The Labyrinth
Chapter 4 – The First Days
The plane landed, and finally all of Barbara’s cockiness, all her bravado, even the warped sense of pride in being dangerous enough to be sent here ebbed from her as she got a good look at the solid glass that had once been sand. The place looked dead. There were no boats, no cars, nothing but the building. It was a barren wasteland, with the only signs of life being the workmen taxiing the plane towards the jetway that stuck out of the building.
“Stand up!” the guard barked out, and she was out of her seat the moment the plane touched down. Barbara realized that their guard was under control herself; her steps were too precise and her timing too exact not to be under some form of control. But she had enough worries on her mind trying to keep her balance on the stripper heels as she got up, so she left that for later.
“Fifth Circle! Gwen Fairchild, Barbara Greer! March!” the guard ordered. Gwen gestured scornfully at her, while Barbara was too busy trying not to fall and be trampled as the two of them got off the plane and down the jetway into a cavern of ice. Barbara blinked and realized that it was just a white, white room: white walls, white floor, white on white furniture. Everything was cold, sterile, and-as Barbara found when she was shoved onto one of the stools- designed to look and feel uncomfortable.
“No guards other than this galoot so far? How the hell come my girls back in Pittsburgh haven’t sent a speedboat here yet? Well, when they do, I’ve got you. You’re witch material for sure- just lay off the girls!” Gwen whispered with a grin.
“I think I can handle that,” Barbara whispered back with a smirk. She looked out over the room of nothing but painful whiteness and two girls dressed like whores, trying to find something different, something they could use to get out of there, but coming up empty.
A door indistinguishable from the wall opened, and Barbara would have jumped out of her chair if the guard’s hand hadn’t come down like an anvil on her shoulder. The man who came through it wore a coal black suit with a matching shirt, and the scowl on his face was darker than his clothes.
“Gwendolyn Fairchild. Three Sisters, temptress- surprised you wobble in those heels. Cockfighting ring. My God, do you realize that even Three Sisters has disavowed that practice?” he snapped out.
“Asshole. Surprised you have the balls to face a Three Sisters witch. My God, do you realize how little I care about what you have to say?” Gwen shot back in an accurate mimicry of his accent.
“Yes, you are a green dress girl, aren’t you? Harrison is going Sixth Circle, you know. You just booked the talent, she ran the operation. But enough chitchat. Undress and change,” the man demanded, throwing her black bike shorts and a sports bra.
Gwen dodged. “What is this place? Somewhere where we can get your rocks off by putting on silly outfits?” she said with a sneer.
“No, because otherwise we would be more traditional and use the handcuffs. You will put the clothes on, or I will do it for you,” the man replied.
“You can try, but any man who’s laid hands on me hasn’t lived long enough to regret it.” Still, she lowered her shorts and panties, but as she turned around to preserve some of her modesty, the guard spun her around to face him, so that she had no choice but to present him with her body as she changed into the exercise gear.
The elastic had barely snapped into place against Gwen’s skin when the guard picked her up, slung her over her shoulder, and carried her through the door, kicking and screaming the whole way. The man turned his attention to Barbara. “Barbara Greer, subliminalist. Yagudayev family. Murder by enslavement? How did you only manage Fifth Circle? Ahhh, Erika the Forgiver. Aren’t you the lucky one? Undress and change.”
Barbara’s outfit was different, a knee-length gray skirt, a navy blazer, and a white blouse. She put them all on, realizing that she’d been made to look like a boy’s fantasy of a naughty schoolgirl. Unlike Gwen she didn’t bother trying to cover herself; not only would it be useless, but if he wanted to see her bumps and her gut, that was his punishment. When she was finished dressing, the guard- or maybe another one, she couldn’t be sure- picked her up and hauled her away the same way Gwen had gone.
The system was clearly insane, but she’d seen what happened when someone tried to fight it, and she would much rather be comfortable if she had to deal with this kind of insanity, so she was less combative. All she could see was white floor and white walls as the guard carried her down and down until the walls and floor turned black. A steel blast door opened, and before Barbara could register a what the fuck is going on here, she was hurled against a mattress in the new room, and the blast doors slammed shut.
The room moved, and Barbara corrected her initial reaction- she wasn’t in a room, she was in an elevator. She descended for what could have been forever or could have been two minutes, until the doors opened onto a barren cavern, where several other women in the same preppy clothing as she was were milling about. Some seemed to be in a stunned daze, while others were wide awake. Before she could strike up conversations with any of them, another of the guards led her down the hall to an empty room with a single hallway.
“You are in the 19-25 wing of the Fifth Circle. Find the center of the maze, get the cheese. Begin,” the guard recited, and pressing a button, she walked away, leaving Barbara alone to fend for herself. Forward was the only way to go, so she walked forward, wondering where her cell was, what the protocol was, and where she would be able to find the bathroom and the mess.
