Alice checked the final two corridors when Alex’s screams ceased. She no longer cared to hear his pleas, his lies, and his threats. She hadn’t cared in the first place but taking her vengeance on him and his minions had soothed her soul to a degree, the look on his face at the horrors she was imposing on him was enough, his final death throes were a dance that she needed to feel and experience, she closed her eyes at the enjoyment it gave her. She was breathing hard from her exertions and knew she was losing momentum in her desire for revenge, for justice, not only for Kathy but all these women and girls as well as the men and boys. She was tempted to release all the women but knew that would create chaos and risk to her at being exposed. She was tempted to see Kathy one more time but resisted it, barely; she was running out of time. As it was the hours she had spent here already were putting her at risk. The drug she had administered to the two FBI agents who had been spying on this place would be wearing off, the blow dart she had expertly applied had been quiet and sure and they would awaken with a hell of a headache but they were alive and Alice finished. She flung her odd little metallic magnetic shavings at random and left the ranch but only after removing her bugs from Alex’s computers. The hard drives had been copied electronically to an outside line through her bugs and she didn’t need them anymore. Instead she encrypted them until such time as she was ready to release the data. Finally she lifted the phone and dialed 911. It was still very dark as she slipped across the compound and into the trees. She checked on first one and then the other agent and was pleased to see them sleeping comfortably, they would wake soon and she wanted to be long gone from this place, she made her way back to her Jeep exhausted at her nights work but unable to give into that exhaustion, not yet, not for a while yet.
Special Agent Arnold woke with the headache Alice had promised him, not only from the blow she had rendered him but from the shot she had injected into his blood stream knocking him out for hours. He swallowed a few times to get the dryness out of his mouth and looked around. It took him a moment to realize he had fallen asleep on the job and then he blinked, his eyelids even hurt. Then he realized he was seeing flashing lights. It took him another moment to realize the flashing lights he was seeing was coming from down in the compound where he and his partner had been watching. The place was covered with black and whites and miles of yellow police line tape. The local county sheriff, the state troopers, and he couldn’t be sure there were other agencies all down in the yard of the ranch as well as many camera crews against the long lines of police tape. He shook his head and found that to be a mistake of gigantic proportions. He tried to get to his feet but groaned at the effort. His movements and noise attracted attention and he found himself looking down or rather up the barrel of a 9mm semi-automatic from three different agencies. He and his partner had a lot of explaining to do and they knew nothing, Alice had made sure of that.
Processing the women and girls and the few men and boys took a long time. More than a few retained their mental faculties but enough of them had such traumatic experiences that they were nothing more than blubbering idiots at this point. It would take a lot of patience and time to figure out who they were. Therapy would take years and some of them would not make it. The scope, the magnitude of this operation was incredible. That it had taken place this close to Portland and no one had noticed was inconceivable. It really wasn’t though. What better way to do something like this than in plain sight. They were not that far from Portland yes but far enough not to arouse suspicion. Alex ‘The Flybird’ Johansen was a well-liked and personable man, no one would suspect what he had been doing for years and to find all this was unbelievable. A couple of the agents pulled in even knew the man personally. It was necessary to I.D. him and almost impossible from what had been done to his body. The other ‘victims’ or the dead ones at least would take time since their fingerprints were readily available and it would take many ‘teams’ to match up the fingers and toes and lips extracted from Alex’s body.
Alice had left just enough information on the computer that the agents were able to access that gave clues to half a dozen of the women including Kathy. The rest was encoded until she was ready to release it. As it was it was difficult to actually I.D. these women she had chosen at random, two were mentally insane and blubbering, two were so angry they wouldn’t speak, they were catatonic, one wouldn’t stop talking, and one screamed every time a man came near her, another kept begging for the ‘master’ clasping any man who came near her around his legs and begging to be ‘chosen.’ But from their I.D. tags and cell numbers their pictures were taken and compared to the FBI database for matches. Two agents who had been briefed on the case and brought rapidly up to speed were dispatched to some of the families for further identification.
Alice was flown at the government’s expense up to Portland to the hospital where many of the victims had been taken. The government, in the form of the FBI had taken over many floors and assigned psychiatrists of their own to handle the mental problems and extract information for their case against Alex and his minions. Many of the dead were still being identified, it had been decided that there had to be more than one killer since no one person could have done all this and everything was carried out in almost ritualistic precision. Each of the dead men had their fingers and toes and lips cut off but also their genitals which had been shoved in their mouths and down their slit throats. The angle of the wounds suggested that most bled out but each was being analyzed by teams of agents. Forensics would take months, possibly more, teams were being brought in from all over the country, resources were being stretched and data was flowing to Langley in large quantities.
Alice like other family members was treated with kid gloves, at least verbally. With the amount of time that had passed the initial contact, the digging up of the grave, and the usual government red tape she had had time to heal which was to her benefit. She couldn’t wear a baseball hat all the time and her rain hat had hidden even more as she healed. She still had tender ribs and shoulders and a few cuts that she hid under makeup but only someone who really knew her would have noticed, Kit had one morning before she left on the flight to Portland but Alice had managed to put her off while mumbling about one of the workout equipment pieces having struck her in the head.
