Magenta

[rubus]

The Marvelous and Mesmerizing Mistress Magenta, known to her friends as “Debbie,” had a cold.

Debbie was disciplined and meticulous on tour, washing her hands often, applying sanitizer when a tap was too far, and avoiding public places except when performing.  But when you were in a different city every few days, you got a whirlwind tour of the nation’s up-and-coming viruses no matter how careful you were, so she was only mildly surprised that she’d caught something.

It was a heck of an inconvenience, though.  Her costume - red fishnets, black bustier, very sensible flats - left little to the imagination, and even less to the task of stashing a tissue.  She was glad she worked with an old-fashioned hand mic instead of a headset or the fancy bone-conduction doohickey she’d been drooling over.  At least she could hold the mic away from her face when she sniffled.  But sniffling was all she was going to do tonight.  She’d taken enough OTC cold medicine to keep a mastodon from sneezing.  That had been before dinner, but she just had to make it through the rest of this performance, and then she’d be done for the night.

“Now,” she said, as the crowd finished applauding for the teenager who had made a very convincing puppy, “I’m going to need some new volunteers.”  Her eyes scanned the front row, lingering a little over the sweet young thing whom she’d caught staring at her in the hotel lobby.  She’d been having a sneezing fit, and she’d only noticed him when she wiped her nose after.  He looked a bit surprised to be caught staring.  She’d smiled.  He’d smiled back, shyly, but then Debbie’s attention was called back to fixing her daily allowance of hotel registration screwups, and by the time things were sorted, he had vanished.

And now here he was, The sweet young thing wore the same button-down green shirt, but not the same confidence.  He cast his eyes down and aside, trying very hard not to be noticed.  Usually the front row were, if anything, too eager, but apparently he just wanted a good view - what with women who can’t hide tissues being a turn-on for so many - and was as close to the stage as he wanted to get.

Probably just as well, she thought with a sniffle.  “This is another light warm-up bit. If you want to volunteer but you’re concerned about becoming a willing zombie sacrifice to the volcano gods, this is your time to shine.”  That got a little bit more of a laugh than last time.  She was still honing the line, which had come out spontaneously a few shows ago.  “Yes,” she said, pointing to a zaftig brunette in the third row who met her eyes confidently, “and… there in the fourth row, three in, with the fabulous shirt.”  The young man was wearing a short-sleeved shirt that, from a distance, looked like it was made of diamonds.  “And, oh… yes, you,” she said, “all clad in black, your gothy highness.”  The crowd laughed, pleasantly, and the woman, a thirty-something bombshell with spiked blonde hair, grinned as she popped her gum and joined the other two volunteers headed toward the stage.  With a grand and sweeping gesture at the three new volunteers who stood in front of folding chairs, she said, “Let’s have a round of applause for our brave adventurers,”  She took the opportunity to sniffle while the crowd complied.

“All right,” she said, coming to the burnette. “What’s your name?”

“Becky,” the burnette replied.

“Thank you.  Becky, I’d like you to repeat after me.  Are you ready?”

“Are you ready?” Becky said.

The crowd laughed.  Debbie grinned, stepping back and gesturing to the burnette as if presenting a star.  “Becky, everybody.”

“Becky, everybody,’ said Becky.

There was another laugh.  Debbie snuck in a sniff just before it died down, then took a breath and said, into the microphone but directed at Becky, “Moses supposes his toeses are roses, but Moses supposes erroneously.”

Becky scrunched her eyebrows together.  “Mo-suppoth pth bleah.”  She smiled sheepishly at Debbie.  “Sorry.”

“You can stop.  And it’s all right.  I bet you’re not alone.”  She moved on to the shiny-shirted man.  “And your name is?”

“Dexter,” he said.  She debated making a serial-killer joke, decided against it.

“All right, Dexter, repeat after me.  Chester chooses chestnuts, cheddar cheese, with chewy chives.”

