Brandy and Bullets by Jessica Fletcher Page A

audience. He wore a black dinner jacket with silver sequins, and a red bow tie. Six straight-back chairs were lined up behind him. He looked down at me. “We have a real live celebrity in the audience tonight,” he said.
    I wanted to crawl under the table.
    “My friend, and the world’s greatest mystery writer, Jessica Fletcher. Stand up, Jess. Take a bow.”
    I rose an inch off my chair, and nodded.
    James pointed to a young woman at the table next to us, then to a man, another woman, and three others. “Come up here,” he commanded. After much giggling, and a few vocal protestations, they all did, to my surprise.
    Carson had them sit facing us in the chairs. He snapped his fingers: “You’re going into a trance, a deep and relaxing state of mind. Deeper. Deeper. Close your eyes. You can’t keep your eyes open. Your eyelids are heavy. Heavy. It feels so good to close your eyes and to float to pleasant places. Your body feels as though there are helium-filled balloons attached to it, making you feel light. Lighter. Lighter. Buoyant. Floating. You’re so relaxed, carefree, floating, floating, hearing only my voice. Only me. My voice. Deeper. Deeper. Lighter. Lighter. More buoyant.”
    Carson tossed out occasional humorous asides to the audience, which resulted in a few laughs. But the mood in the small room had become quiet, serious. Everyone, including Seth and I, leaned closer to the stage and watched with fascination as Carson continued to hypnotize his subjects.
    Carson focused on one of the young women, who seemed to have been most affected by his hypnotic instructions. She sat placidly, her eyes closed, arms dangling loosely at her sides, a smile on her face. Carson touched her forehead and said, “Your left arm is light and buoyant. Let it float up.” Her arm slowly ascended. “That’s right,” Carson said. “Now, I want you to stand.” She got up. “The sun is shining brightly,” he said. “The barnyard is a warm and happy place—and you’re a happy little chicken.”
    Snickers from the audience.
    “Listen to me,” Carson said. “You’re going deeper, deeper, deeper into your pleasant trance. And you hear only me, my voice. Go ahead and speak like a chicken. I’m speaking to you. You have something to say.”
    The young woman started clucking.
    “And you want to fly. Go ahead. Flap your wings.”
    She tucked her hands beneath her armpits, and energetically moved her elbows up and down, accompanied by her clucking.
    Carson told her she could stop, and had her sit down. He went to another subject, a young man with a baseball hat on backward, and had him stand. Within a few minutes, this person was doing crude ballet dance steps, much to the delight of the audience, now very much into what Carson was accomplishing onstage.
    He didn’t attempt to have all six subjects act silly. He worked with only four of them, allowing the remaining two to be bystanders to the others’s antics.
    As Carson was about to bring everyone out of their respective trances, he instructed them that they would remember nothing of what had transpired on the stage, but that when they heard the song, “When Johnny Comes Marching Home,” they would again become a chicken, a ballet dancer, and the roles Carson had given the others to perform.
    “Awake!” Carson commanded, snapping his fingers.
    The six subjects came to attention, opened their eyes, smiled, then laughed, and took their seats in the audience.
    “Amazing,” I said to Seth over the lingering applause.
    “Plants in the audience,” he said.
    “Oh, no, Seth. I don’t think so.”
    Carson took the microphone. “They say writers go into a sort of trance state when they write,” he said. “They lose themselves in the scenes and characters they create.” He looked down at me. “Am I right, Jessica?”
    I shrugged.
    “Come up here.” He motioned with his index finger for me to join him onstage.
    “Oh, no,” I said.
    “Please,” Carson said. “Just