Title: The Case for Editorial Control
Author: BedHead
Summary: The Rozhan Psychiatric Institute has an excellent reputation, but it has been hard to discover whom it treats, and how. Journalist Irina is determined to find out more!
Chapter 4 — The Bliss of Forgetfulness
Nina dabbed the perspiration off Fatima. The girl had climaxed at least three times as Nina had worked her way through the tools and techniques in her repertoire. Practically drunk from ecstacy, she was nevertheless now mostly free of the medicines used to control her.
“Are you ready to stand up, Fatima? Slowly, of course. You aren’t secured any more.”
“Sure....” The groggy woman pushed her away to a sitting position, then slid to a dismount onto the tiled floor. She stood there, swaying slightly.
Nina moved to steady her with an arm. “Give it a minute. You’ll get your balance back.”
“Thank you...” Fatima took a deep breath, and her expression changed. “Ohhh. You smell so nice...”
“Thank you!” Nina stroked the girl’s back. “Smell is such a powerful, associative sense, isn’t it?”
She lifted a neatly folded shift from a table. “Here, let me help you on with this...” With some well meaning, but mostly ineffective, cooperation from Fatima, she eventually managed to get it over the girl and her arms out of the sleeves. “And I’ve got some slippers for you.”
“You’re so nice to me,” said Fatima, leaning against Nina as she tried to insert her uncooperative toes into the slippers. “You... They...” Her eyebrows knitted in confusion. “What’s happening? The basement...?“
“Let’s go to see the Director,” Nina suggested with a secretive smile. “She will be able to explain.”
“The director? Okay...” Fatima allowed herself to be guided out of the room and down the corridor. Nina was watching her face, and could see the puzzlement there grow as the girl started to stitch together her fragments of memory.
“In here, please, Fatima.” Nina opened the door before Fatima could read the ominous label on it. “You’ll see me soon, I hope...”
The room was quite dark, with a central spotlight highlighting two chairs. In one, an older woman in a white coat with a notepad was smiling at Fatima.
“Do have a seat, Fatima. I am the Director.”
Fatima sank onto the chair, staring at the woman. Her face and voice were very familiar. But, from where? She trawled the confused swirl of her recent memories. The table... Bright lights... A warm, reassuring voice when she was scared... Everything going fuzzy... A long, rambling conversation about her friends...
It all clicked. “You drugged me! You wanted to know everything I knew! You bitch!” She started to rise from her chair.
The Director brushed off her outburst. “As I’m sure you will eventually , Fatima, I merely helped you want to tell me everything you knew.“
“Semantics,” snarled Fatima. “I should claw your eyes out.”
“Perhaps,” itted the Director. “A little messy, of course. And rather cold—I, in return, am not offering you any violence. I merely offer a proposition, which you are free to reject. Would you like to know more?”
There was a subtle clearing-of-throat noise from the darkness behind Fatima. She paused, calculating her odds. The math was not favorable.
She sank back into the chair, glaring. “All right. Tell me more.”
“Very good!” The Director settled back in her own chair. “To recap: From your mind, I extracted the information required by the Ministry, which concluded their specific interest in you. No, you don’t have to thank me.”
“I didn’t intend to!”
“Ah, but you should!” The Director’s face became grave. “Your friend—Aylin? I offered her safety from the Ministry, but she refused. A brave girl, but not wise.”
She picked up a photograph from beside her chair. “The Ministry sent me this.”
Fatima took the photo, and reluctantly looked at it. The dog-faced woman was prominent in it, and she could—just about—recognize Aylin. She gulped, and tears stung her eyes.
“I’m very sorry.” The Director sounded sincere. “My arrangement with the Ministry has them assume... ‘ownership’ of our patients should they ever leave us. Apparently, they want to be certain that ‘subversives’ can never reenter the general population.”
She paused.
“I’m afraid, my dear, that you are one of those so restricted.”
She the words sink in.
