Digital Indoctrination II

My thoughts are interrupted when there comes a playful tap on my nose. I know it to be my nurse, her evanescent touch snapping me into reality, if being bound naked, blinded and deafened can be so described.

Yes it’s feeding time and by now I know to open my mouth in expectation of sustenance. It’s salubrious fare I am sure, but bland... certainly not to gastrically excite. Still it’s needed and her exacting tendance ends the loneliness.

I’ve tried speaking to her, kind words of thanks, never anything crass and certainly not suggestive. The Mills Institute will be submitting reports on my progress, my therapy, the MILF prosecutor I am sure eagerly anticipating some slip in my behavior. Thus I am humble, knowing to be obeisant. But she responds not, her training absolute.

So in silence I docilely lay masticating whatever is offered, oddly looking forward to the next visit of my therapist and another press of her finger. Perhaps at some point I will be reunited with my body. It’s a strange thought... but the nature of my restraint is equally strange.

Undergoing orientation at Mills Institute, stripped naked, bathed and depilated by two pretty but dour young nurses, I was thereafter directed to pose before a green screen. A half dozen cameras suggested my completely exposed form was video taped from a variety of angles, a very authoritative nurse instructing me to slowly turn then assume some very revealing positions.

I was unaware that it would be the last occasion during which I gazed at my body. For immediately thereafter I was led to a room, ominously equipped with much medical paraphernalia, and laid on a wheeled platform of latex coated foam. Strapped in place, I was told to close my eyes. I did not and there came an instant of claustrophobia as a nurse of size and strength pushed the platform toward the wall such that my head was thrust through a circle of rubber. It was then that I closed. The rubber yielded and when I reopened I found my face and head in another room, separated from the rest of me by a wall with the rubber lined opening firmly accommodating my neck... oxygen permitted but denying any glimpse of my naked body.  

Surreal... weird... but in the many days of continuous therapy, things happening in the adjoining room which make the imagination foment in consternation, the psyche oddly acclimates to the separation. I am bifurcated... there is my body... there is my head and mind. I have no control over the former... and the latter is being molded... into what I have not a clue.

The last real thing I saw, before the headset covered my eyes and forehead and the headphones my ears, was the smiling handsome face of my therapist.

Dr. Rebecca Rogers... Dr. Becky I was encouraged to call her... when rarely opportuned speech. Curious that her perfectly even features, short dark hair and kind words were the last real thing I saw and heard. Since, for days not to be counted, everything comes through the goggles and the headphones.

A second tap to my nose suggests feeding time is over and that water is to be offered. I drink, no longer concerned that within an hour or two, the interval meaningless, I will soil the rubber coated platform. It matters not, I am acclimating. It’s not me urinating... and cleansing will follow, the staff of the Mills Institute most attentive.

The straw retreats. Stillness returns. Thoughts return to the courtroom... counselor’s chamber...

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“Lots to read and evaluate, Henry,” seating myself in the stark ascetic side room where defendants are permitted sub rosa discussions with their attorneys.

Henry Foster, an attorney of modest legal prowess but an old friend, nods, making no effort to peruse the Mills Institute manuscript.

“So you want me to read it first?”

“Don’t bother, Joe. You’re taking the deal.”

“Just like that? How do I know what I’m facing... getting into.” 

“I know what you’re avoiding. The bitch prosecutor is going for the throat, Joe. She is threatening to expand the charges... that in addition to the sexual assault in the indictment you groped your stepdaughter when she was a minor.”

“Never,” the charge both ghastly and untrue.

“Doesn’t matter, Joe. She’ll testify to it under oath... and juries believe sweet little girls undergoing the duress of having to give such emotionally stressful testimony.”

“She’s not a little girl. Eighteen... and quite sexually active I might add.”

“Joe, they’ll put her in a little girl’s dress, wearing pigtails and carrying a toy doll to comfort her on the stand. You’ll get twenty years. And the bitch will make it hard time in a place where child molesters are not... shall we say appreciated.”

“This sucks. I won’t agree to it.”

“There’s another aspect to be considered, Joe. The legal bill is into five figures now. Trial will bring it to six figures... appeals a seven figure number.”  

“So its about money?”

I had mistakenly put everything in joint name... bank accounts, brokerages accounts, the works. In separating after my stepdaughter announced her charge of sexual misconduct, my wife quickly depleted the accounts leaving me penniless. I’m battling that, but it’s a secondary front so to speak... staying out of jail the first. Worse, under advice of counsel, the house has long been in my wife’s name. Not only cannot I not borrow against it, I am homeless. But now Henry is forcing the issue of funds.

“Your wife has offered to pay the legal, Joe... if you agree to therapy.”

So, old friend Henry has sold me out. It’s about money... of which I have little remaining... at least that I can put my hands on...

In desperation I wearily place my forehead on my folded hands atop the bleak bare wooden table.

“It’s best Joe. You’ll come out clean,” Henry patting my shoulders.

Old friend Henry is aware of the basis for the problem... the genesis of the intemperate action on my part. Drugs. Methamphetamines during the day... supercharging my high pressure career in foreign currency trading... quaaludes at night, countering the stimulants so I can sleep. When the two overlap, as when I assaulted stepdaughter Cindy, the psychoactivity can be alarming... the meth urging the body to run through a brick wall... the quaadules proposing no harm or pain will result.

I become omnipotent.

“Henry... all I did was kiss her ass... at her behest.”

“And you did... then there came more than that Joe... and you know it. Take the deal.”

I did.