Thursday, January 7, 2016

Guidance Counselor


I was thinking what it would be like if I was a high school guidance counselor and your teenage child came to me for advice about the future. I think it would go something like this:

Hi, I'm Michael, I'm your high school guidance counselor. Have a seat ... okay, so I looked at your transcripts and you're doing well in your classes. I also noticed that you have a lot of extra-curricular activities. Do you know what you want to do with your life?

... Yes, I--

Okay, I'm going to stop you right there. Are you fucking shitting me? Are you seriously going to sit there, you sixteen year old piece of snot, and tell me you know what you want to do with your life? You don't know shit. Have you ever blown a guy for money? Can you look someone in the eye for a minute and make them want to cry? Have you ever masturbated in public without shame? No, no, and no. So, please, stop telling me you know what you want to do with your life because until you experience things that completely fuck with your head from out of the blue and make you want to hit the reset button on your life, you don't know shit about fuck. Am I making you uncomfortable? Good, because that's what life is going to be like when you get out of school. You will be shit on, you will have shit shoved down your throat, and you will wallow in your own shit. Do you want to know how to avoid that crap?

... [nodding head while sobbing]

Good, I'm going to fucking tell you. You make other people as uncomfortable as possible, you brow-beat them, you publicly humiliate them, you take advantage of their weaknesses, and you reduce them to quivering snot-dribblers. After that, you put your arm around them, you help them up, and you let them know that if they work their asses off for you for fucking peanuts that you won't let them drown in their own vomit. If they get out of line, dunk their head under water repeatedly until they submit to your will. You don't have to know anything about anything; you just have to be willing to hurt other people until they do what you want them to do. Now get the fuck out of my office, you piece of shit. Oh, and Happy Fucking New Year.

Wednesday, January 6, 2016

The Bitch in the Basement (1): Introduction



I had tied her up in the basement hours ago while she was unconscious. She was naked, splayed out, her wrists and ankles tied to the posts of the bed. I was in the kitchen upstairs eating a bowl of Cheerios while reading the sports section of the newspaper. There was controversy about a one-loss football team being ranked in the top four of the College Football Playoffs while four unbeaten teams had been left out. I had gotten wrapped up in the arguments, remarkably sophisticated considering the topic of debate was college football, far more sophisticated than the front page news about the terrorist attacks in Paris. I found it amusing that a band named Eagles of Death Metal had been playing when three men had opened fire with Kalashnikovs killing nearly one hundred people. Was that a success for a death metal band? What is death metal without death, after all?

My bowl was still half full when I heard the screams, dulled by the closed door to the basement, muffled by the soundproofing of the walls. To hear screams in the kitchen, that was new. This woman, this bitch, had a mighty pair of lungs, no question there. I reached across the table to grab a pen and a pad of paper and wrote, “Soundproof basement door.” I got up, opened the door to the backyard patio, stepped outside, and closed the door behind me. I listened for a minute, but I couldn’t hear anything. That was good. I went back inside.

The faint screams came in bursts over the next five minutes. I was going to finish my cereal and read the rest of that damned football article no matter how annoying that bitch was, but she sure as fuck was going to pay for ruining such simple pleasures. Cunts like her always think their problems mean more than everyone else’s. It was going to be difficult to disabuse her of that notion, but it was on my list of goals. I hadn’t kidnapped her for nothing. There were lessons she was going to learn. It would be nice to just read from the list and have the points absorbed and understood immediately, to see a sea change take place within this woman in a matter of minutes. Then I could go about the rest of my day in peace, satisfied that the vanity and deceitfulness of one woman, at least, had dissipated. 

Who might she become if she could shed a lifetime of selfishness and lies in a matter of moments? Hell, I would be happy if it only took a day. But problems like these, deeply embedded emotional and psychological problems that had calcified neural pathways and worn out synaptic connections, it was unlikely that they could ever be changed in meaningful ways. Still, I had to try. Trying was the only significant purpose I had in life. I would have liked to live in utopia, absent such creatures, content to read and play board games and drink wine and go sailing on the weekends. But that wasn’t the way the world was. ISIS was believed to be the world’s greatest threat, but that wasn’t true. The most serious problem in the world was the everyday person. Why? I could write a book about why.

For now, though, it was time to visit the bitch in the basement. I was both looking forward to it and dreading it. This was going to be extremely painful for me. For her, too, of course, but that was part of why it was going to be painful for me. I didn’t want to hurt her in any way, but it was almost certainly going to be necessary. She really wasn’t aware that she controlled her own fate. Who would believe such a thing after waking up naked and tied to a bed in an unfamiliar basement after falling asleep at home. Home. I wasn’t sure that word meant anything real. Believing in home was like reliving in fairy tales—a facade that made people feel good by covering up the uncertainties threatening a comfortable life.

I knew this woman, too, and that was going to make it even more difficult for her to believe that she was in control of her own fate. I knew her well enough to know that there might be no end to her attempts at manipulation. That had been her way when she hadn’t been tied up and I had no reason to believe that her go-to methods of deceit and persuasion would be eschewed for a more virtuous approach. Hell, if she had practiced anything akin to virtue she wouldn't be in my basement at all. She wouldn’t understand that, though. No one before her ever had.

