously has to swipe away from his equally greasy forehead. Disgusting. The thought of him touching me makes me more nervous than the actual hypnosis. He has beady, black eyes that creep the hell out of me, but I did a lot of research and he came recommended from what I consider to be a reputable website. I need to remain positive about this process, though; I’ve read that negativity and skepticism can make it difficult to go under.
The “relaxation room” is in his basement. I read this on the website before making the appointment, but it still doesn't ease the anxiety that I feel walking down the creaky, wooden steps.
“Maybe you should have tried hypnosis to help me get me down the stairs,” I say with a nervous laugh.
He gives me a small smile that doesn’t reach his eyes, but reveals a mouth full of jagged, yellow teeth.
“Have a seat, Sweetheart,” he says.
I sit in a brown suede armchair― the only piece of furniture in this basement aside from a washer and dryer― and keep my hands in my lap to avoid having any contact with parts of the chair that may not have been sanitized, which was probably the entire chair. I close my eyes and drum my fingers nervously on my knees while I wait for this debacle to begin. I should have done more research on this process, I think as I watch him place a CD into an ancient Boombox.
“Just relax, Sweetheart,” he says in a quiet, relaxing tone. “Take a drink of water and try to calm your nerves.” He hands me a water-filled coffee mug emblazoned with a cheerful-looking Mickey Mouse dancing around the words “Disney World.” I take several sips and hand it back to him.
“Take a deep breath. Inhale… and exhale. Good girl,” he says quietly as he takes the coffee mug from my shaking fingers and places it on the concrete floor next to my feet.
I let the tension out of my shoulders and sink a little farther into the chair, inhaling and exhaling until my eyes become heavy and the sounds of traffic from the street combined with the hum of the dryer lull me into a light doze.
“When I snap my fingers once, you’ll be inside the first illusion. When I snap twice, you’ll go to the next. Are you ready?”
“I’m ready,” I think to myself, unable to speak the words.
With a single snap of his fingers, I’m standing in the middle of a blank, white room. There is nothing but white. No walls, no doors, no angles at all, just white. I turn around in a circle― at least I think it’s a circle― and I see nothing, hear nothing, and feel nothing. For the first time in a long time, it’s nice not to feel anything and I breathe deeply without the weight of panic sitting on my chest. What is this supposed to be? I reach my hand out to try and touch something, anything, but it’s dead air.
I take a few steps forward and reach out my hand again. There’s a ripple in the white this time. Just a tiny shift that’s barely noticeable and I stare at it in wonder. This isn’t scary at all. Reaching out again, I put my hand inside the ripple and watch it disappear into the white. I feel nothing tangible and it’s irritating. What phobia is this?
I pull my hand out of the white and it’s covered with spiders. At least twenty black, hairy, eight-legged nightmares are crawling on my hand. I scream in absolute terror and do the holy-effing-spider dance with more pep in my step than ever before. They’re crawling up my legs now, dropping into my hair, and coming out of my clothes. There are more ripples in the white and more spiders crawl out of the blankness, this time with snakes slithering out with them.
I swipe at my arms and kick my legs to no avail. Snakes wrap around my legs, their tongues darting about, flicking my skin. I try to scream again, but any noise that would have come is cut off by one of these putrid spiders trying to crawl inside of my mouth. I shake my head and spit. I’m able to remove some of the mutant arachnids from my arms, but they are instantly replaced by new ones, bigger ones.
I try to run away, but anywhere I turn, there are more snakes and spiders pouring in out of the white. My skin feels raw and aches with the weight of the creatures. My throat burns from screaming and my eyes are bleary from the tears. I can’t take this.
“Get me out of here,” I sob. “Get me out of here!”
I hear two snaps and the white turns to solid black. I gasp and frantically swipe at my arms again. There’s nothing. The snakes and spiders are gone.
Reaching out my timid hand, I can feel a wall. I follow the wall with my fingers until I find each corner. There’s a door with a knob, but it’s locked. I can stand straight and reach above my head without feeling anything, but there’s no room to fully extend my arms in any horizontal direction. I’m stuck in a locked closet.
I’ve never experienced such complete darkness or such an enclosed space. I can stand or I can crouch, but there’s no room to fully sit down. This should be easy to endure, yet my breath is coming in rapid gasps and my heart is racing. My only thought is of how badly I have to get out of this room. I feel trapped.
I’m pounding on the door with both fists and screaming at the top of my lungs, but there’s no sound. I keep screaming. I can
feel the force of my screams reverberating in my already-aching chest and it’s becoming too exhausting. Why is there no sound?
