Story: Dagger of the Mind


Posted by Thanatos on August 26, 2000 at 16:08:10:

If you want to hear me read a brief (<1min) intro to this story, click here. I hope this works. I’ve used the more compact (but lower quality) recording format that Sam suggested to keep this .wav file to a reasonable size.


But back to the story. All feedback welcomed as always.

The Psychoprobe returns...

in


Dagger of the Mind (c) Thanatos 2000
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Newman knew that he was in danger the moment the waitress came back with the check.

Her hands were shaking as she handed the folded slip of paper to him on a saucer.

For a moment that stretched in time, Newman watched her hands as they shook, and he visualized the furtive phone call that would have taken place behind the bar, and the whispering to the impassive voices on the other end.

The instructions to keep him there while they came for him.

Newman looked up at her as he opened up the check, and smiled. She turned to go, but Newman stopped her and handed his card over.

'I'm sure it's right,' he said politely. She hesitated, and took the proffered card.

'Would you like some more coffee?' she asked, and her earlier smile had gone, and her eyes looked frightened.

He knew then that he had to leave, and leave quickly.

'Yes, I think I will,' he said easily, and as she walked back to the bar, he got up and walked to the rest rooms, and the moment he was out of her sight he changed direction and went for the door that led to the fire stairs.

He ran quickly down the stairs and into the kitchens, and strode confidently between the rows of steaming pans and the clash and clatter of plates, ignoring the shouts and surprised looks of the kitchen staff.

He found what he wanted at the back of the kitchen. An open door, and two of the staff taking a break from the heat and steam, smoking in the cool evening air.

Newman stepped past them, his heart pounding, and walked as fast as he dared away from the building, two hundred meters down to the water, then ran to catch the departing car ferry across the harbor.

The ropes were being cast off, and the gangway had been pulled back, but he vaulted over the barrier and leapt for the rail of the ferry, over the turbulent water churning against the quay. He nearly didn't make it, and another passenger grabbed him and helped him climb over the rail, to the sound of shouting from the deckhands.

Newman smiled apologetically and went to a deserted section of rail, and caught his breath.

He knew they were coming for him. The only question was; how long did he have before they found him?

He stood by the rail, and went through his pockets, and methodically cracked and discarded all his cards over the rail, and all the till receipts he had accumulated. Finally, he checked every pocket in his clothing to make sure there was nothing that could incriminate him or help them in any way. But he knew in his heart that he was only buying time, and none of this would save him.

He only had a few minutes, and he had no time to think of himself. All he could think of was isolating himself, so that there were no leads to go elsewhere.

The ferry was docking after its short journey across the harbor, and Newman scanned the quayside for anyone that might belong to Them. But it was just the usual queue of people and cars for the return journey, and as he stepped off, nobody followed him.

A few more minutes, then.

He found a public telepoint in the ferry ticket office, and punched in the familiar numbers, then the security code that would identify his situation. The small screen cleared as the encryption tunnel opened, and...

Something cold and metallic was pressed into the side of his neck, and a gloved hand pulled his hand away from the small keypad.

Newman froze, and slowly turned his head.

He saw the eyes first. They stared back at him, the incurious, dead eyes of a person who has seen too much death. They were the coldest ice blue.

They were all the more frightening because they were set in a woman's face. Her plucked eyebrows framed the eyes. Newman dropped his gaze to her neck, and she was wearing a scarf, tied closely round, and his heart sank.

There was no escape. They always worked in pairs.

He didn't offer any resistance as she took his arm and walked him quickly and firmly to the waiting car, the gun pressed to his side under the cover of his arm.

The other one joined them at the car, and another pair of dead eyes met his frightened gaze as they flung him into the car and bound his hands. They worked in an eerie silence; there was no need to say anything, and in any case they could not speak, because they had no tongues or voices; the neat scars on their otherwise flawless throats were hidden behind their clothing.

They never needed to speak to their victims.

Real killers never needed to speak.

Günter's killers.

And that, more than anything, was why he offered no resistance, why he obediently rolled over when prodded, why he just lay there on the back seat of the car as it sped him to his death. He knew they would maim him without hesitation, in ways that would not reduce his usefulness, if he so much as moved a finger in resistance. He had seen what these cold-hearted women were capable of doing behind closed doors, the crying, bleeding things that they dragged in for interrogation, drip lines held high.

You don't need all your limbs to be interrogated.

