The Time I Died
Chapter Three
Freeport
Downtown was filled with people.
There were crowds seemingly everywhere, in spite of the chill, in spite of the ceaseless breeze, in spite of it being in the middle of the afternoon in the middle of the work week. Pedestrians packed the sidewalks, lingering as they ed Kate, eager to eavesdrop on her conversation with Michelle. They cast glances in her direction, some curious, others disparaging.
“…and I had breakfast in the cutest little cafe today! I think it was called Frankie’s? Franklin’s? Have you heard of it, Kate?”
The question snapped Kate back into reality, where she and Michelle occupied an unremarkable corner of downtown Freeport and where an entirely normal volume of ersby walked right past them without notice. Still, she felt exposed, even if she wasn’t. Be discreet was something her former controllers had burned into her brain, and now it sat alongside eat your vegetables, wear sunscreen, and other classics.
“Or maybe it was Frannie’s?” In contrast to Kate, Michelle didn’t seem to be concerned about anything, other than pinning down the name of that diner. “Do you know which one I’m talking about, Kate?”
She did. “It’s Franklin’s,” she answered. “It’s where I used to take my best friend, so that I could hypnotize and brainwash her”.
She decided to skip over that little detail.
April 15
“How did you get involved with Golden Dawn, Kate?”
“Oh, God, I swear it was not my own doing. They were so ridiculous! Take an 80s religious cult, throw in a huge house that hasn’t been remodeled since the early 90s, and replace the ugly tangerine robes with metallic gold bikinis and heels. Voila! You’re created Golden Dawn!”
“What drew you in, then?”
“I didn’t get drawn in, that’s my point! I wasn’t… okay, so, stepping back, the first time I ran into Golden Dawn was when they hosted this off-campus event. Free booze! So you know Kate’s gonna be there first in line, right? I went with my bar-buddy Theodora, and no more than twenty minutes in… we both knew it was a cult.”
“I imagine there were plenty of warning signs.”
“It was like a warning sign factory. We walk into the room and almost everyone there has two Xs.”
“Chromosomes, I’m assuming?”
“Ding-ding-ding! Bingo! Turns out they were marketing it as a female empowerment event, men not welcome, come on in sisters! There were only a couple of guys, mostly boyfriends tagging along, and Michael Oliver.”
“And that’s where you met him for the first time?”
“Yep, it was my first encounter with the one and only glorious Master Michael Oliver! And the girls standing around him were beautiful. They were fawning over him like he was a rock star. They would grab ing students and gush about him. ‘Oh, have you met Michael? Oh, you have to meet him!’ Stuff like that. We found out later that those girls were the actual Golden Dawn, and that everyone and everything else involved was a front.”
“How so?”
“The free booze, the pamphlets, the token guy , the events, even the philosophy… it was all there just to hide the fact that this was Michael’s little personal harem and that he was using these events solely to meet and seduce women like me.”
“He used that even to recruit you into the cult.”
“In his dreams! Not a fucking chance! Not that he didn’t try. He came up to us several times, in person, hand out, ‘hey, I’m Michael, hope you’re both having a great time!’ But even that got creepy after a couple of times. Another red flag! So Theodora pretended to get a phone call from her ‘sick mother’ and we got out of there. And we laughed so hard about it when we got home. Damn, what a big bullet we had dodged! Just look at all of those brainwashed morons! Can you imagine us ing that bullshit? Oooh, come learn about the universe that surrounds us! Ha ha ha big fucking joke.
And that was that, until a couple of weeks later, when he sent his goon squad after me with chloroform and a van.”
“How much do you about that part? When you were kidnapped?”
“It’ll always be a little fuzzy to me, no matter how hard I try, because they kept me super drugged. There was never a point where I was lucid in any meaningful way. I lying on my back in the back of a van. No windows, something straight out of a movie.
Then some guy was carrying me over his shoulder down to the basement of the mansion, where the Machine was. I him bonking my head on the door and not feeling a thing, and thinking how weird and funny that was. I kind of thinking that they were going to lock me in the basement until someone paid my ransom, only there was no one who would pay it.