Two more snaps and I’m running through the woods with the sound of loud, thudding footsteps just paces behind me.
“Come here, Honey,” he says, his voice a slick, oily caress that makes my skin crawl. “I won’t hurt you.”
I cringe and try to dig my feet deeper into the dirt. Run faster, I silently yell at myself.
The sound of my wildly racing pulse beats in my ears so loudly that I can barely hear my feet hitting the hard earth.
“I’m right behind you, Sweetheart.” I hear the voice from all directions and I’m no longer sure of which way to run. Which direction is safe?
There’s a tight thicket of thorns and brush up ahead and to my right. I’m small enough that I may be able to crawl under it and remain unscathed, whereas any man is more likely to be bigger than me. I pray to whoever is listening that he won’t fit.
Making a bee-line for the brush, I execute a perfect baseball slide underneath the thorns, silently thanking my mom for forcing me to play summer softball all those years. But what I wasn’t expecting was to come out the other side. Crap. I force myself to my feet and feel something cold and metallic pressing into the small of my back. Reaching around, I pull the thing from my waistband. It’s a revolver and I bite my lip to keep from releasing a psychotic-sounding cackle of delight.
“Whatcha got there, Princess?” I hear the voice in my ear and feel breath against my neck.
Jumping forward, I turn to face my pursuer, gun aimed. He’s just a shadow; a black shadow in the shape of a large, brawny man.
“You don’t want to do that, Darlin’,” he says.
He lunges for me and I pull the trigger. Click. Nothing happens. I pull the trigger again in rapid succession. Click. Click. Click. Nothing. I turn to run, a scream stuck in my throat, but his black, shadowy hands grab my hair and pull me to the ground. I’m trying to fight while this shadow… thing… creature covers my mouth. I stare up at it as it puts its full weight on top of me. There are no eyes, no face, nothing other than a shape, yet I can’t breathe with its hand covering my mouth and my nose. I close my eyes and pray for this to go away.
Snap. Snap.
My body grows cold all over. I feel completely weightless and my hair is clinging to my face. I’m submerged in dark water. Is this a lake? I open my mouth and try to scream, but all that I’m doing is using up precious oxygen that I need to be holding in. My chest aches and I don’t know how long I can hold my breath. My lungs are screaming for air, but I don’t know where the surface is. I can’t see anything.
Kicking my legs instinctively, I move through the water in the direction that I think is up. I can’t tell, though, if I’m swimming to the surface or if I’m going deeper into the water. I try and muster up what little bit of air may be left in my lungs and blow it out into the water. I follow the bubbles, but as hard as I push myself, I’m not making it to the surface.
Spots and flashes of light begin to swirl around my head. This light-headed feeling isn’t quite so bad. If my lungs didn’t hurt so badly, it might even be peaceful. I let my heavy limbs go limp and decide to let myself float to the top. I’ll just rest my eyes as I float. This isn’t so bad.
Loud scraping noises and male grunts wake me. What happened to the snaps? I blink the bleary, sleep-induced haze out of my eyes.
“Did you have some pretty gruesome hallucinations, Doll?”
I’m lying on my back with my head tilted to the side watching the hypnotist dig a hole in the earth. I want to ask him where we are and what he’s doing, but I can’t speak. My body won’t move. I can only watch and listen.
I try to force my mouth to move, to try and speak the words, but it’s impossible. My brain is functioning perfectly, but my body is in full paralysis. Is this another illusion? This wasn’t a fear that I had talked to him about.
My minuscule field of vision reveals only trees, darkness, the hypnotist, and a hole. We’re in the woods, but where are the woods at and how did we get here? He throws down the shovel and turns to me with his bony hands on his muddy, blue-jean clad hips.
“Here’s another phobia that a majority of people have. Let’s see how you work through this one.”
He picks me up and places me gingerly inside the hole. I’m panicking on the inside. My mind is telling me to scream, to fight and kick away from this monster, but I can’t do anything!
“Yes, Sweetheart, this is real. You won’t have to worry about those pesky fears ever again.”
My heart is thudding in my ears and I can feel my pulse racing. What is he going to do? I can only listen to his sick, twisted laugh and watch as he picks up the shovel and throws the first bit of dirt on top of me. Inside, my heart is beating out of my chest, but on the outside I’m completely still and unmoving. The hole smells like mildew, decay, and death. I watch him scoop up dirt and throw it on top of me until I’m completely covered and can’t see anything anymore.
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Casey Blumenstock