Rainbow
“Wake up now,” Gloria snapped her fingers.
Neil’s eyes fluttered and he laughed. Where once there was black and white and nothing but extremes, now lived a conflagration of colors, possibilities, and choices, all heightened by the beauty of her eyes.
“You’re the rainbow in my cloud,” he said.
“You’re a rainbow, too,” she smiled.
Two things were at the basis of this one. The first is a quote by the late Maya Angelou, namely
Try to be a rainbow in someone’s cloud.
The second is the notion of deep feelings, or feeling things too intensely for one’s own good. Doing that can lead to highs incredibly highs and lows incredibly low. making things appear more black and white than what they really are. I speak from experience. Feeling things deeply is both a blessing and a curse.
I wrote this one to emphasize the need for balance and to remind myself again of it all. We can all be rainbows, and we can all be clouds. We can all be a little bit of both as well.
A Hypnotic Odyssey
“Do you know what my favorite part of 2001 is, Mr. Kubrick?” The time-traveling hypnotist asked, sitting in his favorite chair. “When Bowman is pulled into the vortex. I have one of my own. What do you think?”
“It’s very pretty,” he drooled.
Clockwork orange beams of light filled the room, shining his will away.
Another one of my time travel shenanigans because those are always interesting to write. The trippy sequence near the end of 2001: A Space Odyssey is ripe for mind-control variations but I always like to add extra nods to these, hence two more Kubrick films are named in the last paragraph. Just a bit of random fun for you all.
Hypnotic Ink
“Alexandra?”
“Yes, General?”
“Why are your last five mission reports in blank?”
“I asked Colonel Gibbons to take care of them for me. Is it my fault he used invisible ink?”
“Invisi… no, of course not,” he muttered, confused.
“That’s what I thought,” she giggled, seeing the big bold red letters reflected in his eyes.
This story just popped in my head, I guess. Making people see things that aren’t there, confusing one’s perceptions is all part of some forms of hypnosis and by now you already know she pretty much excels at every one of them so… A friend of mine recently told me the General is in need of some vacations of his own but I suspect her mischief will haunt him wherever he goes. What about you?
Soul in His Mind
“Recognize it?” Laura asked.
“The Soul Stone…” Nathan gasped. “It allows the user to steal, control, manipulate, and alter living and dead souls.”
“So if I use it on you…?”
“I’ll be your thrall,” he drooled.
“Exactly.”
Laura deepened the trance, grinning. The imagination of a comic book fan is a terrible thing to waste.
As I mentioned before, comic books were never much of a thing for me as I was growing up. They still aren’t but I enjoy watching the movies for the mindless fun they really are. Avengers: Infinity War is coming and it’s going to be big, so I decided to do something with The Infinity Stones or, at least, the idea of one. The image featured above – one I stumbled upon online was – also a source of inspiration as I can definitely see that being used as the focus point of a hypnotic induction. It’s pretty, isn’t it? And yes, I know the Soul Stone or Gem used to have a different color in the past but it’s orange now and orange is one of my favorite colors next to green and purple so all is good. I hope you enjoyed this piece of micro-fiction.