Then I started giggling about that, and I couldn’t stop. I guess that pissed off the guy who was carrying me at some point, because after who knows how many minutes of my cackling, he dropped me on the ground and stuffed that nasty rag into my face again until I blacked out. When I came to, Michael had me strapped into the Machine.”
“Strapped?”
“Strapped. It was… imagine this big basement room, the size of a basement rec room, only it’s crammed full of computers and stuff. And in the center is a big chair with wires coming out of it, a big curved monitor right at head level. Michael would literally strap girls into that chair. Big leather straps that he probably got from an old asylum, the kind with big thick metal buckles. I can still feel them cutting into my skin.”
“This is another opportunity, Kate…”
“Oh no. You’re not going to pat me on the back for being heroic again, are you? Because it’s not… it’s not like I was successful. I didn’t escape him, not then, not ever! You keep telling me to be proud of it, and I don’t understand. I lost. I got brainwashed! And I kept getting brainwashed! How is that even vaguely heroic?”
“How many women do you think just rolled over, Kate?”
“With Michael? Maybe a few.”
“With Michael. With Decker. With anyone else out there. We don’t know how many of these cults are out there, ones like yours, but it’s well above zero. That’s not even considering the cults that rely on plain old drug addiction or coercion to keep their in line. So thinking of that, how many people do you think just roll over and get brainwashed, no fighting, no struggling as hard as you did?”
“I was a bitch. I was a crazy, psychotic, emotionally-damaged, slutty little bitch! Of course I was going to fight him!”
“I disagree, Kate, and I’d like you to consider my reasons why. Not that you have to, of course.”
“Such as?”
“Well, picture riding the bus, and a man on the bus is acting very creepy towards you. Studies have shown that most people… men and women, mind you… would accept the abusive behavior from that man until the bus reaches the next stop. They place their faith in a future event to save them from their present.”
“The bus stop?”
“The bus stop will come soon, or maybe the creep will go away, or maybe a stranger will intervene. From everything you’ve told me, today and in our other sessions… by far the easiest thing for you back then would have been to surrender unconditionally. From the first moment. The first swing of a watch, or whatever someone wanted to use on you. Most cults prey on people exactly like that, people who won’t put up a fight in the slightest. And yet here you were, drugged and strapped to a chair and being subjected to some intense brainwashing, and you were still fighting them for as long as you could.
I want you to focus on that. Whenever we talk about your past, or your present. About everything that’s happened to you. There was always a part of you that fought like hell, and never stopped fighting like hell.
And it’s the reason you’re here today chatting with me.”
2009
“You’re feeling very safe, Kate. Very safe and soft and warm and relaxed. So safe and soft and relaxed. Feel yourself sink down into the chair. Relax and watch the spiral. Sink into the spiral. Endless turning, pulling you in, deeper and deeper. Feeling so sleepy and relaxed. Watch the spiral.”
“I’m—not—going to watch the spiral,” she countered. The words that came out of her mouth were as slurred and blurry as the display in front of her face, but the look on Michael’s face let her know that he understood them. He kept smiling, but even in her condition she could see the anger and frustration behind his eyes.
“Yourrra… y’know what you’re… yourren asshole.” The words didn’t come out the way she wanted them to—few did in her present condition—but those little flames in his eyes grew bigger.
“Kate. Kate Kate Kate… you’re going to drive me crazy. Why can’t you just listen to me?”
“Ffffuckin… lemme go… choo listen to that? Dickass…”
“You’re very tense. There’s so much anger inside of you, Kate, but I can help you escape that. I can make all of that go away. You just need to relax. Calm your mind, feel the tension flow out of your muscles. Your tired, tired muscles. Take a deep breath, and relax. Feeling calm. So, so calm, Kate.”
His voice had a little musical cadence to it, a little melody that rose and fell like waves. It peaked at ‘breath’ and bottomed out at ‘relax,’ over and over. Kate rode the wave for a little bit, breathing in at the top, letting it hiss out at the bottom. Deep breath, relax. Deep breath, relax. So calm, and relaxing. Deep breath, relax. So calm and relaxing.
“Yes. So calm and relaxing, Kate. You’re so tired. So very tired. It’s so easy to just watch and listen. Relax and surrender to the spiral. Sinking so deep. So deep.”