I had been practicing for years, honing my skills. One thing I had learned was that planning was useless. Well, planning the abductions was essential, but the process after a successful abduction was always unpredictable. No matter how similar men and women with certain vices are, they are particular in the ways in which their vices manifest. I was very glad I didn’t start with this woman I knew so well because the results would have been unsatisfying. They certainly were with the first three abductees. Practice does not make perfect. A hollow idea. No, practice merely improves skill, the skill necessary to adapt to unforeseen problems. The process was more like pi than finite mathematics. For what that’s worth.

As I walked down the stairs I heard the screams become howls. So much louder now. This was my first abduction in this house. I wanted a pristine place to perform this type of surgery, no taint from previous sessions with other patients. I had debated about having a run with someone else first to test acoustics and the lot, but I decided against it. I could see, though, that I would have to make adjustments. Her screams, which were now pleadings, weren’t sufficiently blunted by the soundproofing. It was distracting. If it kept going like this I was sure to get a migraine.

I thought about that at the bottom of the stairs. I laughed aloud thinking about the migraines this woman used to get. I don’t think she heard me laughing given how loudly she was bleating and she couldn’t yet see me as I hadn’t turned the corner into her line of sight. On a little stand at the base of the stairs was a mask, a mask made of dried roses sewn together with thread and glued onto a latex rubber mask hood. I had tried it on a few times previously. The fit was tight, but it was only uncomfortable for the first fifteen seconds or so. After that I didn’t notice it any more than I noticed the skin on my face. It was part of me, not just the role I was playing, but who I was in the moments I wore it. It wasn’t like my personality disappeared once I put on the mask; rather, the mask enhanced it, if not as a whole at least in parts.

The screams had stopped as I fitted the mask to my face. Once on, I looked around. I could see fairly well even though I had sewn screens over the eyes. I didn’t want her to know who I was. Not yet. I sat down on the stairs and contemplated. This basement room was partially finished, but the floor was cracked and crumbling concrete. There were other rooms in this basement, rooms that hadn’t been touched since the house had been built at the turn of the century—the nineteenth into the twentieth. Basements in Victorian houses from that age were mazes of rooms connected by doors, tiny hallways, and small closets or enclosures. I had soundproofed only this first room, the largest of all the rooms, at the base of the stairs. I wasn’t sure the other rooms needed it. I would, of course, be using those other rooms, but I intended to begin with the least disturbing space. There were two small windows at the top of the south-facing wall. I had boarded them up, covered them with a thin layer of cement, and covered them with pads as I had the rest of the walls and the styrofoam ceiling tiles which had been merely decorative to cover up the copper pipes, electrical wiring, and ventilation ducts that had been installed in the latter decades of the twentieth century. I had cut out space for the openings of the ventilation ducts so that the room wasn’t unbearably stuffy. A couple fans placed at opposite corners of the basement created airflow. 

Besides the bed, there was a dresser, a wooden straight back chair, and a large tray upon which I had placed the various tools of my trade. The tray was hidden from the view of the woman on the bed. I didn't want her to see the tray before it was necessary. I didn't always need it, anyway. Occasionally, desired results were achieved without anything more than my presence. I relished those cases. Extraordinary to change a human being through presence alone. Changes can be made without extreme measures. Achieving mutuality in perspective without the use of force is, by far, the most fulfilling result. Whether it happens or not is primarily determined by the subject in question. I learned to remain open to the unforeseen so that I could accept whatever happened. I adjusted as needed. Yet another reason plans were useless. This was an art rather than a science. I thought of it that like that, anyway.

The floor was covered in plastic. I went over in my mind how carefully I had placed it. There were three layers around the mattress which was, itself, wrapped in plastic. I closed my eyes and pictured the body of this woman I knew, a body I had known so well years ago. I couldn’t picture her as she had been, though. All I could see in my mins eye was the body I had tied to the bed hours ago. Her younger body, the body I had known, had faded from memory and her present body seemed remarkably unfamiliar to me. I thought seeing it would jog memories that had been dormant, but no. 

At that moment, her quivering voice rang out: “Please, whoever you are, please let me go. I can pay you whatever you want. I have money.” I opened the drawer of the little stand upon which the mask had sat and pulled out a pair of latex gloves. After putting them on my hands, I moved around a few small items until I found what I wanted. I placed the voice modulator over my mouth and said, “Patience, little one.” Silence and then, very softly, weeping. I sighed. I didn’t like this part of the process. The screams and howls were unpleasant yet tolerable, but the quiet weeping was heartbreaking.

