Shock Treatment

by Geoffrey Lyon

  “You don’t dare speak of His Holiness in that manner!”

  “You mean that murderer?”

  Another slap, this one hurt. Miriam tasted blood on her lips. She must have touched a nerve. Good, she thought. She was angry, too. About Daniel. And Elizabeth. And about what they were doing to her right now.

  “You know he won’t escape justice,” she said, smirking, “When he goes down, so will you. All of you.”

  That brought down a rain of slaps. She struggled, but the men held her down and pummelled her. Finally, she collapsed. She was already weak from the ordeal of the previous night. And now she was bruised and in pain.

  But this was just the beginning. They lifted her up off the ground, splashed cold water in her face, and dragged her to one of the corners of the basement. They proceeded to bind her ankles to her wrists, leaving her trussed up in an extremely uncomfortable and vulnerable position.

  One of them leaned down and whispered in her ear, “Now, shall we begin the real fun?”

  Miriam clenched her jaw tightly, anticipating what was to come.

  “Bring the whip,” the man gave the order.

  When he had the whip in hand, he swung it vigorously at Miriam.

  She lost track of the time. One punishment blended in with the next. She had had nothing to eat or drink since the previous night, and was feeling very weak and dizzy. She was bleeding and in severe pain. It felt like all her muscles were on fire. She had been slapped, kicked, whipped, cut, beaten, and tortured. She had screamed in agony and struggled, but it was all in vain. Her torturers had made it clear that the treatment would continue. They were not asking for anything, no demand for information or confession, no demand for an oath of loyalty nothing. They kept at it for hours.

  Finally, at long last, they stopped.

  “Take her back,” the one who had been administering her punishment gave the order, massaging his wrist. “That’s it for today.”

  The men lifted Miriam’s limp body, carried her upstairs and out of the basement, and threw her in the van. They drove in silence until they reached the tin shed. They had to physically shove her inside and close the door. She slumped inside the shed, half-unconscious, not knowing where she was.

  It was the middle of the day. She passed out only to be woken up by the sweltering temperature. It was hot outside, but it felt like being in an oven inside the tin shed. The metal walls were like a hot iron. Miriam jumped, feeling her skin burn where it had touched the metal. She had no choice but to stand. But she had no energy to stand. Her lips were dry, her mouth parched from thirst, and she had cuts and bruises all over her body. The nauseating smell of blood and sweat mingled made her feel like vomiting. She didn’t know what to do, so she carefully, slowly, inched herself down on her knees. She carefully avoided touching the metal walls of the shed. Once she was kneeling, she lowered herself and bent forward, lowering her head to her knees. She was able to find some relief in this posture, and she crouched there like that in the intolerable heat until she passed out.

  She didn’t know where she was. It felt like an oven. How hot was it in here? 100 degrees? 110? She shouldn’t be alive, she thought. She was severely dehydrated. She felt like she was going to die. She started to weep quietly.

  “Hey now,” it was Daniel. He was not in the Lake Tahoe cabin anymore. He was standing outside in the snow, breathing in the crisp cool mountain air. “Don’t cry. You know I hate to see you cry.”

  “I can’t, Daniel,” she whispered soundlessly. “I can’t do it anymore. I can’t go on. Let me die! At least I’ll be with you.”

  “My love,” his voice was soft, full of compassion. “You are always with me, no matter what.”

  He kissed her gently on her forehead. She felt the light kiss and breeze of refreshing cool mountain air on her face.

  “You can’t die,” his voice was serious now, “Not yet. You still have to fulfill your destiny.”

  “I can’t go on!” she felt helpless, lost, broken.

  “You are not finished yet, my love,” his reassuring words reached her like a salve for her wounds, like bandages and medicine and the elixir of strength and perseverance. “Not by a long shot.”

  And then he was gone. The sweltering heat wiped out all traces of the cool wisps of snowy mountain air.

  But Miriam was still alive. She blinked, staring at something beyond the ground in front of her.

  Chapter 14

  Agent Dawn sat at her desk, tapping the end of the pencil against the desktop. Finally, she picked up her phone and dialed Phil’s number.

  “Phil, what’s going on?” she asked impatiently. She could almost hear Phil shrugging on the other end of the line.

  “I don’t know,” he replied, “Judge Williams, he can be unpredictable like this sometimes.”

  “He’s fickle. And untrustworthy.”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “No, I did.”

  “Listen, just give it some more time. I’m sure he’ll send the approval within a day or two.”

  “Fine,” Dawn hung up the phone and tossed it back onto her desk. She stared at it for a moment, contemplating various paths in the future. Then, she got up and marched out of her office and into her supervisors office.

