My parents were the easiest to manipulate, even without any special effort: they did all the work themselves.

They were so thrilled to be the parents of an Indigo Child that they were my first worshipers. Of course, they were both New Age True Believers, so when the Indigo Child fad belatedly swept into their consciousness when I was about seven, it became their current passion. Since it also gave them a sense of superiority at being selected by the Higher Powers to be the parents of a superior being, the delusion was self-reinforcing and the adulation they received only added to it. I was paraded out like an idol, at least until I started taking an interest in what was happening and taking a hand in directing it.

And by then, I was ready for it.

To say I was precocious is an understatement. By the time I was five, I was reading at an adult level, but all the adult books around the house were the sappiest New Age drivel possible. Still, it all became part of the act: I could recite and recycle the best and worst platitudes and philosophies from them all from memory, mixing and matching to suit the occasion. Steal from the best, I learned early, and that is what we always did, steal the best from writers ancient and modern. The modern authors, when they caught us stealing from them, took it as validation. At least publicly. And if they privately complained, I would convinced them otherwise: they were so easy to manipulate.

But by then I was eager for real knowledge. Since it wasn’t available at home, where my Luddite parents home schooled me in the worst possible way, I made the local library my second home. I don’t care to remember many times I was politely escorted out of the adult section of the library and shooed into the children’s section, to be among my ‛peers’ who could barely read and write, let alone think coherently. Therefore I treasured the chances to get access to any kind of adult knowledge, especially the encyclopedias. I would devour them, learning speed-reading through necessity and discovering my perfect memory in the process. And if an adult happened to comment, I pointed at the page and would say “I like the pictures.” I learned that would mollify just about everyone. Finally I took the trouble to befriend and charm a couple of the younger and more impressionable staff at the library, who would tolerate my presence and even assist me, especially once I discovered my talents to lie convincingly and tell them this was really for my parents. That opened up a whole larger world of information to me. Later on, those same staff members would say they recognized how special I was and took some measure of assistance in my development.

If only they knew the whole story.

But hiding my full range of abilities was one more way of manipulating people: it was so much fun.

My next victim almost physically leaped at the chance to be hypnotized.

Phaedra was an acting student and quite a good one, quite energetic and out-going. She was also a total vampire groupie, with her ankh necklace and earrings: vampire hypnosis was a hot issue with her, I could tell.

“Crystal,” she said, “one of my teachers taught us some boring meditation techniques to prepare for auditions, but this sounds like a lot of fun.

“What else can hypnosis do?”

She may present herself as being just intellectually interested, but I could see the images flashing through her mind, many from the department’s avant garde production of “Dracula” last spring, where the actress in the title role played up the mesmeric angle of the character’s vampiric female seductions, and how she wanted to succumb to the same passions. In her mind she was already conflating my presence with the image of the actress.

The trouble was that I was already bored with eye-fixation inductions, but I still wanted to take advantage of her predisposition toward vampiric mesmerism. I briefly considered having her play the vampire and select someone else as her victim, but that would essentially mean a second-hand induction and that was just as boring. Instead, I remembered an old movie, where the title character was a female vampire who used a brilliant jewel in her ring as a induction focus to aid her vampiric powers, similar to the ring I wore: with just a touch, I could see that it was a movie that Phaedra had seen.

“I remember an old movie, where a woman used a ring to hypnotize people,” I said. “It was a big crystal ring, much like this one.” I moved the ring to match the motions in the movie, and the image of the handsomely beautiful actress with the deep eyes immediately came to her mind, along with the image of her character using her ring to entrance her victims. “She would catch the light with her ring and reflect it into the eyes of her subjects.

“Much like I am moving the ring to catch the light, to reflect the lights into your tired eyes, as the lights make your eyes heavy, so very heavy.”

The refracted lights danced across her face so very prettily. After a few moments of the lights glittering into her eyes, Phaedra was blinking heavily. In her mind the connection between hypnosis and vampire mesmerism was growing stronger and she was remembering her fantasies about surrendering to a vampire’s control, with my image in her mind as the vampire: connections and images I was going to have so much fun playing with.

“You are going to sleep,” I said, this time more forcefully than the gentle lullaby tones I used with my previous subject, joining my statements with a series of gestures with my other hand toward her eyes. “Sleep, sleep, sleep.”

By this time, Phaedra’s eyes had lost their focus and she was swaying slightly in time with my gestures. She wasn’t aware that she had passed into a light trance: all she had on her mind were some passionate and very erotic seduction fantasies that were being realized by being entranced.

I put my other hand to her face and brought two fingers down before her eyes. “Sleep, Phaedra, sleep,” I said. She obediently closed her eyes and was in a deep trance.

I surreptitiously peeked at my audience, expecting at least one to have followed Phaedra into trance, but they were all simply in awe. Linda, whom I knew was having trouble accepting the fact she was lesbian, was plainly aroused at the sight, but no one else noticed.

“Phaedra,” I whispered into her ear, “just let your mind drift. Until I touch you on the shoulder like this you will ignore all sounds, all speech, just drifting, pleasantly drifting, all thoughts drifting away, sounds drifting away.”