“As I said, I am here to offer you a proposition.”
Fatima glared at her. “You seem to have a gift with words. Please use them to explain clearly what you want from me.”
“You, my dear.” The Director paused. “Is that sufficiently clear?“
“How—What do you mean? What are you going to do with me?”
“Psychiatric research,” explained the Director. “We are expanding our understanding of the guided modification of the human mind. Your mind proved most interesting during my questioning, and I would very much like to take my studies of it—of you—further.”
Fatima stared at the Director, trying to read her expression. “What is in it for me?”
“Well, obviously you would not need to be returned to the basement of the Ministry. I would have thought that sufficient? Or do you have a burning desire to be hanging from the next rack along from Aylin?” The Director paused. “I’m sorry to be blunt, Fatima, but I really do think your best interests lie with me.”
“It isn’t fair.” Fatima tried to keep the whine out of her voice. “I didn’t do anything wrong ...”
“Maybe not,” sighed the Director. “But, here we are.”
Fatima threw up her hands. “All right. In exchange for not being handed back to the Ministry, I’m all yours.”
“Wonderful!” The Director rose to her feet. “Let me show you what is involved.”
She pulled back the corner of a thick black curtain that formed the backdrop of the room, and indicated for Fatima to go through.
The girl found herself in a space with racks of medical equipment, three beds—two of them occupied—and a nurse apparently monitoring the machinery.
“This is where we prepare our subjects,” the Director explained. “You might recognize one of them.” She indicated the bed in the middle.
Fatima peered at the wrapped shape, trying to see past the tubes and wires that surrounded it. “Gaukhar?” She had last seen her friend’s terrified face as Fatima had squeezed into the vent in the basement. Now, her friend’s face was peaceful, eyes closed, much of her visage hidden behind a breathing mask, and a row of electrodes covering her forehead. Her body was wrapped in a translucent plastic bag with various tubes and wires coming from it and connecting to the equipment racks
“She made a wise choice,” the Director confirmed.
Fatima stared at her friend for a while. “What’s happening to her? Does it hurt?”
“Does it look like it hurts? She looks very peaceful, doesn’t she?” The Director shook her head. “No, for the duration of the conditioning—five to seven days—you are effectively sleeping.“
“Mmm.” The suspicion in Fatima’s tone was clear.
“Hello, Fatima! I’m ready for you.” A familiar voice, and scent, came over Fatima’s shoulder, and she turned to see Nina.
“Nina will help prepare you for conditioning,” the Director explained. “Please go with her now.”
“Come on...” Nina took Fatima’s hand and gently tugged the confused girl over to a door. “You will be fine, Fatima. I’ll take good care of you.”
Fatima found herself in a white-tiled bathroom with a low table in the center of the floor, and various rubber bags hanging from a rack. Nina efficiently removed Fatima’s shift, placing it in a basket, and urged the now-naked girl onto the table, on her side.
“Not too cold? Here...” She draped a rubber sheet over Fatima. “Give me a minute to get the water ready.” She pulled on a rubber apron and cap, selected one of the bags, and started to fill it from a tap.
“You’re going to be asleep for quite a while,” she explained over the noise of the running water. “We need to make sure you’re empty inside.”
Apparently satisfied with the fill, she hung the bag from a pole above the table, and sat down on the table behind Fatima. Fatima felt the sheet being lifted away from her bottom.
“Have you ever had an enema before?” Nina pushed a plastic nozzle into Fatima’s starfish before the girl had a chance to answer, making her gasp. “We’ll get as much in as we can—let me know when you start to feel cramps—then you can go to the toilet and let it go.”
“Okay...” There was a click, and a strange sensation inside Fatima.
“Hopefully I’ve got the water temperature right,” Nina remarked, carefully adjusting the nozzle. “It doesn’t feel cold, does it?”
“No...” Fatima could now feel her belly start to expand as the water filled her.