The track sloped downward, then back up again in a spiral. She sighed and went down the narrow passageway, passing several women weaving their way along the same path. Finally, one of them grabbed her by the shoulder. “New girl? Good luck with that,” the woman said in an almost drunken slur before continuing to stumble her way up and down the spiral. Why doesn’t she stop if she’s that tired? Barbara wondered, but then again, she was walking too, and she didn’t know why.
It was a good three or four floors down to the bottom of the parade route. It looked like the cells and other necessities might be down there, but she was fenced in on all sides with no way to get to her cell. There were people in different outfits now, and they weren’t caught in the same numb haze as the people she was walking with. They leered, whistled, and catcalled at her without stopping.
“New girl, yeah!”
“I’d rack that girl up!”
“Hey, wanna be my pussy pet?”
“A little big, but she’ll do. I’d prep that preppy.”
“Yeah, lemme have a piece of her pie.”
The laughs and taunts picked up, and Barbara could feel her thoughts slipping away from her, first in one direction, then another. Lewd taunts, whistles, piercing gazes, jiggling breasts, magnetic presences... and the bombed out women in front of her. She realized that since everyone was a controller, no one cared if anyone ended up a victim. She tensed and tried to shake it off, and her knees pulsed with soreness. How long have I been walking up and down? she wondered, losing track of time.
“Clear the track,” a voice boomed over the loudspeaker, and everyone lined up and marched orderly to the top of the spiral. Hazy as she was, Barbara headed with the line in lockstep, no longer caring where it was going except that it was somewhere other than the bottom of this pit. Luckily for her, it was just for dinner. Of course, the loud klaxon that wailed throughout the meal woke her up enough to be aware of how awful the mystery meat was, and the lighting gave her no way to identify it.
“That’s the point,” the blonde in front of her said. “They make you remember what you’d rather forget and forget what you want to remember. I’m Brenda. I had a special way of breaking up with my boyfriends.”
“Nice. I just bullied my bullies,” Barbara said with a sigh. Something wasn’t right, but it was just her first day and it wasn’t like she knew how prison worked anyway.
“Remember, you got the strongest minds in the world in one pit. That’s part of it. The rest... they do a lot of shaming. You haven’t even started your journey. Trust me there. I don’t remember much outside this place. Days, months... I don’t even remember days or months or how long I’ve been here anymore. No light, no nothing, just thoughts and everyone else’s madness. Not to scare you or anything. Finish your dinner. You’ll need your strength,” Brenda said with a sudden smirk.
After dinner everyone marched out again and back onto the track. This time the taunts were stronger and more sexual. She grew wearier with every trip until finally someone grabbed her hand and took her aside. She felt her clothes come off as everything faded out.
The klaxon woke her again, jarring her back to awareness of being cold and confused. She lay on a cot at the top of the spiral in her bra and panties, but she didn’t feel like anyone had done anything more than undress her and leave her there. Shaking off the feeling, she got out of bed like the others and walked into a shower room, where she left behind the bra and panties and waited for the water to come on.. I’ve seen all the prison movies. Don’t drop the soap! she thought, washing mechanically and carefully until the water stopped and everyone dried off, then lined up naked outside a locker room.
“Pray they just stick you back in pacing class, rookie,” someone behind her taunted.
“They won’t. Surprised they gave her a day to warm up first. Most go right to punishment,” a Latina said with a light accent and a venomous grin.
“Greer, room 19,” one of the guards said, grabbing the still naked Barbara and leading her into the locker room.
“Adios, amiga,” the Latina snickered. The others smirked knowingly or winced with the last remnants of sympathy as the door locked behind Barbara.
“Ah, Greer. Yes, real men fuck the prom queen, but isn’t it true that real controllers fuck the prom queen, use her to get the homecoming queen, half the cheer squad, and if you’re really good have the sexy math teacher lead the class into a servile harem?” the woman in there asked. Her thick mop of gray curls and her black skirtsuit would have marked her as ‘teacher- like but don’t necessarily trust’ in Barbara’s world before. But in this dungeon, the woman wasn’t the least bit intimidating.
“I hate those bitches! You can try to make me into a happy little Barbie doll, but you’ll never get into that part of my soul. I’ll bring it to hell with me if I have to. You can plead innocent all you want and talk about wasted potential, but I know that those bitches deserved it, and the only thing they would have gotten better at was blowing guys- and hey, I helped them get a whole lot better than that faster than they would have otherwise! You’ll never make me believe I should have jumped off that bridge instead of going to Russia.”
