Here's a bit more. Life is more than difficult since I retired. One major problem after another. I'm afraid posting is going to remain VERY sporadic since writing is so difficult. But I am still working on it! - Karen.
Monsters
By Karen Singer
Chapter 31 – A Few Answers – Part 1 of 2
“What?”
“Seven of our guys were killed watchin’ out for the whores downtown.”
“Damn him!” Vince Beastman yelled. “His mercs couldn’t get through our defenses, so they went after the girls on the street?”
“Except that I didn’t hear nothin’ about those mercenaries,” the man told him. “From what I heard, all the killing was done by a woman. One woman.”
“One?”
“Could it be that other broad you was lookin’ for?”
“Death! I thought she was long gone. How many of the girls were killed?”
“None. But one is missing.”
“Missing? Which one?”
“Some new broad named Sally somethin’.”
“The new one? Sally? Fuck!” Vince roared. “She’s the one I brought back with me from the breaking house. Shit! Well, there’s no way she can tell anyone where that place is.” He dared to chuckle. “In fact, from what I was told, there’s no way she can tell anyone about anything at all…except to beg them for sex. If that damn woman is back again, then tell everyone to keep their eyes out for her. I still want her, and I want her bad. Revenge and Death. The perfect matched set. I may even have to arrange something special to display them both…properly!”
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The car drove around the back of the mansion. Ralphie watched as the barn grew nearer. He was staying in the barn this time instead of the house. The entire top floor of the barn had been converted into makeshift quarters for the entire staff that wasn’t staying in the house. Now him as well. But that was good. Vinny was staying in the house. Ralphie wanted to keep as much distance between himself and Vinny as possible.
He saw Carol standing outside of the barn entrance, waiting. He knew she couldn’t wait to talk with the woman in the trunk. He wanted to hear what she had to say too. Was Brandy alive. Did she know anything at all about Brandy? Ralphie was sure that Carol had other things she was interested in knowing as well, but for Ralphie, his entire future rested on Brandy’s fate. Was she alive? Or did he need to worry about what would happen to him without Brandy.
The car stopped and Ralphie heard the trunk opening before he managed to get out of the car. He immediately heard that strange sound again, and there was no doubt as to what it was. The woman they had captured was barking like a dog. Weird! That other hooker had said Sally was weird, but Ralphie hadn’t expected anything at all like this.
There was a crowd gathered around the back of the car. It took a few minutes, but Ralphie finally was able to see what was going on. The damn woman was down on all fours, barking like a dog, while she did her best to go to every man in the group and do her best to try to get him interested in having sex with her. Except that the only noise she seemed to make, was to bark like a dog. Carol and the others were all trying to get the woman to stop it, but the woman didn’t appear to be interesting in stopping her behavior. And to Ralphie, she just looked scared. He couldn’t blame her. Did the woman have any idea the kind of people that were gathered around just to see her?
He spotted Carol’s mother walking from the house to the group of gathered people. He worked his way around the back of the crowd so he could get closer to Carol to hear whatever was said. He watched as Carol and her mother hugged, then Carol’s mother stood watching the oddball woman and her sexy doglike antics.
“We can’t get her to stop,” Carol told her mother. “It’s like she doesn’t understand anything we’re saying.”
“She’s obviously scared,” Janice noted. “But that wouldn’t account for this kind of behavior.” She thought about that as she watched the woman. Finally, she nodded. “Someone has been busy with her,” she said. “Carol, I suggest you lock her in the barn for the evening. Someplace where she can’t get free. Someone has done some mental conditioning on her, and whatever they’ve done, they’ve done a pretty good job of it. As I see it, your only chance of getting anything useful out of her at all is if I go in and manage to override what’s been done to her. And from the look of things, that may not be easy.”
Carol wasn’t happy to hear that. “You’re sure, Mama?”
“Very! That woman has been brainwashed! Lock her up and let’s all get a good night’s sleep. I have a feeling, come morning, I’m going to need it.”
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There was no way that Janice would depart from her usual routine schedule, but for Carol’s sake, she had hurried just a bit through breakfast. There was no doubting her daughter’s worry about Brandy, and no doubting how anxious Carol was to get answers. The woman Carol had brought in last night was only a faint hope for those answers, but so far, it was the best Carol had been able to come up with. So for Carol’s sake, Janice had hurried, a bit, through breakfast.
“All is ready,” the Chinese man said to her as she approached her workroom in the barn.
Janice merely nodded as she entered the room. The woman was there. Naked. The usual shock collar locked around her neck and attached to the chain that ran up to a beam from the ceiling above. As before, the woman was down on all fours. She wasn’t barking like a dog this time, she only looked scared. Not just scared, petrified.
