The Erotic Mind-Control Story Archive

Amissum Codex — The Book of Loss

M/f MD MC

This story is intended for adults. All characters in this story are over eighteen years of age. Do not try this at home. Any similarity to persons living or dead are purely coincidental.

All rights to this story are retained by the author. Please do not duplicate or redistribute.

1. Ingressio — Beginnings

Mid-April? 1993

I remember being in small cafe in San Francisco. It was late night, we were there after a party. What were we celebrating, a birthday? Whose? I remember lots of laughing, lots of talk. Whitney Houston’s voice came from the speakers, singing. “I will always love you.”

There were two women sitting in a far booth with some guy. The women were hot and I was drunk. One was a redhead, the other was dark. The man I don’t remember at all, really. I stared at the red-head and tried to think of what to say. He laughed and told me to find another party.

I don’t remember what I said, but I did say something and then everyone stopped talking. The whole bar went really quiet. No one moved, at all. I remember laughing at that, finding it really funny. The guy with the two babes looked at me surprised and he laughed with me. He smiled at me weird.

Did the redhead crawl under the table and blow me? No one in the bar moved. At all. Did she really blow me? He watched me the whole time. He laughed again. The dark woman looked bored. Something weird happened and the whole world twisted up.

I remember being back at my table where everything was normal, I was drunk and I had imagined it all. What he absolutely had not said to the dark woman he was with was this. “How interesting, let’s use him.”

I’d had the beginnings of a headache all day. It started in the morning with a kind of sinus pressure, not feeling great edge of your awareness headache. I assumed that it was a lack of coffee or maybe it was eye strain from the previous night in front of the computer. I took two Tylenol and headed into work.

By noon the headache was worse, and I took a couple more pills and began to wonder what the maximum safe dose was. Then something really different happened. The headache got a whole lot worse.

By mid afternoon the headache was so bad that I stopped even trying to work and told my boss Alice that I was going to have to go home and lay down. By the time I got off the phone with her though, it was so bad I was nauseous. I put my head down on my desk and hoped it would get better soon. It didn’t. After a minute, I started to see white spots in my vision. Then, I went blind. Everything turned white. The pain was so bad all I could do was moan.

I fell out of my chair and onto the floor and curled up into a ball. I remember wondering if I was dying. It hurt so much. Somewhere in there I passed out.

The guy in the cube next to mine heard me moaning and looked over the cube wall. When he saw me on the floor, I was writhing and crying. He called 911. The paramedics came and took me to San Jose Medical Center’s emergency room. Alice rode with me in the ambulance. When they got me there, Alice told the ER doc that I had complained of a headache. They put me in the CAT scan (which was still kind of rare in 1993) looking for an aneurysm. They didn’t find one, but I had lapsed into a coma by that time. I entered a persistent vegetative state.

I don’t remember anything concrete from being in a coma, not even dreams. I have these weird half-memories, but I can’t describe them to you. Its like trying to remember a song you heard once. You can remember a couple of notes but not the melody. And you certainly can’t get someone else to know what you mean. There was some sense in there of being really really far away from myself, kind of like floating over everything. It was peaceful. It was peaceful for a really long time. This may sound weird, but if death is anything like that, I won’t mind dying, not really. I just was, and it was good.

I remember a sense of pressure. Not pressure on my skin, pressure pushing in on who I was. You know how you have a voice in your head that talks to you? Stop and sit and listen for a minute. Just sit there a second. That voice, the one that just said to you. “What voice? What the hell is he talking about?” That’s the voice. That voice is not you. That voice is your internal conversation. It’s like a radio turned on to your thinking. It goes all the time, never stopping, never shutting up.

You go to the mall and that voice is on loud speaker. “Where did she get the idea she could wear spandex? Oh god those are nice tits. Hmmm, mens suits ½ off. My butt itches. Hair color not found in nature.” and on it goes, forever, without stopping.

Well, somewhere in there, my little internal voice just stopped. It just stopped. What I got instead was this sense of pressure. Something out there pushing in on me. Pushing in on who I was. Except, without that voice in my head, I didn’t really have anybody that I was. I was just being. It was weird but cool. The pressure wasn’t cool though. It was awful. It sucked because when it pushed in on me I got lost. When it receded I came back. I hope you get the idea. If not, I don’t know what else to say about it.

