Tales From The Psych Ward 8: The Final Chapter

(story continues from Tales From The Psych Ward 7: Again a Witness)

Part 8: The Final Chapter

The headlines about the arrest of Dr. Susan Barrington as the Roadside Rapist soon faded. It wasn't that it didn't make interesting news, but there were too many very important people involved who didn't want it known that she had been targeting the Masters and Mistresses of The Club - or that they were members there. Besides that, it was immediately apparent to almost everyone that Dr. Barrington had fallen off the deep end and was nuttier than Mr. Peanut.

Over the objections of her court-appointed attorney, she entered a plea of guilty at her first arraignment hearing. That, however, was overruled by the judge who doubted her mental capability. After a competency hearing and a bunch of legal mumbo jumbo, a plea deal was finally struck. She was allowed to plead guilty, but mentally deficient. That meant she would be incarcerated, but in a mental ward rather than with the general population.

The only problem with that agreement was that Dr. Barrington had helped put away many of the inmates currently in the state correctional facility's psychiatric ward. She would definitely not be safe there. Since we were just normal crazies rather than criminal crazies, it was decided that she should be brought here instead.

Dr. Henderson may have influenced that decision so he would have one more guinea pig for his research into seizure-based schizophrenia. He got the credit for identifying the condition in Cassie and me, and if he could come up with an appropriate treatment and control, his status in the psychiatric research community would be cemented for life.

Dr. Barrington, however, turned out to be much less than an ideal patient. At first I thought they had her on some industrial strength tranquilizers, but at meds time I could see what they put in her cup and it was just Tylenol and Ativan. That combination is strictly to relieve anxiety and really isn't all that effective at that.

As I watched her, I realized that she wasn't spaced out or catatonic, she was concentrating deeply or meditating. She even had a mantra that she chanted continuously and softly. It became part of the standard background noise of the day room. I sat beside her on the couch one day and listened carefully. She was chanting, "Wayne, I need you. Debra, I need you. Wayne, please come for me. Debra, please come for me." She would repeat it over and over and over again throughout the day and far into the night. She was crazier than I am.

Dr. Henderson didn't have her sit in with our group. I'm pretty sure he didn't want to have to deal with another shrink in his therapy group. The mind games don't work as well when the other person already knows all of your techniques. I don't know for sure whether he met privately with her or not. They don't exactly tell you those types of things around here, but I think I would have heard something from the rumor mill.

One day after morning group, I was sitting in the day room watching Dr. Barrington chant her mantras to Wayne and Debra when Cassie came over and sat beside me. "Did you ever wish you were just normal?" she asked.

"What do you mean?" I replied.

"What if it were just you and me... without Wayne and Debra. I would give myself to you fully. I would be yours, and it would totally be my choice. You could give me pleasure when I needed it and pain when I needed it and most of all, you could give me yourself beside me and inside me when I needed you."

"But we aren't normal," I answered. "Remember, we go places. We live in different realities. We are not normal."

"But Dr Henderson says we could be. He has developed what he calls a pacemaker for the brain. It can stop certain areas of the brain from working. All they have to do is put us in a special scanning machine next time we go catatonic and map our brains. Then they can install it and it will put a stop to all of this."

I took her head in my hands, and looking directly into her eyes, asked "Is that what you truly want?"

"More than anything," she answered. "I don't need any master but you, and you are starting to act more like a master than a slave. You are not a slave anymore. I'm afraid that you won't go with me next time I am called to go somewhere."

"If that is truly what you want, I will speak to Dr Henderson about it." I assured her.

She leaned her forehead against my shoulder and began crying softly. "Are you saying that you love me?" I asked her

She raised her face and I watched as her eyes overflowed with her tears. She swallowed hard and answered me, "I am not sure that either of us really knows what love is. Maybe nobody knows, but I need you and I want to be with you and I want you to want to be with me. I would be willing to be yours forever and to grow old with you. Maybe even we could have kids together if we could ever get out of here."

I was trying to decide on an answer to that when Mike, the orderly, walked up to me and said, "You have a visitor. He wants to speak to you alone. He's in visitation room three."

I told Cassie that I would be right back, and accompanied Mike down the hallway to the "visitation rooms." These rooms were primarily for one-on-one therapy sessions and were equipped with hidden cameras and microphones to record sessions, but they were also used for family visits and so were labeled, Family Visitation Room 1, 2 and 3. I don't think they recorded family visits, but around here, who knows.