The children knew nothing of why the FBI had come to the house. Alice didn’t inform her staff either. She instead said she was leaving on another business trip. She looked in the mirror before she left and could still see the deep bruising that her clothes covered up. A healthy body she only hoped she would heal fast. She wasn’t sure what would happen from here but she had to play along with the FBI and she was anxious to see Kathy, she wondered if she would recognize her, would still be ‘her’ Kathy. The agents had warned her about the state she was in, catatonic had been the word used.
Alice went through several interviews with several different agents before she was allowed to see Kathy. She was angry and frustrated and vented on the last one.
“When am I going to see if this is actually my wife?” she shouted after the same endless series of questions had been thrown at her by another agent. She was sick of it! To finally be here, to be so close but have to submit to their endless questions, the psychological profile and cautionary measures they were warning her with, she just wanted to see her wife, to know if she was actually there, to let Kathy know she was here for her.
Alice thought it was the anticipated frustrated anger that did the trick; they finally were going to take her to Kathy. She felt anxious, so much rode on this meeting. Would Kathy be sane enough to recognize her, would she be forever mentally screwed up? Would she be forever scared mentally or could she put the horror of the last year behind her?
Alice walked into the room where Kathy sat looking out the window. The room was pleasantly white; it smelled like a hospital should, antiseptic. She looked sad and broken despite their attempts to clean her up, comb her hair, and talk to her. Alice’s heart went out to her. She stood there ga
zing at her intently before Kathy finally looked over to see who had entered her room. A lot of people had come into her room over the last few days, a lot of people wanted to talk to her. Kathy was tired of it all and not sure exactly what any of them wanted. Here was another one, probably to talk to her about what happened, what she remembered, what she would tell. Her eyes were blinded from looking out the beautiful window at the rare sunshine day in Portland, it took a moment to adjust from the glare as she tried to blink rapidly and focus in on her visitor.
Finally though her eyes came into focus and she looked at the woman standing there looking at her just as intently. She examined her from the top of her very blonde hair to the stylish clothes she was wearing including a silk cowl necked blouse, a plaid jacket, and matching slacks to the fashionable boots on her tiny feet. She stood very still as she looked at Kathy expectantly, waiting patiently, hopefully. Kathy sighed, another one who wanted something from her. She was sick of being asked questions, she was sick of people wanting things from her. She didn’t know anything, she didn’t want anything, she didn’t understand. Something though, something about this woman held her a moment longer, she examined the face, her eyes darting around it as though to recognize it, looking for something…familiar. The hair was longer, much longer than she remembered and then she realized she was remembering, her eyes shot to the standing woman’s eyes and she realized those strange cat-like yellow gold eyes were familiar. She blinked several times as she tried to focus in on the feeling of a memory, an iota of sanity, it all took only moments but for both women it seemed like eons. She caught her breath, she knew this woman, somehow she knew this woman. Slowly things began to click into place in her befuddled mind; strings of things began to align themselves in the mess that her mind had become. Lucidity returned.
Finally Kathy pulled herself out of the chair, they had given her clothes to wear and she was wearing a dark blue sweater and light grey slacks and hospital slippers. She stood up, not quit proudly but rather as though waiting on a blow to her shoulders. She looked the petite blonde straight in the eye as she stood and whispered heartbrokenly, desperately, “ALICE!”
~The End~ K’Anne ;-P
MENTAL MALICE
Book 9
The mind is a fragile thing, the brain so a part of every function of a body that it can take a while for the body to even realize it is dead after the brain goes. Your brain is a wonderful concoction of fluids, tissue, nerves, and other mysteries that mankind has only begun to unlock. When damaged whether physically or mentally the brain can heal itself or become so dysfunctional that an adult can revert to a childlike state or even what is termed a vegetative state. Should the day come where my quality of life has been jeopardized to the point that machines and not my brain are keeping me alive, pull the plug…this has all been outlined in a living will. K’Anne Meinel
Kathy didn’t have a living will but she wasn’t in a state that required ‘pulling the plug.’ However, there were some days where she wished it were so. Her will to live was definitely not what it once was; her delight in the simple things was long gone. Life held no joy for her. She didn’t understand things that went on around her. Uncomplicated things that she knew she should know were now difficult, it required concentration to do the simplest tasks. The people who were around her confused her, scared her at times, and caused her endless anxiety.
Once she came home from the hospitals Alice had hired the best nurses, the best therapists, the best round the clock care for her wife. None of it did any good. Kathy, the Kathy they had known and loved was gone. One of the nurses had had the temerity to suggest that Kathy be put in a long term facility for care rather than home care. Alice had nearly come unglued as she put the woman in her place before firing her and ordering her off the premises. Occasionally, only occasionally, on rare instances Alice imagined that she saw the ‘old’ Kathy. She wasn’t certain but she may be delusional herself.
“You scare her,” Dr. Lambert said to Alice as they both watched Kathy play with the younger children from the windows of the house as they ran along the beach.
