Jackie's Week (15 page)

The dummy broke free of the chain and
collapsed in a heap, a mass of plastic pellets pouring free from
its torn canvas scalp. Jackie sank to her knees. She could not
release the bat, which felt welded to her hand. From somewhere in
the room a wind seemed to be blowing, a Divine presence which
flowed freely through the rooms of her mind.

A vision of her own face floated up before
her, a vision of a face strong, determined, and peaceful. Gone was
the grief she’d borne in her face and body. In front of her
blossomed a new face and a new life. She had broken through into a
greater presence. She had become a new creature. A warrior. A
soldier, ready to fight.

"Viktor Bout," she whispered. "You have a
date with me—at a lineup."

Chapter 25

"The Chinese call it fa jin," Dr. Black said.
"It’s a special energy or force, one which is lively and
spirited."

They’d returned to Black’s office, and were
safely ensconced in soft leather, Jackie gulping heavily from a big
bottle of Poland Spring.

"If I’d had this kind of strength when Bout
attacked me, things might have gone differently."

"The point of the exercise was for you to
discover the connection between your fear and your strength. When
you can do that, you’ll be stronger than Bout."

"I thought I was trying to get rid of my
fears."

"Oh no. Because you’ll always have the fear.
You’ll have it for the rest of your life. This is why the fear must
become your ally. Fear can paralyze, or it can be the source of
superhuman strength. You must make up your mind that you won’t let
it paralyze you ever again. That if you’re ever threatened again,
you’ll push past the paralysis and launch yourself into combat as a
proud warrior, one who would rather die fighting than die
whimpering. The dummy is just an exercise to bring out the beast.
But it doesn’t cure anything. It gives you a new tool, but you
haven’t built anything with the tool yet. But you will."

"So the damage is permanent."

"Yes. You have to respect that damage. But
you can still have a life if you are willing to fight for it."

"I’ve discovered that a woman is worth
fighting for," Jackie replied. "Especially if that woman is
me."

"One problem we will be working on is your
guilt. That is an area where we can reclaim a lot of lost
territory."

"My guilt?"

"Guilt is the biggest problem a victim has.
It is corrosive. It is not only a physical force but a spiritual
one. You’d be surprised at the role guilt has played in your
self-destruction. Guilt presents you with a lopsided view of
yourself. We have to counterbalance the weight of your guilt by
uncovering your other personae." Black stood up and took her by the
hand. "There’s plenty of time for that. First things first. We’ve
got a little more work to do this morning. Follow me."

She led Jackie back down the hall and into
another room. The heavily draped chamber was dark and dimly lit,
the flickering light furnished by a row of votive candles on a
table. Incense burning beside the candles filled the air with a
sweet but acrid scent. On the floor in the middle of the room sat a
good-sized coffin. Black walked over and opened the lid to reveal a
lining of shining, white, padded silk.

"The manufacturer calls this model the Rose
Taupe Victor," Black said. "An odd name for a coffin, don’t you
think? I call her Victor for short. I picked her up from a casket
company on the Internet. It’s amazing what you can buy on-line
these days. Now, when I leave the room I want you to lie down in
the coffin for awhile. When you come out, we’ll talk about it."

"Dr. Black. I’m sorry, but there is no way in
the world you’re going to get me to lie down in a coffin."

"I understand your reluctance. The coffin is
a symbol of our death. And our upbringing teaches us death is an
unpleasant subject. But until we face our own death, we aren’t
truly alive. Anyway, the coffin is merely symbolic. It can’t hurt
you."

"Dr. Black, I feel as alive as I need to be.
I already faced my own death. Death came for me in the corner of a
supermarket parking lot."

"You didn’t face your own death. If you had,
you wouldn’t be here today."

"I faced death."

"No, Jackie. What you faced was Viktor Bout’s
idea of your death. You allowed yourself to be drawn into his sick
vision. There’s a huge difference between the two. One is reality,
the other isn’t. It’s up to you to discover which one is real."