Weeping, it seemed to me, was the sound of helplessness on the brink of resignation. In fact, I believed weeping was the way in which helplessness became resignation. Resignation most often led to numbed fear and pain; however, I had seen weeping result in greater sensitivity and vulnerability. If one was in a warm and loving environment in the latter case then life would have become even more beautiful. If one was strapped to a bed, however …

Whether there was weeping or resignation, it was usually the worst characteristics of a person’s psyche that came to the fore to save the mind. If biology uses such tactics for survival then how can a society say that those tactics are wrong? It might be that context determines what is good or bad. Interestingly enough, it wasn't generally clear which of my actions in specific situations were just and which were unjust. But then again, how can justice as a universal be defined? For me, justice was everything I was doing with these abductees. For them, perhaps, it was everything they were doing in response. Who was right and who was wrong in situations in which our actions opposed one another and were simultaneously perceived as unjust in the eyes of the other? Through whose lens should the answer be decided? I was never the one strapped to the bed; they always were. It was I who had true agency. Thus, I was always in position to be their God. I made the rules, I provided the definitions for words such as justice and concepts such as morality did not apply--it takes two to justify. What were their beliefs to me in such a situation? More importantly, over time, what were their beliefs to them? But then, what if any of them ever escaped?

As I sat out of sight listening to her sobs and faint pleas, I thought of music. A symphony is not a note. Some actions considered unjust in early moments become just when heard in combination and sequence with all of the other notes. Social mores are too simplistic to be justified in relation to the complexity of a reality that can only be heard rather than understood. Music theory means nothing without music. What were now her pleas might later become her hallelujahs. 

It was time. The sobs and pleas were fading so I walked around the corner with my mask firmly in place, a long-sleeve black shirt, loose-fitting black pants, and black boots. On the front of the shirt was an embroidered red rose. She didn’t look up at me until I was next to the bed. When she finally turned her head toward me, I leaned over so that my mask was only a couple feet from her face. She let out a piercing shriek. Her face was a mask in its own right, her mouth frozen so wide I could see the tonsils at the back of her throat. Her eyes weren't masked, though. If she had been more coherent she probably would have wished they were. Instead, they were alive, soaking in what she likely perceived as evil and emitting what was unmistakably terror. I had looked at my face in the mirror shortly after putting on the mask for the first time. I could understand why it would elicit such a response in this situation. I had been frightened by it even though I was the one wearing it. It was the screens in place of the eyes and the mouth. That combined with the dried roses? Disturbing. 

This was, in many ways, my favorite moment with abductees. I knew exactly what they were feeling and I could feel it with them while they were feeling it because I, too, had been in similar situations throughout life. I knew the feeling of being helpless while looking in the face of what I, too, had perceived as evil. What made moments such as this so rich for me, though, was that while I experienced the terror of being a victim, I also experienced being the evil that was so terrifying. It was empowering. These moments, the initial moments of terror upon seeing me, were therapeutic. In a matter of seconds I went from feeling the helplessness of victimhood to the all-powerful God that embodies every fear, panic, and horror within each and every human being. It was a purging of my experiences of impotence earlier in life. I hadn’t even considered the possibility of such a thing occurring until the very first time an abductee screamed in fright while tied down on a mattress  Every experience since then has been as cathartic. Once I began to understand what was really happening, perhaps by the third time, I recognized the importance of this moment for me. It was then that elements of ritual began to form. 

Ritual is all to easily dismissed as unimportant and meaningless in contemporary society, but nothing in my prior experience compared to the power of ritualized fright. Of course, it was only a ritual for me. For the abductees, it was an entirely new and foreign experience, certainly one they would never choose. But I hadn’t been offered the choice when I was young, either. No one on the helpless end of events ever had. Well, perhaps a few, but only in stories. Jesus choosing to be crucified? It wasn't that I didn’t believe that it happened, it was that I believed choosing to suffer wasn’t really suffering at all. How could anyone feel any debt to Jesus “dying for sins” knowing he chose to be tortured and killed? If I was a god, I might choose to be tortured, too, perhaps out of sheer boredom from being all-powerful throughout eternity. A day of pain and helplessness might feel good by comparison after feeling nothing but love and power forever and ever. Why people willingly worshipped a narcissistic God I had no idea. I understood why my patients, as I thought of them from time to time, learned to worship me, though. It wasn't because I chose to suffer in their stead, either.  

I stood up straight and put the voice modulator in front of my mouth. “Try to relax. If you piss and shit all over the bed I’m not going to clean it up.” She closed her eyes and arched her head back with her mouth wide. There was no sound.  She emitted a silent cry while the veins in her neck popped out and her face turned blood red. I spoke again: “Breathe. Holding your breath makes the fear worse. Deep breaths, not short and shallow. Loosen the tension of your muscles. It will help.” I always found it oddly amusing delivering soothing messages with a mechanical, robot-like voice. I knew from watching reactions in the past that it had the opposite effect. It was extremely satisfying.

I pulled the chair next to the bed and sat down. I was surprised, but she seemed to be following my directions, calming herself down. She was the first who had actually taken my advice. I relaxed, too. We shared a momentary peace, a sacred peace. For a moment, I put off contemplating what I wanted to do next. It wasn't long, though, before a flood of possibilities entered my mind.