As I walked down the hallway with Mike, I wondered who it was who wanted to talk to me. I had very few friends on the outside and most of them knew me only through Kelly and Wayne. To my surprise, as I entered the room, Wayne stood up and greeted me. "I am here to invite you to join the club," he began. "We are all very grateful for what you did and what you risked to help capture Dr. Barrington. We all also recognize that your actions were not the actions of a slave, but the actions of a Master. You have changed."

He spread his fingers and made a shrugging movement with his shoulders. "It happens sometimes. Most often it happens when someone is motivated to be in a new relationship in a new way. Brenda and I both think that the motivation for your change is Cassie."

Wayne smiled at me in a way that he had never done before. "I would like to invite you to come to the club this Saturday night. Because the connection still exists between you and me and Kelly, getting you out of here will be no problem, but because you are no longer a slave, we need your spoken permission in advance or we will be unable to act. If you agree to be there, Cassie will also be brought to the club. Since she is still a slave at heart, she does not need to give her permission."

He paused as if judging my physical response. "You will be brought first. After we have concluded our little ceremony, she will be summoned."

It was now obvious that he was waiting for a verbal answer. I paused in thought for a moment and then responded, "I appreciate your offer, and yes, I am willing. Cassie's permission is not needed, but I must speak to her in advance of what is going to happen. Otherwise, she will be terrified that I have intentionally left her behind for some reason. She has spoken to me of her fears that something like that will happen someday."

"Spoken like a Master who is concerned for the welfare of his slave," said Wayne, as he shook my hand. "So, it is agreed. We will see you Saturday night. Be ready at 9:00 o'clock sharp."

With that Wayne left. I remained standing in the middle of the room looking down at my hand. Wayne had shaken my hand like an equal. And I had gripped his hand as firmly as he had gripped mine - as an equal. Maybe what Cassie could see happening and what Wayne could see happening was truly occurring. I was gaining control of my own life. I was becoming a Master.

The thought elated me and terrified me at the same time. Did this mean I could control my own life? Did this mean I could be Master to Cassie? Both would be a source of great joy, but both also meant great responsibility.

I was about to use the intercom to request an escort back to the ward when the door opened and Dr. Henderson came into the room. "Mike said you were here," he explained, "and I saw that your visitor was leaving." He cleared his throat and continued, "Cassie said you wanted to talk to me. Did she explain what I had told her about the implants?"

"She said that you could turn off whatever it is that is happening if we let you map our brains during the next episode."

"It's not quite that easy," Dr. Henderson replied. "I'm afraid I may have given her false hope, because for now, it is all just theoretical."

He pressed his fingertips together, an action I had seen him do many times in group when he was weighing his words before speaking. "Actually, the technology already exists and is used for epilepsy. The surgery is proven and relatively easy. Even placing the electrodes is easy. Putting the device in the brain is not the problem."

He paused for more thought. "The problem is the brain mapping. The actual mapping of brain activity is again already proven and relatively easy. It's not that. It's the problem of ... of ... timing. We can't overcome the problem of timing."

Dr Henderson was now more agitated that I had ever seen him. It was obvious that he had everything all worked out except the barrier of what he called timing. He put his hand on my head, as if to emphasize what he was to say next. "We have to have a mapping of your brain just before an episode occurs and then during the episode. The comparison tells us exactly what we are dealing with. For an epileptic, you can trigger seizures with flashing lights or electric or electromagnetic stimulation. None of that works on you or Cassie. I've tried."

"Since your episodes are very random and so widely spaced in time, you would almost have to live in a scanner for us to capture that precise moment, and no one has figured out a way to do that. If we could only trigger - or predict one of these episodes... " His voice trailed off into silence.

"Have me in the machine at 8:59 Saturday night and I only have to be in there for two minutes."

Dr. Henderson laughed softly and shook his head in that dismissive way I had seen so often in group. Then suddenly a look of understanding flashed across his face. He stared at me and then stared at the door through which Wayne had exited moments before. As he turned slowly back to me, he said, "You're not joking with me, are you? You think that he told you exactly at what time he was coming for you. You really believe that it will happen exactly when he said it will, don't you?"

"Wayne has never lied to me," I answered. "He has done a lot of things to me, but he has never lied to me."

Dr. Henderson pressed his lips together. His head swayed back and forth slightly as he thought. His concentration was so intense that his brow was furrowed and his eyes were nearly squeezed shut. "In any other situation, I would refrain from any action that might reinforce your delusions, but this time your delusion, itself - reinforcing your delusion may be exactly what we need. If you - and Cassie - firmly believe that this is going to happen at 9:00 o'clock on Saturday night, that may, in and of itself, be enough to trigger an episode. It is going to take a lot of talking to the board here and at the hospital, but I am going to arrange for it."

