Page 113 of Mind Maze

Since I have no choice, I stare at the wall. First, he shows a video of a kitten sitting on an old lady’s lap as she rocks in a chair on her porch in the country. It’s serene. Sound comes through speakers that seem to be attached to the mechanism that has my head locked in. I can hear the creaking and the kitten’s purrs.

“So,” Doc Junior explains, “when your brain sees something soothing like in this video, it reacts in a certain way that provides feedback to my computer.”

The video is gone, replaced by another one. It’s an aerial shot of a woman lying on a raft in the calm, crystal clear waters near a white, sandy beach. She’s wearing a pink bikini and her skin is rosy from the sun’s heat. I can hear gulls in the background and the soft, rhythmic sound of waves lapping at the shore.

“Your brain just told me that there is an exact match within your neural activity. These videos are calming to you.” He switches the video to a compilation of people slipping on ice. Each of them falls brutally. And while it’s kind of funny, I can’t help but wince, wondering how many tailbones were broken in the making of the video.

“Now,” Doc Junior continues, “the activity changes. Essentially, we’ll go through a series of different videos meant to invoke certain emotions so we can map your brain’s reactivity.”

“Map it for what?” I choke out, not liking where he’s going with this. “This is invasive.”

“It’s just science,” he states, unbothered. “It’s going to help you. You’ll see.”

He switches the video to a montage of malnourished and mistreated animals living in horrendous conditions. My heart aches for the poor creatures. The video then goes on to children lying in hospital beds with hairless heads and little to no life in them.

“I don’t want to see this,” I tell him. “None of it.”

The screen flits back to something I’m grateful to see. No more sad stuff. It’s a scene in a forest where it’s raining. The droplets bounce off leaves, making them jiggle. Pattering sounds echo around me and the occasional distant rumble of thunder can be heard.

Before I can fully relax, the screen fills with bodies, emaciated and gray, lying in rows in the dirt. Someone douses them in gasoline. A match is tossed. I’m forced to watch their corpses burn.

It’s sick.

Then it’s a different video. A scuba diver deep in the water and standing on the edge of a dark abyss. Something big rises out of the darkness and a tentacle wraps itself around the person’s leg. They struggle against it, but the creature uses another tentacle to suction to their face mask. It’s then ripped from their face and an explosion of bubbles bursts around the diver. I can hear his submerged screams as he’s yanked into the darkness.

“Stop,” I croak out. “I don’t want to see this stuff.”

A sharp buzz to my neck reminds me to fall in line. I have no choice. Watch, listen, watch, listen, watch, listen. That’s my only job here.

The change from terrifying to soothing is jarring. I seek solace in the sound of wind softly whistling through the tall grass as the girl walks along barefoot. A dog barks in the distance. She turns, shielding her eyes from the sun, and grins in that direction. I ache to be out of this chair and standing beside her, a world away from whatever sort of torture this is.

Doc Junior takes me through a gambit of emotions, back and forth between scary, worrisome, devastating, and then to something serene. I’m mentally exhausted and drenched in sweat. Then he switches it to a new video.

I can hear the slurping sounds of someone licking. The visual is of the ceiling, the fan going around and around. Then the person with the camera points the view down to the sound. A bearded, tattooed man has his face buried between two curvy thighs, eating her out like it’s his job. Heat floods through me as I remember the last time Caius was doing the same thing to me.

“I’ll admit,” Doc Junior says, “these videos are my favorites.”

Sick bastard.

The videos turn back to violent and terrifying and sad, but this time, there’s a sexual element to all of them. My own pasttraumas of Vivienne and Gareth spring to the surface of my mind. I sob through all of them, grateful when it returns to the tatted man and his soothing licking sounds.

When will this end?

I’m going insane.

The videos are on a constant loop. I don’t want to see them anymore. Anytime I try to close my eyes, Doc Junior all too gleefully zaps me until I reopen them. He pauses briefly with the torture to feed me and give me fluids before it’s back to the torture.

Finally, he shuts off the video.

I’m too wired with confusing, alternating emotions and feelings to feel any relief. My heart won’t stop racing and the tears keep falling.

I want to go home.

Where is home?

“I think we’ve collected enough data,” Doc Junior says as he comes to stand in front of me where I can look straight into his eyes. “Now for the fun part.”

I don’t have the strength or energy to ask what that entails. Since he’s a narcissist, he’s happy to provide me an answer nonetheless.

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