PSYCHE DIABOLICALLY RESCULPTED: THE EXCRUCIATING INTROSPECTION OF DOCTOR THOMPSON
Months bled by in that hospital bed for the traumatized daughter of the vicious business magnate Victor Velez. While Lily lay deeply in her coma, such state brought on shortly after the impromptu extraction of the Artifact from her abdomen, her mind experienced the opposite of the respite which her body was enjoying in the sphere of the living.
As it would turn out, for her that "next time" which the demoniac inflection promised had arrived much sooner than the canny college coed could ever have hoped to expect.
But regardless this subsequent encounter with Them still did not commence until Lily had delved several weeks into her unnatural slumber…and in that time she'd experienced so many frightful flashbacks, both from corporeally-crushing confrontations she had recently in that abominable estate, as well as scarring incidents she suffered sooner than that. Yes, one could even collocate certain spirits dwelling within that horrific iteration of the House with the deadly sins: the Mannequin embodying Envy through her want of Lily's skin, the varied infant incubi encompassing Gluttony through their need to devour the dame at almost every turn of her jaunt through that place of perdition, the stitched Twins copying her likeness and living our their stiffly-animated flesh-flaunting existences as Lust.
Then more prominent entities representing the other vices as the Patient in his wayward wheelchair sought with boundless Wrath to rearrange most ruinously the physiognomy of any able-bodied being with whom came into contact. Ostentatious was the Artist in the Pride she literally exhibited in her ever-explicit guts-rendingly ghastly works. It went without saying here under the circumstances that the Father Victor demonstrated much Greed in ruthlessly running his corrupt corporation in a constant quest for unending glory and gold.
Yet for the last sin of Sloth there was that one monster whom Lily abhorred more than any other, he who sat for quite some time and did nothing to restore the girl's self-esteem or sanity generally, he who rent her essence more than any overbearing lurid loping underworld elevator sentry could ever hope to in contrast. And it was he who now haunted Lily more than any other creature in her comatose condition, much more than that satanic cage-headed undead-Charles-Xavier-copy from whom she hid near to the end of her quest, or that cunning killer counterpart to Frida Kahlo who adored the inkling of painting Lily's ripped-asunder flesh onto her cruelest canvas.
In the course of the hell-harrowed hussy's unconscious stasis, she felt his shadow looming over her once again, he standing taller and ever more ominously-threatening than that weirdly-rotating monolith that the Velez vixen had happened upon in her father's study. Again the psychologist stood so imposingly, just as he did by the couch upon which a much younger and far more trusting Lily lay for what she was sure would be sessions designed for healing her, for restoring her, or at least driving her further from the recurring impulse for the noose.
Plagued more each day in her personal oblivion was this once-glamorous gore refugee, she beset over and over by that alleged "professional" of the psyche to whom Lily's parents entrusted their daughter for the sake of her future wellbeing. Through so many recreations now of these uneasy experiences, the underworld-weary waif responded wrongly, reacted with abject and impotent apprehension, she forgetting all the savvy she shored up earlier regarding cardiac quelling and other evasive maneuvers which had kept her intact from soul to skin.
Searing within her spirit eventually was instinct arousing those internal mechanisms to ensure her survival. An ability awakened inside Lily to lucidly perceive at last that these visions were not the surreal actuality she experienced before she so landed in the hospital, but rather were now exclusively taking place in her mind.
Evident nevertheless was the apparent situation that the horror-haggard lass could liaise once more with those lethal demons, and once she completely grasped the same she decided that, so as with her father before her, she would parlay these presences to attain quite the supernaturally-advantageous outcome in her favor and against her tormentors, an insidious victory that would make a similarly so desperately scheming Kirsty Cotton blush.
"Well…if it isn't my fragile absconded Muse…unfortunately still living and breathing before me this very moment."
Warily Lily measured now the dapple-bedecked devil before her, she noting once again the offputting opaqueness of her featureless mask, as well as the length and sharpness of her unkind knife.
"You had taken leave of me far too soon, Delicate Flower…it would be a lie to say I was not disappointed by your…sudden and rather distasteful departure."
Steeling herself now was the domineering businessman's daughter as she faced one of her otherworldly enemies, countenances of skin and porcelain respectively confronting one another. This was a figure here, the shrewd yet scarred woman measured, who once held her at butcher-knife-point and claimed that such a moment of prolonged threatening proximity, perpetrated to the point of the Artist's causing claret to seep from her quivering quarry's features, made them "into good friends."