You don't need your eyes.

You don't need your face.

You don't need...

Then they were pushing up his sleeve, and he felt a desperate desire to struggle, to try to escape, but he knew he was never going back again, and he only felt despair as the needle went in, and his arm went cold, and the cold spread up his arm, to his chest, to his neck, to...


* * *


The first sound he heard was a rhythmic clicking; a tap, tap, tap.

Then light filtered in, and he saw floor tiles going past, and then suddenly he was fully conscious, and the fear hit him like a wall.

He was being wheeled along in a stainless steel interrogation chair, inside Günter's headquarters. He was held in the chair by metal bands at elbow and wrist, knee and ankle. He could hardly struggle, let alone escape. A drip line was in his wrist, and the plastic bag of saline swung from a high hook on the back of the chair.

An oxygen mask lay in his lap, and the pipe snaked round to the cylinder on the back of the chair.

His shirt had been removed, and two large defibrillator pads were taped to his chest, across his heart.

The palms of his hands were pressed against large copper electrodes, and he looked down and saw the wires emerging from his waistband, and he knew where they led. His testicles retracted unconsciously at the feel of what lay next to them.

Tap, tap, tap.

He had been here so many times, on the other side of the chair. He had heard the screaming, the pleading, the begging, the crying, and he had watched the bodies jerk, and jump, and quiver, and slump. And he had seen them brought back to life when things had gone too far, brought back to face it again, and again, and again, until they broke.

Tap, tap, tap.

He knew the corridor they were heading down now, and he knew what was waiting for him at the end of it. The very thought made him break out into a sudden sweat. He felt physically sick; his heart hammered in his chest. Could he kill himself in time? Could he do it by swallowing his tongue? He opened his jaw to try, and there was something in it, something holding his jaws ajar, something that held his tongue down.

They knew everything, of course. They'd seen it all, heard it all, and the tap, tap of the guards' high-heeled boots as they wheeled him to the interrogation was like the nails being hammered into his coffin.

Tap.

Tap.

Tap.

The hammering stopped, and the twin metal doors slid back, and they wheeled him in.

Günter was waiting behind a desk as Newman was brought in. The desk was the only furniture in the room, and the walls and floor were of stainless steel.

There was a large bloodstain on the steel floor, a few meters in front of the desk, and an unmistakable arterial spray was splashed over the front of the desk. Two orderlies were mopping up with rolls of paper and disinfectant sprays.

The room smelled of fresh blood, and death, and fear.

Even behind the desk, Günter loomed larger than life in the interrogation room. He was tall, over six feet, and powerfully-built; his 170 pounds was all muscle. He was dressed in his trademark black; his shirt, pants, shoes, belt; everything black.

Günter waved the orderlies out, and when they had gone, he regarded Newman for a long moment before speaking.

He spoke perfect English with a German accent that he could easily have eradicated if he had wished; he was an excellent linguist. Newman knew better; he cultivated the German accent to terrorize his victims.

'Ah, Mister Newman, my trusted and loyal servant. I think you are not what you seem to be,' Günter shook his head as the guards moved Newman into a position facing the desk and removed the tongue depressor. They took up positions on either side of Günter, hands on guns.

'I don't know what you're talking about,' Newman answered, as flatly as he could, but his tongue wasn't working properly yet, and his words were thick and slurred. 'I haven't done anything wrong.'

'Are you one of the Fatherhood?' Günter asked, evenly, looking Newman in the eye.

Newman looked him back.

'No,' he said.

'Are you prepared to stick to that story under persuasion? You know what I will do,' asked Günter, tilting his head to one side.

Newman closed his eyes and said:

'Yes.'

Günter said nothing, but his hand moved to press a hidden button, and Newman braced his body for the pain. His muscles tensed. What would it be? How bad would it be? He was sure it would be the electric shocks, to soften him up first, but where? Would it be through his hands, turning his body into a jerking, convulsing mass of screaming muscles, or would it be to his testicles, burning like a red-hot poker held against them?

Newman's body quivered with tension, and he shut his eyes. Günter was playing with him; it was going to be bad. Please, please, just do it, just do it, just get it over with, the first shock is the worst, please, just do it...

There was the hiss of a door opening behind Newman, and he opened his eyes, and heard someone approach the chair from behind.

There was a swish of something like silk, and a soft footfall behind him on the stainless steel. Soft shoes, not boots. Somehow, he knew it was a woman. The faces of the guards, impassive until now, showed a trace of emotion as she moved closer.