“I’ll slow this down. It will make it easier for you to take.” Nina adjusted a clip on the hose from the bag, and started to rub Fatima’s shoulder. “Just relax, darling. I’ve got you.”
Despite her situation, Fatima was starting to feel relaxed. The heavy dose of tranquilizers in the water was flowing through her, and her eyelids were already getting heavy.
“That’s the lot! Good girl. Squeeze for me...” Nina withdrew the nozzle. “The toilet is just over there.” She pointed.
Fatima staggered to her feet, and plopped down inelegantly on the commode. She let everything go, and a fountain gushed out from under her.
“We’ll give it a bit of time to drain,” Nina said, starting to put away the equipment. “Don’t go anywhere!” She chuckled.
Fatima by now was practically leaning on the closet wall for . She daydreamed for a while, only coming back to reality when she realized that Nina was cleaning her crevices with a small hose.
“Sparkling clean! Are you okay to stand now? Anything else to come out?” She scrutinized Fatima’s face.
“Yes—no—um, yes I’m okay...” Fatima wobbled to a stand, and Nina ed her with an arm around the waist.
“Let’s get you lying down.” They returned to the main room to find the empty bed cleaned and prepared, with the supervising nurse waiting next to it. Fatima was just grateful to be able to lie down, and practically collapsed onto the bed.
“Why’m so tired?” she slurred. “What’s happenin’?”
“We’ve given you something to make the preparation easier,” Nina said cheerfully. “You don’t have to do anything, just let us get you ready.”
“Ooookayyyy...” Fatima gave a tired sigh. She knew deep down inside that she should be worried, but right now it seemed like too much effort.
Nina slid an inflatable plug into Fatima’s now-clean anus, carefully inflated it until it was immobilized, then screwed a tube onto the fitting poking out of it. While she did that, the supervising nurse opened a sterile packet, swabbed Fatima’s pee hole with betadine, and fed a urinary catheter into the girl.
“Stings,” moaned Fatima, but she made no move to pull away.
The nurse ignored her, inflated the cuff, then took a shaped metal probe and eased it into the girl’s sex. Fatima gasped, but again there was no resistance.
“That’s all the tubes done,” said Nina, removing her gloves and patting Fatima’s limp hand. “Now the electrodes.”
Collaborating, the nurses had twelve electrodes placed around Fatima’s naked torso within a few minutes. Then then unpacked a large, translucent plastic bag from its wrapping, and started to slide it over and under Fatima, guiding her feet into it.
“My ears are ringing,” Fatima moaned.
“We gave you quite a large dose of the tranquilizer,” Nina said reassuringly, as she worked the leading edge of the bag under Fatima’s butt. “Just relax, and enjoy the high.”
“Butterflies...” Fatima mumbled, staring up at nothing.
“Pretty butterflies? Like you, my little butterfly?” Nina finally got the bag under Fatima’s shoulders, and kissed her stunned patient.
“She’s ready, Director,” the supervising nurse reported. “Shall I put the line in?”
“Yes, please.” The Director came walking over, examining the bagged, wired, and penetrated girl on the bed.
“Was this what you expected, Fatima?” she purred, stroking the girl’s dark hair. “But surely better here, than in the basement of the Ministry.”
She nodded at the nurse, who sterilized a site on Fatima’s neck, then carefully introduced a cannula. Fatima moaned again, but the tranquilizers by now had effectively paralyzed her.
“Like the sting of a wasp?” the Director enquired, rhetorically. “Paralyzing her prey, to take it to her lair and feast on it.”
Nina handed her a new set of electrodes. The Director adjusted her glasses, then carefully and precisely positioned each in a perfect arc across Fatima’s forehead.
“How ever did you get here?” she murmured, stroking the girl’s hair again. “One day ago, a heroic figure in the underground movement: now, a helpless subject about to be drained of memories; soon, an empty vessel to be filled with whatever I will.”
She stood back, watching as Fatima’s eyes tried vainly to focus on her.
