The Hypnotist

At work the next day, in my quiet lab alone as I manipulated my little zebra fish embryos across the slide the first full memory hit me. Dr X. Sitting across the desk from me, he reaches up and turns the video camera off. Thats all I remembered. The next memory did not hit me until I was making dinner. Head down, eyes open, relaxed, hypnotized I was looking at my sweater. Two of the buttons had come undone. Hands, his hands, re-buttoning them. Carefully though. I decided at that moment to never go back. And the memories just kept on coming to me after that.

“Jennifer, when I snap my fingers you are going to wake up. You will be alert and feel normally except you will be extremely thirsty. You will tell me you are thirsty and I will give you a bottle of juice. Jennifer, you will drink the entire bottle of juice very quickly. Jennifer, you will also be very hot and want to take your sweater off.”

He snaps his fingers. I am alert, very hot, unbearably hot! I pull my sweater off. I tell him I am thirsty, he hands me a bottle of orange juice and I drink it down fast. He snaps his fingers again and I am staring at my chest. He then proceeds to do a similar test with me being cold and putting my sweater back on.

Its another session. I am staring at the buttons of my sweater. I hear the click of the camera being turned off. He instructs me to stand with my back to him. He tells me to completely relax and fall down when he snaps his fingers. He catches me and puts me back in the chair. I am staring at the buttons of my sweater. Two of the buttons had come undone. Hands, his hands, re-buttoning them.

The click of the camera being turned off.

“Jennifer, when I snap my fingers you will wake up and feel normal. We are going to have a conversation. Jennifer you are going to ask me about my wife, you will ask me how long we have been married and what she does for a living. Jennifer, then I will ask you about your fiance. I will ask you how you met and when you plan to get married. Jennifer, it will be a nice, pleasant conversation like we are old friends.”

He snaps his fingers and I am alert. We smile pleasantly at each other and proceed with the pre-arranged conversation. I feel as if this is normal and pleasant. We are old friends. I ask him the questions I think are my own and he answers them and asks me about my fiance. At the end of the script we are smiling pleasantly at each other. I have no thoughts. He snaps his fingers and I am once again staring at my chest. With a click, he turns the camera back on.

“Jennifer, I am going to bring you back now to being fully awake. Jennifer, you will start to remember some of the things we have done here. Just a little bit at first, but as the week goes on you will start to remember more and more. Jennifer, when I snap my fingers you will no longer be hypnotized.”

He snaps his fingers, I wake up, and never come back.

I have many flashes of Dr X reaching up to turn the camera off. Many bits and pieces of the tasks he had me perform. But just flashes. When I stopped showing up for our appointments, he had called me once to see if I was coming back. I had gone to see him once a week for about three months. I had taken the computerized test only once. This I am sure of because I had to be “awake” for half of it. In the weeks after I had stopped going to the sessions I tried very hard to remember more but could not recall anything beyond the flashes. That was six years ago and I am no longer having those flashes. I can’t decide if I am better off not knowing the rest.