Captured Souls (15 page)

She files her long claws. I know what’s next. She’ll sit on her couch with a million cotton balls and little bottles of different colors. She’ll stare at the TV screen and during commercials will paint her finger- and toenails wild combinations of colors.

There’s a roll of fat that hangs over the waist of her short-shorts. The sight of it distresses me. She needs to work out more, but it’s so exhausting making these three specimens go through their rituals every single day.

I click over to Specimen 1. He’s sitting at his desk, smoking, with his glass of scotch on the rocks, and staring at his computer screen. I zoom in on what he’s looking at. It’s an online article about his book and an interview with him, flanked by one of the photos he posed for that day so long ago. He sat staring at the screen for a very long time, and with the exception of drinking and smoking, he was as still as a statue. Of course, I’d put the article there, as I did everything I’d find of interest on the real Internet and then route into the false-shell environment I had created for the specimens.

It wasn’t the first time he’d seen the article either. I’d shown it to him myself the day it came out.

Whatever emotions were going through him, he didn’t show them. He just stared, drank and smoked.

Specimen 2 was manic. I barely watched him for a minute. Specimen 3 lay around like a lazy lion; Specimen 2 was like having a hyperactive squirrel scampering around, except for when he was watching TV. Then he just sat and ate, hypnotized by flickering images.

I clicked back over to Specimen 1. At last he closed the window with the article and resumed his writing.

Specimen 3 was still painting her nails.

The article I was preparing was to be presented at a conference in a few months. I was hoping to have more complete results by this point but something had happened along the way. The sexual nirvana I thought I would be experiencing still eluded me.

There could be no more pondering, no more attempts to glean which route was the auspicious one to take. I could consult tarot cards, I could consult textbooks—it mattered not. The experiment had too many factors and the complications compounded one another.

I watched Specimen 3 painting her nails. I took my own bottle of polish from my desk drawer and touched up a couple of nicks as I pondered my options.

Specimen 3

Denial of the transformation has continued. I’m having a difficult time and have tried in vain to coerce and tease other types of behavior from her, ones that involve altruism and empathy, but she is a shell, a hollow puppet that reflects and refracts whomever she’s with. Flirtations have their place. Cruelty and betrayal are no longer tolerated from her.

I’m not sure why I thought I could lure a goddess to earth and expect her to stay a goddess. It was time to release her to where she truly belonged. She was disrupting the harmony of the perfect life that I had spent years mastering. Codes and formulas, psychoanalysis, rhythm and tonality, degree upon degree, study upon study, all fit together in a complex matrix to stimulate the brain to crave specific things.

I didn’t have it quite right with any of them—have I not just spent the last few pages lamenting that very idea? However, her blatant betrayal was the worst. It stung me right in the heart. Was it because she was a woman? Was it because she was all that I was not and never would or could be?

Yet I despised her too. I despised how she let life happen to her, even as an escort. She only needed to pout and preen, and she had a home and anything else she desired. Women like me had to work for a living. We had to be as good as, or even smarter than, men. And those of us who are beautiful have it worst of all. It’s amazing how societal norms and gender-specific expectations can color a lifestyle, a career, a marriage.

Specimen 3 graced many covers of magazines, she was a red-carpet wannabe, a celebrity-climbing succubus. Like so many before her and after her, she was a product of our ridiculous society.

The beauty was manufactured and replicated, easy to spin and design. The beauty I had seen that first night, that lusty shine which had spoken of goddesses and forbidden moments, was long gone. Crashed from the heavens, dropped from the world.

Journal

The boys have started to hang out together more at the end of the day. In fact, I noticed over the past week they are slipping into a whole different routine. Specimen 2 hasn’t been waking up early. Specimen 1 hasn’t been writing as long. Before a few days have passed, they sleep in, play video games all afternoon, have dinner with me, and then we all get together.

But they are soft. They don’t have their spark of excitement.

Was this a rebellion or is there something in the formulas I need to adjust yet again?

It’s midafternoon. The sun gleams in from the skylight. I’m in one of the attic rooms, where the sun beams down. This room has monitors for my cameras, the door is hidden by a bookcase on the other side. Sometimes I like to sit in the sun with my laptop. It’s like a change of scenery. The sun is warm on my face and it’s soothing.

With a few clicks, the monitors are on, split screens displaying twelve camera views at a time. There are hundreds of cameras throughout the house, I keep adding more as I think of different angles I might want to see.

The men are playing video games. They lie on the couch, screaming at the TV, writhing with the games. When the game pauses to reload, they eat handfuls of trail mix. They go through a week’s worth of snacks in mere hours. It really grates on my nerves.
 

Something had to be done. The specimens were self-destructing. It wouldn’t be long before Specimen 2 would start smoking.

My anger swells as I slip on a lab coat and fill it with hypodermic needles. I descend the staircases towards the basement.

By the time I reach Specimen 2’s suite, my knuckles are white with fury. I can’t contain the resentment I feel towards these sloths or, rather, towards myself. They’ve lost their spark. The substance that made them so intriguing. Now they were ordinary men again. Nothing to write papers about.

Yet it was my fault. The electrodes, the serums, the programming. Something was slipping. Were batteries dying? Maybe some of the electrodes were growing faulty over all this time.

Preparations would have to be made to examine the electrodes thoroughly. They would have to be sleeping during the examination.

“What is going on here?” I asked as I barreled through the door.

“What do you mean?” they asked.

“Why aren’t you working? Or training? Or doing something?”