The pressure would come in and I’d lose myself. I’d feel lost. Then it would recede, and I’d be back. After this had happened a few times, I started to notice that my eyes were sort of open and I could see around the hospital room I was in. But it was like living in a strobe lit world. The pressure would recede and I’d see a few moments of people moving around me, or maybe a family member sitting next to me, and then it would all recede again and I’d be lost.

* * *

“Nurse, his eyes opened! Carter, are you there sweety?” My mom dressed in her navy blue church suit. My dad next to her looking over and smiling at me, concerned but hiding it. “Carter, say something.”

* * *

Colors. Shapes. Pressure. hungry.

* * *

A darkened room. The quiet ticking of a clock. A machine starts a steady beeping, it’s loud. There’s a bed next to me. Someone in it starts to wake up to the noise. I hear feet on a tile floor.

* * *

Pressure. Love her run for ball hope she throws it again oh yes here we go run run fast happy ball got it run yes run look there a cat don’t go there run with ball look she’s happy with me yummy yes happy please ball again yes please please ball yes run run get it get it there it is bad ball bite it make it squeak my ball run run run.

* * *

I’m in my hospital room again. I can’t think of the names for the people who are here, but they love me and are scared. One of them is certain I’m dying, though I don’t know why. I feel free.

* * *

Pressure. God this looks terrible on me why do they make dresses look like this why design it this way I wouldn’t I wish I had lost those ten pounds I’m a fat pig and I look it it makes me want to cry I used to be so thin in college and now shit size fourteen how did I end up not being able to wear a fourteen I wouldn’t do this to women I think I’ll buy jeans.

* * *

That went on for a long time. A really long time. I was in and out of the coma for over a week. There were times I was lucid for an hour or more and then I’d slip away again. Somehow I knew that my family had all gathered and relatives had flown in. No one knew what was wrong with me.

I’ll spare you the rest of the details. The simple version of what happened next is this. I learned somehow to push the pressure away from me, to keep it at bay. It was really hard at first, like learning to use a new muscle. Some times I failed, and then I lost myself. When I came back though, I lasted longer and longer. One day I stopped going away. I got me back.

* * *

There was a nurse in the room, smiling at me. My older brother Mike was in the chair next to the bed watching ‘The Price is Right’ and laughing at the guy who was getting the prices wrong. The nurse leaned over me and smiled. “Hi Carter, are you going to stay a while this time?”

“Hi” I said. She hit the call button really fast and my brother nearly fell out of his chair. I blinked my eyes a couple of times. “Can I have some water, please?”

Mike poured me some water and the nurse left to get the on-call doctor. (Do you wonder how I knew where she was headed?) My sister Charlotte and her husband Bill came in right away. They’d been in the hallway outside talking about whether or not my medical insurance would cover long term care.

“Oh Carter!” Charlotte cried real tears for me and laid her head on my chest. Mike just rubbed my forehead and fed me water and pretended he wasn’t about to cry.

Later that afternoon mom and dad got back and we all cried. Except for Bill. Bill’s afraid to cry. Inside he’s concerned that if he cried once he might not stop. He gets angry instead of crying. So, Bill got angry with the ward nurse for something. I knew he meant well. So I cried for him.

I went home a couple of days later. I’d been in the hospital for nine days. I felt really tired, sore and wrung out from so much rest. Weird. I slept a lot over the next couple of days. My family came and went, mostly they stayed with me and cleaned up and made food. They all did the stuff you do when you don’t know what to do. Something really cool happened in here though, and it’s hard to explain.

I fell in love with my family. You know how people make you crazy with the goofy crap they do? How they take it out on you when they feel bad? Somehow I was able to actually feel what was going on underneath all that stuff and I knew who they were inside. They loved each other and were all messed up and tired and frustrated and worried. All the stuff we all are. All the time. Don’t ask me how, but I fell in love with them. It was cool. I was an emotional wreck. I cried a lot. That worried them. I worried about them worrying.