"Awww." Jackie stared at the
stuffed-silk-lined box. The silk would be cold. The box would be
suffocating, dangerous to her spirit, her mind. The box was like a
black hole in space, sucking all the light into itself, light which
would never shine again. The light of life which she possessed was
transient, that much she knew, but she had no desire to rehearse
what would one day visit her again, and which was even now, in the
form of Bout, threatening an early termination to her
existence.

Many people were talking about the end of the
world as conditions continued to decline, but Jackie, with her more
intimate knowledge of death, understood that the true end of the
world was when one found oneself lying on her back in a parking lot
with a gun barrel tearing into her most sacred place.

"Dr. Black, do I have to?"

"No. But I think you should. All the women I
work with have been in the coffin."

"When my sister Donna was seeing you—was this
part of the routine? Did my sister get in the coffin?"

Black nodded. Jackie started out the
door.

"Jackie!"

She looked back and was startled by the
sight. Black had prostrated herself face down on the carpet, arms
stretched towards her.

"Jackie," Black said."

Heaven help me, Jackie thought. What manner
of lunacy is this?

Still, she had to admit, never in her entire
life had anyone—not counting Johnson’s clumsy genuflection in the
park—thrown themselves to the ground for her the way Black was
doing now. She understood without thinking that the one doing the
groveling was stronger than the one standing and running away. The
force of Black’s beseechment sucked Jackie back into the room and
forced upon her a mantle of responsibility like that of a froward
penitent returning to her Mother Superior.

"Okay," Jackie said. "You can get up now. But
you should know I don’t appreciate your helping me get over my
fears only to start up new ones with this coffin routine. I suppose
this is going to show me another facet. Well I think it is
stupid."

Black’s face, tear stained, slowly lit up in
a way the sun would have envied. Jackie had never before been in
the presence of such unearthly beauty. It was as though an inner
light was shining throughout Black’s frame. Her face was almost too
bright to gaze upon directly.

"Help me," Jackie said, sinking to her knees.
Black stood above her, and placed a hand on her head. A current
began to flow into Jackie’s mind and soul. Inside the current, she
could hear a voice speaking.

"None of us wants to die. We can’t imagine
ourselves without our bodies. But until you make death your friend,
you’ll always walk in fear."

Jackie realized the truth. She had always
been afraid to die. The feeling had been there, just under her
skin, her entire life. Bout had not introduced anything new into
her system. He had merely tapped into what was already there. He
had been the dark priest and she his unwitting acolyte. But she
realized, as she remained kneeling beside her mentor, that things
might be about to change.

"Do I have to shut the lid?"

"Well it’s not like it’s locked or anything.
I’ve punched a few holes in the top. You won’t suffocate." Black
left the room, shutting the door quietly behind the still figure on
the floor. The minutes ticked by, Jackie’s soft breathing the only
sound in the room save the occasional hiss of burning wax from the
candles. Her eyes snapped open. She stood up.

"Hail Mary, full of grace." She made the sign
of the cross and sat down in the coffin. The tears began to flow as
she stretched herself full length onto the shining silk
cushions.

She slid into a supine position, reached up,
grabbed the underside of the lid and pulled. It shut with a click
and she sucked in a breath as everything went dark. Where was the
light? It was supposed to be shining through the air holes Black
had punched into the top. She’d have to open it a crack to stem the
tide of claustrophobia, to keep it from flooding her system and
overwhelming her sensory apparatus to the point where she’d leap
forth screaming in panic.

Pushing upward, the lid didn’t budge. Her
arms were exhausted from clubbing the dummy, and legs were of no
use, they being effectively hemmed in by the narrow confines, to
the point where she couldn’t draw them underneath her in any sort
of effort to shove the jammed lid open.

For a moment, everything within her stopped
and there was a signal silence. But not the sort of silence
generated by interior peace, rather, the final few seconds of shock
as the organism realized it was in a trap. The silence shattered
and she began to scream.