An assertion of that sort was completely and undoubtedly insane, Miss Velez thought. Everyone had known as the poetess Plath declared in her sole novel The Bell Jar that puking vomit, not pooling blood, was the optimal and perhaps only way to build strong and lasting female relationships. But she was rather too distracted to focus overly much on that detail right now.
"I…regret having to fly so abruptly," Lily began, her voice infected with a veneer so sardonic herein, "but it is not as if I don't intend to make it up to you."
Underneath the alabaster mask a deformed eyebrow had raised. "Go on."
"I'm looking to make a deal…something along the lines of what my father wanted to do with me in the unliving hell that makes up your own dimension."
At this The Artist cocked her head quite quizzically.
"You seek to commit unto my study and artisanship a member of your kin? What could possibly make you come around now to harbor such malicious resolve, my dear? Is it against your mother that you seek reprisal? Did Julia Velez return out of some kind of guilt, for you to vindicate yourself from self-loathing you have from such abandonment? Land, I could never imagine my gossamer Flower becoming a Reaper, such a delectable victim becoming the damning victimizer."
Lily shook her head at this, at once also doing all she could to keep her heartbeat as steady as she would while stealthing amidst so many monsters months ago. "Nothing of the sort really…at least not in terms of my intended object of this…creative commission, if you will. I want instead to give you someone who was something so far from family to me."
Stepping into view now were a couple of femme humanoids whom Lily had hoped never to see as long as she lived. (Perhaps after she would eventually die, she imagined, she might see them anew given that they stood as seeming sentinels of eternal torment. Pondering this idea alone made Lily want to renounce her less than virtuous ways and check herself into a convent for the remaining balance of her anxious existence).
Indeed, seeing the familiar sack upon the neck of the one and the triggering stitches upon the countenance of the other certainly gave her pause, almost sent her into shock then and there honestly.
Drawing arms close to the chest, Lily steeled herself. After coming this far in both her world and theirs, she wasn't going to allow these monsters to keep her off balance for longer than this very instant.
"What a thrillingly grand concept," the Artist had to admit, once the evil-leviathan-vitiated Velez had related in the ensuing minutes exactly the man whom she wished these monsters would pursue. "I must say that I am rather cross at myself that I did not think focus my talents more extensively upon that…slimy serpent."
Stale air surrounding the murderous maiden had stirred the tawdry streamers passing for the she-demon's hair. "But as before, my luscious little blossom, you have bestowed upon me the spark of inspiration needed for the creations I strive to bring to unlife."
…
…
…
Confining and suffocating was the tiny cream block comprising the cell of that terrorizing therapist named Thompson. Never did the man think in all his adult years that he would be made to experience a sensation of smothering as his clients must have felt upon his couch.
As far as such a constricting experience was concerned, Thompson could attest to the fact that he likely deserved all this. What kept him going was that already about half of the decade stint that was his sentence had been completed and that, apart from the whole lifetime registration thing, he would eventually breathe the air on the outside.
Truthfully, the dust particles floating around him in contrast felt heavy and dreadful—especially this evening for some reason. It was as if the motes milling around were tensing to mass and envelop him. Imagining all this made this organism who was ostensibly a man cower into his bunk.
Shakily Thompson reached for the clear plastic portable radio he eventually managed to afford after conducting secret counseling sessions to insecure prison guards to earn a bit of scratch. Getting passable reception was so trying on any given night, but this time the device proved for seeming hours to be only a small square static machine.
It was after another fifty to sixty spins of the frequency dial on the wretched gizmo that a voice finally crackled to life. Offputting was the inflection as it appeared to belong to some poser pseudo-preacher, the kind of haughty crowing that Lily listened to before taking on that safe with the stone baby cranium within.
"It is a different time…
"It is a…present-fatalistic time.
"Here in the inevitable now, we must reckon what we have wrought, and acknowledge that the scar we set upon another eventually becomes a cicatrice that occasions consequence."
…
…
…
"It is a different time…"
As this overly histrionic screed cycled through the machine again and again herein, the specialist of the psyche commenced to shiver, particularly at the term "present-fatalistic"; this was a term that psychologists like him would use to connote a sense of helplessness and hopelessness about the future.
Seconds later and the radio's repeating spiel seceded while another voice manifested, this time inside the mind of the inmate.