I answered with, "Cassie will be joining us a few minutes later."

"Perfect!" was his only response.

He got up and walked to the door. As he opened it, he said back over his shoulder, "I will have consent forms drawn up today for both you and Cassie."

And so it was that at 8:30 on Saturday evening, Cassie and I were both on movable patient support platforms ready to slide into scanners at the hospital. I was on the main machine, Cassie was on the back-up scanner at the other end of the room separated by a partition with large windows in it. I could only see her feet protruding out of the end of a hospital gown from where I lay.

Dr. Henderson and a technician were discussing the fact that she was at an older model, but it would still be very sufficient for what Dr. Henderson wanted to do. Their only concern was both units running heavy duty cycles at the same time. That had never been done before and the tech was concerned that the power and cooling systems might not be able to take it.

I heard Dr. Henderson assure him. "They believe that he will go first and she will follow later. If anything is going to happen, that is how it will happen, so we will start him and then as soon as we have images, this shuts down and the secondary unit goes to full power."

The scanner tech then turned his attention to me. "You just relax and let whatever is going to happen, happen," he instructed. "I am going to place a white cloth over your head so that you can keep your eyes open and your passage through the tunnel won't make you anxious."

"OK," I responded.

"Since we don't know for sure what time whatever it is will occur, you will be passing through the machine multiple times over a twenty minute period." He then added, I think for Dr. Henderson's benefit, "That's the maximum continuous duty cycle for this unit."

He placed a stiff cloth over my head that formed a sort of tent and patted me on the hand. "We will start at 8:50. If your timetable is correct, we should be able to capture the transition of brain activity. Are your ready?"

"Fine," I answered and a few minutes later, I could feel the table beneath me begin to move slowly into the machine. Dr. Henderson had not said exactly what type of scanner he would be using. I thought maybe that he had said a CAT Scan, but the noise was more like an MRI, only not quite so loud. I was just starting my sixth pass through the machine when the noise disappeared completely and I was standing on stage at the club.

"Welcome to a very special night at the club," said Wayne as he stepped up to me and once again shook my hand. I noticed that he was wearing a loose fitting knit shirt. It was black with the emblem of the club beneath his left shoulder. Debra was standing next to him wearing a similar looking black, silk blouse. I looked down and I was wearing black jeans similar to Wayne's and a similar black shirt with no emblem on it.

"Right now there are only Masters and Mistresses assembled here," he announced. "We are here to welcome a new Master to the club. This is not only our way of showing our appreciation for what you have done, it is also our recognition of the change which you have made in yourself."

There was a smattering of applause from the audience. "As a way of showing our trust in you and revealing to you the one final thing you must do to become a member here..." he began unbuttoning his shirt and Debra, standing beside him began unbuttoning her blouse. "Lights!" he yelled and the room became black - no not black, bathed in black light.

Master Wayne pulled open his shirt. Mistress Debra opened her blouse. On both of them, just above the left breast, glowed an ultra-violet tattoo that was invisible in normal light. It was a crossed tawse and whip with the lash of the whip curled around the tawse and then running above both to spell out "The Club." I looked out into the assembled group and could see the glowing crest on every person there.

"If you will accept this mark, known only to other Masters and Mistresses of this club and visible only under certain wavelengths of black light, you become one of us. Do you accept this mark and with it membership as a Master of this club?"

"Yes," I answered firmly and began to take off my shirt.

The scruffy looking tattooist in grubby blue jeans and black T-shirt dragged his rolling table up onto the stage. "For this I am using my regular needles," he said. "This will sting, but it won't really hurt."

He was amazingly fast. It seemed that in no time at all he was wiping away the excess ink and announcing, "All done, and a beautiful job if I do say so myself."

As I looked down at the glowing emblem on my chest, Wayne began applauding. Soon all of the Masters and Mistresses were applauding me as their newest member.

"Your shirt," Debra said as she handed me a black shirt identical to what Wayne was wearing.

"If we can go back to normal lighting," said Wayne loudly, "we will bring in the subs and the slaves."

Then he looked at me and added, "And Cassie will be joining us now."

The lights came back on. A parade of naked and semi-naked slaves and subs filed into the room and joined their Masters and Mistresses. I turned to speak to Wayne and suddenly Cassie was standing naked beside me.

