The Safe Room

You had spent many papers and arguments discussing the subtle nuances of hypnotism in college and then in medical school, the former which sought to debunk it as a kind of "role play", and the latter which taught you to utilize it very much as a state-inducing practice, or trance. The latter seems to work better in your shows, and its the latter you intend to bring here, to affect one Alex Poppy in the way you had affected Carl... with obvious differences. Here, in the controlled environment of your office, you would have no interruptions, no background noise, no other entities to ruin the focus... and with a dimming of your lights and the comfort of your couch on his back, Alex is halfway to the meditative state necessary to enter the trance. All that remains is to bypass the critical, conscious mind, to imprint upon the **** "Alex" the very particular patterns and instructions you've devised. Alex's youthful body shifts uncomfortably against the cheap leather of your furniture, and your eyes trace his body, looking for any sign of resistance: clenched fist, jaw flexed to bite the tongue, a pinching thumb and forefinger on flesh. You find no such signs. He is utterly and totally unaware of how to resist you.

"So... I just relax like this?"

"Just listen to my voice, and focus." You walk him through the paces: describing him in a forest, clutching those issues and things over which he frets like shining, glass apples. By your instructions over the next ten minutes, he leaves them, one by one, at the knotted roots of this tree or another, slowly unwinding the conscious fears and concerns and goals of Alex Poppy to leave nothing but the raw, naked nerve of the entity, the human without human trappings. "When I click my pen, it will be the sound of this forest, of this sunlit place, fading to black... and when I click the pen again, it will be replaced with an empty room with no doors, no windows, and one couch, just like the one you're laying on. Your body will not be in this room, Alex. You will leave your body at the foot of a tree, just like the apples, and you... the invisible, true you... will be all that enters this room." Alex doesn't respond, but his breath quickens. He is afraid. Your words are literal to him in this state. Even if he intended to be uncooperative, it is beyond his ability now; he has already entered the trance, and you're now going to have him discard his body as well.

"Sit down by the tree, Alex." You give him a few moments, his lips moving as if to resist... and once you're confident he has done so... you click the pen. Alex's head begins to rock back and forth, looking into the blackness of the nothing place you've deposited him. His breath speeds up, his chest rises and falls notably-

You click the pen again.

A sharp inhale... and fast, worried exhale. "You're safe here, Alex. Breathe deeply, and slowly. There is nothing in this room but the couch, and my voice, and your invisible self." His breath slows. "Alex... here, in this room, only the truth can be said. I cannot tell a lie here, nor can you. The forest has lies; they hid in the bushes, behind trees, in the canopy- but here, with only my voice, and this couch, and your invisible, true self... there can be no lies. Everything I say, then, must be true, and everything you tell me must also be true. Also, anything we discuss here will never leave here: the Safe Room keeps inside all that is shared and revealed, and no one, neither you nor I, can ever speak of what was said or what happened here. This is why this is called the Safe Room: it is the room with only truth, where only that which can be trusted exists. It is also why it is so lonely here: because in this room are the only things that will not lie: my voice, your voice, and hard, empirically-proven, inanimate reality. Do you understand?"

"I do..." His voice is soft and feminine. He no longer forces that deep, false voice he tries to effect from day to day, the kind that slips whenever he grows upset. How quickly this mental construct works: if he's already dropping that life-long practice, then your procedure is complete. Alex Poppy is now totally under your control... and now you need only test it.

"Alex," you begin, "we're going to discuss a number of topics, and I will be the one to choose them. You do not have a choice in answering, nor is there any threat or danger in answering or believing anything I could say; we are in the Safe Room, and you are absolutely safe here. Do you understand?" He does. "Alex, what is your general impression of me?"

"I think you're a cisgendered, hetero-normalist pig male who collects checks and wastes my time, but one that has to be tolerated to shut my parents up. I think your whole medical practice is bullshit, and you're probably racking in some nice cash working with those cow-whore doctors that try to fatten me up and otherwise 'normalize' me to fit into their cookie-cutter society."

