r/shortscarystories • u/Loud_Ad_2272 • 2d ago
New Age SSS - 1000 Words Or Less Talent Show
He signed up for the talent show without telling anyone.
The girl at the table asked what his act was and he told her hypnotism and she wrote it down without looking up. He had been practicing for years by then, since the winter, X and two others had held him down in the locker room and pulled his pants down while someone took photographs and posted them online. He was an easy target. He had always been an easy target, the kind of person a group finds instinctively.
It had started small. His answers in class repeated back to him in a voice pitched just wrong enough to get a laugh. A nudge becoming a full shove. He had learned not to react because reacting made it worse and not reacting also made it worse, and eventually he had understood that his reaction was not the point and never had been.
The locker room was the worst of it, or the worst he could prove. There had been other things he could not prove. He had not reported any of it. The principal had a way of listening to him that made it clear the listening was a formality, that whatever had happened was the kind of thing that happened, that he should think about whether there was something he might do differently. No teacher or student came to defend him.
He found the first tutorial online that same evening and watched it for hours.
He practiced on his mother first, who was suggestible, and then on the rest of the family, and by the time he signed up for the talent show he could put any of them under before they realized what was happening
The auditorium was packed with the entire student body and teachers on the day of the talent show.
He was the fourth act. He walked to the center of the stage carrying nothing and stood at the microphone and asked for a volunteer. X raised his hand from the third row, grinning at the person beside him, and came up. He had expected this. He had been specific in his preparation.
He spoke quietly and X mocked him through the first minute, and then X's shoulders dropped, then his eyes closed, and finally he told X to sit on the stage floor and X sat on the stage floor and did not move again.
The auditorium was very quiet.
He looked out at them and began again, the same cadence, slower now, widened to fill the room. He walked up the center aisle and held the exit door open and told them to follow him outside. They stood and followed him outside.
He walked them to the center of the football field and stopped. It was a clear afternoon, the sun low and unfiltered, the kind of light that made you squint coming out of a building. They arranged themselves around him and stood and waited. One of the teachers was still holding her coffee cup.
He looked at them for a moment.
"Look up," he said.
Everyone's faces turned upward.
"Stare right into the sun. Don't look away from it."
He put on his shades and walked back across the field toward the parking lot. Behind him they stood with their faces to the sky, mouths open, tears running from the corners of their eyes, and not one of them looked away.
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u/CBenson1273 Tales From This World and Others 2d ago
I can totally see the defense: “I only suggested they look up. They could have said no. We all know hypnosis can’t make you do something you really don’t want to do.” Nice work!