[…I want his thing…]
[…I want his thing…]
Thompson noted that the inflection beetling through his brain sounded not unlike that of his own Lillian Velez, that perfect specimen about whom he could not forget any single detail. Her custard cream flesh and the fantabulous fudge of her hair…the birthmarks near to the eye and the mouth and the lower neck, all of which he regarded as kissing spots designated for his lips alone.
She was a pleasure both to behold and to hold; the wispy thin shape she so presented was substantial enough, certainly more so than that of the meager pillow he would now spoon as her substitute on a nightly basis.
Extensive amounts of energy were expended by Thompson over the course of his work to explore the minds of others and uncover all the ugliness contained within; honestly if vices like the sins listed above could be measured in radioactive units, the corruption inside this creature could be considered to have the magnitude of the Chernobyl Elephant's Foot, with Sloth really accompanied in truth by the other half dozen infractions of evil to boot.
Anyone who exhibited some modicum of contrition for possessing such a base soul may perhaps warrant forgiveness and reconciliation with his or her maker; because of Thompson's lack of remorse and irredeemableness otherwise, what was in store for him now was not so much a holy confession but a hellish execution.
[…He's so dapper…]
[…Want to strip him all the way down and leave nothing left on him…]
Crescendoing in intensity was the sound, the silkiness of what had to be Lily's insistent whispering to him making the inmate begin to grasp at himself in the same region of the body where he was sure that delicious little damsel enjoyed being touched.
[…I want his thing…]
Then instants following, when the minor-molesting thing who corporeally owned said thing was close to climax…
[CRACK]
…out went the ceiling light fixtures.
Which seemed odd, as Thompson was certain there was still another five minutes to the hour; normally the institution did not kill the lights until ten o'clock and at the moment it was only 21:55 (a time telling that savvy stygian safecrackers like Lily herself would give anyone needing to know).
Unsettled by the absence of image and sound was the pathetic prisoner. Such a void would prove infinitely preferable, though, compared to the sinister intonations of mirth now manifested.
[HMM HMM HMM HMM HMM HMMMMMM…HMHMHMHMHM…]
Again it sounded quite unmistakably like Lily; the cowed convict was sure of this, even though he only had about three sessions with the girl by the time their…destined tryst had gloriously transpired.
Thompson was once more aroused here by the idea that his nymphet soulmate had alighted to visit him at last; it prompted him to resume reaching for his own personal metronome of pleasure…
Then that freakish snickering was joined by a deeper and even more familiar sort of chortle.
[HNG HNG HNNNNNGGG…HNG HNG HNG]
He could swear that this second register was at the pitch and tone of his own voice, which he knew specifically from so many tape recorded playbacks concerning analyses of other attractive underage subjects he had studied.
[HNG HNG HNNNNNGGG…HNG HNG HNG]
[SCRACK]
Because the output of the overhead halogen tubes had only been cut for so many seconds, the pupils of Thompson's peepers had not fully dilated to adjust to darkness. Thanks to this, when the lights cracked back on there was no trouble for him in espying in full focus the terrifying torso and head of the figure now hovering over him.
It was him…to an extent; the same glasses and baldness and goatee for the face…yet the mug was mediated by several intervening stitches streaking across a seemingly much more plasticized skin. And instead of a matching pair of eyes gazing back, the horrid supine homo sapien saw only two vacant holes staring back at him, though with the outer edges upturned in a gleeful expression. Lips also interrupted by the crudest sutures also reflected a mien of manufactured happiness emanating from this similar yet so synthetic iteration of Thompson.
[HNG HNG HNNNNNGGG]
Instants afterward the two stitch-latticed arms shot out, securing the shoulders of its human analogue to the prison bed. All the while continued the incessant snickering of the insidious automaton, the shape denuded save for the boxers and loafers Thompson regularly wore for work, plus infinite stitches upon the false flesh otherwise. All the while the human victim underneath it could only watch in horror and absorb the scene as it manifested, not unlike what the sensation Lily had felt in his office those years ago.
[HMM HMM HMM HMM HMM]
In the background somewhere Thompson could also still make out the other source of muffled obscene laughter, emanating from a voicebox he was sure was that of his teenaged dreamgirl. Now it was coming from what sounded like somewhere underneath that of the molded man pinning him down, perhaps at the level of his waist. Unnerving in its intermittent piercing presence was this gibbering sound, and it made the jerkoff of a jailbird that much less comfortable that it was happening right around that intimate area where he would indeed rest his hands every night in here.