You hold your breath, even as you feel anger bubbling inside of you. Well, you DID ask for it, didn't you? "Do you trust me, Alex?"

"Here, in the Safe Room? Of course. It's impossible for you to deceive me. But in the office, in the flesh? Of course not. I have a **** alarm in my pocket, and I'm always ready to press it if you try anything. Sometimes I think about doing it whenever you piss me off, too, just to watch you get hauled off."

Jesus Christ. No one warned you he was like this... and who did such an alarm notify, exactly? Is it a loud noise, to bring in the driver his parents have waiting in your lobby? These questions aren't important, of course... fact is, you almost got that news broadcast on you after all, though you were blithely unaware of about how. How would you fix this? You thought you'd convince Alex that he wasn't bulimic or anorexic or whatever else you wrote down on his laundry list of alleged issues, but... but this kid- no, this legal adult is fucking poison! You can't stop there... what would you do, then? How would you be able to cover every base and ensure the soon-to-be-rich shithead didn't fire you or, worse, get you arrested on false allegations?! No... no, there was no way you could keep him under this influence long enough. You'd need to go a bit further... and you can't risk the Safe Room technique not working later. You have to somehow make your office a "Safe Room" as well, or else he'd...

He'd...

... wait. That's not what you'd somehow do. That's exactly what you'd do!

You clear your throat, and steady your words to not risk breaking the peaceful illusion. "That is... that was the right thing to do and think, Alex," you carefully word, "but only because you didn't know the whole truth. This is the whole truth: even in the real world, I am bound by a compulsion that I cannot resist or fight. The compulsion is this: I cannot lie to you or mislead you inside my office. Anything I say to you, in the office and nowhere else, is absolutely true, is perfectly believable at face value, and never has the intention of misleading you or excluding important information. That office, like this Safe Room, binds me to tell the truth. After we leave the Safe Room, it will also bind you to tell the truth and honestly present all things, just as it will continue to bind me. That means that, for you and me, the office will become a Safe Room, a place without fear, lies, or danger... and like the Safe Room, everything that happens there remains a secret between doctor and patient. If any should ask you to reveal what occurred, and you are compelled to reveal it, then you must mislead them by describing some basic exchange, such as what we've had before today. These rules now bind you, as they have always bound me. Do you understand?"

"I... I do. The therapist room is a Safe Room, too. Everything you say there must be truth. Everything I say must be truth. All that is said within must remain a secret, even if I must lie to achieve this."

"Do you understand what that means, about what you thought I was doing and plotting?"

"I understand. It means... I was wrong."

"That's right, Alex, but it's OK. You didn't know, and no one can blame you. But now you do know, and now we're both bound by the rules of the Safe Room. Is this true?"

"Is it... is it true? Of course it is," he giggles, more girly than ever, "this is the Safe Room after all." His eyes roll under closed eyelids, and you peer down at him with a dry mouth and an excited electricity coursing through you. At some point you got up to stand over him, and you nearly brought him back before retaking your seat.

"Alex... when I click my pen..." The motions to get him back, to complete the 'Safe Room', are simple enough... but the anticipation, to wait on the results, is killing you. You had put Carl in the Safe Room to give yourself the honorary title; you had done it to a bartender to show off and she cleared your tab for the night (now that you think about it, it's probably going to be cleared every night, for however long this lasts). But this... what you're asking Alex's conscious mind to accept, as instructed by the **** mind, is madness. Would it be strong enough? How could you test its limits? The safest way was obvious... one of his afflictions, one you knew wasn't real, or rather was being **** to seem real and carry with it all the damage it was doing to his body. Bulimia seemed a good target for this. If it didn't work, you knew you went too wide with the Safe Room and would need to try again... presuming you'd get to try again.

You click the pen twice, and Alex returns from the forest, having collected his things and re-entered the real world. The trance breaks, and Alex's eyes simply open, following a bored sigh into reality. "Is that it?"