So deep. Calm and… wait no, no, fuck no! I have to get out of here! I’m in a fucking basement shut up shut up asshole…
“It’s so easy to watch and listen, Kate. Breathe and relax. Watch and listen. See the spiral. Your eyes are so heavy and sleepy. It’s so easy to give in and surrender.”
“It’s… no, it’s NOT easy,” she grunted. She pushed against the restraints. The leather strap holding down her right arm had a rough edge, and a few hours of straining against it had produced an equally rough-looking patch of red, raw skin. Pushing on the strap now felt like getting slapped, a searing pain that shook away the drugs and the soft music and whatever the hell else Michael was trying to use on her.
At some point she’d bitten through her lower lip, and now it too provided a convenient method of shocking herself back into reality. She pressed the wound and felt warm, thick blood ooze into her mouth. It was salty and gross. She let herself choke on it instead of swallowing, the better to chase away the dizzying drugs he kept feeding her.
“Breathe and relax,” he persisted.
She did one, but not the other.
“Well, it didn’t feel heroic at the time.”
“It rarely does, Kate. But let’s keep going, if you’re okay with that. What happened next?”
“I… well, I was really confused and scared. Every time I got close to zoning out I’d be reminded that this was all way out of the ordinary, and it would kick me back into gear. I’d bite my lip or rub my skin on that strap, and then the drugs and screens would try to pull me down again. Over and over. For hours. It could have been days, truth be told.
And the thing was, it was all because I was being a rebellious punk about it. I bet that if he’d just sat down and calmly chatted with me about the weather, that spiral would have pulled me in all on its own, and he’d have had me wrapped around his finger in an hour. Instead I lay there squirming and hurting myself and telling him to fuck off. So he switched tactics.”
“Tried a different approach? I’m guessing it didn’t involve chatting with you.”
“No, but not far off. Michael was smart. At least about brainwashing and mind control, he was really smart. He knew how to break people. By that point he’d had enough women in the machine to know what worked and what didn’t. When he finally saw how much I was resisting him, he realized that I was specifically fighting him. So he stepped back, and had Nikki take over.”
“One of the other slave girls. You’ve mentioned her before.”
“She was his first. It’s weird, in a way. I think he loved her, truly loved her. Pined for her and when she rejected him, he did what any normal boy would do, he built a huge brainwashing machine and turned her into a doe-eyed love-puppy. She was fiercely loyal to him.”
“People like Michael usually start by getting into the heads of the people they already know well. Family, friends, crushes. When you already know what makes a person happy, or angry, it’s easier to use that against them. And as they say, practice makes perfect. The more minds you break…”
“God, that’s an icky thought. And it’s also one hundred percent true, isn’t it? You start with the ones you know. Your high school crush, or your very best friend on the planet.”
2018
“You’re deeply hypnotized, Claire.”
Her beautiful friend sat across from her in the booth at Franklin’s, eyes closed, face relaxed, white teeth just visible behind parted, full lips. “I’m deeply hypnotized,” she whispered.
“You trust me completely, don’t you?”
“I trust you completely.”
“You’ll obey any command that I give you, won’t you?”
“Of course.”
“You’ll go deep into trance when I tell you to.”
“Yes.”
“I’m sure it worked to his advantage, to see someone else so completely under his spell. Convincing you that resistance was a waste of time.”
“That clever fucker. Goddammit, you’re absolutely right. That was absolutely the plan! I never thought of it that way, but… yeah. It makes total sense.”
“And so… he turned things over to Nikki. What did she do differently than Michael?”
“Oh, Decker could’ve learned a thing or three from those two. They were good. They were fucking good. Like, ‘good cop-bad cop’ good. It was like a full one-eighty. It went from hypno-spirals and drugs and ‘you are in love with Michael Oliver, you want to fuck Michael Oliver,’ to hypno-spirals and drugs and female empowerment! us, sister! We’re all sisters now! Sisters in power! She didn’t talk about him at all. She talked about this thing they called ‘The Truth,’ which of course was all about letting Michael control our minds and bodies, but she didn’t say that. She just said that all I needed to do was accept The Truth and everything would be okay.”
