Under His Influence

by Justine Elyot

  The psychiatrist waited for a moment, then left the room.

  “I don’t know what to make of that one,” he confided to his female junior outside the door. “He’s rational, maybe a bit bitter, possibly paranoid. Presents quite eccentrically but… I don’t know. We need to see about a transfer to The Lawns anyway. He says he’s a millionaire.”

  “Is he though?” The junior grinned.

  “I don’t know. He also says he won’t speak to me—only a female doctor.”

  “Maybe I could finish off for you?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t want to indulge him if he’s just playing around with us.”

  “Can’t hurt though, can it?”

  “Perhaps not.”

  They were stopped by a nurse at the door of the recreation room.

  “You’ve finished with Mr. Stone already?” he asked in surprise.

  “Dr. Wolseley is going in for a second bash,” said the senior doctor. “He doesn’t want to co-operate just yet.”

  “Oh right. He has a visitor. Is it okay for him to see her?”

  “Yeah, we can give it an hour.”

  The nurse collected John from the locked cell and walked him to the recreation room, where an assortment of patients were watching television or staring into space or doing jigsaws. On a seat in the corner sat Anna, huddled into herself, trying hard not to look anywhere.

  “My beloved wife,” John said stagily, almost for the benefit of the nurse. “What do you think of the new place?” He indicated a broken pane of glass, patched up with cardboard pending proper repair. “Well ventilated. All modern conveniences. Desirable residence, eh?”

  “John, I didn’t want this,” Anna muttered.

  He sat down next to her and deliberately took a hand, holding it tightly against his chest.

  “Well, funny you should say that, because neither did I. And yet, here I am.”

  “I want you back. Properly. The real you. The John that loves me, not the one that thinks I’d cheat on him.”

  “What’s this? I catch you with another man and that makes me insane?”

  John looked around the room, as if searching for an audience to shake heads and roll eyes with.

  “They’ll help you…you’ll get better.”

  “They’ll help you…you’ll get better.” John mimicked Anna’s breathy, half-pleading words. “You’re ruining my life, Anna. Anyway. Fetch Mimi. I need to speak to her.”

  Anna crumpled as if beaten and lowered her face to her hands.

  “Why are you doing this to me?” she wailed.

  “Good question. I’ve asked myself the very same one. Go home. Tell Mimi I need to see her. Urgently.” He put a hand on Anna’s shoulder, which twitched and then shook, and put his mouth against her ear. “Or somebody here is going to get hurt. Do it, Anna.”

  He sat up, knowing she had to do as he asked and smiled with as much mock tenderness as he could muster. “Goodbye, dearest,” he said, raising his voice, standing and helping her to her feet. “Tonight. I need her to be here tonight. Sooner if possible. It’s more urgent than you can imagine.”

  He took hold of Anna’s shoulders and propelled her forward, away from him, out of the recreation room.

  “Come on then,” said the kind-faced nurse. “We have to go back.”

  “Can’t I stay here?” John picked up a newspaper from the wheeled trolley beside his chair. “That cell is disgusting.”

  “It’s just till the assessment’s done. The doctor will be back to speak to you soon.”

  “I’m not talking to that popinjay again,” John warned the nurse, following him along the corridor. “I want a woman.”

  “Don’t we all,” quipped the nurse, showing him into the cell. “Take it easy, Mr. Stone. You’ll be out of there before you know it.”

  But it was half an hour before Dr. Wolseley was free to interview John again; half an hour for John to hone his strategy.

  By the time she arrived, he was sitting cross-legged on the edge of the bed, leaning back on one arm, smiling dazzlingly.

  “Oh, so they do take patient requests seriously,” he purred, moving up the bed to make room for the junior doctor.

  “Well, it’s not a priority issue that you get to see a female doctor, Mr. Stone,” Dr. Wolseley chided. “You just happened to be lucky that I was in today.”

  “Yes. Very lucky. And call me John.”

  “Thanks, John.”