Janice didn’t like working over women. She didn’t like hurting women at all. She was a great advocate of women, trying to help them out whenever she could. The collar and stripping her naked perhaps weren’t the best ways to start with this subject. Not if she was already acting too much like a dog – a trained defense mechanism she suspected. Brainwashing…of sorts. A fallback to what she had been trained to do…or become.
She didn’t usually ask questions of her victims, but this time she did. “What’s your name?” She noticed the wide-eyed frightened look on the woman. And then the woman barked. Janice shook her head, perturbed. Either the woman was too scared to answer, or too brainwashed. She was going to have to be tough with her. Cruel. Perhaps more so than with some of the men she destroyed.
“Sit in the chair,” she ordered. But the woman just stayed where she was, on all fours. Janice didn’t bother giving another command she grabbed the remote control from the table, pointed it at her, and pushed the button for maximum pain. The woman screamed and writhed on the floor. Janice released her finger from the button. “I said sit in the chair…like a human!”
The woman appeared to be more frightened now than she had been. She propped herself up on one elbow and barked…almost pleadingly. Janice immediately hit the button for maximum pain again. “Every time you don’t do what I tell you to, you get pain. Pain just like this. You either do exactly what I say immediately, or I put you through hell.” She released the button. The woman was panting heavily, her hands grasping at the metal collar locked around her neck.
Janice moved closer to her, closer than she usually did to her victims. “I don’t care what you’ve been conditioned to do. You either do what I say, or you spend your life in agony, just like that. No more barking. No more acting like a dog. You’re a woman. A human woman, and I want you to act like it and sit in the chair…like a human woman! Now move!”
The woman started to move her body, but slowly. Janice’s finger moved down to the lowest pain setting and hit that button, the woman fell to the floor in pain. Janice’s finger left the button. “Not fast enough,” Janice said to her. “When I give an order, your only thought has to be to do what I want – as fast as you can. Now sit in the chair!”
This time, the woman moved much faster toward the chair. A moment later, she was sitting and staring fearfully up at Janice.
“Much better,” Janice told her. “You think you experienced hell before? Trust me, that’s nothing to the hell I’m about to put you through. Now that we’ve gotten you sitting in that chair. Stand up.” But the woman wasn’t fast enough for Janice and Janice’s finger hit the medium pain button for a moment. “Stand up!” The woman stood. “Sit down!” Janice ordered immediately. “Stand up! Sit down!” And so her commands began. This time, against a woman. This time, against someone who had already been through someone else’s brainwashing. But Janice was unquestionably the best in the world at brainwashing. Nothing could stand against what she did. And nobody could ever break free when she was done with them.
The commands came. One at a time. Constantly changing. “You don’t have time to think. The only way you can get through this is to let me do the thinking for you. My brain controls you.” Step by step. One by one, she gave the commands to the woman. Taking her though the process that would render the woman powerless against her. Taking her though the process that would force the woman to do whatever Janice wanted. Janice’s will, was her will.
To Janice, the woman seemed to go under her spell faster than any of the others. She guessed it was because of the prior conditioning the woman had been through. But she dared not take any chances, just as she dared not take any shortcuts. Janice was thorough, and she prided herself on that. She would own this woman, lock, stock, and barrel. And in the end, if she decided the woman was worth saving, then later she would decide how she wanted to save her. But first, she had to own the woman’s mind…something she knew already that she did. But still, she took no shortcuts, took no chances.
In the end, when she was done with her, Janice left her right where she was. But this time she didn’t wake the woman up from her hypnotic control. She simply left her sitting calmly in the chair, her body relaxed, her head empty of thoughts. Janice opened the door and motioned to one of Mr. Wu’s workers. “Call my daughter please, and anyone else who wants to hear. I want to start questioning her here first, before I wake her. Then, after we know a few things, the others can question her.”
The woman nodded and hurried off towards the house. Janice poured another glass of iced tea and drank it while she waited. Mr. Wu arrived in moments. He always stayed near during her sessions. Carol and Susan came hurrying in a few minutes later.
“Mom?” Carol said. “You’re not sending her to the interrogators?”
“They can have her after we’ve talked a bit,” Janice explained. “After watching her, I want answers too. Someone else is bending minds and I want to know who. Whoever it is isn’t nearly as good as I am, but this is a dangerous game. I need to know more.”
Carol looked at the woman sitting calmly in the chair. “Is she awake?”
“No. She’s still pretty deep. I haven’t asked her anything yet, but we can start getting some answers from her now.”