“Once we put you under, we will periodically current through the memory centers of your brain. You won’t feel a thing, but it will gradually break down your memory engrams. After a few days of treatment, any memories left will be like distant, fragmented dreams.”
She smiled. “And then, the fun will begin.”
There was a whirring, coupled with the “ssshh-ssshh” of an evacuation pump, and the bag started to tighten around Fatima’s body.
“This is going to start to feel cold,” the Director noted, nodding at Nina to start a hydraulic pump. “We’re going to slow your metabolism to make the treatment easier for your body to accept. There’s too much risk of brain damage at the higher currents we’d have to use without this.”
Fatima was only absorbing about half of what the Director was saying, but could indeed now start to feel cold as chilled water started to circulate in the tubes embedded in the bag.
“Start the sedative,please.” Nina obliged with the drip stand, while the supervising nurse pressed a breathing mask onto Fatima and strapped it into place.
“Goodnight, Fatima. I’ll see you in a week.” The Director watched silently until the girl’s eyelashes fluttered closed.
“Thank you, ladies.” She disposed of her gloves. “Two more days until we wake this one, and six more for this one.” She indicated Gaukhar. “I’m rather inclined to give her to Darsi. But Fatima, my dear Nina, will be all yours...”
Whatever her personal proclivities, Medina was a gracious host. The Director was seated in the newsroom private office, with Medina serving them both an excellent black tea along with small sticky sweets.
“I must say, Medina, you have quite a spring in your step today.” The Director had shed her “official” white coat, preferring a business suit for this visit.
“Don’t I?” Medina carefully replaced the samovar. “I must congratulate you on your... ‘treatment’ of Irina. I would never have believed it possible. My goodness, she serviced me for hours last night. I was quite worn out!”
“I’m so pleased,” smiled the Director, sipping her tea. “Though, I suspect that was not the only reason you suggested that I call around today?”
“Quite.” Medina retrieved a data pad from a table. “I came across some interesting information today which might benefit both of us. You have, I assume, heard the rumors about increased underground activity in the Eastern oblasts?”
“I have.” The Director shrugged. “I know there has been something of a exodus from some of the larger towns, although I don’t know how justified it is. From what I have seen and read, which ittedly is little, nothing really seems to be boiling over.”
“Our indications are that the Ministry is very concerned about covert foreign for the underground. A situation apparently arose yesterday when a vehicle carrying some Western graduate students was stopped. I understand that they had decided to leave their studies and return to their home countries until things calmed down. They were apparently found to have ‘subversive materials’—which could be almost anything, of course—and were detained incommunicado.”
“A diplomatic incident?” the Director enquired.
“Not yet, apparently.” Medina topped up the Director’s glass. “They had—deliberately—not told anyone that they were leaving, hoping to avoid alerting anybody.” She shrugged. “Not a wise choice, it seems. So they are currently at the Ministry, which is trying to decide what to do with them. Releasing them from detention might be awkward depending on their treatment to date. Keeping them indefinitely would probably be worse, and although there are one or two voices in favor of, ahem, ‘silent disposal’, fortunately there’s not the stomach for that. Yet.“
“You have an idea,” observed the Director.
“You read my mind,” Medina chuckled. “I suspect that you could intercede and offer... treatment in your facility as a compromise. As long as the students are properly ‘prepared’, I think the Ministry would be quite happy to release them.”
“An intriguing idea, Medina.”
“An intriguing idea, Director.”
Besla, the dog-faced nemesis of the girl who used to be Fatima, leaned back in her chair and tapped a pencil on her yellow teeth.
“I’m curious how you found out about our little guests, but I’m not going to look a gift cow in the mouth—for now. You’re right that this is a piss-poor situation for us—for the State. After their treatment here, we wouldn’t welcome the inevitable attention from their countries if we released them and they tattled back. On the other hand, putting them in a camp—or something more permanent—would only store up trouble for the future.“
The Director smiled politely, despite her distaste at the woman. Everything about Besla rubbed her the wrong way—her lack of manners, crude language, and what the Director had privately diagnosed as acute sadism, barely kept in check.