Fear. They felt fear.

Günter's killers felt fear.

He tried to twist his head round to see, but the high back of the chair prevented him, and he shrank from the touch of two small cool hands placed on his temples from behind. She was petite; maybe five foot four. And slight, he could feel it in her touch; she wasn't built like the female guards, whose muscles were smooth and sleek under their tight riding pants.

Günter spoke:

'I suppose you expected torture, Mister Newman. Well, I have something far more effective. Let me introduce you to Barbanne. She is - or was - a Psychoprobe.'

Günter let the words sink in.

'I presume you know what that is, Mister Newman?' Günter was clearly enjoying himself. Newman had frozen when he heard the words.

'Like most people, you probably think that Psychoprobes are only used to read the vanishing thoughts of the dead and dying. Well, Barbanne here is different. I found her some years ago and... bent her to my purposes. Now she does what she is told, and she uses her training to extract those little secrets that I need from the people I bring here.

You see, Mister Newman, Barbanne works on the living mind.'

Newman's mind was racing. He seriously doubted if Günter could be lying, but such a story was fantastical... no Psychoprobe had ever been able to work on the living brain, it was too disordered to lock onto the thoughts.

Günter's face clouded, and he shook his head in mock pity.

'I can see you doubt that this can be true, so Barbanne is going to show you that I do not lie.'

He glanced up at the hidden woman. 'Are you ready?'

'Quite ready.' A cultured accent, from behind his head. The cool fingers still pressed lightly on his temples, and they shifted slightly as she took a better contact.

'Mister Newman, how old are you?' began Günter in a bored kind of way.

'I'm seventy-seven,' Newman replied, mimicking the tone.

'He's lying. His true age is forty-five,' Barbanne responded instantly.

'You see, Mister Newman? Even your little jokes betray you. So, you cannot be trusted to tell me the truth, even when I ask you a simple question. So, Barbanne, tell me, is he one of the Fatherhood?'

Newman shut his mouth and tried to blank his mind. Barbanne's voice spoke instantly.

'Yes. He is Father ten ninety-seven. Serial number eff ten ninety-seven, three seventy-two, twelve oh-six. He was inducted into the Fatherhood when he was seventeen, but left, due to... an incident. He has been... brought back into the Fatherhood... and specially trained for this mission. He...'

Günter lifted his hand, and Barbanne stopped instantly.

'Why did they bring him back? What was he thrown out for?' Günter's eyes were hard as ice, boring into Newman's.

'He... was scanned and... found to have some kind of... sexual deviancy. I cannot read what. He has been through some kind of therapy, I can't read through the blocking protocol. Oh, it's good, it's really good, very professional job... He was... brought back because... the Fathers needed someone who was imperfect, someone who would not arouse our suspicions.'

'What has he found out?'

'He knows a great deal. The Fatherhood is close to penetrating our security. There is... a double agent.' Günter's eyes lifted and met her eyes over the top of Newman's head. 'He works in the data security department. He doesn't know the name, just a codename. Leper.'

'I'm just letting her think that.' Newman said smoothly, but in reality he was terrified. The woman was reading his mind like it was laid out in a book in front of her.

'He's bluffing. He is very afraid. He is afraid of me. My performance has shocked him. He is wondering how deep I can go.'

'Tell him.' said Günter.

'I can read your mind, and your memories; back to the day you were born. You are transparent.' Barbanne's words were deadly cold, and Newman was sweating profusely now.

'He is scared. He is sweating. He has an urge to void himself,' Barbanne said, and he felt, rather than saw, the trace of a malicious smile crossed her lips.

The air in the room was growing cold, and Newman wondered how long he could keep this up.

'Keep what up, Mister Newman?' Barbanne responded at once. 'You aren't able to provide any resistance at all to me. I can read your conscious thoughts as clear as if you were writing them down for me. I have felt more resistance from a child.'

She was mocking him now, smiling in evil satisfaction, and he was getting desperate.

'He is panicking,' said Barbanne, 'He has never experienced this before. He is unable to believe that the stories he has heard about Psychoprobes are true.'

Newman's mind was racing. He was being laid bare. He glanced round the room, looking in vain for some kind of escape, and all he saw were the two guards, their gloved hands on the trigger guards of their submachine guns.

