Free The 37th mandala : a novel by Marc Laidlaw

It stores and processes memory very differently. I'm not so sure I could help you."
    "Well," she said, "maybe you're helping me without knowing it. Just talking to you, I feel better. Like I could tell you stuff and you'd understand."
    "I'm flattered you feel that way."
    "But you still won't hypnotize me."
    "Look, Lenore ... I can teach you to do it yourself. How would that be? It's all self-hypnosis anyway. The hypnotist is only a guide."
    "But I need a guide!"
    "It's nothing to do lightly. It has to be taken slowly, over time. I can't just put you under right now and clear up all your problems. You have a lifetime to deal with. One little session, here and now, might be worse than nothing. I'd have to see you regularly, over time. Maybe there's someone around here who could do it."
    "No," she said, slumping back into her seat. "There's nobody."
    "I doubt that's true."
    "There's nobody, all right?" she yelled. "I know what I need, what I've been looking for, and I never felt it until now, but you're not interested, so just shut the fuck up and leave me alone, all right?"
    Lenore reached over the seat, switched on the radio full blast, then got out and paced along the opposite shoulder, smoking a cigarette. Every now and then a car swept past, but no one slowed.
    Jesus, Derek thought. That'll teach me.
    He sat quietly, deafened by country music. He was tempted to go out to her, but that little teasing dance of codependency frightened him; he already felt snared, involved in something he couldn't stop. Best just to wait here, hold his tongue, let her anger burn itself out. He was hardly the savior type, but he couldn't fault her for unrealistic expectations. He'd set himself up for it, painting himself as the great hypnotherapist when in fact he hadn't used hypnosis (outside of his books) for years. Not since his boyhood, in fact. And in response to that thought, which threatened to propel him into deeper silence, darker reveries, he switched off the radio and opened his door.
    "Lenore," he said into the sudden quiet.
    She stopped pacing. He could see her cigarette flare, then her steps came crunching back to the car.
    "What?"
    "I'm sorry," he said. "I—I can't tune out a call for help that easily. It's true you need guidance. But I can teach you how to do it yourself, and maybe that will start you on the way."
    "Hypnotize me, you mean? You'll do it?"
    "One trance. And I'll give you the commands you need to do it to yourself. Then you can—well, explore."
    She crouched before him on the roadside, her cigarette dangling between her knees. "Seriously?"
    "Sure. Come on, why don't you get in the car?" He stepped out and pulled his seat forward, and she slid past him into the back, arranging herself on the long cushion. Derek returned to his seat and pulled the door closed.
    "Don't you have like a pendulum or something?" she asked.
    "Don't need it," he said, trying to remember the basic steps. But what was there to it, really? "I'm just going to talk you through some visualizations. The real work you'll be doing yourself. Are you ready? Get comfortable."
    "Go," she said.
    He began to count backward from one hundred, very slowly. He told her that with every number he counted off, she was falling deeper and deeper asleep. Between the numbers of his count, he told her that she was floating down a long tunnel. He told her that she was becoming lighter and lighter, until she weighed nothing. He told her she was dissolving into the sky, melting away. "Your fingers are melting, melting away. Your arms are melting, melting away. Eighty-eight. Your shoulders melting, melting away." He watched her chest rising and falling softly, her head slumped forward, eyelids trembling, breath steady and slow. "Your chest, melting away." His eyes lay on her breasts for a long while, hardly more than the faintest curve beneath the stiff fabric of her leather jacket. "Eighty-seven."
    It took a long time. He was more careful than he had ever been. He