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Description

The party was over. The house was empty. No, like, really empty. It was their 'housewarming' after all, even though it was just a two-bedroom rented flat. Still nice to have their shared friends around for a night of fun. It was, however, less nice to then clean up and realise most of the furniture would be arriving the next weekend.

Val was pretty sure she could tolerate a week with Hayley in an otherwise mostly featureless house. They'd been roommates since uni, after all. They were not the most similar pair, but they always managed to be comfortable around each other. For instance, they had both immediately changed into their 'lounging around the house' clothes after the last guest was gone, but the outfits themselves were different. Hayley wore a loose, low cut blue top which blended with her jeans - a simple look which was brought together with her equally plain necklace. All the same, her pale, flawless skin was on full show, and even after a long night her messed-up hair still looked gorgeous. Val, meanwhile, wore a black top somewhere between a dress and a jumper, with a tan shawl around her shoulders to further help her resist the night's cold (which Hayley seemed to have no problem with), smoke-coloured jeans which matched her matted, curly hair. Despite attempting to cover up, her olive brown skin still showed between the tears in her jeans.

Both women were barefoot, though even that looked different on the two friends. For Val, it gave her a Bohemian vibe, with her full lips, perpetual smirk and thrown-together-but-still-giving-off-a-cool-vibe clothing. In contrast, Hayley just looked relaxed, entirely comfortable, and entirely uncaring about what anyone might think about the milky skin of her soles being fully on show.

It was, actually, immediately clear that Hayley didn't care what anyone might think about her, because she was entirely focused on the single piece of furniture they had installed in the living room (at her own urging and no small amount of puppy dog eyes). So, she was sat cross-legged on their bare floor, facing a massive TV screen on the wall hooked up to her PC, living the 'playing Civ 6 on my wide-screen TV in my new apartment' dream.

Val, meanwhile, was simply scrolling down her phone screen, waiting for the buzz of the party to wear off so her eyes would feel heavy again and she could finally go to sleep.

It quickly got boring, but she couldn't make any sense of the hexagonal grid of numbers, symbols, and little dudes lighting up their screen. She really had no idea how Hayley could focus on this nonsense after everything else that night, but her friend's eyes remained fixed on the screen with a look of childlike wonder.

"So... it says New York there. Does that mean you're playing as America?" Val didn't especially care about her roommate's weird game, but it was nice to talk all the same.

"Yep." Hayley nodded, then after a few more clicks added, "Going for a Culture Victory this time."

"Oh, is America good for that?"

"Yeah, they get Tourism bonuses." A few more moments of mouth-scrunched-in-thought later, Hayley made a decisive click on 'Medieval Faires' and continued. "New Leader can do cool stuff with National Parks, so I wanted to try that out."

"I totally understand what you mean, Hayley." Val countered in the most deadpan voice her very-East-London accent could do. It was very deadpan.

"National Parks give loads of Tourism in late game. But I need to invest a bit in Faith infrastructure now to make them. Annoying since America has no religion bonus." (Val did think that was kinda weird.) "So I have nothing to spend it on until I get Conservation."

"How long until you get that?"

"About 150 turns."

Val glanced up at the '90/500' in the top corner of the screen, but she was not quite curious enough to ask if the next 150 turns would be as fast as the first 90. She wasn't getting any particularly helpful answers out of her roommate, anyway.

She returned to her phone, but weekends were never the time for Twitter's greatest hits. She was already bored, but still nowhere near tired enough (and the fake-old-timey music coming out of Hayley's laptop speakers were not helping).

Obviously, Hayley was paying more attention to the game than to whatever conversation Val tried to start up. It was actually like she wasn't listening to her roommate at all. Sort of as if her brain was processing Val's words by instinct, without her ever really consciously processing them, given that her mind was completely immersed in clicking the right option from the apparently infinite menus on the screen.

So, trying to talk would be fruitless. Val scrolled for a few more minutes, but there was no refuge in Instagram either - everyone was too busy in bed or at their post-club maccies to be posting any interesting stories.

But, the boredom did give her chance to think.

