Part 70

Posted by Barbanne on March 27, 2003 at 21:29:32:

PART SEVENTY


SLAY RIDE




We all sat around our dining table.
Somehow I had ended up on one side and they were all on the other. I mean it was a round table but you know how one person is sort of one side and the others are like in a horse shoe opposite.
I had bought out biscuits and made tea and coffee, anything to sort of stop this from happening but now I had run out of delaying tactics. Alex was fiddling with his fingers, not meeting my eyes, Loreen was looking at me as though she had never seen me before and Candice had that kindly look I had seen many times before. She spoke first.
"Barbanne how are you?"
"Oh OK."
"That's good. I haven't seen you for a long time and a lot has happened I believe. Most importantly you have taken hold of your own destiny and are really trying to turn yourself around."
"Yes," I looked at all three, "I am determined not to have any of that shit beat me."
"That's fantastic dear."
"But look at her," said Alex, "Barb's far too thin, she's wasting away."
"You do look a bit gaunt dear."
"You should see her stripped. She's just skin and bone."
"I'm sure enough people see Barbanne naked without me being one of them. How's your health dear?"
"Oh alright. I have this crook tummy but otherwise I'm so so."
"Its all my fault," said Loreen, "I got in a mess and called on Barb and what with everything else she's going through I should have just kept my problems to myself."
"Bullshit," I said, "that's not all of it. I have serious menstrual difficulties and it seems I only just get over them and they come again. I mean I am losing days every month to this crap."
"Hmm," Candice looked at me, "but that's not new?"
"No, I've lived with it since I was a kid."
"And Loreen's difficulties?"
"Well they're over although I confess they got to me a bit, but then I'm always sticking my nose in and getting it bashed. I'm a dill."
"Maybe so. What about this tummy upset?"
"Yeah maybe I'll go to the doctor."
"Struth," said Alex, "wonders never cease."
Candice looked at me as though she knew the truth and I lowered my eyes. I couldn't win a staring battle with her and sat there waiting with some trepidation. Waiting, waiting.
"Tell me about your father Barbanne."
"What about him? He wasn't a very good father, he drank too much and he hurt me."
"What sort of man was he?"
"I've told you."
"But what sort of man was he in himself. A strong man?"
"Yes." I could hardly hear myself, my voice tiny and frightened.
"A dominant man?"
"Yes."
"What you'd call a strong personality?"
"Yes."
"And you what sort of little girl were you?"
"Scared."
"Scared, how do you mean Barbanne? Frightened? Of him? You were a timid little child weren't you Barbanne? Timid and frightened and you looked up to him?"
"Yes."
"And he let you down didn't he?"
"Yes."
I looked around pleading with my eyes. Alex was looking at me with sympathy and Loreen looked as though she didn't really know me. I silently supplicated but I was on my own.
"Barbanne," said Candice, "in all my discussions with you, in our sessions together, I have suspected that there was something behind you, behind all of your problems and I want you to consider this. I think that you are possessed. Oh not possessed in an exorcist way, no green vomit or spinning heads, but I think you are possessed by the ghost of your father. Oh the symptoms we see, the not eating, the running away, the mood swings, these are all real enough, but behind those the real problem is that your father's spirit is still controlling you."
"No!"
"Yes my dear. Tell me did you love him?"
"I, I wanted to."
"And he let you down?"
"Yes."
A whisper.
"I want you to submit yourself to hypnotism Barbanne. That will let us get behind your barriers and see what is there."
"No."
"What do you mean no?"
"No I don't want to and anyway it won't work I can't be hypnotised."
"I've thought of that Barbanne and I want you to drink this," she held out a glass of water with something that looked like aspirin dissolving in it.
"Are you going to do this now?" I said in a sudden, horrible panic.
"Yes dear, you are amongst friends and now is as good as any other. The sooner the better."
"Alex," I said, "what will I do?"
His hands closed over mine and squeezed them. "Do what's best darling."
"Oh, oh," I looked around feeling trapped, feeling frightened.
"Drink Barbanne," said Candice holding the glass to me.
I took it. I looked and felt like a spotlit rabbit. My hand was shaking as I bought it to my lips and sipped it and then swallowed it down.
I sat in the chair. My hands had fallen down by my sides and I had slumped back. Candice looked into my face. "Barbanne, you are feeling safe, warm and safe and you are going to show us inside your doors."
"Mmmmmm," I mumbled, then I saw another face, "Sibyl," I said through thick lips, my tongue getting in the way, "Sibyl why are you here?"
"Sibyl will help us Barbanne," said Candice. Then she said, "Where are you Barbanne? Tell us where you are?"
"I'm in............, I'm in..........bed. I'm in bed..............................."