'Oh, there is no escape,' Barbanne chimed in quickly, 'You cannot escape, and even if you came up with a plan, I could read it before it even surfaced in your own mind. Just a moment...' she broke off, frowning, and probed deeper.

'What is it?' asked Günter impatiently.

Barbanne looked up again, and she was clearly excited by some discovery.

'He is sexually excited by your guard over there, in the corner. He fears her, but is excited by her demeanor... by her body... and by her clothing. And... he wants to see her die. He thought briefly about how it would be if he grabbed her gun and shot her. I think we've found what he was thrown out of the Fatherhood for.' There was a note of triumph in her voice now.

'Really, Mister Newman?' said Günter in genuine surprise, glancing at the guard in question. 'The Fatherhood certainly took a risk with bringing you back, didn't they? That really is going too far,' Günter was laughing in a hearty way, and the female guard under scrutiny risked a half-smile; she was obviously enjoying the joke.

'Move his chair so that he can see her clearly,' commanded Günter, and Barbanne swung the chair round, so that he was facing the female guard. Her blue eyes regarded Newman in an amused but disinterested way, and Newman recognized her as the one who had pressed her gun against him at the ferry.

Günter stared back at Newman for a long moment, and the room went deathly quiet. Günter looked up at the other guard, on his right, and indicated the first guard.

'Shoot her. In the throat.' said Günter, suddenly and efficiently, and before the luckless guard had time to react, the other guard had raised her gun and cocked it, and the room shook to a burst of automatic fire that buffeted Newman's eardrums, leaving a ringing silence.

The guard with ice-blue eyes jerked back a few inches and slammed against the wall behind her. Her eyes were wide in shocked surprise, and her gun clattered to the floor as she clasped both her gloved hands to her throat.

A spray of arterial blood pumped past her leather-clad fingers, and she staggered to stay upright. She was drowning in her own blood as it poured down her shattered trachea and filled her lungs, and she made a panicked, gurgling noise as she expelled the last air in her lungs, sending more blood spraying. Then she was drowning and dying, and her eyes widened in terror as the pain of death hit her, the realization that there was not going to be a swift death, but a painful and a long, and that there was no help. She slid slowly down the wall as she lost strength, her hands still clasped to her throat, leaving a bloody trail behind her on the wall. Her blue eyes were glazing as she reached the floor, but she still had them open, and they swiveled to look at Günter in fear and loathing as she sank lower and lower.

She collapsed in bloody ruin on the floor, her legs splaying untidily in her tall leather boots, as more blood pumped past her hands and ran out onto the floor.

Behind Newman, Barbanne's body moved in her silk dress, in excitement or tension, Newman couldn't tell which, and unseen layers and folds of fabric rustled against each other. Her fingers pressed into his temples.

'So, what did our Mister Newman make of that?' asked Günter.

Newman squeezed his eyes shut and concentrated so hard on keeping his mind blank; his fingernails gouged white half-moons in the flesh of his hands.

'Mister Newman, that's pathetic,' she mocked, 'you can't hide your thoughts from me. I can read your sexual thoughts, long before they reach the cognitive cortex. Don't you know anything?'

She became crisp again:

'He was aroused by her death, by the sudden command to kill; by the way she grasped her throat as she died. He is trying to suppress an erection. He has a powerful death fetish. He has had it from an early age. He has been treated with a blocking protocol to suppress it.'

Newman shook with fear, and embarrassment, and rage. This woman had smashed all those years of therapy, the careful litanies and habits that he had been trained to use to combat it, and she had broken through it in an instant.

Günter, however, threw back his head and laughed loudly. He was clearly enjoying himself as he recovered himself and spoke again:

'It will be a pleasure to dispose of your body, Mister Newman, it really will. I think it will make quite a sensation for the media, when we arrange your death, with all the trimmings,' he indicated the dead female guard. 'And in your Father's uniform, that will make quite a stir.'

Newman closed his eyes. He felt sick. He was quite sure that Günter meant it, and that the following morning there would be a ghastly tableau arranged, with the dead woman prominently featured.

Barbanne stood behind him, still as stone now.

Günter leaned forward, and his smile vanished.

'Enough playing now. What do the Fathers know about me and my little operation here?' He was asking the question of Barbanne now, not even bothering to question Newman.

'They know that you are implicated... but there is insufficient evidence. They planted him here in the hope of gaining some.'

'And has he found any?'

Barbanne shifted her fingers slightly on Newman's temples:

'Yes, he thinks he has, but it is circumstantial. He...'