Then the giggling of the girl figure underneath intensified even more as Thompson felt a sandpapery hand grab roughly at that said secret area. Then another second
[SFASSSSSHHH]
once more there was total dark, but any kind of accompanying void of sound immediately invaded by
[SCUP SCUP SCUP SCUP SCUP SCUP]
[CLOP CLOP CLOP CLOP CLOP CLOP]
what must have been a pair of pumps in tandem with a couple of loafers…the latter again a familiar stimulus to the inmate, as he knew the sound of his own shoes while pacing the hardwood floor of his office.
[SFASSSSSHHH]
Still upon Thompson was his stitched-up self with its terrifying tittering expression. In his peripherals the dastard doctor strained to try and see the other dreadful drone that was still clutching at his crotch. Instead of finding her with his overly widened eyes, however, the condemned convict noted what looked like another version of himself, this time bedecked completely in the business casual to which he was accustomed when he had his freedom…though what seemed to be a burlap fanny pack hung down in the frontal pelvic area.
Next to this other self was a female form dressed almost entirely in black, with a sack of identical gunny material where the head should have been.
[HMM HMM HMM HMM HMM]
[HNG HNG HNNNNNGGG]
[…I want his thing…I want his thing…]
Over the tandem sniggling of the anathema at his waist as well as the abomination mostly blocking his line of sight, Thompson could tell now that the voice(s) desiring said "thing" were twofold, both issuing from the other two creatures mere feet away.
Reaching behind itself for a second was the psychologist's clone pressing down upon the genuine article, and not unlike a malicious mockery of a cartoon character he whipped out of nowhere an opportunistic apparatus to use for violent purposes; unlike anything animated for children, though, his objective in the operative item's usage was to be anything but comedic.
Aghast lay the execrable analyst as he so recognized instantly what the object was: a craniophore, the two-pronged implement used to measure the human skull.
[HNG HNG HNNNNNGGG]
This the doctor's doppelganger now clamped down hard against the head of his intended prey. While the former squeezed harder and harder against the sides of the latter's cranium, the fabricated femme looking like Lily snapped her fingers at the translucent radio now lying on the floor.
Because this author cannot ever evade the easy joke, the most appropriate old New Wave song piped up on the device while the Twin continued holding Thompson down.
"Hold…me…now…
"Ohhh, warm…my…heart…
"Stay with me…
"Let loving start, let loving start…"
This moving ballad persisted with accompanying weird preternatural static integrated across the trajectory of the melody.
[HMM HMM HMM HMM HMM]
Simultaneously the lady only distantly like Lillian who was positioned at the psychologist's waist began to use an archaic version of a goniometer, which was a measuring device used by physical therapists (among other specialists) to test range of motion in certain bodily joints. Fitting a razor to replace the bar in the center of the decrepit doodad, she fit the gizmo to the prisoner's testes sac and began sliding the sharp edge of the item back and forth ever so slowly until the sucker's scrotum was scraped but good. This ensured indefiniteness of time before Thompson pleasured himself anew.
For certain the pair of agonizing pressures upon such sensitive areas of the sickening psychoanalyst's body was enough to capture all the attention of this supposed human being who was considered safe under protective custody. Notwithstanding this, the chamber's other peculiar couple would insist on becoming more than overtly noticed.
[SFASSSSSHHH]
[He's so dapper…]
Again the unearthly whispering sounded, what was thought to be Lily's liltingly seductive voice at its faintest timbre in actuality that of the other she-person-oid with burlap-bagged noggin, the same statuesque atrocity now stop-motioningly skulking forward as the white light all around took on an overbearing hue of crimson and Thompson's struggling stopped brusquely and against his will.
Indeed, frozen in place was the shithead shrink, he unable to activate a solitary muscle while the murderous mystery lady continued to approach. All the way toward standing alongside the smirking shudderworthy copy of his most coveted patient was this menacing murmurer, such that both had crowded his crotch region most uncomfortably.
[SFASSSSSHHH]
Upon another issuance of the untoward otherworldly resonance here, Thompson discovered that the light returned to its natural white and he could once again squirm most futilely in place. This he did quite uselessly for all of another five seconds until
[SFASSSSSHHH]
all around the atmosphere of the room became bathed in blueness, really indigo to be exact, as the mannequin made out to simulate the crummy criminal himself stirred from his unnatural stasis.
[Strip him all the way down…]
uttered the other diabolical dummy as it lumbered forward, its hip-level outlandish appalling fanny pack flouncing almost mechanically with it as the monstrosity moved.