  Dr. Wolseley, used to all kinds of bizarre behaviour, found that she was struggling with the force field of charm around this man. Did he have a personality disorder? Perhaps a sociopathic narcissist or something. Whatever it was, it was powerful, and she was going to have to be careful.

  “So what’s your name?”

  “Dr. Wolseley.”

  “Your first name, I meant.”

  “Well, it’s Jennifer.”

  “Ah, Jennifer, Jennifer, Jennifer,” he said, seeming to revel in the word. His repetition of it made Dr. Wolseley hear it differently, as if it was exotic rather than perfectly ordinary. The tight ponytail at her nape prickled. “She spends her days amongst shattered minds. What must that do to a young woman?”

  “Enough about me. I need to ask you a few questions.”

  “Oh yes, you do. All right. I feel fine. I’m not depressed. I’m not entertaining suicidal thoughts. I’m not tempted to harm myself. I’m not anxious. I’m not afraid. I’m not hearing voices—though some people are hearing my voice. I’m a man who works hard and wants to get back to work. How’s that?”

  “Umm…people are hearing your voice? What did you mean by that?”

  “I meant, Jennifer,” John said, moving a hand closer to the doctor’s tweedy trousers, “that my voice carries a long way. A very long way.”

  She looked into his eyes and forgot what she meant to say next.

  He was next to her now, crowded into her personal space, closing that gap between her face and his at a steady, implacable rate.

  I should move away. I can’t move away.

  His lips covered hers and she was lost.

  It wasn’t a long kiss, just a few seconds was enough to do it. Stone let her go and said, “You’ll tell that other doctor to let me go, won’t you?”

  She nodded.

  “You’ll tell him you have no concerns about me.”

  “No concerns,” she echoed. “He might not…agree with me.”

  “Then you’ll have to persuade him, won’t you, Jennifer?”

  She reached a hand out, wanting to touch his stubbled cheek. He indulged her desire for a moment or so, then took her hand and replaced it firmly in her lap.

  “Go on then,” he prompted. “Put it in your notes.”

  She scribbled a few disconnected phrases and then sat there, watching him in a daze.

  “Will that be all?” he asked, perfectly polite.

  “Oh!” She recollected the purpose of her visit, her profession, the fact that she lived a life outside the orbit of this man, though it didn’t quite strike home. It didn’t seem true somehow. “Do I have to go…I could take a few more minutes…”

  “You’re on duty, Jennifer.”

  There was a rough knock at the door, then the nurse entered without waiting for any permission.

  “The camera’s been turned off somehow. Just had to check you were okay.”

  He stood on the end of the bed, fiddling with the CCTV eye in the corner of the ceiling while Dr. Wolseley gasped, brought back to reality by the sudden realisation of what she had put at stake by succumbing to Stone’s mysterious allure. She shook her head violently and backed over to the door. Perhaps she needed to check herself in here.

  But when she looked at Stone, slumped back on the bed now, a bored sneer accompanying his observation of the nurse’s actions, all thoughts were dislodged by one imperative. Do what he told me to do. Get him out of here.

  She turned to leave, bumping into a young woman on the other side of the doorway.

  “J
ohn Stone?” the woman asked, uncertain.

  Dr. Wolseley felt herself consumed by jealousy. This woman was attractive and sexy. Was she his wife? His girlfriend?

  “Who are you?”

  “Mimi. He asked me to visit. Is it okay to go in?”

  Dr. Wolseley simply sniffed and stalked off down the corridor, nose in the air, looking for her senior colleague.

  Mimi stuck her head cautiously around the side of the door.

  John, apparently sensing her, instantly turned and focused all his attention on her, ignoring the fiddling of the nurse in the corner.

  “Miranda,” he exclaimed. “You came.”

  “I wasn’t going to. This is against my better judgement.”

  “You’re doing the right thing.” John stood, holding out his hands.

  “No. I’m not going to touch you. You stay there on that bed and I’ll sit on the chair. Over here. I’d like that nurse to stay too.”