“Mom, I know that you’re worried that I’m so emotional.”

“Why Carter baby, no I’m not. Not at all, you’re just healing is all.”

“I’ll be okay mom, promise. I’m just feeling kind of open.”

“Carter baby, this is Jesus’s wake up call to your heart honey. Jesus wants you to come back to Him, baby. Our dear Lord just gave you a second chance at life baby. Pray with me sweety, pray to Jesus with momma.”

“Okay mom, I’ll pray with you.” I loved her that much.

“Praise God, Carter baby, praise God.”

What can I say, it made her happy. I wanted to make her happy, she’s my mom. She prayed and I bowed my head and repeated her words. She cried that I was back in the bosom of the Lord. She was really happy. That made me happy.

Dad came in the bedroom later that day.

“Son, I’m proud of you.”

“Um , thanks Dad. Why?”

“You beat this thing and I’m proud of you for that. You’re a strong man.”

“I love you too Dad”

“Um, right back at ya sport”. Dad sniffed.

“Dad?”

“Yep?”

“I just wanted to let you know that you did a great job with me. You’re a great dad. Always there for me. Thanks.”

* * *

“Mike says that the Braves are playing really good ball this year, sport.”

“No kidding pop? Who’s pitching this year?”

After a few days of this stuff, life began to return to normal. Mike flew back to his home in Richmond. Charlotte and Bill drove back to LA with their kids. Mom and Dad moved back out of my place and settled for calling me twice a day to check on me. Life went back to normal. Except I wasn’t normal. Not even close. Oh, I could pretend, but it was like I was raw all over inside.

I didn’t go back to work right away. There was just no way. How can you call up your boss and say something like this:

“Hello Alice, I’m not going to come into work today because at this moment, I’m a hummingbird. I’m in my backyard. I’m smelling the most delicious flower on a bird of paradise. I think I’m going to spend my day being a bird. Its really cleansing to be that simple, that open. So that’s what I’m going to do today, sorry.” You can’t.

I had some leave, so I used it.

I went backpacking up in the Sierras. I hadn’t been a big outdoorsy guy ever, but I really wanted to get away from people. I bought some gear and some food and headed out.

I went up the Woodchuck trail in Sequoia National Forest. It’s incredibly beautiful in late May, and hot. It isn’t dry yet though, that comes later in the year. The trails aren’t full of people either, not yet. There’s a lot of green everywhere and the streams are full. I hiked in for a full day, up over Maxson dome and camped.

The next day I hiked in towards the Boys Camp. It was really hard hiking, and it kept my mind busy. By the end of the day I was completely exhausted. I pitched my tent and collapsed. There was no one nearby, and I lay on my mummy bag in the early twilight and relaxed, too tired to work on food.

That’s when it happened. Some ways away there was an owl. It was perched in the upper reaches of a large red fir. I let myself flow into the owl. I looked out its eyes and saw an incredible glory of twilight. I saw a world that was new to me... sharp and clean and brilliant. I was whole. I was complete.

We launched ourselves off the branch and into the air. Somehow it knew we were me and it coasted down towards my tent. I landed near me. I had the most amazing experience of seeing myself through the eyes of an animal. I smelled what a human smells like. We smell like perfumes and dyes and soap and animal fats and tanning solutions and chemicals. We smell toxic.

I flew off. I was hunger. Hunger possessed me. I went into the hunger and through it and let it guide me. I heard the chirp of a chipmunk in the distance. I became patience. I flew in silence. I perched and listened. Chirp. I flew again.

And this is where it happened. Something of my thinking flowed into the owl. For the first time, I went outward, not inward. I pushed. I could see that the chipmunk was hiding beneath a piece of rotted log and was running back and forth avoiding us. I/Owl couldn’t predict where the chipmunk would go. I/Carter could. I brought the chipmunk out from under. We swooped at just the right time. I felt my talons go into my skin, I felt my blood leak out onto the ground as I bit into my neck. I ate. I died.

I learned what death feels like, and I learned what it is to kill. There is no good or bad in it. It just is.

I cried for the chipmunk because my heart was broken, it was gone forever and would never come back. Never.

But we still ate it without regret, and it was tasty.