Warm and safe in my bed.
Then I felt her crouching over me.
"Mummy?"
"Come darling. He is waiting."
I sat up. I was chilly in my thin nightie, but she held out my warm coat and said, "Put this on."
I did and she led me downstairs.
"Where are we going Mummy?"
"He is waiting."
It was cold in the darkened corridors and the stairs felt like some cavern, some dark and sinister cavern. The only light spilled from an opened door down below and the shadows leapt and danced and looked strange and frightening. I was hurried along frightened and sleepy and I grizzled saying I was tired and wanted to go back to bed.
"Come dear."
She opened the front door and the carriage stood there waiting. Two snorting coal black horses straining at the traces. The ornately decorated sleigh behind them. Snow was falling and the night was very dark.
"I'm cold."
"Come."
We were in the sleigh and it was rushing across the snow whitened landscape. The great monastery loomed ahead. Fitfully lit by the moonlight as the clouds scudded by. Huge dark, cold, dank and terrifying. The sleigh had stopped and she hurried me inside.
"Come he is waiting and it is almost ready."
We rushed, almost running down the black stone passages and through vaulted chambers and then we stood outside a huge iron bound wooden door. She knocked and it opened. Thick, damp fog and the dreadful chill of death seeped out. He was there. She pushed me inside. I stood there looking at the alchemist's laboratory, at the bubbling beakers and the flickering flames. She took off my coat and the she took off my nightie. I was cold, freezing cold.
"Life eternal," he said.
"The missing ingredient," she said.
I looked up and the knife came hurtling down.
"Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaagghhhhhhh..........................................!!!!!!!!"


I slumped back in the chair.
My head had rolled back and my eyes were unfocussed and glazed in confusion.
The faces peered down at me.
Alex.
Sibyl.
Loreen.
Candice.
"Please," I croaked, "please, why are you doing this to me? I can't handle this. I can't deal with the pain. Let me live with my problems. I don't want to be helped, I am not strong enough, please, let me be. Alex, Alex, please don't let them do this to me. Why are you letting this happen?"
Candice leaned over me and her eyes, hypnotic eyes, filled my vision.
"Relax Barbanne, show us more."
"No, no ,nooooooooooooo......................."
I was in the monastery again.
The sleigh stood outside, the horses shaking their heads and whinnying in the cold blackness.
We rushed along the passages. I couldn't believe anything could be this cold. The door loomed in front of me. It opened slowly, ever so slowly, creaking against its hinges. Light spilled out. Pale, watery, yellow light, flickering as the flames flickered. She pushed me inside. He turned and she grasped me from behind and my coat and nightie were ripped away from me.
I was flung against the wall. The hard cold stone dug into my back, my buttocks and my shoulders. I was weeping. She gripped my wrists and shackled them to the stonework.
He came toward me a long steel spike, a rapier in his hands.
He smiled at me and said, "Surely you didn't expect love?"
I just looked at him and wept.
The steel tip was at my slit. I looked down, bending my head as much as I could.
I saw it going inside me.
"The blood, the sacred blood is mine," he said.
The steel was thrust into me.
Like some cruel cold lover's cock it slipped into my womanhood and then it split my os, my cervix and my uterus and burnt its way up through my guts and my lungs and into my throat and on up into my brain setting it alight with agony. Blood spurted from between my legs and fountained out of my nipples and spouted in a stream from my mouth.
I knew I was dead.
My humanity had been slain.
I shrieked and there I was back on the chair thrashing and kicking and all four of them held me down.
The violence of the spasm passed and I slumped semi conscious in front of them.
"Now Barbanne, once more, once more and then it will be over."
"No, no, no, please no more. Alex, why are you letting them do this to me? Whay are you doing this to me? Loreen, Loreen, does our friendship stand for nothing? Help me, help me please."
Candice's face filled my vision.
"One last time Barbanne."
I looked into her eyes and my will dissolved.
Sibyl held my hand and we walked toward the door again.
She knocked and it ground open and she led me in.
They were there, the machinery of torture was there, the beakers, the bubbling liquid, the jars and the horrid things. The house of torture was there, all of the horrors, the monastery of hell, the sleigh ride to purgatory.
"I can take no more!," I cried and fell to my knees.
Sibyl pulled me firmly upright. They both stood there looking at me with such malevolance.
"Forgive me, forgive me, I was so unworthy," I said, tears falling from my eyes, coursing down my cheeks.
Sibyl was beside me, clothed in white, her glorious figure moulding the garment into purity and fecundity, mother earth.
She squeezed my shoulders through the thin nightie.
"Don't you think she has suffered enough?" she cried out, "let her go, let her go now, I command it!"
They shrank backward and then the room dissolved into mist and I stood alone outside the doors of the forbidding building and I stepped back and then there was nothing.
I was lying on the sofa, my body bucking and writhing out of control. Sibyl came close. "It is over Barbanne. Open your eyes."
I opened them and saw Alex and my love for him surrounded me, cloaking me in safety and comfort. Loreen was smiling and Candice nodded her head.
My clothes were saturated and I felt utterly limp but I was free, at last I was free.