"This is a simple collaring ceremony," began Debra. And then she added, "with a few little extra embellishments to make the change - so to speak."

Debra addressed me first, "Do you desire this slave as your own, forever?"

"Yes," I answered.

"Cassie," she continued, "do you desire this man as you new Master from this time on?"

"Yes, yes... oh yes," she cried.

Handing me a dark leather collar with a matte-black buckle, Wayne said, "Then put this collar around her throat." After a second he added softly, "The buckle is a special carbon fiber composition that won't trigger alarms at federal buildings or the airports." He added in a softer voice, "It also won't be attracted by the magnetism of a scanner." Wayne evidently knew what was happening back at the hospital.

Cassie knelt before me and I buckled the collar around her throat.

"We need to change your markings," Debra said to Cassie and pointed to the barrel that had been rolled up on stage.

Cassie walked over to the barrel and lay across it. Her hands and feet were not secured, and the tattooist asked, "Can you remain still or do we need to tie you?"

"For him, I will remain still," she answered and molded herself to the cylinder beneath her. The tattoo gun began buzzing and Cassie gasped and clenched her teeth. Obviously, the shabby man was no longer using his regular needles. A few minutes later when she stood back up, the twin tattoos on her back no longer said "Cassie" and "Debbie," but rather had "Cassie" and my name.

I don't know how he was able to change the name. Maybe he overwrote with flesh colored ink or something, but whatever he did, it was not possible to tell that the tramp stamp had once said something else.

"Now the front," he announced. Then he said to Cassie, almost apologetically, "We will have to tie you down for this or you won't be able to stay bent over backwards properly."

Cassie did not answer, but instead turned over on the barrel and arched her back, reaching out her hands as far as she could beyond her head. Two of the club security men in black T-shirts came on stage and secured her hands and feet. This time when the buzzing started Cassie did more than grunt and clench her teeth. She screamed at the top of her lungs until the bearded face once again appeared and announced, "She's done."

After the security men released her, Cassie came over and stood before me. The tattoo above her pubic bone no longer proclaimed her as Debra's slut. My name was now in the place of Debra's. "I am sorry I failed you, Master. I should not have screamed, but the needles were just too painful."

"You are forgiven this one time, slave," I replied. "But we will find an appropriate punishment later."

Cassie beamed at me in response and then suddenly I was back at the hospital on a Gurney in some sort of recovery room. Cassie lay on a cart next to me.

Dr. Henderson bustled into the room. He ignored the fact that Cassie had suddenly acquired a black leather collar from somewhere and that I now had a black, knit shirt on under my hospital gown. "We have it," he announced joyfully. "And both of you have been implanted. Once the incisions have healed, we can turn the devices on and - if my theories are correct - these catatonic episodes will be no more."

That was all 120 days ago - 30 days for everything to heal and 90 days episode free. Dr. Henderson has declared us "cured" and we are going home. Because Cassie was originally sentenced to psychiatric incarceration, she is technically on parole and needs to be supervised, but since I was never convicted and sentenced for anything considered truly criminal, I can be her supervision. She is moving in with me.

Both of us were packed and ready to go, and Dr. Henderson was giving us final instructions. "You have to wear the recharging headbands at least once every 60 days, and you have to keep your monthly appointments to begin with. We will download the logs off your devices and it will tell us if there has been any unusual activity in your brain. After a few months, you won't even have to come in. The devices will connect to any local WIFI through the charging headbands and with the proper programs we can download and control them remotely. All you have to do is log onto a special website so we can establish the link."

I don't know what else he had intended to tell us because at that point the ward alarm began sounding and the often heard "All orderlies to the day room" cry came over the speakers.

Dr. Henderson took off running down the hallway. Cassie and I followed him, but we were walking, rather than running. Whatever it was that was occurring was not, after all, our responsibility.

When we reached the entrance to the day room, we could see Dr. Susan Barrington standing in the middle of the room surrounded by orderlies. Tears were streaming down her face and she was crying out loudly, "Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you." She raised her hands toward the ceiling and continued, "Thank you, Wayne. Thank you, Debra."

She was naked and completely hairless, not even her eyebrows remained. A brand new tattoo consisting of intricate vines and roses wound up each leg and came out from between her legs onto her pubic bone where it said in very ornate letters, "Debra's Slut." I had no doubt that on the back there was a tramp stamp with her and Billie's names in mirror images.

