Hypnotized and Humiliated - Chapter 7 Part 2 of 2

Hypnotized and Humiliated

By Karen Singer

Chapter 7 Part 2 of 2

Marian came back to her desk and found an email from Vivian.  She read it three times, shaking her head each time.  She looked up often at Vivian, but the dreaded woman never once turned her head back towards her.  She opened the drawer and found what Vivian had left.  Just as the email had said, she found a tube of lipstick there.  She opened it a bit and checked the color.  Very red.  Ugh!  Nobody wore lipstick like that.  She was only glad that Vivian wasn’t making her wear it!  She paused in her thinking a moment.  At least Vivian wasn’t making her wear it… yet!  She wouldn’t put it past the demented woman though.

She read the email one more time to make sure she remembered all the details.  Then, as per Vivian’s instructions she got up from her desk and went over to Phillip.  “Phillip,” she said in a very commanding voice.  “Come with me!”  She didn’t bother to wait for him, but she headed straight for the break room.  She held the door open while Phillip, with his doll, came in.  Then she closed the door. 

She knew without a doubt that everyone in the other room was watching them intently.  She turned to Phillip and spoke softly.  “With the door closed, they probably can’t hear us.  But that doesn’t help the situation much.  Vivian wants me to make it look like I’m hypnotizing you again to make you do something else stupid.  I don’t want to do this but I don’t have much choice in the matter.”

Phillip shook his head sadly.  “She called me this morning and told me she would be making you do things to me from now on.  And I had to make it look like all the commands came from you and not her… but they were really coming from her.”

Marian nodded.  “That’s about the size of it.”

“So what do I have to do this time?” Phillip asked, not sure he wanted to find out.

“First we make it look good.  Put your thumb in your mouth and suck on it, then close your eyes.  Act like you’re in a trance.”

Hating himself, Phillip did exactly that.  As he closed his eyes and sucked his thumb, a tiny feeling of relaxation came over him. 

“Open your eyes and look at me, but keep sucking your thumb,” Marian instructed.  She waited until he was now looking at her.  “Phillip,” she said, “I’m going to hand you a tube of lipstick.  When you walk out of here, you’re going to stand at the front of the room, just outside this door and face everyone else out there.  Then you’re going to coat your lips heavily with the lipstick.  When you’re done, I want you to smile happily at everyone out there before you go back to your desk.  Watch the clock, every hour you have to grab that lipstick and reapply it to your lips.  Got that?  Stand out in front of them.  Heavy lipstick.  Smile at them as you go back to your desk. Every hour refresh it.”  Marian could see the anger building on Phillip’s face and it looked like he was sucking his thumb harder than before.

 “Remember this comes from Vivian, not me,” she added, hoping it would help.  It didn’t look like that bit of information changed the troubled expression on his face at all.  Well, she guessed she couldn’t blame him.

Moving on, she held out the red lipstick.  “Here, take this now.”  She could tell he didn’t want to do it, but after a second, she saw his face scrunch up a bit and his hand reached out and took the lipstick from her anyway.  Movement just outside the window made her turn her head.  Several of the women were right outside that window, and prominent among them was Vivian with her cell phone - videoing them in there together.  She shook her head disgustedly at Vivian… who just kept aiming her camera at them.

Marian turned her attention back to Phillip. “When I tell you to, remove your thumb from your mouth.  I’ll leave the room first.  Don’t come out for a second or two after I leave.  Ready?”  All she got for her question was a look of hatred from him.  She guessed she couldn’t blame him.  “Wake up!” she ordered, and turned quickly and left the room.   

Phillip removed his thumb from his mouth and looked down at the tube of lipstick.  God he hated his life!  He didn’t want to do this at all.  But the moment he found himself hesitating a bit too long, his right arm suddenly exploded in pain for not following Mistress Vivian’s instructions.  Like it or not, he quickly found himself walking out the door to do as he had been told.  The pain in his arm only dissipated slightly since he was still so hesitant about doing it.  Hating his stupid situation, he stood at the front of the room where everyone could see him.  Mistress Vivian was right there with her cell phone, taking pictures.  Ugh!   Unable to help himself since the order had been given, he opened the tube and twisted the red color up.  The pain in his arm had already started to diminish the moment he got in front of everyone, but now that he was actually doing what she wanted, it disappeared completely.  That was the only relief he felt.

He didn’t have a mirror and he had no idea what he was doing with the stuff.  As best as he could, he pressed it fairly hard to his lips to try to coat them heavily and moved it all around them.  Then he closed the lipstick again while the women were all laughing at him.  Then, because the order had really come from Mistress Vivian and he desperately feared the pain again, he smiled as he walked back to his desk, checked the clock, and got back to work.  He did his very best to bury his head in his computer and ignore the comments from the women that were now raging throughout the room.  Ugh!  He couldn’t imagine hating his life any more than he did just then!

Phillip was the whispered… and not so whispered conversation among all the women.  Both verbally and in emails.  Everyone had seen Marian hypnotizing him again.  None of them questioned why she did it in the semi-privacy of the break room… where everyone could see them, but nobody could hear them.  To most of the women, Marian was a hero again… something that nearly made Vivian laugh!  And now Vivian was extra happy, because now she had another damaging video to use against Marian.  The stupid old cow!  Ha!