Because she couldn't help but notice that while Hayley's answers were short and inattentive, they were still correct. Even if she was answering by pure instinct, her brain was still processing the question Val had asked. And that meant that she was actually making Hayley's brain do something without Hayley noticing.

That was interesting. Val did love Hayley. Obviously, they'd been friends for years now. But she was also... flawed. In a lot of ways which would probably become a lot more grating when they were cohabiting a far smaller space than a student house of six girls.

Val saw a chance to change those habits. And her pretty friend would be none the wiser.

"Hey, Hayley, where would you feel the most relaxed?"

The gamer's head didn't even turn. "I guess, like, a national park? Erm, the Grand Canyon is really big and sublime, right? There."

"That's nice. It's all really big and empty. The wind rushes through it, filing your ears with its hollow howling sound. There is nothing else but the warm rays of the sun and the complete peace inside your mind."

"Yeah, it sounds cool."

"And you want to imagine yourself there. Sitting, cross-legged like you are now, and the sun-heated stone. Feeling a cozy, humid stillness all around you."

"Uh-huh."

"As the wind blows against your skin and brushes your hair against your face, you tune out from the world. But your thoughts are empty. You are completely, utterly relaxed and empty."

"Sure."

"But you still hear the wind, and the whispers on the wind. Whispers in my voice, Hayley. The only thing you can hear, and the only thing that matters." Val whispered, leaning closer to her friend.

"Cool." Hayley said blankly, the mouse in her hand still sliding across the bare floor.

... Okay, so maybe expecting Hayley's pure primal subconscious to do a complicated visualisation induction was too much. Val sighed, the various images of an open-mouthed Hayley sprawled on the living room floor with spaced-out eyes already started to fade from her imagination.

As she turned back to her phone, her previous ideas faded out of her imagination.

And then she realised - Hayley's subconscious was absorbing Val's words, but was unable to form a sophisticated enough response to them for her to be brought into a trance state. But that was with auditory stimuli. Val hadn't tried the other senses yet.

She waved her hand in the corner of Hayley's line of sight. Hayley remained laser-focused on her game, but she still asked, "Yeah?"

But she didn't say any more when Val didn't say anything. She had processed it, but not paid any attention. Perfect.

Val opened the hidden folder on her image gallery. Out of the corner of her own eyes, she scrolled down until she found that one perfect, pulsing spiral. She pressed her thumb to it, and it expanded to fill the entire screen of her phone. Then she placed her phone on the floor, inside Hayley's line of sight. Even that small amount of motion would be an irresistible stimulus on the otherwise completely plain floor (okay, there were a few bits of dirt and spillages from the party, but none around where the girls had made their camp for the 'after-party').

She watched closely. It was almost imperceptible, but she saw the little flicks of Hayley's eyes. They stayed on the screen for the most part, but every few seconds for a fraction of a moment they drifted back to the spiral before returning to their object of attention.

In other words, Hayley was absorbing the spiral, but didn't even realise it was happening.

"You can't look away for too long, Hayley. It's too nice to look at."

"Yeah... It's really nice... Keeps drawing me back..." Hayley answered in a sleepy voice. Her conscious brain wasn't registering the spiral, but that didn't mean that she wasn't still affected by it. Instincts are drawn to sudden movement, they're meant to find things the conscious mind doesn't see. So of course, Hayley's instinctual brain had fallen under especially easy once it had locked on to the constant movement of the spiral.

"Of course. You see the rings move out, like they're trying to escape. But just like you look back at it, the rings fall back to the centre. You are trapped. You are under its spell."

"Yeah, I guess if I'm not looking away I'm trapped. But I feel fine, though."

"Relaxed, maybe?" Val kept her voice smooth. Barely a whisper, but just enough so that Hayley's ears could pick up on it even with her senses attenuated by the spiral.

"Ermmm..."

"You're sat cross-legged on our floor, completely absorbed by the game. You're not thinking, but you are appreciating the spiral. You cannot look away from the spiral and you don't mind. Sounds relaxed to me."

"I guess you're right."

"You're relaxed and under my spell."

"I'm... I'm under your spell."

At no point in their conversation did Hayley's hands stop moving the mouse and tapping hotkeys on her keyboard. She was completely engrossed in the game, just as much as her subconscious was engrossed in the spiral.