'That's not true,' blustered Newman, 'I found a kilo of...'

'Silence him!' commanded Günter, and the remaining guard stepped up to him, grasped his jaw, and rammed a ball gag into his open mouth. She tied it up cruelly tight, so that his jaws were forced wide apart.

'Continue,' Günter rapped. Barbanne bent back to her task, moving her fingers until she had reestablished contact.

'He thinks he has found something, but he has no evidence. He has... not told his superiors about it.'

'Are you sure?'

'Quite sure. He knows that he needs some real evidence first.'

'How does he communicate with the Fatherhood?'

'An encrypted link accessed from public telepoints. He tried and failed yesterday to alert the Fatherhood to his impending discovery.'

'Access codes?'

'Yes...' Barbanne searched, then shook her head, 'He failed to make contact last night. They will have removed his access already.'

'Then keeping him alive is useless to us. Is there anything else? Any other weaknesses?'

Barbanne frowned and shifted her fingers and searched his mind carefully.

Finally she looked up.

'Nothing of consequence. He has feelings of guilt about a female that he sexually assaulted many years ago during a date. A failed marriage. One child that he hasn't seen in three years. Two illicit sexual encounters since he joined the Fatherhood. Both female. That is all.'

Günter sat back in his chair and regarded Newman with a gaze that was devoid of fear, and any pity.

'Your superiors really should not have sent you in here, Father Newman. I don't suppose any of them even considered that I could have a weapon like Barbanne at my disposal, and I don't propose to let them find out. I suppose they thought that I would extract information from you under torture. Well, I enjoy torture, as you know very well, but Barbanne's methods are far more effective, don't you think?'

He seemed to lose interest, and stood up to go.

'I've finished with him,' he waved his hand dismissively.

'Can I have him?' asked Barbanne, suddenly. She was looking at Günter, her dark eyes pleading.

Günter looked back at Newman, then nodded.

'Yes, do what you want with him, but be sure to leave him blank afterwards.'

And then Günter was gone from the room, and the female guard backed out after him, her dead eyes never leaving Newman's until the door slid shut behind her.

Newman was alone in a room with a dead woman and this lethal Psychoprobe.

She came round and stood in front of him, so that he could see her properly. No, so that she could see him properly, he realized.

She was petite, like he had imagined, and her black hair tumbled round her shoulders. She looked like a beauty out of a painting that might hang in one of the giant palaces of Europe; the rustling came from a dark red hooped dress that was layer on layer of heavy silk, from the tight bodice to the wide hooped skirt that swished along the floor. A simple necklace of pearls circled her delicate neck and exposed cleavage.

And her hands. She carried her hands carefully, almost protectively, keeping them together in front of her, lest they be damaged.

Her eyes were a deep brown, almost black, and they regarded him with a look of evil relish.

She said nothing, but went over to the crumpled body of the dead guard, and knelt down beside her. She dipped one of her fingers into the bloody ruin of the woman's throat, and tasted it, and her eyes closed in ecstasy.

Newman knew then that she was quite mad.

Barbanne stood up again, and walked to the desk and pressed a comlink.

'This is Barbanne. Get a technician in here. Clean up the body in here and bring it to my room immediately. I need it in minutes, before the brain cools.'

She didn't wait for any acknowledgement, but turned back to Newman, still bound and gagged in the interrogation chair.

'You know, you're very lucky. You're going to see something that nobody else has ever seen before.' She had a happy smile on her face, and she went behind the interrogation chair and released the brakes, then started to push him towards the door, which slid aside obediently at her approach.

Barbanne wheeled Newman off, out of Günter's office and down corridors, until they came to a door that he had never been through. Something rustled under her dress, and the door opened.

'This is my room, Mister Newman,' she said, wheeling him in and removing his ball gag, 'do you like it?'

Newman looked around himself. He was lost for words.

The room was a vast chamber, with a high ceiling way above their heads, and dimly lit; what light there was came from several standing candelabras in which church candles flickered in the draft of air from their entrance.

The room was a huge library.

Books were arranged on carved wooden shelves that began at floor level, and continued up to the high ceiling, and a mezzanine gallery ran round the entire room, accessed by two ornate spiral staircases at each end of the huge room that went up into the dimness of the upper gallery. Carved statues of beasts in grotesque poses guarded the stairs.

