Hypnosis
The dark room was briefly illuminated by the flame of a lighter. After the metallic click, smoke escaped his mouth, and the room fell back into darkness.
A man lay on a couch at the center of the room. He stepped closer and lit two candles on the table beside him.
From a nearby bookshelf, he took down a book with no markings or title.
The man under hypnosis was asleep, yet fully conscious. He uncapped a bottle of ink and instructed him to sit up straight and take the pen.
The man dipped the pen into the ink and signed his name on the cover of the book.
He took the book—still closed—and told the man to lie back down. Sitting in the chair beside him, he opened it and read aloud:
“Darkest Secrets by…”
The signature, illegible, served as a placeholder for the name.
With each page he turned, the book shifted in color.
The secrets that surface when this book is read—the ones we try to hide but summon involuntarily, like trying not to think of an elephant and thinking of nothing else.
He watched as they appeared on the pages—dark, buried truths rising one by one.
When he reached the final page, always left blank to make room for secrets yet to come, he stood and shook the book. The ink peeled away from the pages and vanished before it could touch the floor.
He returned the cigarette to his mouth, placed the book back on the shelf, and blew out the candles.
As he left the room, he flicked the cigarette inside, letting it fall—
and the fire began.