[Use him up to the utmost…]
was emitted from the entity as, like the female counterpart in turn, had ended up alongside his fellow clone at crown level regarding the bastard's body.
[SFASSSSSHHH]
Then for only some more beats was restored illumination so clear, as well as attempts in vain regarding any escape from this perilous predicament on the part of the psychologist.
All that Thompson could do, that fallen felon a more distant semblance of a man than any of the other bipeds in the room right now, was continue to writhe failingly in the clutches of his cruel corrupt keepers, the stitched-up sneering ones permitting the other duo to do their worst in time with the continually-shifting lighting scheme.
[SFASSSSSHHH]
Now crimson colored the air again as the literal bag lady that was the female mannequin attained much more than a handout as she gripped hard upon the Jungian jackass's junk and began ever so slowly to pull said essential equipment from its roots.
[SFASSSSSHHH]
White light once more while the bad doctor cast his gaze down petrifiedly at his slightly extricated extremities, gore seeping from his groin as the plastic statue madam kept on holding his most important member in her suspended animation.
[SFASSSSSHHH]
In came indigo anew while the life-sized male doll at face level began to dig his fingers deeply into the psych's scalp, it brashly beginning to burrow index and thumb into the brainpan of his blighted prison victim. Still conscious at present was Doctor Thompson and he could feel every instant of what was inchingly wrought upon him.
[SFASSSSSHHH]
Just a five to ten second reprieve before the ghastly guard changed yet again, during which time the doc could feel the synchronization of fluids fleeing from both his greater and his smaller heads.
[SFASSSSSHHH]
Continuing by centimeters the castration by the mistress mannequin.
[SFASSSSSHHH]
Beginning graciously to lose consciousness this break as the sinister specialist sighed a silent goodbye to both his soonly-erstwhile vitals.
[SFASSSSSHHH]
Marching along by mere millimeters went then the complementing trepanation.
[SFASSSSSHHH]
And, worst of all, most horrifically, the radio kept on loop throughout this unearthly torture episode the grating falsetto "STAY WITH MEEEEE" final chorus of the Thompson Twins's "Hold Me Now."
…
…
…
"Do you know what I cherish almost as much as art, perhaps even irony, Doctor Thompson?"
Airily the Artist addressed her latest subject, even though she knew this was not going to be a dialogue between them.
"…Justice.
"…Yesssss…
"…Swift, decisive…and thorough…justice. A measure of castigation so consummate that it dwarfs any flavor of punishment that could be handed down in your dimension."
Breezily indeed now went the grisly likeness of a lady as she applied a chisel carefully to the kisser of the cad before her.
"…They believe in a humane, some could say even compassionate, death penalty where you come from, Doctor. But my associates and I are of a differing ilk and disposition on that front."
At this the Artist gazed satisfiedly back at the male mannequin whose waist burlap now had a much more considerable bulge behind it.
She retrieved her awl and made toward the face of her latest figure; the flaps on either side of the opened head of the flayed psychologist had to be detailed a bit more, made to look as if the dummy drawing them apart had clawed at them more than he did.
"…It matters not at all to us as to how the subject feels, love. Rather, how the one acted upon looks, in addition to how the actor appears alongside in the creative space, altogether to comprise a choicely curated scene so…unforgettably inspired in its graphicness."
Honestly the masked macabre demoness felt much in the way of gratitude toward Lily; the girl had more than made up for her hasty exit from the studio with this offering. Perhaps this was even the beginning of some beautiful business relationship between the two.
"Really this is what I strive to capture in all the constituents of my oeuvre. But pieces involving compelling measures of justice meted out, to those most deserving of same…those can be that which leave the most lasting of impressions."
Glaring back intensely yet inanimately was the muscular tissue of a face ravaged down the middle, this measure of ruin matched only by the vacuity existing between the legs of this lewdest loser.
"I dub thee 'Excavated Animus,' Doctor. Doubtlessly you are still experiencing the artistic influence upon you, as I have maintained your sentience within the piece so the anguish you perceive now is enduring."
While this author does not believe in eternal disciplining, as in his opinion everyone eventually deserves to be done with punishment (even if the penalty in question to be served takes hundreds of years in the afterlife), they of Them would indeed be having their way with Thompson for a long time, quite considerably a greater span than that which Prosperity's go-to correctional institution would have.
Warmly the Artist placed a viscerally fleshy hand to her fresh exhibit's agonized, frayed face.
"…You will never get used to it, my man."