Tricks

Blurb from a short story I've been tweaking:


They’ve been tricking me. The magicians in the next room. They will tell you they are not magicians. Understand that they don’t believe they are magicians. They will try to hide their juggling act. They’ll stuff the blindfolds under the mattresses. The blindfolds they use when they’re about to walk across the tightrope about seventy feet in the air. You won’t be able to hear the pigeons because they will have killed them by the time you get here. They don’t want anyone to know what they are.

Remember, they won’t tell you they are magicians. It is important that you understand this, lest they try to hypnotize you. They are good at what they do. They know what they are doing. They have years of practice.

This much I have gathered about experimentation in hypnotism. Forgive me for the mere fact that the only real knowledge I have on the matter comes from something I learned before I entered the military. It never posed a real threat to us. Hypnotism hasn’t been used as a form of torture since World War II, or so I remember. At first, I didn’t understand that they were magicians. Captives of war are usually tortured by other means. Usually, we’re dead within the first twenty-four hours. They didn’t send in the magicians for the other two.