It’s All In The Mind

Part 4: The Price of Success

Previous chapter: Blonde Insight

This is a psyops job. I’ve only done a couple of these. The idea is to change the way the target thinks, now and forever. This is intimate – like kidnaping. Not my favorite type of job, but the pay is exceptional. My analysis tells me that the target will react the appropriate way to my planned show. All that’s left is to put it on and test the results. The consultant I used for this job is someone I worked with back in the military. I don’t think he’s made that association. If he has, he’s been careful to keep it to himself. He’s moved into politics since he left the military; he uses his skills to design persuasion ads. I think he even acts as a jury consultant from time to time, but usually not openly. He was quite amenable to working with me anonymously, for cash.

Though the house has what’s considered a state-of-the-art security system, it’s mostly marketing hype. I know security and this is mostly for show: to impress the credulous customer and charge them top dollar. I occasionally amuse myself with the thought of selling effective security systems, but no one would pay what I’d need to justify becoming a working stiff. I’ve been here scouting, so made some modifications to the system, allowing me to disable it remotely. I enter through the back door, using the key I made earlier. Though I pick locks just about as fast as I use a key, there are so many moving parts to tonight’s show I didn’t want to add another. To the basement, silent as a ghost. I pull on my mask and start the gas into the air handler. It’s a matter of minutes before the house is saturated. It’ll keep everyone and everything under control until I’m done.

First things first: making one-hundred percent sure everyone is out. Next, I start arranging the stage for my play. I gather up what I need, set the mood lighting, add a little smoke, don my attire and am ready to begin.

I set the mother up in the place of honor, give her the appropriate drugs, and wait for them to circulate. Then I put a mask over her mouth and nose to remove the gas. After a few minutes, she starts to stir. I stand directly in front, waiting for her to notice me. She groggily rolls her head from side to side, then finally opens her eyes. It takes a couple of seconds, then she stares in shock, trying to scream around the mask and gag.

Using my own mask and a voice distorter much like what I used on Elizabeth years ago I say, “Hello Jennifer. So nice of you to join me for my show tonight. I promise it will be one you will never forget.”

I take out a single rose and lay it in her lap. It’s a Rosier buisson “Osiria,” A very distinctive flower with dark red on the inner side of the petal and ghostly white on the outside. I find it quite lovely and I don’t even like flowers. Her head tilts as she follows the rose down to her lap. The drugs are clearly working as desired.

“You have been a bad girl, Jennifer. Bad girls get punished for being so. Tonight we are going to have a banquet of punishment, all for your enjoyment...”

After some study, I’d developed what I thought was a hierarchy of “best among equals.” No loving mother will ever tell any of her children that one is better or more loved than another, but that’s rarely true in reality. Everyone has favorites. Sometimes the favorite remains the husband, but often the favorite becomes one of the children (I often wonder if the husband realizes he’s been supplanted; perhaps he wouldn’t want to know, it might be too strong a blow to his ego.) I want to save the best for last, so take the least favorite. Not the husband, neither first nor last, but the youngest, the boy. He’s quite the hellion. I grew to dislike the little bugger just listening to him whine on my bugs. I bring him in front of the mother.

“Watch closely, this is how bad girls are rewarded...”

I pull out a big butcher knife, place it on the boy’s neck. He’s staring straight ahead in terror, whimpering past the gag. I slowly reach around, place the tip against one ear, slowly insert it, blood flowing freely. His whimpers increase to small screams past his gag and he thrashes around until I complete my grisly task. Jennifer stares in horror.

Relax! He’s a dummy, the blood’s fake, sounds recorded. I’m a killer, not a monster.

“All for you, Jennifer. All because you have been a bad girl!”

I go to the next in line, her husband. His dummy is harder to get around, being so much larger. Getting these dummies made was an aspect of this job that drove the timing. They need to move around realistically, but also be light enough for me to manage them by myself. I go through the same gruesome routine, then cut the head clean off, placing it at her feet. If the lights were normal, there were no haze in the air and she weren’t drugged, my activities would look like a really cheap B horror movie. With all the atmosphere, coupling with the drugs coursing through her veins, she’s in a very suggestible state of mind and it’s all horrifyingly real to her.

