Captured Souls (20 page)

I blinked several times, hoping it was a trick of my eyes, but, no, there was something horrid rolling and growing. The room grew colder and I pulled the covers high over my head. I vaguely wondered if Specimen 1 had ever experienced that black mass while he lay there shackled. Poor guy, it likely drove him to madness to see that and not be able to do a thing about it.

I peeked out from my blankets but the room was still engulfed in blackness. A thick darkness that was deeper than the regular dimly lit room. Shadows didn’t grow and hover and stay when there were no windows or lights to create them. A mass was forming around the bed. I squeezed my eyes tightly shut to block out the vision. I tried to focus on the terrible mess I would be facing in the attic in the morning and how I was going to be certain every drop of blood was gone for good.

Hands pulled back the covers. I screamed, but there was nothing there but the darkness enveloping me.

My electrodes were humming furiously. In this most terrifying of times, I was also craving my lovers. They were near. They were here.

As the black mass rolled and shifted around me, I saw fleeting glimpses of their faces. The beauty, the writer, the athlete, the musician. All laughing at me, enticing me, teasing me with unseen fingers, pulling at my nightgown, rubbing my flesh in the most glorious spots.

The room was darker as the pleasure built. The ghosts were all pleasuring me with their electrical energies. My body craved theirs, our patterns still working, their individual energies emerging briefly from the others and then diving back into the throng.

I cried with pleasure as our circuits danced and combined. My face was slick with sweat, my hands reaching out to unknown creatures, momentarily solid until slipping into ethereal nothingness again. A wave of growing ecstasy filled the room, the mass shifting and turning, my body filling and pulsing.
 

I came more times than I could count as the pleasure began to shift towards torment. I was exhausted. I needed to rest. Terror returned with the persistent clawing at my flesh. Streaks appeared, as if there really were fingernails scratching me.
 

I leaped from the bed and ran for the light switch. Obscured by the darkness of the mass, the light didn’t illuminate the room one bit. I couldn’t see who was tormenting me. My specimens. Demons.

I left Specimen 1’s room and retired for the night in my own room, where the rest of the night proved to be uneventful.

Journal

The attic has been cleaned and preserved as best as I can manage. Specimen 1’s room is now scrubbed and refreshed as well.

The musician’s death was easy enough to deal with. But Specimen 1 was going to prove to be more difficult to cover up. I wasn’t sure what to do. Part of me thought that I should have him found dead of a heart attack as he was and be done with it. However, the idea of keeping him alive appeals to me more. The experiment hasn’t been completed yet so I can’t report him missing.

Instead, I keep up his social media, which I’d always guarded anyway, and continued on as if he were alive and well and working on his novel.

I went through the manuscript. This second novel was nearly finished and there were extensive notes and chapter outlines, so it wouldn’t be too hard to finish it up for him. I was a big enough fan to be able to emulate his style.

Of course, writing a novel is time consuming and boring. I discovered dictating the book while going about my business was working better for me. After I had all of that transcribed, I’d run it through a spinner that parroted the style of Scott Gravenhurst and it would be as if he’d written it himself.

The book wasn’t due for a long time yet, so I wasn’t worried about finishing it. I could likely do it in a weekend. I don’t know what all the angst-ridden time wasting that writers experience is all about. A profession in the arts is one thing I can’t wrap my head around.

So everything is as it should be.

Having no specimens at all is so freeing. I forgot how liberating it is to just be single. No one else to worry about. Just freedom.

But was I free?

I still had to keep an eye on the cadavers in the basement. Even if I didn’t have to check daily, I still needed to keep on top on their vital signs. They have to remain at a specific range or there’s no point in going through any of this. If the compounds aren’t exact, they could rot, get brain damage, organ damage and so on. I wanted them to remain as wonderful as I could keep them, for as long as possible.

At night, I slept. Or tried to sleep. During the day, it was easy to push off the surreal rush of intrusive lust from four different lovers and give a lecture at the same time. I could pretend that twinges and tickles were menopause kicking in or the implants sparking. I knew what the sensations were, of course I did. The idea of it thrilled me and I kept careful track of the times and other important data in the other journal.

At night, however, they came to me. The black mass. The sudden chills. The endless orgasms. Night after night for nearly a week.

There is nothing I can do in the daylight hours to appease them. At this point, it’s a timing thing. The various components need time to reprogram and regenerate. In the meantime electronic ghosts of my lovers come for me.

It was curious, how these lovers came to me, nearly always together. It was a side effect of the electromagnetic portion of the experiment. Between the serums and other factors, the implants still focus on their creator.

Journal

I am awakened in the night by a strange fluttering like butterfly wings and gentle, warm-fingered caresses along my body. Yet when I wake, there is nothing there.

Journal

They come for me at night, their tongues tasting, their fingers probing, their flesh rubbing around and in and through mine. I never know when they will arrive, circling me in a swirling mist, sparks of longing and lust palpitating from ethereal vapors. I can never ascertain how many of them there will be or who it will be that time. My specimens have come to play with me in their afterlife.

Specimen 1 often would make an appearance when I was watching television. His creative urgency pulsed frantically around me. Often the agitation was too much to bear and I learned that silencing him through the computer, by working on his book, was the best way to placate him.

