You don't remember deciding to see a hypnotherapist. That's the first strange thing. You find the appointment card in your jacket pocket—Dr. Vera Castellanos, 7 PM Thursday—in handwriting that might be yours but seems subtly wrong, the letters leaning at an unfamiliar angle.
The building is older than the neighborhood around it, wedged between a vegan café and a co-working space like a gap tooth. Her office is on the third floor. No elevator. Each step creaks a different note.
She answers before you knock.
"You're early," Vera says, though you checked your phone twice and you're exactly on time. "I like that."
She's younger than you expected, maybe thirty, with dark hair pulled back so severely it must hurt. Her eyes are pale gray, almost colorless. She doesn't blink as much as other people.
"Come in. Sit anywhere you'd like."
There's only one chair for clients—a leather recliner facing her desk. You sit. The leather sighs.
"So," she says, settling into her own chair, crossing her legs. "What brings you here? What do you want to forget? Or remember?"
"I don't... I'm not sure. I found your card in my pocket."
"Ah." She smiles, and you notice her teeth are very white, very straight. "Then perhaps we've already begun."
The sessions blur together.
Once a week becomes twice a week becomes whenever she calls. And she always calls at the perfect moment—right when you're thinking about her, right when the craving gets too strong.
She teaches you to go under in stages. Ten to one, each number pulling you deeper. By session five, she only has to say "ten" and your eyes start to close. By session eight, she only has to look at you.
"You're very suggestible," she tells you, and you can't tell if it's a compliment or a diagnosis. "The best subject I've ever had."
Her office becomes the realest place in your life. Everything else feels like television—bright and flat and unconvincing. Work, friends, your apartment. Only Vera's office has depth, has texture. Only Vera feels solid.
"Are you doing this to me?" you ask one evening, fighting to keep your eyes open.
"Doing what?"
"Making me... making me need this. Need you."
She leans forward. Her perfume is faint, something like amber and smoke. "Do you want me to stop?"
"I don't know."
"That's not an answer."
"I don't know if I can know. If you're in my head, how would I know what's real?"
She stands, walks around her desk. Perches on the edge, close enough that you could touch her knee. She's never been this close before.
"What feels real?" she asks softly.
"This. You. Everything else feels like a dream."
"And if it's the other way around? If this is the dream?"
You reach for her hand. She lets you take it. Her skin is cool, her pulse slow and steady under your thumb.
"Then I don't want to wake up."
She squeezes your hand once, gently. "Good. Because I haven't finished with you yet."
You move through the world like a sleepwalker now.
Your roommate asks if you're okay. You tell them you're fine, you're better than fine, you've never been better. The words come out smooth and certain, and you believe them while you're saying them. But later, alone, you're not sure if they were yours.
Vera starts touching you during sessions. Just small things at first—her hand on your shoulder as she counts you down, fingers brushing your temple as she tests your trance depth. Then longer touches. Her palm flat against your chest, feeling your heartbeat slow. Her thumb tracing your jaw. Her breath against your ear as she whispers suggestions you won't remember.
"Are we..." you start to ask one night, surfacing from a deep trance to find your head in her lap, her fingers in your hair.
"Are we what?"
"Is this... professional?"
"Does it feel professional?"
"No."
"Does it feel good?"
"Yes."
"Then why are you asking questions?" Her fingers tighten slightly in your hair, not quite painful. "You think too much. That's why you needed me in the first place."
"I don't remember needing you. I don't remember the first time."
"I know." She smiles down at you. "Isn't that nice? Isn't it relaxing, not having to remember everything? Not having to decide everything?"
It is relaxing. It's the most relaxed you've ever been.
She leans down and kisses you, and you don't know if you kiss back or if she's moving your mouth with hers, puppeting your responses, and you don't care. When she pulls away, you chase her lips.
"Not yet," she murmurs. "You're not deep enough yet."
"How deep do I need to be?"
"All the way down. Until there's nothing left that I haven't touched."
Time becomes unreliable.
You lose hours, then days. You'll be at work and suddenly it's evening and you're on Vera's couch, her voice in your ear. You'll be falling asleep in your own bed and wake up tangled in her sheets, her body warm against yours, her fingers still moving in the patterns she uses to put you under.
"Did we...?" you ask one morning, naked in her bed with no memory of getting there.
"Yes," she says. She's already dressed, sitting in the chair by the window, watching you with those pale, patient eyes.
"Was I... was I awake?"
"Define awake."
You try to sit up. Your body feels heavy, dream-slow. "Vera. Tell me the truth. Are you making me feel this way? Making me want you?"
"Do you want to know?" She stands, walks to the bed, sits on the edge. Her hand finds your chest, over your heart. "Really want to know? Because I could tell you. I could tell you that every feeling you have for me is genuine, that I've never influenced you, that this is all real. Or I could tell you that you've been under since the moment you walked into my office, that every word I say is a command, that you're nothing but a puppet and I'm the one pulling the strings. I could tell you either thing."
"Which is true?"