"Being under my spell means you'll do what I tell you."

"I guess. I'm busy, though."

Hayley's hand twitched. Her subconscious was trying to contact the conscious. That wouldn't be good. Hayley was not the most wilful person in the world, but if her attention focused on Val there was no way she wouldn't be able to resist the hypnosis. And then... Well, it probably wouldn't be good if her roommate learned she'd tried to give her posthypnotic suggestions.

"No, no, no." Val's voice was hasty and shushing, like a mother whose baby had just started to stir from sleep. "It's okay. Not now. But you'll remember what I say, because I have good ideas."

"Yeah... You're the smart one Val. I'll remember your ideas." Hayley's dreamy smile returned. Her eyes still focused on the screen apart from their brief lapses to absorb the spiral for another stolen moment.

"Good girl, Hayley. You're feeling so nice when you accept my ideas. It feels good to do what you're told." Val pushed slightly, the insistent maternal tone still in her voice.

Hayley responded well. "Sure, whatever you say."

"You're going to always clean up after yourself in the kitchen. When you see your pans still piled on the hob, or your food still in the sink drainer, you'll remember how that will make it harder for Val, and get rid of the mess."

"Of course." Hayley didn't nod, but the order had embedded itself in her brain.

"And if the washing up liquid or the bin liners ever run low, you'll make sure to get a refill the next time you go shopping."

"Sure."

"Oh, and you'll let me know when you're planning to shower every Friday so I can get time to have a long bath at the end of the work week."

"Sounds good."

Val continued through her mental list of 'every thing about Hayley's living habits that will drive me mad'. One by one, with tiny verbal affirmations from her friend, they became the list of 'things that Hayley will do to make my life here easier'. Every order drifted through Hayley's mind. It never touched her current train of thought, or entered into memory. Instead each command was buried into her conscience, her constant subconscious. Hayley was being trained so that her own inner voice would serve as her taskmaster, admonishing her when she failed to do things that would please or help Val, and praising her when she did.

And even now, with her subconscious filled with new commands, Hayley was still obviously enraptured by the spiral.

Val stood up. Her bare footsteps on the floor made little sound, and any they did make were drowned out by the drums of the video-game war that was taking up Hayley's waking mind. So there was no reaction when she walked behind Hayley. None when she lifted up a lock of hair the same colour as dark autumn leaves and twirled it in her fingers. None when she leaned down and put her lips close to a small, cute ear.

"When you're inside the house, you will always be barefoot. You will obey."

"Yep, I will." Hayley said, as if responding to a question about the weather.

All the same, she would obey the command.

Val returned to her phone and locked the screen. Hayley flinched ever so slightly, but after shaking her head for a moment, she returned to her game.

"How long are you going to be at that?" Val asked, back to her normal inside voice.

"Still only in Industrial. Probably another three hours."

"Wow. I'm going to bed now. Don't you think you should put some socks on to warm up?"

As Val passed Hayley's body, she saw her friend's cute, pale face scrunch up in momentary thought.

"No, I'm fine like this. Good night."

It was going to be a very good year, Val thought.

----

The latest addition to the 'Mauri makes a story based entirely around a particular induction idea and tries to stretch it into a proper thing' is brought to you by a time when a friend crashed at my place the night Civ 6 came out. I probably talked to her, but I can't remember a single bit of the conversation because my brain was too busy working out optimal Hansa placements (I played random first game and got Germany, I didn't choose the Bloody Germans on purpose). So this led to a thought of 'if you can hold a conversation completely by instinct, maybe you could be hypnotised like that as well?' because that's how my brain works.

I suppose driving is kinda like that too, but I don't have many good source pics of people driving (many of kpop stars coming out of cars, though). Plus this is just a good source pic, you've probably seen it in like five other manips. That's why I tried to do something a bit extra to spice it up on this one.

So, hope you enjoyed and I'm interested in comments on the execution of the idea I summarised in three lines and turned into a 2 page story, but also in any thoughts on the gif!