Vivian downloaded the video into her computer and started extracting single pictures of some of it.  Those she sent to Marian with the suggestion that maybe she really ought to be sending them straight up to Human Relations instead.  When she turned around to look at Marian, Marian was sitting looking straight at her computer screen, but with her eyes closed as she tried to control her temper.  “Get to work!” Vivian whispered.  For which she got a look of absolute hatred back from Marian.  Vivian nearly laughed out loud again. 

Phillip needed to go to the men’s room.  Going there would be bad enough with the stupid dolly, but now his lips were coated with bright red lipstick as well.  He dared not go!  But if he didn’t go, he’d wind up wetting his pants.  So he really had no choice - he had to go!  He had to humiliate himself in front of even more people, just to go to the bathroom!  Damn these women!  Scared out of his wits, he quickly grabbed Dolly and hurried out of the room… to the tune of several snickers from the women.

As usual, traffic in the hallways was light… fortunately.  But that didn’t mean he didn’t pass all too many people along the way.  He did his best to turn his head away from anyone in hopes that they wouldn’t notice the lipstick he was wearing.  In fact, he was so concerned over the lipstick, that he barely thought anything at all about the dolly in his hand. 

He reached the men’s room and prayed it would be empty!  It wasn’t.  He nearly ran straight into another man who was just heading for the exit.  He saw the man’s strange look as he hurried past him and into the stall where he could close the door and be somewhat alone.  He hurried as fast as he could with his business in hopes of getting out of there before anyone else walked in.  He didn’t even wash his hands afterwards in his haste to get out of there, but he did pause for half a second to check his reflection in the mirror.  No surprise, the lipstick showed up all too prominently.  With the image of his red lips haunting his mind, he hurried back through the halls in front of all too many people… and back to his own room where the women all laughed at him again… and finally back to his own desk where he could finally get Dolly out of his hands. 

His heart was still pounding as he sat down and automatically checked the clock… and realized he was a full minute overdue for having to coat his lips once again.  He tried to delay it, but once again the pain invaded his arm.  And once again it was bad enough that he couldn’t grab that lipstick fast enough and begin recoating his already heavily coated lips.  Yuck!  And for his efforts he was rewarded with the pain going away, and the laughter from the women who noticed him doing it erupting all over again. 

Deeply embarrassed, he looked around the room helplessly, then turned back towards his computer and did his best to get back to work again.  Thinking about work was nearly impossible for a while though because he was too busy thinking about how humiliating it had been to coat his lips like that, and walk through the halls like that.  And worse, the awful taste of the extra lipstick he had just added was starting to get hard to ignore!

It was lunchtime.  “Coming Marian?” Ashley called as all the women headed for the door. 

Marian shook her head disappointedly.  “Can’t,” she replied.  “I’ll get something in a few minutes.”

“Later then,” Ashley said as she disappeared, leaving Marian and Phillip alone in the room. 

Marian looked at her computer screen.  She was working on yet another of what should have been Vivian’s jobs.  She was doing her best to squeeze them in between her own work.  She had no doubt that trying to hurry so much with it all was making the quality of her work suffer, but she didn’t see any way around it.  Her current job wasn’t going to be done for a while.  She got up and walked over to Phillip.  His lips looked terrible!  He looked like a clown!  Not only were they overly coated with the lipstick, but since he hadn’t used a mirror, the lipstick was way outside of where it should be.  She wanted badly to grab a tissue and wipe if all off.  But what would have been the point?  “Deli again?” she asked.

He felt stupid just looking up at her.  At least she was trying to be nice to him.  “Sure,” he replied.

They discussed what he wanted for a moment, then she left… and he went back to work again.  Well, he had nothing better that he could do anyway since he dared not leave in the condition he was.

Marian came back a short while later… to the sight of him once again coating his lips with the lipstick.  Geez!  The poor guy was still doing it even when he didn’t have to.  She amended that thought.  No instruction had been given for him to not do it every hour, even during lunch.  The poor guy didn’t have a choice.  She watched as he finished and then looked up with a very red and embarrassed face that wasn’t nearly as red as the color on his lips.  Instead of talking to her, he turned away from her completely, as if trying to hide how he looked.  She pulled the things she had gotten for him out of the bag and left them on his desk.  Then she went back to her own desk to eat… and continue working. 

“Thanks,” Phillip’s voice finally called a few minutes later. 

Marian looked up, he was eating now, but he still wasn’t looking at her. 

“You’re welcome,” she replied. 

She was just starting to get back to work again, when she heard him speaking again.  “Explain something to me,” he said, still looking away from her. 

“Sure,” she replied, doing her best to try to sound friendly and kind.

“I thought you couldn’t hypnotize someone and make them do something they would never want to do.”

She felt her face clouding at the question.  “That’s pretty much true,” she replied cautiously.

“Then how can she make me do these things?”

It was a moment before she replied.  And when she did, her voice was almost soft enough that he couldn’t hear her.  “Let’s just say that… I have my suspicions as to the reason for that.”