“Chester chooses…. Chest….nuts…”

“I know most people prefer a man who takes his time, Dexter, but the show’s only ninety minutes long, c’mon.”  The crowd laughed, again pleasantly, but Dexter tensed.  Debbie turned her head away from the audience, just long enough to give Dexter a private and conspiratorial wink, and she saw him relax.

“All right,” said Dexter, “here goes nothing.   Chester chooses chestnuts, cheshire gees, wi fewchy kives.”

“Brilliant,” she said, to mild laughter and an embarrassed smile from Dexter.

“Now, your highness,” said Debbie as she came to the gum-popping goth.  “Your name is?”

Debbie was expecting “Elvira” or “Dominique” or something ridiculous like “Magenta”, but she got, “Ann.”

“Thank you Ann.  Repeat after me.  Sinful Caesar sipped his snifter, seized his knees and sneezed.”

Ann smiled.  “Nnnnnnnnnope.”  This got laughs and a smattering of applause.

“I really do have to say, Ann, that’s the worst attempt to repeat that tongue twister that I’ve ever heard.”  

The audience laughed, and Ann laughed along.  “It seems like maybe Ann needs a little encouragement.  Can we have another round of applause for Ann, Dexter and Becky?”

Debbie scanned the crowd as the applause crescendoed.  The sweet young thing had eyes glued to the goth, and while she wasn’t surprised, she was, to her amusement and irritation, disappointed.

The applause hit its peak, held steady a moment, and then died down.

“All right, okay,” said Ann.  “But you have to give it to me again.”

“Sinful Caeser sipped his snifter, seized his knees and sneezed.”

“Okay,” the goth said, “I’ll give it a go.  Sinful Caeser seeped his sniffer, seized hees snez and sneed.”

“Much better,” Debbie said.  Anne gave a short curtsy while the crowd laughed.

“Most of us find tongue-twisters challenging, even impossible.” Debbie strolled slowly down her short line of volunteers.  “But the problem isn’t the words.  The problem isn’t your tongue.  The problem is your mind.  We spend so much energy watching for mistakes that we make ourselves make them.  If we can get the conscious mind out of the way, if we can just let ourselves speak… well, the most malignant mouthful’s menace melts away.”  A few of the crowd laughed.  She took a moment to look away and sniffle.

She’d reached the end of her strut.  “So, I’d like to invite each of our volunteers to take a seat, and relax.”  

Right now, the tempo was still ramping up, the audience still willing to wait a bit.  In fact, right now making them wait was to her advantage.  “I want you to focus your attention on the top of your head,” she said.  “Don’t worry about your eyes.  You can keep them open or you can let them close, just focus on the top of your head.  There are muscles there, not ones you can control consciously, but they can store tension.  I want you to just imagine a relaxing warmth on the top of your head, and when you’ve got that, when you can really feel it, just nod slightly.”

Becky nodded first, Ann last, which is how Magenta figured it would go.  She guided them through a textbook relaxation induction, getting them to relax their faces, their necks, their arms, steadily working her way through their hands, backs,legs,feet.  Half her attention was on the audience, half on the volunteers.

Okay, 44% on subjects and on audience, 12% on sniffling off-mic.

“And now you find yourself, so wonderfully relaxed, and when you’re this relaxed it’s easy to focus.  I want you to focus on the sound of my voice…”

She took another couple of minutes to complete the induction.  Her subjects looked to have successfully found a nice suggestible trance state.

“Now,” she said, “Becky, Dexter, Ann, I want you to speak clearly, and loudly.  You can easily speak and remain so wonderfully relaxed, so deeply hypnotized.  Repeat after me.  Around the rugged rocks the ragged rascal ran.”

The volunteers did so, easily and clearly, although without much inflection. The crowd applauded Becky, Dexter and Ann’s success  Debbie knew that at least half the reason for it was that most people actually found that particular twister easy.  But most of the crowd didn’t know that, and her volunteers wouldn’t be thinking about it.  They just knew that they’d failed at a tongue twister, gone into trance, and then succeeded.  Now that they were convinced they could do it, Debbie was confident they actually could.