I stepped away from my blissfully entranced subject, letting her sway slightly as her mind accepted my suggestions to drift and has her body responded to those suggestions, her thoughts drifting away on the ocean current of my hypnotic voice.

“Now I am going to give you a demonstration of a hypnotically-induced illusion,” I said to everyone else.

“Phaedra here will think she is sitting alone at home. I will approach her. She will see me as a vampire, as Count Dracula himself, and I will entrance her then transform her into a vampire herself.” Of course, part of that was a lie: Phaedra would see me just as I was, seeing a female vampire, not a male one.

I looked around the room: everyone was expectantly awaiting what I would do next. At that moment, however, I didn’t know what I would do, then I spotted Linda nervously cross and uncross her legs, and I had a sudden flash of brilliance.

“Linda, would you help me? When Phaedra thinks she’s a vampire, I’m going to need a victim for her to feed from.

“Would you come here and be her victim?”

I could tell she had mixed emotions about the idea but she quickly stood and rather brazenly approached me.

“Are you going to hypnotize me, too?” she asked, with a subtle hint of pleading in her voice that only I could detect.

“Just play along with the illusion: that’s all you have to do.”

“Okay,” she replied, again with a subtle hint of resignation. This was going to be much better than I expected. I told her the truth: I wasn’t going to hypnotize her. But I didn’t say anything about Phaedra hypnotizing her.

I took a few moments to instruct Phaedra about the illusion she was about to experience. I told her to sit on the chair someone provided in the center of the room, then touched her to begin the illusion.

Phaedra reached out and picked up a phantom hairbrush and proceeded to brush her long dark hair, humming to herself. She was completely oblivious to everyone else in the room, especially me when I stepped behind her and reached out to her.

I touched her shoulder, and she stood, sending the chair to the floor.

“What, who, what …?” she said.

“Do not speak, do not move,” I said, faking an Eastern European accent.

She started to speak: her mouth moved but nothing emerged.

“Just look deep into my eyes: you are mine.”

“I … I … I am yours, master.”

Her rather sudden submission was quite charming.

“Mine, now and forever.”

“Now and forever,” she replied in a zombie-like monotone, just like the movies and fantasies in the back of her mind.

“Now prepare yourself to become one of the Children of the Night.”

She leaned her head aside, knowing exactly what I intended, revealing the soft skin of her neck. I gently kissed her neck and she sighed in response.

“I have tasted your blood, so you are mine, my thrall, now and forever.

“Now, to complete the transformation, you must drink of my blood.”

I offered her my wrist. As instructed, instead of biting, she kissed the skin on the underside of my wrist, and seemed to writhe in ecstasy.

“You are now one of the Children of the Night.”

“Master, I hunger,” she said to me, turning to me, eyes pleading. That was the other half of her seduction fantasies, and I was ready to satisfy it, too.

“I have anticipated your needs, my Child.

“Look there.”

I directed her gaze at Linda, and Phaedra immediately recognized her.

“Take her as I have taken you,” I huskily whispered to Phaedra. “Use the powers of the Children of the Night to entrance her and feed from her.”

Wasting no time, Phaedra walked over to Linda. “Look into my eyes, Linda,” she said boldly.

Linda, grinning, played along with the illusion, but a few whispers into the back of her mind led her thoughts along paths of lesbian hypnotic submission. Her grin slowly faded as Phaedra’s continued suggestions led Linda’s gaze and thoughts into her eyes. The two began to sway, Phaedra leading Linda slowly back and forth, an erotic dance that entranced everyone else in the room.

“You are mine,” said Phaedra.

“I am yours,” replied Linda, softly, her eyes taking on a vacant stare.

“Mine, now and forever.”

“Now and forever.”

Phaedra drew Linda close, and I could tell Linda’s arousal was about to cause an orgasm. In fact, she came when Phaedra kissed her neck, collapsing into Phaedra’s arms, which sent Phaedra into the depths of orgasm, herself.

In their distracted state, it was so simple to approach them and whisper suggestions of sleep into their ears, and they both dropped deeply into trance. I removed the illusions and suggestions from their minds, allowing the memories to remain, then stepped back a step or two before awakening them both to the applause of the audience.

Phaedra’s face flushed, quite a reaction from someone used to being on stage and in the spotlight, but Linda’s reaction was quite unexpected: she grabbed Phaedra and gave her a deep, wet kiss, which drew an even greater reaction from their audience. Phaedra’s startled hesitation gave me just enough time to whisper a few reinforcing suggestions into her mind, suggestions that washed away any repugnance over the act and encourage acceptance. By the time Phaedra recovered from the shock, she actively returned the kiss, albeit in a friendly way. Then they separated and returned to where they were sitting or reclining, to the intense curiosity of their companions.

I let my audience talk for a few minutes while I secretly reveled in the sensations and the unexpected revelations: second-hand hypnosis, especially when the hypnotist was already under my hypnotic control, was actually quite fascinating. And it opened up a whole new area of research.