Huge paintings, in pigments so dark that he could hardly make out the settings, dominated two of the walls in their heavy gilt frames. In various places in the room were a chaise longue, a huge four poster bed and some ornate Baroque furniture, and Newman realized that this was where she lived and slept, in the middle of this huge library.

The air smelled faintly of ancient moldering paper, and Newman realized that the fragile books arranged on the shelves were genuine; their torn and peeling spines and uneven leaves bore testament to the hands that had once turned them.

'Do you collect anything, Mister Newman?' Barbanne asked, plugging in a set of electric clippers and switching them on. A loud buzzing filled the air as she moved next to him. Newman started; he had been lost in the vastness of this enormous personal space.

'Nice hair,' she muttered, and began to shave it off, in long, practiced strokes, taking it right down to the scalp.

Newman struggled to answer. He really had no idea what was going to happen to him. Cold sweat rolled down his sides.

'Well, I'll take that as a No,' she continued conversationally, as clumps of dark hair clippings fell silently onto the polished wooden floor of the library. 'But lots of people collect things, you know.'

She had finished on side of his head, and now started on the other.

'I collect things too,' she went on, 'but I collect memories. Do you understand, Mister Newman?'

'You collect memories,' he repeated, with a sense of unknown dread as he spoke the words.

'Oh, yes, I can see that you're beginning to understand. Well, let me help you some. I collect memories from the people that Günter lets me... have. I love other people's memories, Mister Newman. That's why I collect books, did you know? All these books contain people's memories.'

She was nearly finished now, and he felt the strange sensation of coolness on his naked scalp. She switched off the clippers and blew the clippings off his neck.

'That's better,' she said, admiring her handiwork, 'you've got nice bone structure, did you know?'

'Why are you doing this?' he gasped.

'Oh, didn't I tell you? It's much easier for me if I have a good electrical contact. We sense the electrical impulses, you know,' she added chattily, 'there's no thought transference really, it's just a freak of nature, and a lot of training.'

From somewhere in the room, a deep bell struck once.

'Come,' she said clearly, and the door opened and the dead guard was wheeled in, lying flat on her back on a wheeled stretcher.

Barbanne dismissed the orderly that had brought the body, and wheeled it round so that Newman could see it.

Barbanne's mouth was set firm, and her dark eyes blazed with a desire that had no name as she leaned her neck forward and reached round the back of her dress. Newman heard the sound of hooks being unclipped, one by one, then her dress fell to the floor. She stepped out of it and stood there in front of him in her antique basque and silk stockings.

'And now you get to see what a Psychoprobe can do,' she said, and she pulled back the sheet that covered the dead woman. They had cleaned up the blood and taken her clothes off, and Barbanne climbed onto the stretcher and straddled the body.

'Mmm, still warm,' she grinned, 'we need them warm, you know. The memories fade so quickly.' She closed her eyes, and for a moment sat in silence, preparing herself.

Then she leaned forward and placed her fingers round the dead woman's face.

Barbanne's smile vanished, and for long moments, there was no sound. Then, Barbanne spoke. Her voice was strange; it had lost the tonal qualities that it had before, and spoke with a faint German accent. No, it was a Dutch accent, he realized, and now he could hear the words clearly:

oh, he finds me exciting, does he? i'd like to show him exciting i'd show him exciting does he know i killed a man only this morning? i killed him with my bare hands i killed him he begged for me to spare him and i killed him it felt good it...

OH, OH! OHHHH! she's shot me! she's shot me! oh, my throat! blood! my blood! it's pouring out! get my hands up stop the blood stop the blood oh it's coming out it's coming out no no no help me, i'm dying! this can't be happening! oh, the blood is choking me! i'm dying i've got to breathe i can't breathe i've got to breathe i can't breathe i've got to breathe i'm dying i've got to breathe, I'VE GOT TO BREATHE oh, no, i'm falling, i'm falling... i'm dying... i'm going... i'm going... i'm dying... i hate you günter i hate you günter I HATE YOU GÜNTER DIE YOU BASTARD DIE YOU BASTARD DIE IN HELL I'LL SEE YOU IN HELLLLLLLL I

Barbanne stopped talking and her body stiffened, and for a moment, Newman couldn't take in what he saw.

Barbanne was in the throes of an orgasm; she was still holding on to the dead woman's face, but her own hips thrust forward rhythmically and a faint hiss came from her clenched teeth as she lived the dying woman's last thoughts.

