"When you think of red, what comes to mind? Roses, blood, or apples? I want you to truly see red, to fill your mind with red. Next, begin imagining another color: orange. A fresh orange, a glass of orange juice, a monk draped in a kasaya. Once you see orange, begin imagining the next color, yellow. Anything yellow: an egg yolk, the center of a daisy, a traffic light. Then begin imagining green: a green lawn, leaves, and jade..."
O'Sullivan and Mills watched the man on the television who kept talking without pause, neither of them blinking.
"You call that hypnosis?" O'Sullivan asked Mills.
"I don't know. I know no more than you do." Mills flipped through a stack of A4 printouts. "The psychologist calls it chakra color hypnosis."
"What's that?" O'Sullivan asked, completely baffled.
"Seems to have something to do with yoga," he said as he read the materials.
"You're kidding me?"
"Tracy practiced it. Something about there being seven vortices in our bodies." Mills gestured over his body. "Qi, you know?"
"Qi is Chinese kung fu. What does it have to do with yoga?"
Mills looked at O'Sullivan and shook his head, wearing the expression of someone looking at hopelessly rotten wood.
"There is a lamp at the end of the corridor. Now walk down the corridor toward the light. When you reach it, stop. Now look down at your feet. Before you, you will see yourself standing at the top of a broad staircase. There are twenty-one steps. In a moment, you will walk down the stairs... Every step you take will sink you deeper, into a deeper state of hypnosis..." the hypnotist on television said.
"Why does he have to walk downstairs?" O'Sullivan asked, even more confused.
"It's related to sex," he said loudly, drawing a