Chapter 26

"Dr. Black, has anyone ever sued you for
pulling these kinds of stunts?"

"Not yet," Black said. "But some never
return."

"I’ve never felt such fear in my life,"
Jackie said. "Not even when I was attacked. Not even in the months
after the attack have I felt what I felt in that coffin. Dr. Black,
all I can say is your methods are cruel. There was no value in
putting me through such an ordeal. That was downright kidnapping.
Holding me against my will."

"On the contrary," Black said. "There was
great value."

"Not hardly. What, did you think you’d scare
the fear out of me? That the shock would somehow cure my mind of
its prior fears?"

"Like putting a bag over one’s head cures
hiccups? No. But it seems to me you needed to confront your fear of
suffocation, since Bout pepper sprayed your throat. You needed to
learn that you can still fight even if you are suffocating. That
you still have several minutes of vigorous fight left in you."

"If that’s true, then why am I more afraid
than ever before? I feel completely defeated. Doomed to have the
past dominate my mind and heart for all eternity."

"You’re not more afraid. You’re just starting
to allow yourself to really feel things again. And don’t be fooled
by your prior obsession over the past," Black said. "The past is
not where the fear comes from. All human fear is about the future,
even if it’s a future death that’s only seconds away. Since the
future never comes, all human fear is useless. A simple concept,
but hard to understand with the finite mind. Now let’s go get in
the car. We have to go visit the scene of the attack.

They returned to the scene of the crime,
sitting in Black’s air conditioned Suburban near the back wall of
Gelson’s parking lot.

"Dr. Black, I’m afraid. Still. Of this stupid
parking lot. It’s no different than yesterday."

"You’re not afraid because of what happened
here six months ago—you’re afraid of the transformation you must
make to be able to face the world again. The truth is, you've
gotten comfortable playing the victim. You must change, and begin
operating in a whole new world."

She put the Suburban into gear and exited the
parking lot, heading west into the pleasant hills. They drove for
awhile in silence until they crested on Mulholland, finally
stopping at a turnout to admire the view of the sprawling Valley
below.

"You know what I really want? I want someone
to rescue me."

"We all expect rescue. But sometimes we don’t
recognize it when it comes. What you are experiencing right now is
a fallback to your old self. You received the spiritual input to
master your problem when you agreed to face your death by entering
the coffin, but the input you received is like a tape that’s stored
up. As time goes by, it will start to play out. Until then, we
still have to work on the old you."

"I learned nothing in that coffin."

"You learned the most important lesson there
is," Black said. "You learned that you still have the will to live.
That’s why you screamed in the coffin, and thrashed around in it
until you forced the lid open. That’s why you know you can’t take
your own life, or allow someone else to take it without a
fight."

"Why didn’t the lid open right away?"

"Because I came back in and held it
shut."

"You bitch. I needed air. It wasn’t me
screaming. It was only my body responding."

"Exactly. And you are your body. That was you
screaming for your life. Because you want to live. At the core of
your being, your will to live is very strong."

"Oh, yeh. You’re right. I did want to live.
Badly. But I’m disappointed that I’m still so scared of everything
after all these cruel exercises."

Black stared deeply into her eyes. "Jackie.
You’re not going to magically recover. It may take years. The
damage may never be fully repaired. But at least now you know that
you’re strong enough to face the months and years ahead."

"No! I’m going to get well. And it’s going to
be soon! I’m going to be as before!"

"No, you’re not going to be as before. You’ll
be different. Your old self is already dead. What remains to be
seen is who you become. You have tried all your life to be perfect,
so when imperfection entered your world in the form of Bout, you
now blame yourself, as though the evil was caused by some failure
on your part. This has caused a lot of guilt, a force so powerful
it produced within you an unquenchable wellspring of anger, which,
of course, you are now turning on yourself. You are demanding of
your own self that it erase all feelings and memories associated
with the horror of your assault. You’ve even tried to erase your
sexuality, and you were surprised to find it still alive when you
went for the massage."