  “I need that warrant!” she said, pacing back and forth. She had explained the situation to her boss, Chief Darryl Bates, who had leaned back in his chair and listened patiently to the whole thing.

  Now, he shook his head.

  “I’m sorry, Felicity,” he replied, “If the judge doesn’t issue the warrant, my hands are tied.”

  Dawn nodded briefly. “Okay chief,” she said, throwing her hands up in the air.

  “Felicity,” Darryl raised a finger in warning at her, “Now don’t go off and do anything stupid. Hey now, hey wait a minute!”

  Dawn waved and stepped out his door as he was talking.

  The park bench alongside the pond at Benoit park were mostly empty this morning. A few visitors strolled along the walkways watching the ducks, but other than that, there was hardly anyone around. Agent Dawn sat on the same bench as before, staring at the ducks in the water.

  They seemed so happy in their oblivion of the world around them. Just quacking all day, eating the pieces of bread that visitors would toss their way. Everyone seemed to be ignoring the signs that pleaded with people not to feel the ducks. Still, the ducks must have enjoyed the processed white flour in the bread, even as it raised their cholesterol and probably gave them heart disease. But what did they know of that. They just loved to quack and splash around in the water. What a life, at that.

  Dawn shook herself out of her reverie just in time to see Torqus sit down on the bench next to her.

  “I don’t know how you sent that message,” he said, a hint of admiration in his voice, “but it worked. Here I am.”

  “You’re not the only one who can back trace an anonymous number,” she said with a small smile.

  “Yes, well, you do work for the FBI, after all.”

  “You were right about the evidence, there’s more than enough there for a search warrant.”

  “But you weren’t able to get one.”

  “Bureaucracy, you know. Or, you would know, if you worked for any type of organization.”

  “You should be more suspicious, Agent Dawn.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “There may be more that just red tape going on here. Much more. Why did you want to meet with me?”

  “Well, without a warrant, I can’t really go to Boise and conduct a search of this Ntanshi Pama’s residence.”

  “There’s nothing at his Boise residence. He has moved on from there. You shouldn’t be looking in Boise. You won’t find him there.”

  “Then where?”

  “You should be looking in California.”

  Torqus stood up.

  “I wish I could tell you more, Agent Dawn,” he said, “But time is of the essence. And lives hang in the balan
ce. I do mean that quite literally. I hope you take the appropriate measures.”

  With that, he walked away, leaving Dawn sitting and staring at the ducks once more.

  “This was not easy,” Peru didn’t wait for a greeting, immediately launching into his report the second that Dawn walked through the door. “But I found it.”

  “You got an address?” Dawn asked, feeling hopeful.

  “I got a location,” Peru clarified, “There’s no real official address, per se.”

  “Okay, fine, what’s the location?”

  “Sending the coordinates to your phone . . . now.”

  He tapped a button on his keyboard and almost instantaneously, Dawn’s phone buzzed. She looked at the screen. Peru had dropped a pin on a Google map and forwarded the location to her phone.

  “Thanks Peru,” she said, turning to leave.

  “Uh, are you going out there?” he asked.

  “Not sure yet, why?”

  “There’s nothing out there, it’s literally uninhabited. Look.”

  Peru pulled up a satellite image on the large monitor and pointed at it.

  “It’s some sort of a settlement,” Dawn peered at the screen.

  Peru leaned back in his chair. “It’s their compound,” he said triumphantly, “you’re dealing with a cult.”

  “This is very helpful, Peru. Thank you.”

  Agent Dawn sat in her Subaru, holding the small USB drive in her hand. She was turning it over and over as she considered her options. It seemed that the warrant was not forthcoming. And she didn’t really want to sit around waiting, doing nothing. Especially after what Torqus had said. She felt a sense of urgency to do something.

  Finally, she pushed the button to start the engine.

  Chapter 15

  When they next opened the door to the tin shed, Miriam spilled out onto the ground. The men lifted her up as before and took her back to station twelve. This time, Shivan was present, as well as a small retinue accompanying her. Miriam recognized some of them from the daily meditation sessions.

  “These,” Shivan introduced the group with a flair, “are the graduates. They have gone through the mind cleanse and are purified. Unlike you, Miriam.”

  “I’m sure glad I didn’t go through that crazy thing,” Miriam replied with a smirk. She looked at the assembled women, “Must have really done a number on your brains, huh?”

  She was met with silence.

  “We will be working on your . . . attitude,” said Shivan, pausing to ensure she had chosen the right word. “You see, we at 2F don’t believe in waste.”

  “Too bad you don’t believe in justice either,” Miriam spat at Shivan.

  “I see we have our work cut out for us,” Shivan nodded to the group, and without a word, they all formed a circle around Miriam. They sat down on the ground, following Shivan’s lead. Miriam remained standing in an act of defiance. But it didn’t last long. Two men stepped inside the circle and forced her down onto her knees.