Her thrusting slowed, and she released the woman's face and slowly sat up. Strands of hair clung to her face. Her neck and upper throat were flushed, and her eyes glittered as she climbed off the dead woman and came towards Newman.

She slowly undid the rows of hooks on her basque and let it fall, and peeled off her stockings and panties, so that she was naked in front of him. She never once took her eyes off him, and they were the eyes of a hunting animal that has cornered its prey, and knew for certain that it would feed that night.

'I get all quivery and excited when I do this,' she said, wiggling her hips, 'I normally only get to take the young ones, that are in their twenties, and they've got SO much energy and drive...' her dark eyes glittered, 'but they don't have all the memories that you older guys have... all those experiences, a whole lifetime to taste.'

He struggled helplessly against his bonds, his body jerking in the stainless steel chair, but she was advancing on him, and she lifted one leg, then the other, and she straddled him easily in the chair.

'And now, Mister Newman, it's time for me to take you.'

Her smile had gone, and in its place her mouth was cold and cruel, and she tore off the electrodes on his chest in a ripping of surgical tape, and her nipples pressed against his naked chest. He realized with a crawling horror that they were erect.

'I'm going to enjoy sucking you dry,' her voice was a hiss on the edge of hearing, and she leaned forward and kissed him on the forehead, and, flexing her fingers, placed them delicately on his cranium, moving them around so that she had a good contact.

Her smile faded, and her face went expressionless, and her eyes looked deeply into his, and they were devoid of pity, the cold expressionless eyes of the predator as their jaws closed on their prey.

'Say goodbye to your mind,' she whispered, the last words he ever heard.

ARGHHH

There was no pain, but instead a dizzying sensation of the room blurring, receding, as if he was on the verge of sleep, when all the sounds of the world sound indistinct. An icy touch spread from the tips of her fingers, spreading, creeping through his brain, immobilizing it, freezing his thoughts, and laying them bare.

Then SHE was in his mind, and her laughter echoed through the forgotten corridors of his memory as, like a thief, she wrenched them open:

The birth of his child...

Through a veil of tears, the tiny hands clasping in the air as the body emerged, skin still wet from the amnion, tiny lips, tiny lungs...

A veil of tears...

His wife's drained face, but happy, so happy. The midwife smiling, retreating from the room.

His first child.

His son.

Barbanne ate up the memory, gasping at its intensity. She had never felt the joy of birth before. She savored it, she drank it, and it was gone, and Newman felt it leave, and he was bereft. A terrible sense of loss opened up in his heart, and his soul cried out as the memory of his son's birth left him.

But she had only just started on him.

The night his son had been conceived...

The depth of love and passion, the heights which he had never been able to dream of, the sensation of conception, and the way they had held each other for long minutes afterwards, while the sperm from his body began their long journey to help make his son.

She consumed it, and it was gone.

A funeral, and the pain, the grief, the wanting to reach out and touch, the pain of seeing a loved one being buried under piles of dirt...

Barbanne took it.

The torrid affair after work...

The frantic coupling in her hotel room in Zurich. He had forced Kathryn up against the wall, and she had responded to him, spreading her legs, tearing at his clothing... How they had devoured each others bodies, the things they had done, the secret places of their bodies that they had explored...

Barbanne breathed it in like a fine wine, and her nipples flooded with blood and rubbed against his chest hair as she drank in the memory, and the intensity of his orgasm.

She found, and lived, and sucked the memories from him, and as each of them passed from him, the pain became more unbearable; it was as if part of his very being was being wrenched away.

Barbanne devoured his brain for hours, taking all his memories, going further and further back, until she had exhausted all his adult life, and the adolescent child in the chair in front of her was afraid.

His first orgasm...

He thought he was dying; he didn't know what was happening to him. He tried to make it stop, but he couldn't, and then the hot wetness had burst over him and the bedclothes, and he had lain there, frozen in terror, at what had happened...

She drank the memory in a moment, and countless others, and now there was a boy in front of her, and still she hungered for more.

His father, letting go as he took his first wobbling ride on his bike, unaided. How proud his father had been, even when he had careered into his father's car and put a scratch in the side. His father had rushed up, full of concern, and told him to get back on the bike at once and ride it again.

Oh, his father when he had been young... how he had looked up to him, how he had wanted to be like him...

Barbanne devoured it, and it was gone forever. Newman hung his head and cried at the memories that she tore from his brain.

