But hiding my abilities soon became a priority.

Other parents wanted their children to associate with an Indigo Child, and some were even willing to “donate” to the cause to expedite the process, so every weekday afternoon, myself and over a dozen other children were gathered together in one or another home, to do what children will do. My parents and their parents thought it was a great honor, but for me, still at the stage when I wasn’t quite willing or able to take control over my destiny, it was a great trial and a great bother to associate with people much inferior to myself. I already knew I was different, but I never quite understood how different I was until I started associating with children of my own temporal age. I didn’t think there wasn’t anything these children could teach me, but I was wrong.

I learned one great lesson: that being different meant threatening and dangerous; therefore, adopting a kind of adaptive coloration became an instinctive act of self-protection. It wasn’t personal experience that led me to that conclusion, but careful observation. Children and their social structure are a microcosm of the adult society, and even more brutal and careless. The weak were terrorized, the strong were placated, and, most importantly, the different were shunned and tormented. Any little defect or difference from the norm, or sign of weakness or superiority, could trigger the herd instinct to turn against the outsider, and I, with my strange white hair and amethyst eyes, not to mention my few but critical mistakes at revealing my true level of intelligence, possessed all of those traits.

A whole tribal structure evolved almost overnight within this group, but I did have a short time before the children all turned against me: the deference their parents had toward me made the rest pause and wonder, and that gave me time to plan my strategy. I could have used any number of ways to protect myself: the most natural and the most boring way was to charm my way into becoming the center of attention, forming my own little circle of admirers, mirroring that of my parents’ adherents. I could fade into the background, shying away from attention and difficulties, which would have been almost impossible, given the circumstances, or I could become the bully, myself, or the strange child that no one wants to associate with, but any of those would be noticed by the adults and some action would have been taken to change things. Instead, I chose the most interesting way.

I chose one of the more charismatic but quite unimaginative of other children, a boy named Richard, and quickly befriended him. Richard, not Dick or Rick or Ricky, he was to be called Richard, or so his parents instructed us, but it was I who gave him his nickname of “Chief” and the rest of the children accepted it and the role it implied. Through him, through my manipulations of him, I would direct and re-direct the formation of our little social order for my own protection. The rest of the children, too young to realize what was going on, accepted “Chief” as the leader and my role in his dominance went unnoticed, all the while I was guiding him, offering ‛suggestions’ and ‛recommendations’ that he accepted as his own. Through him, I controlled the group, meting out punishments and giving rewards, all with the ultimate aim of protecting myself, and, along the way, instilling some little knowledge and instruction that would also benefit the others, as well, almost by accident.

All in all, it became a well-spent several months, and I actually learned quite a lot. Manipulating people in any and all ways became a unconscious part of my nature; manipulating people’s impressions of me became an integral part of my being.

It was also so much fun.

I could tell that Veronica would be a challenge: she had control issues and trust issues that made her very reluctant to let down her guard, especially involving hypnosis, or, rather, her stereotypical impressions regarding hypnosis. It was one of those occasions where stereotypes were working against me. She was having second thoughts about this whole hypnosis thing: thoughts about walking out were playing through her mind, using a headache as an excuse, and that I would not allow, for more than one reason.

I started talking about how hypnosis could be used for pain control, all the time monitoring her thoughts. Just when it appeared that Veronica was about to make her apologies, I said “Veronica, I can’t help seeing you’ve been rubbing your temples: do you have a headache? Hypnosis can be a great tool for pain relief.”

She looked startled: the others had noticed it, too, something she wanted them to notice, but now that I turned it against her, her plans to leave were quickly nullified.

“Why don’t you come over here and let me help you.”

She reluctantly came forward and sat on the chair Phaedra used. I stood behind her and gently touched her shoulders. “Most headaches are caused by muscle tension, so let me take care of that first.” A massage would certainly deal with most of it, from what I could tell, and also give me the way past her defenses into her more-than-average vulnerable inner self. I learned that skill from one of the other Indigo Children, a reiki master and a pretty good masseuse herself. Pretty soon Veronica’s muscles were pretty loose, and her headache was almost entirely gone. That alone prompted her to stay.

But what I was about to do would prompt her to be hypnotized.

I then started slowly rotating her head, just another part of the massage, or so she thought, slightly at first, then wider and wider. The disorientation it caused allowed my soft words of relaxation and sleep to slip through her defenses, and soon her eyes were drooping and her breathing getting slower and slower. She never consciously realized she had passed into a light trance until I began deepening it, when she fuzzily noticed her arm beginning to float up into the air in response to my suggestions, and by then it was too late. It certainly helped that by then, I was whispering soothing feelings of comfort and relaxation into the depths of her mind, and she found that she really enjoyed the feeling. But it wasn’t enough to get her to go any deeper into trance: her defenses were still pretty strong. I didn’t have the time to subvert them or bypass them, but then, I really didn’t need to: my audience was expecting a show, and now was the time to begin.

When I directed her arm to drop back down into her lap, her eyes finally closed: she didn’t go as deep as her predecessors into trance, but deep enough for what I was about to demonstrate. I was so amazed when I learned that hypnotic anesthesia only requires a relatively light trance state, one that almost anyone could attain, one that Veronica was definitely at: it seemed so logical that something as powerful as controlling pain should require a deeper state, but personal experience showed that wasn’t the case. Which was fortunate, as Veronica was really only capable of a relatively light depth of trance at this time, barely sufficient for my purposes, but my audience didn’t need to know that.

I started by numbing her hand and then pinching it painfully, but she didn’t even flinch: I showed my audience the red impressions my fingernails left in her skin as proof, and more than one of the viewers rubbed the back of their hands sympathetically.

But that was only the start.

I asked Becky for a needle or pin and something to sterilize it, and she supplied a rather large sewing needle and the bottle of hydrogen peroxide she kept in the bathroom. I took a handkerchief and rubbed the peroxide over the needle and over Veronica’s hand, then poked the needle across the back of her hand several times. At no time did Veronica even so much as flinch, even though her automatic nervous system should have responded.

For my finale, I pushed the needle through the fleshy part of the hand between the thumb and forefinger, leaving it positioned half-way through, then showed the results to everyone, who all leaned closer for a better look. I didn’t let her see it, though: I could tell she would freak if she saw that rather gory image. I removed the needle and whispered a command to her subconscious to close the wounds down using her sub-cutaneous muscles. In a few moments the wounds would be clotted and closed and then they could relax, but the image of bloodless wounds was the one I wanted to preserve in their memories.

As Becky replaced the items, I brought Veronica back up from her trance. When she awoke, Veronica looked and acted like she just had a long, refreshing nap, and was now more than willing to stay for the rest of my demonstrations. Which was the most important part of her whole performance.