As we stood there, Mike the orderly approached us pushing an empty meds cart. "Dr. Henderson asked me to see you off," he said and gestured down the hallway. He laughed and added, "I think that he is going to be a bit busy for a while."

When we were half-way down the hallway, in the dead space exactly between the two security cameras, Mike signaled us to stop. He reached into his pocked and handed me a computer thumb drive. "This is the control program for those implants," he explained. "Complete instructions and passwords are in the read.me' file. There is also a save - restore' program that will back up the log files and restore it so that any activity in the time between will not be reported the next time you check in. Make sure the charge switch on the headband is turned off and no one knows what you have done. You never know, you might want to switch that little device off once in a while and go traveling. Now that you are Master and slave, it will be much safer for you to explore what is out there."

He then picked up a UV flashlight from the meds cart that was normally used to read the pomm's (proof of medication marks) that were dotted onto some patient's fingernails. He faced me and pulled his white smock slightly to the side and shone the light on his chest. A crest with a crossed tawse and whip appeared for just a second before he switched off the light.

He smiled. "I'm not a member of the local club, but I am in good standing with the national organization."

Another smile and he motioned toward the end of the hallway where our packed bags were still sitting against the wall. We began walking toward the front desk. When we reached the entrance, we could still hear Dr. Barrington yelling even louder, "Thank you, Wayne! Thank you, Debra!"

As we walked through the door and out into our new lives, I spoke softly. "I guess she has finally found her new reality."

Cassie added "And we have found ours."

= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
End of Tale Eight of Eight
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EPILOGUE

This is not part of the story, but an answer to several direct comments or questions I have had when posting this series of stories on other sites.

A few have complained that the stories in this series are too choppy and jump suddenly from event to event.

Speaking from personal experience, such jumps are an integral part of Borderline Personality Disorder.

Borderline Personality Disorder means losing time. For a few seconds to a few hours to even a few days, you are somewhere else. One minute it is early evening and you are sitting at your desk studying, the next it is two o'clock in the morning and you are riding your bicycle through the rain-storm / flood channels of the city wearing nothing but a pair of flip-flops. I was able to sneak back in on that occasion, but from then on, I kept a pair of shorts and a T-shirt in a little saddle bag under my bicycle seat.

I never had any memory of what occurred while I was gone, and luckily I never showed up with any permanent injury, scaring or tattoos. People did tell me that I had been "acting strangely" for a while, and often asked what was wrong when I returned and was obviously confused about where I was or what was going on.

When I was very young, I tried to tell people, including my doctor, what was occurring, but they dismissed it as the imagination of a small child. So, I quickly learned to hide what was occurring from absolutely everyone. I have never spoken to family about this and it appears nowhere on any of my medical records. Because of that, I have never been officially diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder, but I exhibit - or have exhibited - almost all of the characteristics and behaviors. Since there has never been any clear "alternate personality" that has shown itself while I was gone, my condition would be considered "marginal."

It probably would have been much harder to hide my condition if I had insisted on a different name or exhibited different gender behavior during the times that I was gone. I am fairly sure I did not, although there are some remarks by my siblings and college roommates that I am not quite sure how to interpret.

Having such lapses in time is, to say the least, disturbing. As a teenager, I once"woke up" almost fifty miles away from home. As I grew older, and was driving, the distance I might be away grew proportionately. Luckily, the time that I was away also shrank as I grew older. Somehow I was able to keep my secret until the episodes finally faded more or less completely. It has been over twenty years since I have had any major episodes, but I continue to live in dread that they will return. It is probably because of that fear that people notice that I have "control issues."

My longest episode occurred when I was in the fifth grade. One day I was suddenly in class and I could tell by the decorations on the wall that it was nearing Thanksgiving. The only problem was that the memory immediately preceding that was of being in a fourth grade classroom approaching Easter. Over six months had passed of which I had absolutely no memory.

I still have a rather tenuous grip on reality, but I can control when I am or am not in total contact with reality. This does have its advantages. I can actually go somewhere else if I am trapped in a really boring situation. And writing is very easy for me because when I write, it is not so much that I create a story as that I live out a story. I envision an alternate reality, and I am there. Things happen to me and around me and I merely describe what is happening. The only problem is that I really don't know for sure how the story will end until it ends because I am living it, not writing it.

When I am writing, sometimes it is interesting; sometimes it is frightening; sometimes it is highly erotic; but for that moment, for me, it is totally and absolutely real.

When the character of this series says, "They have their reality, and I have mine," that is me speaking.

The Technician.

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30.09.13