Thanks to Dormiria for providing proofreading and extensive discussion about whether hobs are real

Description

The party was over. The house was empty. No, like, really empty. It was their 'housewarming' after all, even though it was just a two-bedroom rented flat. Still nice to have their shared friends around for a night of fun. It was, however, less nice to then clean up and realise most of the furniture would be arriving the next weekend.

Val was pretty sure she could tolerate a week with Hayley in an otherwise mostly featureless house. They'd been roommates since uni, after all. They were not the most similar pair, but they always managed to be comfortable around each other. For instance, they had both immediately changed into their 'lounging around the house' clothes after the last guest was gone, but the outfits themselves were different. Hayley wore a loose, low cut blue top which blended with her jeans - a simple look which was brought together with her equally plain necklace. All the same, her pale, flawless skin was on full show, and even after a long night her messed-up hair still looked gorgeous. Val, meanwhile, wore a black top somewhere between a dress and a jumper, with a tan shawl around her shoulders to further help her resist the night's cold (which Hayley seemed to have no problem with), smoke-coloured jeans which matched her matted, curly hair. Despite attempting to cover up, her olive brown skin still showed between the tears in her jeans.

Both women were barefoot, though even that looked different on the two friends. For Val, it gave her a Bohemian vibe, with her full lips, perpetual smirk and thrown-together-but-still-giving-off-a-cool-vibe clothing. In contrast, Hayley just looked relaxed, entirely comfortable, and entirely uncaring about what anyone might think about the milky skin of her soles being fully on show.

It was, actually, immediately clear that Hayley didn't care what anyone might think about her, because she was entirely focused on the single piece of furniture they had installed in the living room (at her own urging and no small amount of puppy dog eyes). So, she was sat cross-legged on their bare floor, facing a massive TV screen on the wall hooked up to her PC, living the 'playing Civ 6 on my wide-screen TV in my new apartment' dream.

Val, meanwhile, was simply scrolling down her phone screen, waiting for the buzz of the party to wear off so her eyes would feel heavy again and she could finally go to sleep.

It quickly got boring, but she couldn't make any sense of the hexagonal grid of numbers, symbols, and little dudes lighting up their screen. She really had no idea how Hayley could focus on this nonsense after everything else that night, but her friend's eyes remained fixed on the screen with a look of childlike wonder.

"So... it says New York there. Does that mean you're playing as America?" Val didn't especially care about her roommate's weird game, but it was nice to talk all the same.

"Yep." Hayley nodded, then after a few more clicks added, "Going for a Culture Victory this time."

"Oh, is America good for that?"

"Yeah, they get Tourism bonuses." A few more moments of mouth-scrunched-in-thought later, Hayley made a decisive click on 'Medieval Faires' and continued. "New Leader can do cool stuff with National Parks, so I wanted to try that out."

"I totally understand what you mean, Hayley." Val countered in the most deadpan voice her very-East-London accent could do. It was very deadpan.

"National Parks give loads of Tourism in late game. But I need to invest a bit in Faith infrastructure now to make them. Annoying since America has no religion bonus." (Val did think that was kinda weird.) "So I have nothing to spend it on until I get Conservation."

"How long until you get that?"

"About 150 turns."

Val glanced up at the '90/500' in the top corner of the screen, but she was not quite curious enough to ask if the next 150 turns would be as fast as the first 90. She wasn't getting any particularly helpful answers out of her roommate, anyway.

She returned to her phone, but weekends were never the time for Twitter's greatest hits. She was already bored, but still nowhere near tired enough (and the fake-old-timey music coming out of Hayley's laptop speakers were not helping).

Obviously, Hayley was paying more attention to the game than to whatever conversation Val tried to start up. It was actually like she wasn't listening to her roommate at all. Sort of as if her brain was processing Val's words by instinct, without her ever really consciously processing them, given that her mind was completely immersed in clicking the right option from the apparently infinite menus on the screen.

So, trying to talk would be fruitless. Val scrolled for a few more minutes, but there was no refuge in Instagram either - everyone was too busy in bed or at their post-club maccies to be posting any interesting stories.

But, the boredom did give her chance to think.