Alice turned to look at the Doctor, one of the few who had agreed to come to the house for an outrageous fee and an indefinite period. “How do I scare her?” she asked in surprise.
“She thinks you are expecting something from her,” the doctor answered to watch Alice’s response.
Alice knew this, but then she had bugged her own home so that she knew what the doctors, nurses, and other help were saying about her wife, what anyone was saying. It was a lot to filter through to get the information she needed to help her wife because they didn’t confide in her. She also knew that this doctor was actively trying to get Kathy to take ‘her’ children and leave Alice. That this was an unhealthy relationship, that perhaps Kathy would ‘get better’ back in the States, back in a heterosexual or ‘normal’ relationship. Alice cursed the fact that she hadn’t vetted this particular doctor enough to realize she was secretly homophobic. The doctor had come highly recommended and Kathy had seen some progress from the nearly vegetative state she had been in when returned home from the various hospitals. Between the doctors and the FBI interviews Alice had finally had to put her foot down and demand the return of her wife and to get her out of their clutches and the easy access the feds had had to her despite the private hospitals. Her refusal to allow anymore interviews without their lawyer present had put off the FBI and caused a few ruffled feathers but Alice was sick of seeing Kathy upset by their constant and repeated questioning. They had gotten enough out of her. Alice had heard most of the transcripts, not without her own anxieties and anger being aroused.
Alice was pleased when this doctor had said that she had to leave for the States next week; she couldn’t treat Kathy any longer and had to get back to her neglected practice. Alice didn’t need the homophobic woman around any longer, she had done a lot for Kathy but her subtle tactics had increased in trying to get Kathy to see that her lifestyle was causing her and her children irreparable damage and this was making Alice angry in ways that were better left directed at others.
Alice had made four trips in the months they had been down here on the island. In that time she had arranged for a satellite hookup so they were no longer out of contact with the mainland or the world, no longer dependent on an unreliable landline. The good doctor had kept in contact with her office, the children with their schooling, and Alice with her investments as well as in tracking the list she had created of people involved in the previous year and the business it had generated. This list was invaluable. Some of it had been released in ‘batches’ to the FBI in Quantico letting them believe that their skills at hacking into the computers they had confiscated at the compound outside of Portland were in fact working. They had no idea that their super computers had been ‘invaded’ by a sophisticated set of cleverly hidden bugs that now could access their information on select individuals throughout the world through various offshore and backdoor devices. They had brought the bugs, the worms, into their own computers and the information that was sent out was encoded unbeknownst to them as it was so well hidden, so well encrypted by the most modern and refined devices, even the FBI with its infinite resources didn’t have some of the private technology that Alice had access to. The few on the list that Alice had given the FBI she made sure were taken by them immediately but a select few from her own list she wanted personally, these individuals were either involved in Kathy’s abduction to a degree or had carnal knowledge of her wife. These men and women had to suffer and Alice was here to see it done, some she would take her time with, let them relax, some she had already made ‘disappear.’
Alice returned to the doctor’s statement, “I don’t expect anything from her, I love her and I want to see her happy.” She turned back to look at the children running with the dog in and out of the waves and she was in time to see Kathy actually smile. With that smile she looked normal, no longer tortured by the memories in her mind. Bringing her here to the
island had insured that she had no outside influences other than the family who loved her, the periodic nurses, and her doctor who had helped enormously but whose own agenda was now being implemented before her departure. Alice was well aware that the doctor hoped Kathy would ask to return to the States with her.
“What if leaving will make her happy?” the doctor was bold enough to ask.
Alice turned her strangely colored yellow eyes on the doctor and stared at her intently making the doctor feel distinctly uncomfortable. When she saw the doctor swallow in her nervousness she answered “My wife wouldn’t want to leave her family.”
Dr. Lambert didn’t know why this woman made her so uncomfortable. She had questioned and analyzed herself on this and many other items in this whole situation. Maybe the fact that her outrageous demand for money to accompany them on their family retreat had been met without so much as a quibble, maybe the fact that this woman seemed to have more money than anyone she had ever known, maybe her coldness that she had never been able to penetrate, she didn’t know what it was exactly but in the time she had known her she had scrutinized it to death. She knew though in her very being that Kathy was not happy and that this cold woman was not her ideal mate. There was no possibility of it. Kathy deserved a warm and loving normal family and had it with the children, not this woman. She knew that they hadn’t been intimate since Kathy came home from Portland or the hospitals but they slept in the same bed. She knew that Kathy was so destroyed by what had happened and felt the world judged her and found her lacking that she might never recover. She had been determined to help her; it was the challenge of her career. She glanced around the large family room they were in; it hadn’t been a trial to come to this exotic little island either. She was brown and healthy from the good air and the good food. Having all of her needs met by the housekeeper was sheer luxury. Her hours of therapy with Kathy had gotten her to at least to accept her own children and their joy at her return. She felt she had to take pride in the little victories. Glancing at Alice though she felt it was her duty to get Kathy out of this unhealthy lifestyle with this unemotional and cold woman!
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