"Does it matter?" Her hand moves up to your throat, not squeezing, just resting. "You're here. You're mine. Whether that's because I took you or because you gave yourself to me—the result is the same."
"It matters to me."
"No," she says gently. "It matters to the part of you that's still trying to resist. But that part is getting smaller, isn't it? Quieter. Soon it won't be there at all."
"Is that what you want?"
She leans down, her lips brushing your ear. "I want you to stop asking questions. I want you to stop thinking. I want you to sink down into that deep, quiet place where you're safe and loved and mine. Completely mine. No doubts, no fears, no uncertainty. Just me."
"What if I say no?"
"You won't." She kisses your forehead. "Ten."
Your eyes start to close.
"Wait—"
"Nine."
Your body goes heavy.
"Vera—"
"Eight."
The room starts to blur.
"Seven."
You're falling.
"Six."
Down.
"Five."
Deep.
"Four."
Deeper.
"Three."
Her voice is the only thing left.
"Two."
You love her. You know you love her. You just don't know if the love is yours.
"One."
You don't know how long you've been here. Time moves like water in Vera's apartment—flowing around you, impossible to hold.
She's kept you home from work. Or maybe you quit. You can't quite remember. She brings you food, water, everything you need. You exist in a permanent twilight state, not quite awake, not quite asleep. Sometimes you surface enough to feel afraid, and she's always there, her cool hand on your face, counting you back down to calm.
"Do you love me?" you ask her one night, or maybe one afternoon. The curtains are always drawn.
"Yes," she says simply.
"How do I know?"
"How does anyone know?" She's lying beside you, her body pressed along yours. Her voice is soft in the darkness. "How do you know anyone loves you? Because they say so? Because of how they act? Love is always a kind of faith. A choice to believe."
"But normal people get to choose with clear heads. You've been inside mine. You've moved things around."
"Have I?" Her fingers trace patterns on your skin—the same patterns she uses for induction. You feel yourself starting to drift. "Or have I just cleared away the noise so you can see what was always there? You were drawn to me from the first moment. That appointment card—you did write it yourself. I was just... standing behind you. Guiding your hand."
"That's not better."
"Isn't it?" She props herself up on one elbow, looking down at you. In the dim light, her eyes are almost luminous. "I saw you before you saw me. I followed you for weeks, learning you, understanding you. I knew you were perfect—so smart, so sensitive, so desperate to surrender to something. Someone. You were looking for me. You just didn't know it yet."
"That's—that's stalking."
"That's love." She smiles. "Obsessive, consuming, unbalanced love. The kind that doesn't ask permission. The kind that takes."
"You're not supposed to admit that."
"Why not? You're mine now. You're not going anywhere. Are you?"
You try to imagine it—walking away, never seeing her again, going back to your old life. The thought creates a physical pain in your chest, a yawning emptiness.
"No," you whisper. "I'm not going anywhere."
"Because I won't let you? Or because you don't want to?"
"I don't know."
"That's the beautiful thing," she murmurs, lowering herself down again, her lips against your throat. "You'll never know. Every moment we have, you'll wonder—is this real? Am I choosing this? Or am I dancing on strings? And that uncertainty will bind you to me tighter than any hypnosis ever could."
"That's cruel."
"That's love too. The uncertainty. The fear. The constant question." Her teeth graze your skin, gentle. "I've been inside your head. I know what you fantasize about. Someone taking control. Someone making the choices. Someone overwhelming you so completely that surrender is the only option. I'm giving you exactly what you wanted. Does it matter how we got here?"
Your hands find her hair, pull her closer. "What if I want to know? What if I need to know?"
"Then I'll tell you." She pulls back, looks into your eyes. The world narrows to her face. "When you're ready. When you're all the way down. When you're so deep that the truth won't matter anymore. When you're so completely mine that reality and suggestion have become the same thing."
"When will that be?"
"Soon," she promises. "So soon. Can you feel it? How close you are? You're already halfway gone. Just a little further."
"And then what?"
"And then you'll never have to wonder again. You'll just know that you're mine. All the way down. All the way real. All the way in love."
She kisses you, and you kiss back, and somewhere in the tangle of lips and breath and touch you realize—you don't want to know. Not really. The uncertainty is what makes it bearable. Because if she told you it was all manipulation, you'd be destroyed. And if she told you it was all real, you'd never believe her.
This way, suspended between truth and illusion, you can have both. You can believe in the love and fear the control. You can surrender and still feel like it's a choice.
"Ten," she whispers against your mouth.
You smile into the kiss, your eyes already closing.
"I love you," you say, and you mean it, and you'll never know if the words are yours or hers, and maybe that's exactly how love always works—
Nine.
Eight.
Seven.
Down into that deep, dark place where she's waiting.
Where she's always been waiting.
Six.
Five.
Four.
Where the only truth is her voice.
Three.
Two.
One.
Zero.
In her arms, in her voice, in the space between waking and dreaming, you finally stop asking questions and start sinking.
All the way down.
All the way hers.
Forever uncertain whether this is the most real thing you've ever felt—
—or the most beautiful lie.