2009
“Kate. My wonderful, beautiful sister Kate. Are you feeling alright? The drugs Michael uses can be pretty strong.”
“Fffffuuuuhhhh…” Kate’s mouth refused to make the concluding ‘ck.’ She meant it, though, along with the ‘you’ that also refused to follow. “Ffuhhhh…”
“I know, I know.” The blonde patted Kate’s shoulder. “It’s like surgery, sister. It’ll sting for a little bit, but then you’ll feel so, so much better. The spiral really helps. It’ll keep you from thinking about the drugs. That’s what it’s here for. Look closely and you’ll agree.”
“N-no…” The spiral was bad.
The room was outfitted with a million strobe lights, all of them placed just beyond the edge of Kate’s vision, arranged so that she could detect their flash but not actually see them flashing. At one point, the lights had been blinding and confusing, but by now Kate’s brain was mostly indifferent to them. They flashed on and off in a pattern that Kate was almost able to recognize and predict. Almost. Figuring out the puzzle drew her attention away from the Bad Spiral, so she allowed herself to focus on the strobes instead.
Flash flash. Flash flash flash. Deep breaths, and relax. Deep breaths and relax. So deep, so relaxed. Watch the spiral, Kate. Look deep into the center of the spiral. Free your mind. Open and relaxed. Look into the spiral, Kate…
“I w-won’t look,” she mumbled, even with a part of her now insisting that she could. That she should. It was beautiful, right?
No. Maybe. No. Maybe? Nikki was so fucking beautiful. She was being so nice. Maybe the spiral wasn’t so bad? But that asshole wants me to look into the spiral. Fuck that.
Flash. Flash flash flash. Flash. Deep. Relax and sleep. Sleep.
She increased her focus on the strobe lights, forgetting about the spiral and the woman speaking to her. She would figure out the pattern, and once she did, she’d have them by the balls.
“You’re almost ready, sister.”
Kate shook her head. It felt like moving a bag of loose bricks. Her neck felt stiff, as if she’d been holding it in place for too long. That didn’t make sense—only a few minutes had ed, after all—but then again nothing made sense in this weird room. She cracked one eye open, then wished that she hadn’t. The spiral was still there, still making easy, wide, loopy turns, trying to draw her in. Draw her in. Draw her into the center, to sink deep down, so deep and relaxed, down and-
“N…no.”
“It won’t hurt to look.” Nikki’s voice was soft and gentle, a mother telling a bedtime story to a very sleepy child. “Everything is in the spiral, sister Kate. Even you. It’s okay to peek at it again. Or even to open your eyes all the way. Can you do that for me? Just for a moment. It’s so easy to do. It’ll make the drugs and the dizziness go away. It’ll make everything so much better. So wonderful. So relaxed. So open. Open your eyes.”
The strobes burned little Hiroshima shadows into her retinas. Flash. Flash flash. Flash. Flash flash flash. Focus on the patterns, Kate. Focus very carefully. Flash and flash. Concentrate. Focus. Completely focused. Deeply focused. Nothing but the lights. Nothing but my voice.
“Hypno… tizing. Y-you’re hypnotizing me? Hyp… hypno… you’re… I…”
“Oh, my lovely sister, don’t be silly! Everyone knows that hypnosis doesn’t work like that! You have to want to be hypnotized.” She paused, waiting for Kate to take the bait and open her eyes. When they remained firmly closed, she tried again. “I promise, it won’t hypnotize you unless you want it to. From the bottom of my heart. It will make you feel better.”
“Th’sp… spi… spiral’s bad,” Kate mumbled. “Can’t… it’ll… it can…”
“What will the spiral do to you if you look at it, Kate?”
This was something she’d forgotten and ed again half a dozen times. Or at least it was something she thought she ed. “It… it’ll… it will hypnotize me.” There, that was it. That’s why it was so bad. “It will hypnotize me.”
“No, my wonderful sister.” The blonde rested her soft, soft hands on Kate’s shoulders, massaging them slowly until Kate’s head began to wobble in lazy circles. “You’re so strong, and so powerful. Only you can let yourself be hypnotized. Only you can decide if you want to be hypnotized. If you want to drop down into that wonderful hypnotic trance. So deep and hypnotized, so wonderful, but only if you want it. Only if you want it.”
