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Old 12-23-2017, 09:22 PM   #196
Icelander
 
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Default Monkey Business

After a long and depressing sojourn into what passes for the dreams of the security staff at Manhanock Asylum, Dr. Anderson feels the need for more restful dreams. Sending tendrils of his awareness into the J Wing, Anderson frowns slightly upon discovering that Chase Taylor not yet asleep. Dr. Anderson is concerned with possible symptoms of acute stress reaction. It is a worrying sign that he should still be awake despite his wounds and state of extreme exhaustion.

Not far from Taylor, Sherilyn Bell is sleeping soundly in her cell, but from what Anderson can tell, her dreams are far from a restful retreat. Deciding that doing anything about Ms. Bell’s dark dreams would be strenuous, time-consuming and possibly even dangerous for his own mental health, Dr. Anderson moves on from contemplating the scene in J Wing.

The orderlies Dr. Anderson is able to visit do not seem to have been involved in Dr. Cotton’s experiments. Other than Nurse McCrae, the nurses might have had dark suspicions, but no actual knowledge of what Dr. Cotton was doing. Anyone who revealed such suspicions was intimidated by Deputy Warden Tyrrell or hypnotised by Dr. Cotton, usually both.

Sherilyn Bell was usually present during hypnosis. She appeared able to cause hallucinations that are indistinguishable from reality and either she or Dr. Cotton had an uncanny knack for tailoring her illusions to target mental weaknesses and phobias, with the result that several orderlies and all of the guards are suffering from severe PTSD and numerous psychological issues aggravated by extreme stress.

The delusions shared by the guards and Warden Tyrrell involved their role as the last line of defence against a powerful and sophisticated race of subterranean lizard people who had infiltrated human society wearing flesh suits. If any of them were to give a hint to anyone on the mainland that they were aware of the true situation, the lizards would certainly send covert operatives to kidnap or kill their families.

Warden Tyrrell had shown several of his closest subordinates documents and photographs in support of his outlandish claims. From the fact that Ms. Bell had been unobtrusively present every time he did so, Anderson hypotheses that all the supposed ‘evidence’ consisted of controlled hallucinations caused by Bell’s powers, but it does not appear that Warden Tyrrell was aware of the deception.

Drawing from the subconscious of dreaming guards, Dr. Anderson has no access to any memories that could shed light on whether Dr. Cotton was truly forcing Bell to use her powers in this way or whether she was a willing participant in the sadistic ‘experiment’. Unfortunately for Dr. Anderson, the same applies to Dr. Emma King, who is clearly assisting Dr. Cotton with the ‘treatment’ of several guards in the newer memories.

Sighing, Dr. Anderson subtly modifies the recollection of the guards so that Ms. Bell and Dr. King appear more frightened than frightening, taking advantage of the fact that memories of Dr. Cotton remain unchanged with any guards who were unconscious when Dr. Cotton spoke his post-hypnotic trigger phrase in the intercom,. Even without embellishment, Dr. Cotton’s villainy is unquestionable and should satisfy Onyx Rain. Most investigators would be predisposed to perceive Emma King and Sherilyn Bell as his victims rather than co-conspirators.

For his part, Dr. Anderson is far from certain they were always unwilling. Even so, he hardly hesitates in removing or altering memories that might incriminate Dr. King while he is doing the same for Ms. Bell. Whether Dr. King was a willing helper or not, Dr. Anderson would prefer that no one other than him get too much information from her about Dr. Cotton’s experiments. And he certainly does not want her killed or imprisoned somewhere he will not get a chance to interview her at length later on.

Collecting data for future interviews, Dr. Anderson contemplates the evidences of the memories he experiences. Dr. Emma King seems to be working without supervision in many cases, completely trusted by Dr. Cotton to restrain the subjects and inject them with drugs. Ms. Bell was clearly carefully watched and secured with medical restraints, but she appears to enjoy some of what she did.

While a guard by the name of Mike Seward was being berated by a hallucination of his mother, mocking him as a failure for not studying to be a lawyer like his brother, Ms. Bell laughed merrily at his distress. When other guards were confronted by situations which triggered their phobias, Ms. Bell’s reaction appeared to be excitement, even exhilaration. Ms. Bell’s ecstatic reaction to their fear of her hallucinations seems to be erotic in nature, but Anderson cannot tell if that is a genuine response from Bell to the use of her powers or a false interpretation arising from the highly sexualised way that most of the guards view her.