"... That's... that's it, Alex." The presence of that alarm in his pocket sure makes you consider every word carefully from now on... at least, if this didn't work. "Do you remember what we discussed during the hynposis?"

"You... told me to relax, so I did... honestly, I think I fell asleep." You nod. When at last he sits up, he's back to his deeply resentful tone... though he no longer tries to fake a masculine depth. "So... did that really do anything, or do my parents pay you to put me to nap? I hope you didn't do anything fucked up-"

"I didn't do anything wrong while you were hypnotized," you quickly say, too quickly. God, that came out so suspiciously that he's probably going to think something far-

"Oh, good."

... Good God. "Alex, are you bulimic?"

"What? Of course I am!" Well, perhaps it- "I mean I can quit anytime, but far as I've read I'm a textbook bulimic! I've worked hard at it, I'll have you know."

You press your body into your soft, comfortable chair. The chair was a whopping $399.99 at the discount office supply store where you bought it, but it was also the nicest piece of furniture you ever bought for yourself. (You don't count the couch Alex is sitting on; you never get to enjoy that, after all.) You used up what remained of your savings to get it when you opened this practice... and now that would be nothing. Your new technique is... no, it's not a technique. A practice. A whole new field of-! But what if the government would pay even more- wait, no. Calm down, Frank, you're no genius and you're no pioneer of your field... EXCEPT NOW YOU ARE, GODDAMN RIGHT YOU-!

"Why... why are you... what are you doing?"

Big, stupid grins accompanied by quiet fist pumps are not appropriate responses to someone admitting they're bulimic... well, when think they've admitted they're bulimic. "I... I'm just so very happy for you," you say in a sarcastic voice, testing his limits, "given that now we know you're not actually bulimic."

"Oh... right, well I guess I'm not actually bulimic. Why is that?"

Apparently he still accepts it at face value, despite your overt attempts to appear insincere... you strangle your excitement, afraid that somehow that would give you away when blatant sarcasm didn't. "Bulimia is a mental, eating disorder, which means you have to be compelled to be bulimic. Willfully trying to become bulimic doesn't count... and, you may not have known this, is very offensive to people who do suffer from it."

"Oh shit- I'm sorry, I didn't know! I'll stop then... I mean, I don't really care if they're offended? But if all my trying doesn't mean anything then I guess I'm not bulimic."

"Given that, will you stop binge eating and purging?"

"Well... Well yeah, I mean what's the point of doing it? It sucks."

"I... I did it."

"Huh?"

You don't even bother answering Alex right away, such is your rabid excitement. You could treat everything... and secure yourself from everything... in regards to Alex! Hell, depending on the success rate of this technique, maybe even all of your patients! How would you squeeze money from the scientific world from this, though? And... what if... and your excitement dies as you consider it: what if the government decides its too dangerous to allow its spreading? Wait, wait, wait a minute Frank... it's not all green pastures from here... from thieves to assassins, you risk plenty by thinking about letting this out... and besides, you haven't even really tested it out, or made sure it doesn't hurt people...

The question of additional trials, the question of the long-term effects, the question of money, and the question of how to address them all without alerting the public early... all roads led to the same place, the same 18-year-old trans-male, ready to inherit millions and presently under your most potent instructions using this new hypnosis technique.

"Uh... doctor?"

"Please, Alex," you chuckle with a grin, "call me Frank... it's the appropriate way to address me from now on while we're alone in these sessions, given our fifth successful meeting."

"Oh... OK, Frank. But what did you do?"

"Oh... well, I helped you understand you're not bulimic, so does it worry you less now?"

"Well no... I mean, I... I don't know. I guess it's kind of... a bummer."

"Well we'll find some way to cheer you up, Alex, don't you worry." Cheer her... no, cheer him up... your eyes and mind drift while Alex contemplates the **** desire to be troubled for whatever attention he's seeking, and suddenly you wonder how far, indeed, you could take this newfound power.