“Th—the drugs. You drugged… drugging me. T’hyp… hypnotize… hypno…”
“The only thing you’ll find in the spiral is The Truth. You what I told you earlier about The Truth, don’t you? The Truth will keep you from being hypnotized. The Truth will give you the power to resist Master’s drugs. He doesn’t know. I won’t tell him, sister. As long as you promise not to tell him, okay?”
“What… whattaryou…”
“The Truth is more powerful than any drug. We’re in this together, my beautiful, powerful sister. Us girls gotta stick together, right? The Truth gives us the power to do that. And the spiral is where The Truth lives. At the center of the spiral. But you have to look for it to find it, Kate. And you can’t do that if you keep your eyes closed. You don’t want to stay trapped in this room forever, do you?”
“No.”
“I don’t, either. I was where you were, not that long ago. Afraid. Feeling powerless. I was afraid to look into the beautiful spiral. Look into it, sister.”
“Trick…” The word eased out of her slowly, tinged with uncertainty. Why would this woman lie to her? She was keeping secrets from this Michael guy. She had to be on Kate’s side.
“No tricks, sister. Open your eyes. Open your mind. Open your mind and body to The Truth. Let Master’s words into your heart. Into your soul. Into your mind. Your sleepy, tired mind. It’ll feel so good. It’ll feel so, so good. Even better than you feel now.”
Kate was about to respond that she didn’t feel all that great now, but the fog in her brain thinned a bit, and she found that she felt… good? Someone was feeling her up, soft warm hands roaming her sweaty, nude body, lifting and releasing her tits, sliding down her stomach, gently exploring down below, up and down her slit, before making their way back to her chest again. She moaned, surprising herself. A distant voice called to her, warning her that this was wrong, that she shouldn’t be touched like this, that this wasn’t the time for this kind of thing. Then the soft, soft hands found her sex, and the distant voice became too distant to hear.
“The Truth set me free. I was lost, just like you. I was alone and sad, just like you. And once I looked into the beautiful spiral, it was so much better. No more worried or fears, just peace and love and The Truth. It’ll save you, just like it saved me. And it’s so beautiful, Kate! More beautiful than anything you’ve ever looked at in your whole entire life. Please, just open your eyes and give it a chance. One quick peek, that’s all.”
“I…” God, it was so hard to think. She was about to explode and about to collapse at the same time.
“See The Truth. If you don’t like it, you can close your eyes again and not watch it. I promise.”
She was being hypnotized, and the only way to stop it was to look into the spiral. That was it. It was that simple. She could look into the spiral and find The Truth, and then they’d have to let her go. Let her go free. Or she could sit in the chair and not be free.
“Yeah… okay… look… just quick… but… but I won’t let you hypno…”
She opened her tired eyes.
“Hyp… no…”
It was so beautiful.
She became dimly aware of something tugging at her right forearm. Raw skin scraped against leather again, shaking her awake. She blinked. The spiral was still in front of her, still turning in lazy circles. Nikki was right. It hadn’t hypnotized her after all.
Someone—probably Nikki—had freed her right arm from the restraints. She pulled her gaze away from the spiral for long enough to study it. She wiggled her fingers, as if to prove they were real. As she did, she felt the leather bindings on her left arm loosen as well.
“You see, my beautiful sister? You saw The Truth, and now you’re free. Free to leave, free to do whatever you want. The Truth has set you free.”
“Yes.” She dropped her right hand into her lap, her attention returning to the spiral in front of her. “It’s wonderful, Nikki.”
“You are one of us, now. You can do whatever you want. What would you like to do next?”
Kate didn’t answer her. She pressed her right hand against her sex and went to work, eyes never leaving the screen.
“Picture being strapped into a chair, drugged so that you can’t think straight. You’re ashamed of who you are, of what you are. And here’s this absolutely drop-dead gorgeous fashion model telling you that you could be her! That you could be beautiful and glamorous without even trying, you could have perfect skin and perfect hair and perfect everything, and be powerful and important, too! All I had to do was learn about The Truth and accept it. Just that one little thing.”
“And you did.”
“And I did.”