His first guinea pig. It had scrabbled in the box when they handed it to him, and he had been besides himself with excitement when he opened it.

Barbanne sucked it from him.

Eight, and he was playing War with the other boys in his street, and he had felt the faint stirrings of an erection as he pretended to machine-gun his victims...

Now she was getting excited, and she rode him like a horse as his life drained away in front of her and her arousal came.

He was six, and was riding his tricycle down the street, and he was becoming self-aware.

Barbanne panted, and her hips swung against Newman's body, massaging her swollen clitoris.

Four, and he sat on a roll of carpet in the New House, dimly aware of the family moving. A new room, and new furniture.

Barbanne gasped, and then a low groan of pleasure started from her lips.

Christmas, and it was snowing, and they had gone outside to make a snowman in the snow, and their mother had called them in, and she had warm soup for them.

Barbanne's eyes closed tight.

Two, and jealousy at the new arrival, his brother.

Now the groan was a hiss, and her fingers dug into Newman's scalp.

One, and only vague feelings of warmth, his mother's voice, his father's smile, long days in the sunshine, safety and security and love.

Barbanne's body was taught as a spring.

Now she had reached the bottom of the wells of memory, and there was nothing here, nothing but fuzzy memories of warmth, and warm skin against his cheek, and the deep murmurings of his parent's voices.

Barbanne's body arched and her orgasm exploded inside her, spreading out like an evil flower over her abdomen and rising, rising, until it shuddered up her spine to her white-hot brain, and inside Newman's head, a tiger raged, a monster that clawed, and wrenched, and tore his brain, raking out every memory from where it lay hidden from her. The roaring of the monster filled his mind, and his head twitched from side to side as the beast rampaged inside him, destroying everything that he was, scouring, removing, and still her orgasm surged on, fed by the intensity of his memories.

Only when his mind was truly empty did she collapse forward and let go of Newman's head, and her shuddering subsided. She rolled off him and collapsed on the floor, exhausted and sated.

Long minutes passed, and Barbanne drifted off into a shallow sleep, exhausted after her hours of concentration.

Later, she would relive those memories, selecting them for her dark fantasies, and in her bed, deep amongst the shelves of books, she would scream in pleasure as she relived the emotions.

But now, before she could sleep properly, she had to return the empty thing to Günter. She forced herself to get up again, and she padded across to her bed, pushing the hair away from her face.

She flung a robe round herself and went back to Newman's body. His head lolled on its side, a faint line of drool coming from it. She lifted his head up by the chin. The eyes were blank, unfocused, and the head jerked unsteadily from side to side as muscles fired without coordination.

He was empty, and here was a blank page waiting to be written on, but it was forty-five years old, not a tiny baby new into the world.

Barbanne put her face close, so that the thing in the chair could see it, and she smiled. It tried to smile back, but its facial muscles weren't under control yet, and all it could manage was to lock on to her face with its wobbling, unsteady head.

She called for the guards, and she watched it as she waited for them. It was already trying to follow her with its eyes, but its eyesight could not yet focus beyond a few feet. An expression of despair crossed its face as she moved away, and it began to cry, an uncoordinated noise of distress and loneliness.

The guards arrived. Barbanne indicated the cawing figure in the chair. She had no interest in it; it held nothing any more.

'Take it away and set up the scene, then kill it.'

The first guard nodded and began to wheel the figure away. It twisted and turned, trying to catch sight of Barbanne again. Its distress was obvious; it wanted to be with her, it had latched onto her face. It cried as it was wheeled out of the room, and carried on crying, the sound disappearing down the corridor.


* * *


Now Barbanne is alone, walking slowly past the shelves of ancient books in her vast library, and the church candles flicker as she passes.

No, she is not alone. In her mind, she is exploring a library many, many times larger than the one in which she walks in, and in there, screaming to be let out, are the imprisoned memories of all the souls she has sucked dry in the interrogation chair, all those lives that she has stolen. In anyone else, those memories would be madness to hold, but Barbanne is oblivious to the cries and the screams that run along the dripping walls, and the shape of a ravening tiger stalks the corridors of stone, and the cries are silenced.

And if you listen very carefully, on the edge of hearing, you might be able to hear those screams, those disembodied memories, as they echo round the lost dungeons and staircases of her library, and Barbanne heads towards her bed, clasping her hands in front of her as she gloats over what she has stolen.

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thanatos_r@hotmail.com