So, time for something harder. “If two witches were watching two watches, which witch would watch which watch.”

The volunteers performed just as well with the more challenging material, to more applause.  “Now until I again say the words ‘repeat after me,’” Debbie said, “you just sit,letting your minds  drift, noticing how comfortably relaxed you are, how thoughts drift through your head and just fade away.  You can listen or let my words just pass you by, just notice how easy it is to stay so relaxed and so entranced.”  She started to turn back to the audience, stopped, then stopped herself from bringing her elbow up to her nose because she wasn’t going to sneeze.  She wriggled her face, a bit, mentally scolding her nose.

She blinked, hard, a few times, then faced the audience.  “So far what we’ve seen is just the removal of inhibition,” she said.  “So far all we’ve asked of our volunteers is that they get out of their own way, and you can see how powerful - and entertaining - that can be.”  She heard laughter and a few people murmuring.  This was good.  This was right.  She was in her groove now.  She could tell from the noises from the crowd that they she had them in the palm of her hand. People thought it was just the volunteers who entered a trance, but Debbie put the relaxation induction early in the show because, in her experience, a good portion of the crowd would end up at least lightly hypnotized, which made them better subjects on-stage.

“But hypnosis offers so much more.  Imagine if you could run faster than you’d thought possible.  Imagine you could draw like da Vinci.  Imagine you could speak a language you’d never learned.”  Two of those things were possible, more or less, with the right hypnotist and - far more importantly - the right subject.  But if the audience opened their minds to consider the impossible, the unbelievable could easily get through the door.

“That’s the kind of thing we’re going to explore tonight.  But, first, let’s ask our volunteers for one more tongue twister.”

She took the opportunity to sniffle again as she walked back to her volunteers.  “Repeat after me,” she said.

She paused.

The pause was for dramatic effect, but it was also to give her a chance to take in enough air for what she was going to say next, assuming… yes, all her subjects had imitated her inhalation.

Her breath stuttered, and then she breathed in again, sharply.

Dammit. No.

She was throwing her head back, against her own will.  She squeezed her eyes shut tight, held her upper lip in that ridiculous position that let her somehow put pressure on her nose from inside itself, but her lungs were taking in air in a jagged rhythm and she couldn’t…

It was not the sort of dainty and controlled sneeze one would expect from The Marvelous and Mesmerizing Mistress Magenta.  It was loud, and wet, though fortunately it was only producing transparent fluids so far, and no solids, and she managed to avoid getting the sweet young thing wet, or anyone else in the front row.

And, to her surprise… her volunteers sneezed.  When they’d said tongue twisters they’d been in unison, but the sneezes came slightly. Ann had the dainty sneeze the audience would have expected of a Mistress Magenta.  Dexter practically shouted as he sneezed, “aaaaaaAH CHOO!” as if he were a martial artist delivering a devastating blow.  Becky’s sneeze shook her entire body, head to toe.  

A smattering of sneezes came from the audience as well, a panoply of surprisingly-diverse sounds coming in no particular rhythm. Debbie had to stifle a laugh, because really this could turn into a disaster and she had to get control back.  Fortunately, stifling the laugh was easy.  Unfortunately, it was because she was going to sneeze again.

There was really no point in holding back.  Sneezing twice on stage wasn’t that much worse than sneezing once.  But she’d been suppressing her body’s needs for hours now, so the force of the sneeze surprised her.  She almost doubled over with the reflexive effort, and when she opened her eyes, her head hurt. 

And her volunteers sneezed along with her, Dexter delivering another strike, Becky’s body shaking, and this time Ann had a little volume to her.

And about twice as many of the audience sneezed this time.

Well, of course.  People believed you were more likely to sneeze if someone else did.