I work my way to the second favorite. I disembowel her. Hugely messy, I’ll be some time getting all this stuff cleaned up when the show is over. Jennifer is clearly terrified. If I can make sense of her attempts to communicate, she wants to know what she did that’s so bad. I get her favorite, her eldest. Nice, young and tender at sixteen. Blossoming into womanhood. No doubt the boys have been pestering her already; she’s started to develop quite nicely. Like mother, like daughter: mom is well endowed. I suspect she had similar pressure when she was the same age.

“What’s that Jennifer? You don’t know what you’ve done wrong? Such a naughty, naughty girl. How could you not be aware?”

I can see from her eyes she’s in the throes of terror. She’s imagining all the horrible things I might do to her favorite. The boy, sure that sucked, but he was annoying. The husband, well, he’d served his purpose. Sad, but such is life. Her second favorite: while Jennifer was close to her middle child, she was still a little girl, not like her eldest who is finally old enough to take an interest in the womanly things they could partake together. I draw the terror out. Sometimes putting the knife at the dummy’s throat. Sometimes at its belly. Then I pause.

“Wait, she is a fine young thing. Surely still a virgin. Shall we put that to the test?”

I look at Jennifer. She’s shaking her head violently. I take a grip of the clothes at the favorite’s neck and, in one motion, pull them all off. I make little squealing noises. I run my knife down her belly and make as if I’m going to penetrate her with the knife.

“It seems I have your full attention now, Jennifer. Do you want to know what you can do to make all this go away?”

She’s nodding her head so much it’s giving _me_ a headache. I hope she doesn’t get a concussion.

“Whenever you see one of these roses,” I point to her lap, her gaze follows, “you will get instructions on how to be a good girl. Do you think you can follow them?”

Again with the nodding. She’s going to have a sore neck in the morning!

“Just to be sure, we’ll finish this last job up. Watch closely now. Let’s see if she really is a virgin...”

I gut the dummy from her privates to her neck. All sorts of gruesome things pop out and slither on the floor. I walk toward Jennifer, holding my knife out with the “blood” dripping. “Remember!” I get closer, lean toward her, “Remember!” Closer still, “Remember: whenever you see the rose, follow the instructions. Remember!” To finish the show, I grab her by her hair, put the knife on her throat, then give her some electric shocks that could only be interpreted as if her neck was being sliced. Then put her back to sleep by removing the mask.

I sigh. What a mess. Now I have to put everything back in order, clean up (I did put plastic down, but arterial spray, even the fake stuff, goes everywhere) and leave without any but the intended traces.

An hour or so later, I’m finally heading out the door. The gas has a short half-life. Everyone should be back to normal before the morning alarm clocks sound. I have a few more tasks to take care of, to make sure my little show takes, so my day continues.

I imagine when Jennifer wakes up, she assumes she’s had some bizarre nightmare and tries to shake it off. Other than carefully checking on everyone shortly after she wakes, probably in the order of most favorite to least, little would change. She’s too emotionally strong for mere nightmares to have any lasting effect. She probably goes about her morning activities just like any other day, perhaps taking a bit more comfort in the routine than usual. Everything seems like it’s gone back to normal, until she gets in her car, turns to look over her shoulder as she backs out, and sees a rose on the back dash. Surely that must bring a cold sweat to her brow. But she’s a strong woman with lots of ego. Probably makes up some story that her husband put it there, while ignoring the reality that he hasn’t bought her flowers in over a decade. She starts driving toward work and sees me, walking along the road. I’m wearing the same mask and carrying a half dozen of the same roses. I look into her eyes as she goes by. She stares back. I chose a location where the speeds are low and there aren’t likely to be any other people or cars. No doubt it takes a while for her focus to return.

I suspect she finds it a lot harder to banish the last niggling doubt now. When she gets to the office, I see she very quickly walks inside, looking neither right nor left. She’s ignoring every attempt to be friendly, and goes straight to her desk. I have one last surprise for her: on the back of the door, only visible once she’s inside and it’s closed, is a poster of the same flower with the word “Remember” written across it, stylized as if it were dripping blood. I’m observing with a high powered scope from across a parking lot and can clearly see the blood drain from her face. She staggers back against the desk and reaches up to touch her throat. After a minute of staring, she tears down the poster and shreds it into a wastebasket.

I feel fairly sure that she’s got the message and is all set and primed for the client to maneuver. Naturally, I have no idea why they want that power or what they’re going to use it for, but for me the job is done.