Because she couldn't help but notice that while Hayley's answers were short and inattentive, they were still correct. Even if she was answering by pure instinct, her brain was still processing the question Val had asked. And that meant that she was actually making Hayley's brain do something without Hayley noticing.

That was interesting. Val did love Hayley. Obviously, they'd been friends for years now. But she was also... flawed. In a lot of ways which would probably become a lot more grating when they were cohabiting a far smaller space than a student house of six girls.

Val saw a chance to change those habits. And her pretty friend would be none the wiser.

"Hey, Hayley, where would you feel the most relaxed?"

The gamer's head didn't even turn. "I guess, like, a national park? Erm, the Grand Canyon is really big and sublime, right? There."

"That's nice. It's all really big and empty. The wind rushes through it, filing your ears with its hollow howling sound. There is nothing else but the warm rays of the sun and the complete peace inside your mind."

"Yeah, it sounds cool."

"And you want to imagine yourself there. Sitting, cross-legged like you are now, and the sun-heated stone. Feeling a cozy, humid stillness all around you."

"Uh-huh."

"As the wind blows against your skin and brushes your hair against your face, you tune out from the world. But your thoughts are empty. You are completely, utterly relaxed and empty."

"Sure."

"But you still hear the wind, and the whispers on the wind. Whispers in my voice, Hayley. The only thing you can hear, and the only thing that matters." Val whispered, leaning closer to her friend.

"Cool." Hayley said blankly, the mouse in her hand still sliding across the bare floor.

... Okay, so maybe expecting Hayley's pure primal subconscious to do a complicated visualisation induction was too much. Val sighed, the various images of an open-mouthed Hayley sprawled on the living room floor with spaced-out eyes already started to fade from her imagination.

As she turned back to her phone, her previous ideas faded out of her imagination.

And then she realised - Hayley's subconscious was absorbing Val's words, but was unable to form a sophisticated enough response to them for her to be brought into a trance state. But that was with auditory stimuli. Val hadn't tried the other senses yet.

She waved her hand in the corner of Hayley's line of sight. Hayley remained laser-focused on her game, but she still asked, "Yeah?"

But she didn't say any more when Val didn't say anything. She had processed it, but not paid any attention. Perfect.

Val opened the hidden folder on her image gallery. Out of the corner of her own eyes, she scrolled down until she found that one perfect, pulsing spiral. She pressed her thumb to it, and it expanded to fill the entire screen of her phone. Then she placed her phone on the floor, inside Hayley's line of sight. Even that small amount of motion would be an irresistible stimulus on the otherwise completely plain floor (okay, there were a few bits of dirt and spillages from the party, but none around where the girls had made their camp for the 'after-party').

She watched closely. It was almost imperceptible, but she saw the little flicks of Hayley's eyes. They stayed on the screen for the most part, but every few seconds for a fraction of a moment they drifted back to the spiral before returning to their object of attention.

In other words, Hayley was absorbing the spiral, but didn't even realise it was happening.

"You can't look away for too long, Hayley. It's too nice to look at."

"Yeah... It's really nice... Keeps drawing me back..." Hayley answered in a sleepy voice. Her conscious brain wasn't registering the spiral, but that didn't mean that she wasn't still affected by it. Instincts are drawn to sudden movement, they're meant to find things the conscious mind doesn't see. So of course, Hayley's instinctual brain had fallen under especially easy once it had locked on to the constant movement of the spiral.

"Of course. You see the rings move out, like they're trying to escape. But just like you look back at it, the rings fall back to the centre. You are trapped. You are under its spell."

"Yeah, I guess if I'm not looking away I'm trapped. But I feel fine, though."

"Relaxed, maybe?" Val kept her voice smooth. Barely a whisper, but just enough so that Hayley's ears could pick up on it even with her senses attenuated by the spiral.

"Ermmm..."

"You're sat cross-legged on our floor, completely absorbed by the game. You're not thinking, but you are appreciating the spiral. You cannot look away from the spiral and you don't mind. Sounds relaxed to me."

"I guess you're right."

"You're relaxed and under my spell."

"I'm... I'm under your spell."

At no point in their conversation did Hayley's hands stop moving the mouse and tapping hotkeys on her keyboard. She was completely engrossed in the game, just as much as her subconscious was engrossed in the spiral.