Specimen 2 always appeared during my walks and the rare times I was allowed into the “exercise” room. If I was out in the yard and wandering with my thoughts, he would appear and urge me to go faster. Sometimes I ran in circles for long periods of time. I don’t know how far or how long, I lost track of time when I channeled him. At least he let me go to the gym too for my classes, which kept me in the public eye and kept me from going too mad.

Specimen 3 was in the mirror. As narcissistic as I’d always been, suddenly I was catapulted to a whole new level. My makeup changed dramatically to that of a high-fashion model with the latest season’s colors splashed in slashes along my eyes and high cheekbones. I wore my hair in a brunette, shoulder-length, layered cut with streaks of red. Suddenly every blemish on my face was a big concern and I spend many a time on the exercise bike with some kind of mask on my face.

Their nightly visits had now penetrated my days.

Specimen 4

I turned off his devices permanently. His charms were removed from my bracelet. His essence is no more. His exit relieves me a tiny bit. One less specimen to juggle.

Journal

I took to my bed with nervous exhaustion.

Truly, I collapsed one day, coming in through the door. I couldn’t go on. Suddenly, my legs stopped working and I plunged to the floor.

As I lay there, I realized I could sleep for a year. Finally, I gathered my wits together and began a slow crawl up the stairs towards my room. The buzzing and frantic urgency of the specimens raced through my body, each nerve its own pathway up and down my spine until my brain wanted to scream.

I took to my bed to calm my nerves. There had been too much going on. It was time to get a grip.

The day before I had spent the afternoon creating a new recording. This one would hopefully make the bedroom my cone of silence for a few hours before their electrodes homed in on me again. I turned down all the devices on my bracelet, even though I was always turning them down. Yet they would always creep back up again. I couldn’t turn the charms off completely or the specimens would disappear forever and the point of the experiment would be lost.

As I turned down the charms for Specimen 1, I realized how much I missed him. I miss taking him to my university events and going to the pubs. I missed him reading to me at night.

If there was ever a time I wish I could re-create, it would be that first time we met, loving each other in the staff bathroom. The naughtiness, his beauty, the anticipation of everything that lay before me at that time, the unknown—it was all wrapped up in that moment. That was the moment I wanted back.

I had re-created it. And it had worked. For a moment. In the moment. Then it fell away once more.

I drank wine and wept, watching
West Side Story
and then
Sweeney Todd
. When the movies ended and I had cried my fill, I went to the bathroom.

When I looked in the mirror, I saw the face of my own insanity staring back at me. I stared at the brown patches under my eyes, my hollow grey cheeks, my saggy skin. My hair was sticking out all crazy, like an Amanda Palmer rag doll.

I ran to my bedroom vanity and sat down in the little chair, staring into the makeup mirror.

I stared like a zombie. My beautiful looks were ravaged by my experiments. What is the price of finding the ultimate pleasure? I had opened Pandora’s box—no, worse, that
Hellraiser
box—and now I was paying the price for my pleasure with my beauty.

As I sobbed anew, my head on my arms, soothing hands stroked my shoulders. Specimen 3 guided me with stern and gentle hands to make myself beautiful once more. Sure, my makeup was a disaster after my days of bed-ridden angst but I could brush my teeth and comb my hair, hell, even remember to wash it once in a while. I could do that and did.

The other specimens slipped through the cracks in the sound. I knew my cone of silence wouldn’t last, and soon they were around me once more. I turned off the recording as their electronic touches brought me back to life and back to ecstasy.

Journal

The lack of flesh and bone made their pleasures even more exquisite. I wondered what it would be like when I had no more flesh and bone. Would their pleasures be magnified? Or would I not feel them anymore?

Journal

They’ve consumed me, created me to be all of them.

I rise at six every morning to run several miles before I sit down at the computer to write. Around ten o’clock I take a long, leisurely shower and groom myself to perfection before sitting back down at the computer. At three o’clock I ride my bike for about five miles around a local park and when I return I shower and groom again. Then I eat like a pig, have a few drinks, watch TV, then write some more until I collapse from exhaustion—and do it all over again the next day.

I’ve been writing as Specimen 1—he controls the keyboard as the words click onto the screen.

I actually placed tenth in a triathlon. It was really a baby triathlon but I never thought I’d do anything like that in my life.

When I won my latest award for research in electroneurological research, a national magazine decided they wanted to do an entire photo spread on me, the sexy scientist.

However, somewhere inside of me, my physical body is tired again.

Sometimes I wish I could have my specimens all go away until the next part of the experiment can begin.

Not unless I have some sort of major electrical shift.

If I myself did something different electronically, perhaps. But I’m not sure. I would hate to alter my circuits only to find that when I’m ready to reprogram there is a flaw in the data, although there should only be perfection in my many sets of notes.

All I can do is wait. Waiting is difficult in these times but there’s nothing else to be done.

Journal

They are with me always and I’m sure I look half-mad out in public. They tease and torment me as I run my errands, and I beg them to leave me alone.

Though, I must admit, I do enjoy the constant state of arousal. That constant quiver that never ends. Each orgasm fills and empties me with tremendous waves of pleasure and melancholy.

However, even someone as lusty as me has a limit. Pleasure, perfection, has done its time. My search for perfection must continue.

No matter how I adjust the frequencies, they do not leave me. I tried the cone of silence idea once more but it failed miserably. I had barely pressed Play on the recording when they were back, tickling my hair, stroking my thighs, invading my thoughts with their own wants and needs.