  “The format of this training is very similar to a lot of the classes you have already attended, Miriam,” Shivan began her instruction. “But the difference here will be profound. Here, you will be reconditioned, you will be spoon fed, if you will. Whether you like it or not, you will come to accept 2F, and His Holiness.”

  Miriam scoffed at Shivan. Her entire body was in pain, but she was not broken. Not yet.

  “You will comply,” Shivan said in a quiet, serious tone.

  “To become like you? One of you? I’d sooner die!”

  “That could be arranged,” Shivan sounded like she was considering the possibilities.

  After a moment of silence, she clapped her hands. Everyone in the circle joined their palms together and began a familiar recitation.

  “Pama! Pama! Pama! Pama!”

  “Not this crazy nonsense again!” Miriam shook her head. But the chanting grew steadily louder and louder. It was already annoying to begin with, now it was really irking her. She tried to cover her ears with her hands but the men holding her down pulled her hands away.

  “Stop it!” Miriam screamed at Shivan.

  Shivan smirked and raised her hand. The chanting instantly stopped, replaced by silence.

  “Oh, my dear, is the meditation bothering you?” Shivan asked in a mocking voice. “We haven’t even started yet.”

  “Who is His Holiness, Lord of the Once and Future Aquarian Age, and your God?” Shivan stood up and walked towards Miriam as she asked the question.

  Miriam grimaced. She looked down and whispered something inaudible.

  “What was that?” Shivan leaned down to be able to hear.

  “Your mama!” Miriam said loud and clear, right in Shivan’s ear.

  The slap came without warning and struck her so hard that she almost fell to the side. It stung smartly and her ears were ringing.

  “That juvenile attitude will have to stop,” Shivan chided her, “We have real work to do here.”

  She snapped her fingers and the chant resumed, this time louder and faster.

  “We will be here as long as it takes,” Shivan resumed her place in the circle. “Until you confess with your heart, mind, and body that His Holiness if your only God.”

  This was not the mind cleanse. This was a form of mind programming. They kept at it, keeping Miriam awake and exhausted, not letting her rest or have any food or water. They kept poking and prodding, and punishing her when she gave the wrong answer. And Shivan kept repeating that infernal question, “Who is your God?”

  During the first hour, Miriam retorted with all the variations that she could come up with. To keep her mind distracted from the irritating chant, she replied with “Jesus”, “Muhammad”, “Mother Teresa”, “Buddha”, “Krishna”, “Ganesh”, and “Hanuman”. Each of these responses earned her more painful punishments. But she had already realized that it was more important to stay alert and engaged than to cave in to their hypnosis. She wondered if she could remember the names of all the tens of thousands of Gods and Goddesses in Hindu mythology. She would go through the Norse Gods next, she thought. But she didn’t get much past “Hanuman” when Shivan decided to change tactics.

  Instead of merely asking the question, she began to alternate between asking and telling. And now there was a direct command being implanted into her while that chant kept on repeating.

  “His Holiness Lord Pama is your one and only God!”

  Miriam tried singing a song, reciting the pledge of allegience, doing mental math, remembering the names of all her friends, and repeating her social security number. Literally anything to distract her mind from the stimulus being forced upon her. But it was difficult to do. Shivan was singularly focused in drilling these messages into her. The combination of the incessant chanting, lack of food and water, and the almost continual punishments made Miriam feel weak and on the verge of collapsing. In this state, her resolve was beginning to weaken. It started to seem like the most logical course of action to get relief, to get out of pain, was to accept what Shivan was repeatedly saying.

  “You don’t have to believe it,” Miriam heard a part of her say to herself, “Just tell her you accept it, even though you don’t.”

  “But how will I know?” Miriam asked herself, wondering. “If I say it, how will I know what I really believe. Will there even be a way to know?”

  “At least the pain will stop. You will be able to rest. You can’t go on like this.”

  “They haven’t broken me.”

  “ . . . yet. How long can you continue?”

  “As long as it takes!”

  “They look like they could go on forever.”

  All of a sudden the chanting stopped.

  Shivan seemed to be considering something.

  “Alright,” she finally said, clapping her hands. “That concludes the session for today.”

  Silently, all the assembled acolytes rose and left the basement, walking in single file one after another. Shivan was the last to leave. Before
she did, she leaned down and whispered in Miriam’s ear, “I enjoyed implanting the seeds into your subconscious. They will find fertile ground there. They will germinate and sprout. And then you will come into our fold willingly. Won’t be long now.”

  The men deposited her back in the tin shed like a used piece of machinery. She was given half a glass of water to drink. And then they locked the door. She sank to the ground on her knees and immediately fell into a troubled sleep.