"Being under my spell means you'll do what I tell you."

"I guess. I'm busy, though."

Hayley's hand twitched. Her subconscious was trying to contact the conscious. That wouldn't be good. Hayley was not the most wilful person in the world, but if her attention focused on Val there was no way she wouldn't be able to resist the hypnosis. And then... Well, it probably wouldn't be good if her roommate learned she'd tried to give her posthypnotic suggestions.

"No, no, no." Val's voice was hasty and shushing, like a mother whose baby had just started to stir from sleep. "It's okay. Not now. But you'll remember what I say, because I have good ideas."

"Yeah... You're the smart one Val. I'll remember your ideas." Hayley's dreamy smile returned. Her eyes still focused on the screen apart from their brief lapses to absorb the spiral for another stolen moment.

"Good girl, Hayley. You're feeling so nice when you accept my ideas. It feels good to do what you're told." Val pushed slightly, the insistent maternal tone still in her voice.

Hayley responded well. "Sure, whatever you say."

"You're going to always clean up after yourself in the kitchen. When you see your pans still piled on the hob, or your food still in the sink drainer, you'll remember how that will make it harder for Val, and get rid of the mess."

"Of course." Hayley didn't nod, but the order had embedded itself in her brain.

"And if the washing up liquid or the bin liners ever run low, you'll make sure to get a refill the next time you go shopping."

"Sure."

"Oh, and you'll let me know when you're planning to shower every Friday so I can get time to have a long bath at the end of the work week."

"Sounds good."

Val continued through her mental list of 'every thing about Hayley's living habits that will drive me mad'. One by one, with tiny verbal affirmations from her friend, they became the list of 'things that Hayley will do to make my life here easier'. Every order drifted through Hayley's mind. It never touched her current train of thought, or entered into memory. Instead each command was buried into her conscience, her constant subconscious. Hayley was being trained so that her own inner voice would serve as her taskmaster, admonishing her when she failed to do things that would please or help Val, and praising her when she did.

And even now, with her subconscious filled with new commands, Hayley was still obviously enraptured by the spiral.

Val stood up. Her bare footsteps on the floor made little sound, and any they did make were drowned out by the drums of the video-game war that was taking up Hayley's waking mind. So there was no reaction when she walked behind Hayley. None when she lifted up a lock of hair the same colour as dark autumn leaves and twirled it in her fingers. None when she leaned down and put her lips close to a small, cute ear.

"When you're inside the house, you will always be barefoot. You will obey."

"Yep, I will." Hayley said, as if responding to a question about the weather.

All the same, she would obey the command.

Val returned to her phone and locked the screen. Hayley flinched ever so slightly, but after shaking her head for a moment, she returned to her game.

"How long are you going to be at that?" Val asked, back to her normal inside voice.

"Still only in Industrial. Probably another three hours."

"Wow. I'm going to bed now. Don't you think you should put some socks on to warm up?"

As Val passed Hayley's body, she saw her friend's cute, pale face scrunch up in momentary thought.

"No, I'm fine like this. Good night."

It was going to be a very good year, Val thought.

----

The latest addition to the 'Mauri makes a story based entirely around a particular induction idea and tries to stretch it into a proper thing' is brought to you by a time when a friend crashed at my place the night Civ 6 came out. I probably talked to her, but I can't remember a single bit of the conversation because my brain was too busy working out optimal Hansa placements (I played random first game and got Germany, I didn't choose the Bloody Germans on purpose). So this led to a thought of 'if you can hold a conversation completely by instinct, maybe you could be hypnotised like that as well?' because that's how my brain works.

I suppose driving is kinda like that too, but I don't have many good source pics of people driving (many of kpop stars coming out of cars, though). Plus this is just a good source pic, you've probably seen it in like five other manips. That's why I tried to do something a bit extra to spice it up on this one.

So, hope you enjoyed and I'm interested in comments on the execution of the idea I summarised in three lines and turned into a 2 page story, but also in any thoughts on the gif!

Thanks to Dormiria for providing proofreading and extensive discussion about whether hobs are real