  The nurse turned around and stepped off the bed, smiling.

  “I’ve just fixed the CCTV camera. It’s okay. Anything that goes on in here, I’ll see on the screen in the nurses’ station.”

  “All the same,” Mimi said, wary, “I’d prefer not to be alone.”

  The nurse shrugged and took a seat at the corner of the bed.

  “I can’t talk with him in here,” muttered John. “We need to be alone.”

  “I don’t want to be alone with you. I know what you’ll do. I don’t trust you.”

  “This isn’t for his ears. It isn’t for anyone’s ears but yours. It’s private.” He gave the nurse a hard stare.

  “You don’t need to talk though, do you, John?”

  “Ah. So the psychic link isn’t completely broken.” John grinned, pleased that his power hadn’t been too weakened by the lack of immediate contact with Mimi.

  “It seems to work over short distances,” she confirmed. “Even though I’ve had my phone switched off since you were arrested.”

  “You had the perfect chance to throw me to the wolves. Why have you come here? I’m very grateful that you have, by the way. I find myself in the unpleasant position of needing help. Of needing your help.”

  “What you said—about the downfall of humanity. And Luana has been acting very strangely too. Let’s just say my journalistic instincts won out over my sense of self-preservation. I can’t ever let a question go unanswered. And this is quite a question.”

  “Yes,” John agreed, nodding sagely. “It’s the story of your career. As it happens, I have managed to tame a doctor here now. If she can persuade her senior colleague, I might not need your help getting out of here. But I still need you, Miranda, and if you try to get away from me, I will pursue you.”

  “They’re not going to let you out already?” Mimi’s alarm made John smile.

  “Need time to book your air tickets, do you? Don’t bother. You’re mine, Miranda, and that’s the end of it. Now you need to get me out of here.”

  “Why should I? Explain all this. I’m sick of knowing a tiny fraction of the story. I know you come from somewhere else, but where? What are you doing here? Why is the ozone machine so important?”

  John was quiet for a while, reflecting on his answer as he twisted his hands. The nurse’s eyes darted between the pair of them, clearly intrigued by this intense silence that could seem like its own form of communication.

  “Luana’s my mother,” he said eventually.

  Mimi started violently, almost pitching out of the chair. The nurse put out an arm to help her but she waved it away and subsided back into her seat, processing this information.

  “We come from a world several galaxies distant. My mother is what you might call a tribal queen, primitive as it sounds. It’s actually much more sophisticated than that, but I won’t bore you with the details. Our tribe has risen to a position of prominence, from relative obscurity, thanks to my prowess at engineering. I made us rich, and from riches came power, and with power came opposition from other tribes, jealous of our ascendancy. As is the way of things.

  “There was a trade war. My mother and I were taken prisoner. The plan was to execute my mother and keep me for my knowledge, working in slavery to enrich and empower our enemies. My tribe were not warriors—we had always relied on intelligence and civilised manners. This was our downfall, of course. Civilised manners. I’ve rather lost faith in them.”

  He paused, for Mimi to shake her head and roll her eyes knowingly.

  “When our enemies took us, I was in possession of a prototype invention—a kind of matter transference machine, hidden in a ring. I had made one for me and one for my mother. It had not been perfected, so I had to use coordinates that I knew would take me somewhere relatively safe, where we could blend in. As it happened, there was only one inhabited planet that fit the bill. We ended up here.”

  Mimi’s face contorted. “But,” she blurted, forgetting the psychic link. The nurse frowned at her, and so did John.

  “Sorry. This is a lot to take in. What you said about the downfall of humanity—you think you are being hunted?”

  “Yes. I know it. The Rixxar do not give up. They will scour the universe to find us. I have had signals recently, indicating that they are not far away now. If I don’t close the gap in the ozone layer, they will find this planet and exact a terrible revenge. Believe me, they will lay waste to your world, even if my mother and I surrender immediately. They are terribly mean-spirited. You can’t imagine.”

  “Why should I believe you?”

