TO THE READER: The following contains sexually explicit material. If you are under the age of 18 or are otherwise underage to view such material in your region, please do not read on.
The following is also a work of speculative fiction. All characters, situations and events described are figments of the author’s imagination, if not partially influenced by an idea from the “Matrix” movies. Do not try this at home. It’s a bad idea and it’s also impossible. If you succeed in trying this at home, consult a psychiatrist immediately.
REMEMBERING, by Nessa Culon
Hello, Amanda.
I sit bolt upright in the bath, startled. Who had said that? The bathroom is empty. I must have imagined it.
Amanda.
Not my imagination after all.
“What?”
I just said hello. That’s all.
“Who is this? Where are you?” Nobody else here. Definitely.
Call me Ryan.
“How do you know my name?”
Another pause.
Amanda, I want you to do something for me.
This is getting seriously creepy. There’s nobody else in the bathroom, but someone’s talking to me, and I’m naked in the bath, talking back.
“Why should I do anything for you?”
Amanda, please.
“Don’t ‘please’ me. Who in hell are you?”
Two seconds’ pause, this time.
Not quite, dear.
“What?”
Please, just do what I say. Look in the mirror, Amanda.
“Who are you? Where are you?”
I’m the closest thing you have to a friend.
Which is ridiculous. I don’t have friends. I roll my eyes, decide to shut her up, and get out of the bath. My body faces me in a full-length mirror. I wish I had another body. I stare at my stomach, which I hate I hate I hate.
You only get one, I’m afraid.
“One what?” Now I’m really irritated.
Body. Stomach. Whatever.
I stiffen. Can’t let this voice-person let me lose my cool. Can’t. Calm. No fear. No emotion. This voice just read my fucking mind.
I’m afraid it’s sick body, Amanda.
“You and me, Ryan. So are you some kind of ghost? Guess it’s fun to poke at my body when you don’t have one.”
Not a ghost, Amanda.
“Then you’re just a perv, right?” Nothing there for a perv to want. My skin’s nothing special and I’m bony as fuck. I’ve got ribs out to here and my tits barely exist. Even my bush is a mess.
No. No, Amanda. I don’t like seeing this.
“Then why are you looking?”
A doctor can hardly heal what he can’t see.
“I don’t need a doctor.” I don’t want a doctor.
Yes you do. Need and want.
“I think I should know.”
Someone doesn’t want you to. And I feel a chill go through me. I don’t know why. What the fuck does Ryan mean, someone doesn’t want you to?
“So I don’t need a doctor, and someone’s making me think I’m okay?” What is this bullshit?
More than a doctor. A doctor too, yes, but much more. Tell me, Amanda, what do you love?
“What kind of question is that?”
Name anything.
“Not having stupid disemfuckingbodied voices talking to me. I’d love that, you bet.”
You’re avoiding the question.
“And you’re either a ghost or a perv, and I don’t answer questions from ghosts and pervs.”
I’m not. I already told you what I am.
“And I’m telling you that’s impossible. I don’t have friends, so you can’t be my friend.”
It’s an axiom of your existence, yes? By definition, you have no friends.
“Whatever stiffs you.”
Nothing ‘stiffs’ me, Amanda.
“So you’re impotent? Now we’re getting somewhere.”
I’m not a man.
“So your parents decided to be cruel and name a girl Ryan, eh?”
Ryan is my last name.
“And what’s your first name?”
Look at your face, Amanda.
“I know what it looks li—”
LOOK AT YOUR FACE, AMANDA.
I look. My nose curves in a way I don’t like. The hair on my head is drying now, and looking worse than the hair on my cunt. My eyes are boring.
You’re not going to like this. You’ll understand soon enough why it has to be done, says the mouth in front of me in the mirror.
Oh. Fuck. Oh fuck. Oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck it’s me talking oh holy shit oh fuck. And then the world cracks.
I fall on my back, and I’m not sure if I see stars from hitting my head, or if I see them because I’m hallucinating, or I’m not seeing them at all, my mind is just swimming, and I didn’t hit my head. A screaming sound is me.
Amanda is struggling now with images in her head. Now with thoughts that are hers and aren’t. It hurts. Ryan is forcing them on her, date raping her mind, forcing ideas-memories-emotions into the orifice.
They mesh with hers, with Amanda’s own thoughts. They mesh with me, they fuse with me. I can’t tell myself from Ryan anymore, and Ryan is controlling parts of me. A foot jerk, a blink, an ass clench. Testing. Gaining strength. Finally, a hand, my left hand under Ryan’s full control.
The hand zooms between my legs, pushes them apart. My legs obey, Ryan has my legs now. Now everything is paralyzed but that hand, and I notice the cold and wet of the tile floor as my hand searches for a clitoris that hasn’t done anything since when? Ever?
And then it does something. I feel a flood, completely alien and then familiar, in that tiny place down there, blood rushing in, and the feeling grows until my clit is the size of my entire lower body, or so I feel. Ryan’s hand, my hand, pumps and strokes and glides and as I begin to feel sex the ideas from Ryan come to peace in my mind. If the room is still cold, if I’m still on wet tile, I don’t notice it anymore.
I work faster, more furiously. The merging of minds, the peaceful intercourse of my mind and Ryan’s mind is addictive, is a drug, and my only fix is playing with myself and feeling that sensation, that—what—pleasure. Pleasure. I can feel pleasure. My fingers are inside me now and I remember pleasure. I am nearing climax and the capacity for pleasure is coming back to me, gone so long, my memories coming and my hopes and loves coming and I’m coming, omigod I’m coming.
My vagina clenches, and my thighs, and my abs, and my ass, and the small of my back. Have I ever felt an orgasm before? I don’t—yes. More times than I can remember. Back when I was complete. When I was a kid and I would go clubbing with my friends, and we would find all the pleasure we needed right in the clubs, back when I was whole like I think I might be again.
And I remember. As I come down from it, I remember him taking me off the dance floor, I think he must have drugged me. I think there was surgery, or brainwashing or torture, and I suddenly know why I’m here. Somehow, he was feeding on all the pleasure I was denied. My body withered as I gradually lost my mind, my memories, my ability to enjoy anything. He took that. He stole it, like a drug, fed on it to feel bliss whenever he desired. He gave me what I needed to survive, just enough food and too-frequent bathing to keep me from wandering around too far. I always had to rush back for a bath whenever I went too close to where he didn’t want me. Nobody ever told me to go back—I just knew.
I’m in a small, lonely apartment. It’s part of a complex, and there are others like me in every single cell. Hundreds of us. He took us from our lives and turned us into a battery of pleasure supply for him, and for his friends. I don’t know how he drew it from us, but he drew every last drop of it, and sapped our self-awareness, stole our will to escape, or even to think we were imprisoned. All the rest are still imprisoned.
Some part of me was too strong. It came back to me. Ryan. Ryan. My name is Amanda Ryan. Some part of me remained, knew that I could escape. Forced me to do it. Sex isn’t like loving art, or music, or the clubs. It’s hard-wired. You can’t bypass it, and part of me knew that. Part of me knew I could short out the system by experiencing pleasure, and forced the rest of me to do it.
I am Amanda Ryan. I am lying naked in a cold bathroom, having just brought myself to freedom the only way I could. I am terrified at the sight of my body. Not like before. I was disgusted, as everything disgusted me when I was captive, but now I am saddened. My skin is a grey-pink-white, my ribs are too easily counted, my figure is withered and not the ready thing it once was. I have work to do.
My name is Amanda Ryan. There are others. Hundreds of others, and he’s feeding from all of them like he fed from me. It’s time I freed them.