He turned around to look angrily at her.  “So you don’t know!”

“Not… for sure,” she replied.  Although she had a pretty good notion of the one and only reason it could be.  But she was also very sure that he wasn’t ready to hear that answer yet.  Besides, she had no real proof.  No use burdening him with anything more than he was already faced with. 

She had seen him turning angrily away from her the moment she had said that she wasn’t sure.  But now that her thoughts were running in the direction he had started, she asked him, “Phillip, when we came out of the break room earlier and you stood there and put the lipstick on, you weren’t really in a hypnotic trance just then.  You should have been able to fight off doing what Vivian wanted.  So why did you do it?  Why did you humiliate yourself like that?  It couldn’t have been just because I told you to do it.  There had to have been more of a reason.”

He was still looking away from her while she waited for an answer.  She had almost given up on getting that answer when she heard his voice.  “The pain,” he replied. 

She remembered he had mentioned something about pain the day before… and that something had sent chills through her with monstrous possibilities.  “What do you mean?  Tell me about the pain.”

This time he did turn around, but he stared at the floor as he spoke.  “That first night that she really hypnotized me good… made me know that she was in charge of me….”

“Yes?”

“She made me feel pain.  Pain like I’ve never imagined.  She started with one arm and made the pain grow unbearable.  Then she added the other arm.  Then my legs, my body, and even my head.”  He finally looked up at her.  “You can’t imagine how bad it felt.  Trust me, it was worse than anything that you can imagine.”  He briefly turned towards her.  “I was dying all over, it was so bad!”  He looked despondently down at the floor.  “She told me that anytime I didn’t do exactly what she wanted, I would feel that pain all over again.  She told me that only she could take the pain away… and that if I didn’t do what she wanted, then she might not want to take the pain away.  And then….”  He shrugged and turned completely away from her again, facing the other direction.

“And then?” she prompted.

It was a moment before he was able to speak as those horrible memories flooded his mind.  “And then she took the pain away, and the relief felt like the most wonderful thing in the world.”

Marian watched the back of his head as he seemed to ignore her and continue eating his lunch.  She finally asked, “And today?  Were you worried about the pain today?”  She was glad to see him stop eating and turn back towards her again.

“After you left the break room,” he said.  “I thought about not doing it.  And just that fast, the pain hit my arm.  It was bad enough to get me moving really fast.  The pain didn’t go away completely until I opened that tube of lipstick and started to put it on my lips.”  He stared at her for a moment before he finally said.  “I don’t dare not do what she wants.  Every time I even consider it, the pain strikes, and I can’t stand it.  Every… single… time!”  And with that statement, he turned away from her again.

She stared at the back of his head for a moment, then closed her eyes at the futility of it all.  It was the worst case scenario.  The worst thing Vivian could have possibly done to him.  It was all her fears rolled into one.  How had Vivian learned to do that?  And by the time that question hit her, so did the answer.  Vivian didn’t know how.  She had just stumbled on it.  And because she had stumbled across that, it was going to make everything that much harder.  The sound of his voice made her open her eyes to look at him again. 

“Is there anything at all I can do about it?  Anything?”

She didn’t want to say it.  But because of everything else she suspected about him, she had to tell him this much.  “Only one thing,” she said.  “You have to do whatever she says.  Just… do it!  Because if you don’t, and she gets too careless, pain like that could kill you.  And my bet is that she doesn’t even know that!”

“Suppose you tell her.”

She shook her head.  “She’d never listen or even believe me.  In fact, if she did, she might not even care.  In fact, she could even use the knowledge of that against you.”

She saw his eyes widen in fear again.  “But I know about it now.”

She nodded.  “Yeah.  It’s best that you do know.  Just like you know now to be very careful to do whatever she says… until I can figure out how to get you out of it all.”

“Huh!” he grunted, rolling his eyes as if he didn’t believe her.  He turned away again and picked up his lunch to eat a bit more of it.

Sadly, Marian turned back to her own desk.  It was the worst case!  The worst – because of what Vivian had stumbled onto… coupled with what she suspected about Phillip even more now.  Somehow, she had to help him.  Somehow!

It was a few minutes later when Phillip turned around to look back at her.  She was trying to eat some of her lunch again while still working at her computer.  “Why is she doing this?” he asked.  “Why does she have to be so cruel?”

Marian looked at him sadly.  “You want the truth?  Or at least… what I think?”

He nodded. 

Marian sighed.  “She’s drunk!  Drunk on power!  The power of what she’s done has gone to her head and she can’t control it.  She’s on a power high.  And the big problem with that is that she’s still getting into this, which means it’s still growing in her and she’s probably not even aware of it.  And because of that power high, she could get very unstable… and capable of doing anything at all - including all too many really stupid things.  And with as drunk with the power as she could get, she wouldn’t hesitate or even care if she did something disastrous… to anyone.  She wouldn’t care at all!”

Phillip’s eyes went wide again with worry.  “So what do we do?”

“I don’t know yet.  I’m still working on it.  Sooner or later she’s going to make a big mistake and that will be her undoing.”

“But what about us in the meantime?”

She shrugged.  “We do the best we can to get through it in one piece.”