Not that Dr. Anderson is dwelling on the sexual fantasies that most of the guards appear to have had about Ms. Bell or looking to experience any memories of sexual crimes they might have committed against her. While mildly curious about whether it would help with her therapy to have such details, there is simply too little time to spare for exploration. Consequently, Dr. Anderson makes no attempt to examine every memory relating to Dr. King or Ms. Bell. With every dream he visits, he grows more and more practised in drawing out only memories relating to Ms. Bell’s powers and Dr. King’s assistance to Dr. Cotton.

Despite his narrow focus, Dr. Anderson can’t help but notice that Ms. Bell looms large in in the subconscious of Benjamin Hewitt, the guard who originally escorted them to Ms. Bell’s cell block. Hewitt is clearly obsessed with her, with highly charged sexualised images of her imprisoned or helpless playing a large role in his dreams, but he’s also terrified of her. Terrified enough, in fact, that when Bell and Taylor encountered him in the main building, Hewitt started to go into a panic attack, which was only arrested when Taylor knocked him out after a savage beating.

The hallucination that sent Hewitt into such a panic was subtle, a suggestion of serpentine features emerging from Taylor and Bell’s human forms, with Taylor’s limbs extending impossibly far before an outside low kick crippled Hewitt’s knee. In Dr. Anderson’s judgment, the physical changes from what Hewitt would have seen without interference were minimal, with his fevered mind filling in the blanks.

It is a vivid testament to Ms. Bell’s facility with her power in the absence of Dr. Cotton’s influence or control. With only a single breath to prepare, she wove an illusion which completely convinced Hewitt and neutralised him as a threat while he was still holding a shotgun aimed at her and Taylor, by homing in on a fear Hewitt held with phobic intensity. Either Bell already knew that Hewitt was terrified of both her and lizard people in human skin suits or she was intuitive enough to unhesitatingly guess at a hallucinatory scenario that paralysed Hewitt with terror.

Taking advantage of Hewitt’s concussion, Dr. Anderson eschews any complex modifications of his memory and settles for scrambling any coherent memories of Ms. Bell using her powers. Short-term memory loss should be ascribed to the massive blow to the head.

Moving on to the dreams of Ethan Ball, the guard who was on duty at the guard post in J Wing at the start of the evening, Dr. Anderson is both shocked and pleasantly surprised. The shock is because the sexual debauchery on display in the dream would put Caligula to shame, but what pleases Anderson is the artistic imagination, lifelike texture and incredible detail of the dream. Ball is a secret Michelangelo of sex dreams; an unsung genius of extravagantly erotic fancy.

From other dreams, Dr. Anderson recognises several female figures with active roles. He presumes that they are celebrities or perhaps pornographic actresses, as they often feature as lust objects with dreamers who have no connection with each other. Most starring roles in Ball’s bacchanalian revel are reserved for eidolons of Sherilyn Bell, however, in a bewildering variety of erotic poses, provocative outfits and sensual scenarios.

Almost without volition, Dr. Anderson starts to elaborate upon the fabric of the dream, changing it as he moves through it. Moaning phantasms of Ms. Bell become gibbering monkeys, sleek vacuous lovely ladies become grotesque naked dwarves and the bass-heavy beat of the fantasy changes into the jazzy saxophone rhythm of Phil Harris’ Bare Necessities. Leading the inhabitants of the dream, new and old, on their merry dance, Dr. Anderson takes on the form of a female centaur with Bell’s upper body.

Approaching Ethan Ball, the host of the dream saturnalia, Dr. Anderson glides sinuously around his body in his centaur shape, somehow initiating sexual activity with the front of his horse part. Surrounding them in a circle, the gibbering monkeys touch themselves and screech as the centaur-Bell figure overpowers Ball. With a grin, she tears off her face, revealing a baboon’s ugly muzzle, before she turns Ethan Ball around to sodomise him with horse parts that are suddenly very male.

In that schizophrenic way dreams have, the centaur-ape is also Dr. Cotton. Grinning maniacally, he pats Ethan Ball on the lower back, where he suddenly sports a ‘tramp stamp’ tattoo: “Cotton Was Here”. As the music soars to a crescendo, the centaur-ape-Cotton groans his satisfaction and the choir of screeching monkeys throw their ejaculate over them.

A noise at the door jerks Dr. Anderson back to his physical surroundings. When he comes to, the door is ajar and a silvery-white, vaguely humanoid figure is emerging through it. A threatening weapon in its hands shines a bright light that reflects from its empty, faceless head.

Figure: “Dr. Anderson!”
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