  John took a breath and fixed his eyes directly on Mimi, all lightness forgotten, completely serious now.

  “If you don’t, you will all die. I need to finish that machine. Help me, Mimi. Help us all.”

  “You called me Mimi.”

  “If that’s what it takes, I’ll call you whatever you like.”

  “What about Mistress?”

  “Oh, ha ha. You think this is funny?”

  “No, I don’t. None of this is funny.”

  “They want to kill my mother and enslave me. They want to desecrate your planet. You can do something about it. What are you going to do about it?”

  “John…if I help you…”

  “Yes?”

  “You must stop all this mind control. Stop being such a bastard. Let Anna go. Stop trying to enslave me through sex. All of that.”

  “Desperate times…”

  “Yes, I get that, John, but it has to stop now. I can help you without your having to do all that. Is it a deal?”

  John sucked at his teeth, clenching and unclenching his fists.

  “But I like being a bastard,” he moaned.

  Mimi laughed, despite herself. By now, the nurse had given up trying to understand any of this and was playing a game on his mobile phone.

  “If what you’ve just told me is true,” Mimi continued gently, “and that’s a big if! If it’s true, I’m on your side. I’ve got you that meeting with Merchant. You stand a chance of pulling this off, as long as you get out of here. Take Anna out of the equation—let her stay with Liam, let them get together, let her be happy.”

  “What about my child?”

  “We’ve months and months to sort something out about the child. It’s not urgent. What’s urgent is the machine.”

  “Right. So you’ll get me out of here.”

  “Wait. I need insurance. I know you, John, so I know not to trust you.”

  “What kind of insurance? Why did I ever get involved with you? Anna would have done what I told her to.”

  “You can’t resist me, it seems. And nobody listens to Anna. They listen to me.”

  “Don’t push your luck. Go on then. Insurance. What do you need?”

  “Luana.”

  “You can’t ask me to use my mother as a pawn in this game. She is vulnerable. Her age made the transference to humanoid problematic. She can’t interpret as well as I can, and she needs to stay out of this system’s sun. You don’t understand her needs. I can’t agree t
o that.”

  “Then I can’t help you.”

  “Miranda, name anything else.”

  “There isn’t anything else. I’m not talking about mistreating her. I’m talking about keeping her somewhere safe while you finish the machine.”

  “Then let her stay at the house. Take the attic keys and keep her there.”

  “Not good enough.”

  “I have a compromise for you. The child. Anna’s child. If I prove untrustworthy, she can take it and keep it. How’s that?”

  “What is the child to you?”

  “The only survivor of its race, bar me and my mother. The last of my tribe.”

  “You think your tribe has been wiped out?”

  “I’m sure of it.”

  “God.”

  “No. The Rixxar. And even that child will only bear half of our genetic makeup. He will have all of our power though. None of your Earthly weaknesses. That child is our sole link to the future. Unless you fancy letting me get you up the stick, that is. I’m ready when you are.”

  “Stop it, John. Let me think.”

  John looked pointedly at his bare wrist, where the Cartier watch had been.

  “I don’t want to rush you or anything, but can I just mention the phrase ‘time-critical’?”

  “Don’t fluster me.” Mimi sat with her head in her hands for a few minutes. When she lifted it once more, her gaze was cool, controlled and resolute. “Okay. Anna goes to a safe place and you make no attempt—none, got it?—to contact her until the baby is born. What you did to her was inexcusable. I know what your reasons were but you should have waited for someone stronger. You should have waited—”

  “For you?”

  “I don’t know. Shut up. Do you accept these terms?”

  “Yes. Now get me out of here.”

  “I’ll see what I can do.”

  Mimi stood, and the nurse leapt to his feet in her wake, still bamboozled by the whole situation.

  “Are you going?” he asked.

  “I’d like to talk to John’s doctor, if that’s possible. Do you think you could arrange it?”

  “Of course. You might have to wait around a while—they’re pretty busy as a rule. But I’ll buzz Dr. Akers and tell him you want to see him.”