Seduction of the Mind

Roses and Shadows

The first thing Ethan noticed was the dress. Roses. A bloom of them, red and pink sprawled across white silk like stains that had learned to masquerade as art. The petals curled down Vivienne’s figure with the softness of secrets; the stems tangled near her waist in a pattern that made his breath hitch before reason reeled it back. Coincidence, he told himself. Coincidence. But reason’s voice was thin under the weight of memory: Frank Davis, buried under the roses.

Vivienne smiled as she closed the door behind her, the smile of a woman arriving late to a play she knows was waiting for her. She didn’t sit right away; instead, she let her fingertips graze the back of the chair before folding into it with a grace too casual to be unconscious.

“Beautiful day,” she said lightly, though the blinds were drawn enough to slice the light into narrow, pale stripes.

Ethan managed a nod, his own smile stitched from caution. “It is.” He waited until she settled, until the whisper of fabric stilled, then said, “You look… different today.”

Her brows lifted, mock-curious. “Different good or different strange?”

“Just different,” he said, because any other word would taste like confession.

She laughed softly, shaking her head, and the sound brushed against the room like silk against stone.

When the preliminaries fell quiet—the ritual check-ins, the polite scaffolding of talk—Ethan steered the session sideways. “Vivienne,” he said, tone level but pitched to test, “how do you feel about hypnotherapy?”

The question stilled the air. Her smile didn’t falter—not quite—but something small flickered behind her eyes, fast as a match dying in wind. “Hypnosis?” She gave a short, sharp laugh. “Hard pass.”

“Why?” He kept his voice warm, professional. “It can be a safe tool for—”

“I don’t like losing control,” she said, quick as a blade sliding home. Then softer, with a shrug that looked borrowed: “Call it a quirk.”

Ethan let the silence breathe for a beat, then inclined his head. “Fair enough. We won’t pursue it.”

Her shoulders eased by a hair’s breadth. The corner of her mouth curled like smoke. “Good. Because the last thing you need is me asleep in your chair. You might get bored.”

Ethan slid the portfolio from under his chair, fingers brushing the smooth paper like a pianist testing keys. “Let’s try something different,” he said. “Interpretation. I’ll show you a few sketches. Tell me what you see—whatever comes to mind. No wrong answers.”

Vivienne’s eyes sparked with interest—or the illusion of it. “Rorschach, but prettier?”

“Something like that.” He placed the first drawing on the table. A sun sprawling in thick, golden strokes. A child chasing a kite across a field too green to be real, smile stretched wide as the sky.

Vivienne leaned in, her hair spilling like dark water over her shoulder. “Summer,” she said without hesitation. “The kind that smells like grass stains and lemonade. It feels like running until your lungs hurt and you still don’t stop because the day won’t end unless you let it.” Her voice was warm, sweet with nostalgia. Ethan watched her mouth shape the words and felt something coil low in his chest.

He slid the next page forward. A picnic blanket under an apple tree, red fruit dotting the ground like fallen hearts. A woman’s dress in soft folds, a basket yawning open with wine and bread.

Vivienne’s smile deepened. “A secret kept where the sun can’t reach. The kind of place you’d take someone when you want the world to forget you both exist.” Her tone was velvet, slow and curling. Ethan swallowed once, hard.

The next sketch showed a carousel frozen mid-spin. Painted horses rearing, mouths split in permanent grins, poles stabbing upward like skewered stars.

Vivienne tilted her head, eyes glinting. “Childhood pretending to be joy. But the colors feel tired. Like the music broke and nobody noticed.” She tapped a fingertip against the page. “Makes you wonder who stayed riding after the lights went out.”

The last drawing waited like a held breath: a swing under a sprawling oak. Empty. Shadows stretched long like claws across the dirt.

Vivienne’s gaze lingered longer this time. When she spoke, her voice was almost tender. “Waiting,” she murmured. “For weight. For heat. For something to come back and make the air move.”

Ethan’s throat tightened. He smiled anyway, clinical and clean, though his pulse was a drum under glass. “Interesting perspective.”

Vivienne’s eyes flicked up to his, catching the echo of something in them. She smiled—not wide, just enough to say I know what you’re trying to read, Doctor. And then she glanced at the clock.

“I hate to cut our fun short,” she said, slipping her phone into her bag, “but I have a date. Other side of the city. Traffic’ll eat me alive if I don’t leave now.”

Ethan kept his voice even. “Of course. We can pause here.”

She rose, smoothing the rose-drenched dress over her hips, and for a second the pattern blurred and the blossoms looked like bruises. “Same time next week?” she asked, hand on the door, tone bright as glass in sunlight.

“Yes,” Ethan said. His own voice felt far away.

Vivienne’s smile sharpened just enough to draw blood if you leaned too close. Then she was gone, her scent—a whisper of rose and something darker—lingering in the quiet like an afterthought.

Ethan stood for a long minute, staring at the closed door, before sinking into the chair. His hands were steady when he pulled out his phone, but his breath wasn’t. The line clicked after two rings.

“Detective Bennett,” a voice rasped, thick with fatigue and caffeine.

“It’s Hale.” Ethan’s voice was low, wired. “I think I’ve found your zero victim.”

Silence, taut as wire. “Zero victim,” Bennett repeated. “You mean the first. The origin.”

“Yes. The pattern doesn’t start where you think. It starts years back. That case—the one buried under the noise? That’s the root. Find the truth there, you’ll see the architecture.”

A sigh hissed through the line. “You planning to explain, or just sprinkle riddles over my Saturday?”

“I’m telling you the recent bodies won’t give you the mind,” Ethan said, each word clipped, precise. “They’ll give you habit. Ritual. But the first kill—that’s where obsession blooms.”

“You got a name for me?” Bennett’s tone shifted, cool as a scalpel. “Because right now all I’ve got is a good doctor sniffing around graves he doesn’t own.”

Ethan’s jaw flexed. His eyes flicked to the chair where Vivienne had sat, to the ghost of roses bleeding across memory. “Not yet,” he said. “Not until I’m sure.”

“Jesus, Hale.” Bennett’s laugh was short and humorless. “You’re gonna make me earn my ulcers.”

“Comes with the badge,” Ethan murmured.

“Comes with a body count,” Bennett shot back. “And if this hobby of yours adds to it…”

“It won’t,” Ethan said, too fast, too flat.

Another sigh, heavier this time. “Fine. Keep your mystery. But hear me, Doc: if you’re wrong, I’ll bury you deeper than your patient’s secrets.”

The line went dead. Ethan lowered the phone slowly, his pulse drumming against his palms. On the table, the drawings lay like open throats—sun, tree, carousel, swing. Innocence staged in graphite. Except every curve, every shade hummed with the same silent truth: Nothing she said was accidental. And nothing he felt was safe.