Breaking Point - Chapter 29 - Never Go Full Manchurian Candidate
Wherein our hero and his friends fall down a hypnosis-shaped rabbit hole
“What happened in the rest of the lecture?” I asked Lisa and Rufus, leaning forward to retrieve my empty glass from the coffee table.
“To you?” Rufus said, moving to the chair opposite the couch to face Lisa and me. “Nothing.”
“He got some other guy – a dentist – to hallucinate his dead brother,” Lisa said, taking her seat next to me.
“He also did negative hallucination,” Rufus said,
“What’s that?” I asked.
“Not seeing something that is there,” Lisa explained.
“Like oncoming traffic?” I asked.
“Like that,” Rufus agreed.
“After watching Novikov’s little demonstration, I’ve got to accept the possibility that Novikov hypnotized me to make the bomb vest for Mrs. Wilkes, then erased my memory.”
“You remember meeting him before?” Rufus said, eyeing me over the rim of his glass.
“I do not.”
“How about this?” Lisa asked. “Novikov hypnotized someone else to make the vest then hypnotized the guy at Adler’s to think you bought the wire.”
“And then got both of them to forget they’d been hypnotized?” I asked.
“Let’s say Novikov made the bomb,” Rufus suggested. “Then hypnotized Mrs Wilkes to blow it up and the Adler guy to do the coverup.”
“Alternatively, what if Novikov hypnotized Mrs. Wilkes to build the bomb and then hypnotized the Adler guy to finger me?” I proposed.
“We need a Venn diagram,” Lisa said.
“I need popcorn,” Rufus announced, getting up from his chair.
“Before we get totally confused," I said. "Let's review what we know for sure. Novikov hypnotized Mrs. Wilkes to think the bomb vest was a sweater from a thrift shop. Sprague to drive into oncoming traffic. Cope to jump off a building. And Sheldon to blow his brains out.”
“Or your mother’s,” Rufus added from the kitchen. “Or yours.”
“Or both,” I said. “And then maybe his.”
“Why not X?“ Lisa asked..
“An ex-cellent point,” I said, eliciting groans.
“Hang on,” Lisa said, holding up her hand. “I just thought of something. Maybe this whole thing is a Russian plot.”
“Uh-oh,” Rufus said, tearing open a popcorn bag. “You’re going Manchurian Candidate.”
“Never go full Manchurian Candidate,” I advised.
“What’s that?” Lisa asked, getting up from the couch.
“Movie,” I explained, more-than-sightly distracted by the view of my girlfriend. “Chinese commies hypnotize a Korean War vet to assassinate a presidential candidate.”
“The remake sucked,” Rufus said, plopping into the sofa with a bowl of popcorn. “Are you gonna let your girlfriend do that in front of me?” he added.
“I’m not a hypnotist,” I said, shrugging. “I don’t control her.”
“Aside from overthrowing the United States government,” Lisa said, wagging a finger at Rufus while leaning sideways to stretch her hamstring. “Why would Novikov hypnotize people to kill themselves?”
“Same as any other serial killer,” I said. “To prove he’s smarter than everyone else.”
“Vindication for his ‘extremist’ theories,” Rufus said, sharing the popcorn.
“I’m not feeling it,” I said, welcoming Lisa back into my arms. “We’re missing something.”
“Maybe Novikov hypnotized you not to feel it,” Rufus semi-joked.
“Now there’s a scary thought,” Lisa said.
“Here’s another one. I’ve got to hop on Mother’s jet tomorrow.”
“Maybe you’re already on it,” Lisa said, ruffling my hair. “You do have a tendency to hallucinate.”
“Said the woman who gave me a joint laced with toad venom.”
“And spiked your bourbon with psilocybin,” she teased.
“I hope I am hallucinating,” I said with mock petulance. “I don’t like flying.”
“You don’t know that,” Rufus said, laughing.
“At this point I’m not sure what I know.”
“What you don’t know can hurt you,” Rufus pronounced.
How right he was.
Breaking Point is published on Farago Fiction in installments. It’s the sequel to Reservation Point, book one of the John Canali crime series.