“Don’t plan to,” the woman replied, opening up locker 19 and showing off the sparkling blue dress inside.
“Oh, I get it, make me look like one of those bitches! Ha, that’s funny,” Barbara said with a laugh of disbelief.
The woman shrugged. “Isn’t it what you wanted? To be like those girls? To have all the power? To control everyone? To be the queen? To be everyone’s love?” she asked, waving the dress back and forth in front of Barbara’s eyes.
Barbara tensed up, feeling her mind slipping as she was put into the bra, panties, and matching stockings. To her horror, she realized that she was willingly putting the dress on. She gritted her teeth, pulled herself together, and sniped, “This where you dump cow blood on me and see if I can burn this place down?”
“Now why would we do a silly thing like that? This dress is too expensive for that, and you look just so cute in it!” the woman replied. Barbara heard herself giggling, though she tried to tell herself that it was at the overly cheery tone. She tried to strengthen her defenses against the onslaught, but she felt a pinch in her hair and a low buzz in her ears. She was turned towards the mirror, and the tiara on her head let her know exactly what was happening to her.
“Frequency control? That’s older than... my grandma... can’t you at... least... use a radio...” Barbara asked, fading by the second, her brain unable to resist the frequencies overriding it. Her face twisted into an empty grin, her eyes glassy and doll-like- yet she could see and hear everything, painfully aware that her will was frozen. She would be able to witness her own exploitation as if she was some sort of subconscious observer, but she would be helpless to stop whatever they had in store for her.
“Doesn’t that feel good, Barbara?” the woman asked.
Her subconscious was screaming profanities, but she could hear the soothing compliments and happy thoughts being pumped into the rest of the brain, and she heard herself giggle and squeal “Yay!” as she was sat down and her face was dolled up. They started with perfume, and it made her head spin, throwing a thick fog over her real memories of high school and leaving them an idealistic stereotype instead as she heard her role echoing in her head.
This is the real prison, she realized: not the featureless island and the empty halls, not even the cells and the bars and the guards, but here inside her head. Her body and her surface emotions were being molded into what she had hated most, but her true self was wide awake, thrown back in the far reaches of her brain so that she could see her victimization but do nothing to stop it, like a ghost at a funeral. Bracelets dangled before her eyes before going on her wrists, sparkling her eyes and dulling her senses. Nothing was destructive or deadly, everything hitting her at half-speed so she could see what was happening to her. There were no large chains, just many, many small chains that weighed her down slowly and gradually. She could barely hear the subliminals now, but she didn’t have to hear them to know that they were working on her; now it was the remaining haze of the perfume and the dulling influence of the poppies in her bouquet that were turning off her head. And when she tried to get away from the smell, a reflection from the bracelets or the tiara or the dress dazzled her again. She could only shiver a little to keep from completely losing it, but only a little, as she felt herself being loaded like cargo into the elevator and taken to one of the upper floors.
“Time to visit the third circle! Let’s see, oh, I know! Here you go! Have fun at the prom!” the guard said as Barbara was led into a glass cell, waving blankly and happily at an adoring crowd that didn’t exist. In the back of her head, she knew that it was all fiction, but the rest of her reacted as programmed, even through the laughs and the taunts of the other inmates. Every now and then she felt more in control, but then the subliminals would wash over her again, or she would take a dizzying whiff of the flowers, or her circuit would cause her to get caught up in the blindingly bright sparkle of the bracelet, or the dress would do something to her.
It went on for hours, though she couldn’t be sure how many with the way her brain went on and off like a faulty light bulb. Consciousness was harder to hold on to and lasted less time every time; it was so much easier to give in to the blankness and fall back into the giggling giddiness of her other self. But she could hear every tease, every taunt, every word that cut her like a knife. Just when she thought she was going under for the last time, the guard came back and took her back to the fifth circle. Locker 19 held the uniform she had worn when she first arrived, and it was almost welcome after her previous experience. Then she was back on the spirals, up and down, down and up, treading a useless repetitive path for reasons she didn’t understand.
Her thoughts slowly dulled to a haze of pain and misery, interspersed with the mockery of the others around her. It was so hard to think- until the klaxon blared and she and the others returned to the dining hall for what she was thinking of as dinner.
“Hey there, princess, how was it? Oh, sure, they took it easy on you the first day, you know,” Brenda said.
“Yeah? Still? What time is it, anyway?” Barbara asked groggily.
“Mealtime,” Brenda said with a smile.
“Yeah, I know... oh, I get it,” Barbara said as she downed her chow before going back out onto the spirals to try and remember who she was, or forget what she had seen, or something, though she wasn’t sure anymore. Then someone led her back to the cot and everything dissolved into a sweet dream of being a giddy, mindless prom queen, loved by everyone.