“What’s wrong, Doc? Something wrong?”

“Miriam, get a grip.”

“Look at you two. What’s going on?”

They looked at each other and laughed.

“What? We’re not the hot, young studs you hoped we’d forever be?” Specimen 1 chided.

“Maybe we want to relax for once,” Specimen 2 said, stretching his arms over his head.

“Not much point living anyway, at least in these conditions,” Specimen 1 said.

“You have everything you ever needed. A home. Career. Food. Video games!” I yelled.

“We don’t have freedom, Doc. Perhaps you’ve forgotten that, since you come and go as you please,” Specimen 1 said.

“You have all that you need and I would appreciate some gratefulness,” I said.

“Oh, is it time for another needle, Doc?” Specimen 1 taunted me as he reached for my jacket pocket. With barely any time to think, I squeezed the bracelet. Both men fell to the ground, screaming in agony, clutching their balls.

“Smarten up,” I shouted as I left them writhing on the ground. I stomped out of the room and locked it for the night. I’m sure they have no idea why I was so furious. They have no idea how badly off the rails this train is going.

What in the formula is causing the weight gain? Which protocol is triggering their inability to care?

The drops? The vibrations? The currents? The pitch? The frequency?

Again I have to restructure.

Specimen 3

The time for integration was drawing near. Specimen 3 was pretty much dancing on my last nerve, so it was time to make the jump. The idea of moving my specimens to the next phase often disturbed me. It was the final line of morality crossed by me to benefit science with my discoveries.

Beauty, stamina, intelligence—all experienced in their purest forms, or at least the closest I could come in the environment in which I was working.

No one knew she was with me. She, too, was locked in the cell of Internet vacancy and none of her messages reached the outside world.

She was from another country, on the road more often than not. It would be weeks before anyone would even consider searching for her. And they’d never suspect she was anywhere but in California, as I let her more innocuous tweets originate from fake California IP addresses.

Even if she had told anyone about me when we were flirting, and even if she had told them she was coming to see me, that was so long ago. Her persona had been jet-setting and conducting interviews and posing for photo shoots all this time, even if half of them were just ideas that I made up on my own.

“My darling,” I said loudly in an affected voice as I strutted into her bedroom. Specimen 3 had been examining her face in front of the vanity and turned to face me.

“What is it, Miriam?” she asked, brushing her long, currently orange, straight hair.

“I’ve been thinking how hard everything has been for all of us lately,” I said as I walked behind her and hugged her. We both studied our faces in the mirror. I had short, blonde hair this day and it went well with her long, orange hair. We made a lovely couple.

“We need to get away together. Just you and me,” I whispered.

“Just you and me?” She smiled. “I’d like that.”

“I’ve booked us for four days at the Port Perry Spa Resort.” I grinned.

“I love that place, and it’s been so long since we’ve gone.”

“I know. I’m sorry. I wanted the best for you and this is going to be our new beginning.”

“I’m so happy.” She spun around and stood up to hug me. We kissed and her excitement was infectious. We spent the rest of the afternoon enjoying each other in her satin sheets. For a few brief hours, my goddess pleased me on every level. When it was nighttime and I was making my notes, I almost didn’t want to proceed with the plan.

But I did.

Journal

While I planned the weekend retreat to the last detail (which are outlined in the other journals), I readied the boys for several days in a coma.

I wasn’t sure what else to do with them, for to leave them unguarded for that long would surely be a folly I couldn’t risk.

With the boys slipped back into suspended animation, I packed for my trip.

Specimen 3

I’d taken her several times to the spa to prepare for when the end of the experiment would come. When I first had her, I truly thought I could never live without her.

But then, the glamour girl was gone. This was a pudgy, whiney, self-absorbed baby who had no sense of goddess about her at all anymore.

Once we arrived at the retreat, I led her to the bar and then to the mud baths. We changed into our robes, and I looked at her naked, gleaming body one last time, and I remember the girl with the butterfly painted across her chest. We were escorted to tubs of warm mud that were separated by a little bench where you could disrobe. We were helped into the warm, thick clay by the assistants and we sank into it with delight.

While in the baths, we sipped champagne. Hers was tainted with a specific formula. Mine was delicious.

“Are you enjoying yourself?” I asked her.

“Most definitely,” she said. “I’m tipsy already.”

I had secretly arranged for a telephone call to be made to the attendant during the time that we were bathing.
 

Specimen 3 lay back in her tub of muck, her words slurred as she tipped yet another glass of champagne down her throat.

“I’m glad I met you, Doctor,” she said. “Even though you’re weird.”

“I’m glad we met too,” I said, leaning back in the mud.

She was kind, and I almost felt sorry to say goodbye.

“You know, the best way to enjoy the bath is to hold your breath and sink down under. Keep your whole body down as long as you can. It’ll clean out your pores better than any cleanser.”

“Okay,” she said as she sank down.

The drugs coursing through her system gave her no sense of time or instinct or common sense. She lay under the mud for a while and then her hands flung up out of the bath. She started to rise up out of the mud, hands reaching out and clawing at the sides of the tub. I watched from my own tub, sipping my champagne, wondering how much of this event was playing on the security cameras.

Mud was flung around as she tried to rise from her tub. She panicked, sucking in even more through her nose and mouth. She coughed on her mud, and I watched her. Mud bubbled from her mouth and nose. She wiped at her eyes only to smear more mud so that she couldn’t see. She flailed one last time until she was still. Her body slid back into the mud.