Rosie opened her eyes.

She sat in her favorite chair in the den. Her bare legs and feet rested on a cushioned ottoman. Very quickly she noticed that that TV wasn’t on. Neither was the stereo. She looked down at her lap. No book, laptop, or tablet resided there.

“Well, that’s odd,” she said aloud.

She meant that it was odd that she’d be sitting in the den, not watching TV, listening to music, reading, or using a computer. Just sitting there wasn’t something she did. But she seemed to be doing it now.

Why did she come in here then? Actually, when did she come in here? She couldn’t remember.

“Weird,” she said, starting to be bothered by it all.

Well, there was nothing to do about it for the moment. It would all come back to her, she was sure. For now, she should get up and go about her day.

Rosie didn’t get up. She tried to, but she found that she couldn’t. When she tried to move her legs, they just wouldn’t respond. But no, that wasn’t right. They would respond. She could flex the muscles and even move them an inch or two one way or the other. And she could move her ankles about and flex her toes, too. So she wasn’t paralyzed. If she didn’t know better, she would have thought her legs were tied to the ottoman. But of course she wasn’t bound. She could clearly see that. What was going on?

“What is going on?” she asked herself, feeling desperate and frustrated.

“And that is my cue to enter,” said a voice from outside the room.

“Nicole?” Rosie said. “Is that you?”

An attractive young woman, who was indeed Nicole, walked into the den. She smiled as her gaze fell upon Rosie, who she found to be very sexy.

“Hi, Rosie.”

“Nicole, something’s wrong. I can’t get up. Can you help me?”

“Don’t worry, sweetie. Nothing’s wrong.”

“What do you mean? Why can’t I get up then?”

“You don’t remember?”

“Remember what?” Rosie asked.

“Wow,” Nicole said. “Not only is nothing wrong, but everything is perfectly right.”

“What are you talking about, Nicole?”

“I’m talking about…”

Without finishing her sentence, Nicole walked over to the ottoman. She very slowly and deliberately raised her index finger, and then bent down over Rosie’s feet. Rosie’s eyes widened.

“Hey! No! Don’t--”

Nicole traced a delicate line with her fingernail from Rosie’s heel up along her instep, then over the ball of her foot and along the underside of her toes. Rosie giggled, as she squirmed and scrunched her foot.

“Nicole! Please don’t do that!”

“Of course I’m going to do that. You can’t move your legs, which means you can’t pull away or kick me. That’s the whole point of this.”

“The whole point of what?”

“Of course, you don’t know,” Nicole said. “I have to remember that it worked. It worked really, really well.”

“What worked?”

“Hypnotizing you.”

“Hypnotizing me? You didn’t hypnotize me.”

“I sure did. Just about an hour ago. Classic swinging pendant induction. You went along with it because you thought it was just a silly game. You had no idea that it would work, or that you’d be so suggestible when you went under. Neither did I, to be honest. But it did work, and you were oh-so-suggestible. And so here we are: Your extremely ticklish feet are bare and ready before me, and you are obediently following a post-hypnotic suggestion that you can’t move your legs, as surely as if I tied them to the ottoman.”

“No way. No way! That can’t happen. This isn’t happening!”

“Move your legs then. Get up and walk away.”

Rosie tried and tried, but she could only move her legs a tiny bit.

“See,” Nicole said. “Hypnotized. You. By me.”

Frustrated and a bit scared, Rosie looked up at Nicole.

“So now what?” she asked.

“Now what? Isn’t it obvious? I tickle the hell out of you. For as long as I like. And not just now, but whenever I want. Because just like I made you forget before that I had hypnotized you, I can’t make you forget all of this, too.”

“I will scream. I will scream bloody-frickin’ murder.”

“Oh my. That would be a problem. Except…”

Nicole snapped her fingers, said the word, “gag,” and then snapped her fingers again.

“Except I thought of that and took care of it ahead of time. There’s a few other things I took care of, too. But I don’t want to ruin your surprise or my fun. So you’ll find them out when they happen, okay?”

Rosie tried to yell, but found all she could do was make muffled noises.

Nicole grinned and knelt down before Rosie’s feet. Rosie’s eyes all but bugged out of her skull. She shook her head furiously and strained her legs against bindings that weren’t there.

And then, as Nicole took to her feet with malevolent glee, she convulsed with silent laughter.