And now, oh, crap.  Becky sneezed again.  She’d heard someone in the audience sneeze, perhaps, and assumed it was Debbie - with her eyes closed, all she really knew was that Debbie was somewhere over there, so it was an easy enough mistake to make.  Dexter and Ann, and a quarter of the audience, heard Becky sneeze and subconsciously concluded they were running behind and they should sneeze too, which they did.

Which meant that whoever it was that Becky was keying off in the audience also sneezed again.  And then Becky sneezed,  aaaaaaaand… and now there was a feedback loop.

The audience had no idea what to do.  At least a third of them were sneezing now, some nearly somnolent, some to their active irritation.  There was laughter, tentative and uncomfortable, and applause, scattered and uncertain, and grumbling, barely audible, but unsettling to Debbie’s experienced ears.

Debbie took a breath, took a moment to stop her mind from freaking out.  She’d been in her groove just a moment ago, she thought;  it shouldn’t take her long to get back.   She took a deep breath and said, “now, I’m going to count to three, and when I - “

And then she sneezed another time.smacking herself in the forehead with her microphone as she doubled over.

As she righted herself, she noticed the sweet young thing in the green shirt, in the front row, mouth hanging open, legs crossed as if he had something to hide, and eyes filled with a mixture of primal yearning and despair.  But he wasn’t looking at the goth anymore.

He wasn’t looking at Debbie, either.

His eyes were fixed on Becky, who sneezed again, so hard her chair rocked.

Debbie stared for a moment, trying to make sense of the sweet young thing’s changing focus… and then remembered that he’d noticed her in the lobby right about the time she’d had a sneezing fit. 

She was struck with inspiration.

She rejected the inspiration as a horrible idea.  She had a show to get back under control.  She had people to make happy.  She had ethical standards to uphold.

And the inspiration whispered to her that maybe she could spend just a minute on two specific people… it wouldn’t take too long, she could still get the crowd back, and while it might walk right up to the ethical line… if she was careful, she wouldn’t actually cross it.

She crouched behind Becky, whispered so that only she could hear.  “When you open your eyes you’ll notice a young man in a green shirt, sitting  in the front row.  You will find it very easy to read him.  And you might find that, if and only if you want to, it’s easy and comfortable to interact with him in whatever way is best for you.  And if you choose to interact with him, you’ll find it’s easy to make good, wise decisions about it.” 

There.  That might work, might not.  She brought the microphone up again.  “Thank you, ladies, gentlemen, those between, and those beyond.  Now.”  She turned to face the volunteers, pretending like the audience hadn’t reacted at all.  “I will now count to three, then snap my fingers.”  People were still sneezing,but if she waited until they all stopped, they’d still be sneezing when the lights went up.  “When I count to three and snap my fingers, you’ll find yourself breathing easily, calmly, clearly.  When I count to three and snap my fingers “- you’ll all stop sneezing, she thought, but that would be one of the worst things she could say - “your body will feel relaxed, calm, and completely under your control.  When I count to three and snap my fingers, you will awaken.  One, two, three - “

Snap.   “And wide awake, take a deep, clear breath.”  She didn’t bother to pretend she was only addressing the volunteers.  “Aaaaand let it out.  Ann, Dexter, Becky, please stand, if you would.”  Her volunteers complied, a little shakily.  “I think that was a stellar performance, don’t you, my friends?”  There was applause, unsteady, uncertain, transforming into a steady and enthusiastic accolade.  “Take a bow,” she instructed her volunteers, and the audience applauded even more enthusiastically.

Debbie noticed the sweet young thing’s eyes on Becky.  And she noticed Becky’s eyes hold his for just a moment, noticed her lips quirk into a smile.  “Thank you,” Debbie said.  “Please return to your seats.”  Becky walked away with just a bit of swagger that hadn’t been there when she approached the stage.  The sweet young thing’s eyes stayed glued to her.

Debbie smiled.  It was fun to think about, but she knew she’d probably never know how the two of them played out.  Tomorrow would bring another city, another venue, another audience.

And maybe some stronger cold medicine.

[Dgrayman]

Hahaha. What a delightfully silly idea.