Besla stuck the pencil in a crack in her desk, apparently having made a decision. “You will guarantee that they will not be released in a condition where they are able to talk about their stay here?”
“I personally guarantee it,” the Director assured her.
“Good! Because if this does blow up into a shitstorm, I want someone in front of me.” Besla snorted. “That fucking idiot who brought them in and started working on them. She thought she was being so clever, finding those pamphlets in the van. I’d bet that the silly little bitches couldn’t even read what they said...“
“I hope there’s no broken bones or scarring,” the Director warned. “I can work on their minds, but their bodies need to be intact.”
“Oh, they’re fine,” Besla said, dismissively. “My staff might be idiots but they know their jobs. Some dunking, a lot of yelling, a few slaps, but they’re basically fine physically.” She leered at the Director. “Mentally, they’re a mess—but that’s your area, right, Director?”
“Quite,” agreed the Director. “May I see them?”
“Sure.” Besla pushed back her chair and stood, scratching her chest. “Let’s say hello.”
The cell was very quiet. The four girls huddled together, not so much for warmth as for mutual reassurance. Occasionally one would whimper, and the others would hug her until she stopped. A tray of dubious food was in the middle of the room, mostly untouched.
The rattle of the key in the lock caused a Pavlovian response, the girls scurrying backwards to press against the dirty, gray-painted wall. As Besla entered, one girl buried her head behind another’s shoulders, apparently terrified.
The Director pursed her lips as she stepped into the cell behind Besla. While she wasn’t surprised at the apparent state of the girls, it was clear that there was a lot to do. Her nose wrinkled at the combined scent of fear, an uncovered waste bucket, and unwashed bodies.
“They’ve picked up lice,” Besla remarked over her shoulder. “I wouldn’t get too close.”
“Thank you, Besla. I’ll take it from here, if I may?”
The woman grunted. “Be my guest.” She retreated outside the cell.
The Director studied the girls for a few moments, looking for cues. The brunette on the right was quietly reassuring her terrified friend, while keeping her eyes on the Director. One to watch. They were wearing just panties and T-shirts, all of them dirty.
“Do you all understand English?” the Director asked. Her accent was detectable, but her diction was clear.
There was a moment of hesitation, then everyone—except the terrified girl—nodded.
The brunette piped up bravely. “There’s been a mistake. We’re very sorry! We didn’t know what those pamphlets said. Please, please let us go. We promise not to come back to this country, ever! Ever!” Her friends nodded frantically, even the terrified one.
The Director stroked her chin. “I need you to help me out, here. I don’t think that you intended to do anything wrong "—the nodding switched to shaking, to the point where the Director idly wondered whether their heads might come off—“but, I have to tell you, this does not look good.”
The brunette was following her—or, at least, thought she was. “What can we do to help you... ma’am?”
“I run a psychiatric institution near here,” the Director explained. “I might be able to get you transferred to me. Do you understand the concept of ‘mad but not bad’?”
The brunette, by this point, had Hope flashing in her eyes. “Yes, ma’am! We... We had the wrong world view! If only we could fix that...”
“Oh, I’m so glad you understand!” gushed the Director, internally rolling her eyes. “Now, I have to be honest with you,”—honesty had nothing to do with it—“we’re going to have to it you as patients, and that might involve some of what you might think as personal ... indignities. But, please stay with me! I’m trying to help you out of here.”
Everyone’s eyes were flashing Hope by now, even the terrified one.
“Please cooperate to the best of your ability. Can you do that for me?”
Now the heads starting nodding, with squeaks of “of course!” “Please!” “Absolutely!”
“Thank you for your assistance.” The Director took a last look over the students. “I hope to see you soon.”