Auntie’s Island
Chapter Seven – The Voices of Submission
Hello there. My name is Wendy Weizenbaum (I LOVE writing that name!), and Brenda asked me to write about the day I met her … and Willie and Dee and … everybody. And since I can no more refuse Brenda a request than I could stop breathing, I’ll do so. I begged her to let me leave out the sex and other embarrassing stuff … but she was insistent that I make a complete record of it. So, here goes.
I got up about seven and made my bed. Lot of good THAT did. The room was a PIT! It was just the third week of the new semester, and my new roommate (who had evidently spent the night elsewhere) was a total pig! She dressed like a slob, had about twenty piercings (and those were just the ones that you could SEE!), and tattoos and carvings on her arms and hands. In the room, there were clothes and books and candy wrappers and junk everywhere. There were cigarette ashes in the carpet, even though she had filled out the dorm request form saying she was a non-smoker. I couldn’t WAIT to get out of there!
The voices started getting stronger about 9:30, during Physiology 601, and by my third class (BioChem), they were absolutely roaring.
I guess I should explain about the voices. They started when I was twelve or thirteen. At first, I made the HUGE mistake of telling people about them … you know, like my folks and my counselor. They, of course, took me to “professionals” who asked the sort of questions you’d expect: “Just what do the voices tell you to do, Wendy?” Sigh. Everybody sort of naturally assumed I was nutso. And, of course, not one of those professionals believed it when I explained that the voices didn’t really “tell me” anything at all. I couldn’t even understand what they were saying! It was sort of like being at a concert before it started, you know? When everybody is talking to everybody else? And because EVERYBODY was talking, then as it got too loud to hear at a normal tone, everybody started talking louder and louder. On rare occasions, I could pick out an individual word, like somebody would yell “NO!” or “Stop!” … or maybe a scream every now and then. But never anything I could actually understand. It didn’t matter if I was really IN a crowded room or by myself in the woods, it was always the same, though sometimes (for no apparent reason) the voices were louder. And it didn’t take me long to start lying about it, either. When I announced to the psychiatrists that I was “cured,” they were only too happy to consider the case closed so they could just send my folks the bill.
And so, there I was … the middle of BioChem, and it sounded (to me, anyway) like everybody in the whole world was talking at the same time, and I just couldn’t take it anymore. I got up and left the class, without a word to the Prof or anything, and I wandered back to my room in hopes of taking a nap, or maybe committing suicide or something.
And when I walked into my dorm room, I couldn’t believe my eyes. The place was spotless! And there was my roomie, Tina, standing there all CLEAN and nice-looking … not the normal slob of herself at all. I looked around. She’d even re-made MY bed, with clean sheets (which she must have done herself in the laundry room).
Now, when the voices are really howling, it’s sometimes hard to carry on a decent conversation, but I got the impression that she was apologizing profusely about how she had lived during our three weeks together, and she promised that she would be different now. And then she said that she wanted to go out, and maybe do lunch, and hang out together for awhile. Of course, that was the LAST thing I wanted to do, but she kept going on and on about it, and finally I just told her, alright, let’s go. I mean, with the voices going the way they were, I just wanted to shut her up, you know?
So I followed her as she led me out into the parking lot to her car, and we got in, and she started driving. I was in such a foul mood that I didn’t even care where we were going. She asked if I wanted to go somewhere for lunch, but I told her I wasn’t really hungry. We were quiet for awhile, and I didn’t even object when I realized that she was driving off into the country somewhere. But I DID perk up when she started telling me about her mother. It was one of those things that someone tells you, and you really DO NOT want to hear about it, but it’s so absolutely awful that all you can do is sit and listen.
Anyway, it seems that her whole life, Tina’s mom had been doing horrible, terrible things to her; things like hitting her with stuff that REALLY hurt her; or she’d cut her with a knife (her own daughter!); or put drain cleaner in her food! And then, she’d take her to the hospital and tell all the doctors that Tina was doing it to HERSELF! And if Tina said anything to anyone about it, her mom would use some argument that made it look like SHE was the victim! And then when they got back home, she’d hurt Tina even worse! I told her that I knew about this … I’d learned about it in one of my courses! But I couldn’t remember what it was called. Proxy-something-or-other. I wished I could remember. The voices weren’t helping the situation any.
But Tina said that everything was okay now … everything was alright. She told me that the night before, a friend had taken her out to a place where she had talked to some women who had helped her! And these women … they were witches! Real witches! Even though they didn’t like it when you called them that. Anyway, they did something, like a ceremony or a Witch’s Sabbath or something, and when it was all over, Tina had understood. She had been caught up in a sort of self-destructive cycle because of what her mom had done to her (and that’s why she had made MY life such a living hell these past few weeks). But now … now she KNEW what she had to do. Now she KNEW how to break that cycle. And for the first time, for the very first time, she truly thought she was going to be able to live a normal life.
The car stopped in front a huge house in the woods. I could see a big lake down the hill beyond it. She got out and told me that there was someone she wanted me to meet. I really didn’t want to meet anyone, but I got out of the car.
“And about those witches,” she told me, as she stood by her open car door. “There was a price I have to pay because they helped me.”
“What’s that?” I asked. I got distracted. A little dog came running up to me and began jumping up on me. I stooped down and picked her up, and she started licking my face.
“I have to bring them another woman who needs help,” she said. “And Wendy, I don’t know ANYBODY that needs help more than you!”
I heard the door slam and I spun around as she started the car. I could only stare in open-mouthed astonishment as she drove off, waving her hand out the window in a bye-bye sort of motion. I was still holding the little dog, which continued to lick my face. I couldn’t BELIEVE it! My purse was still in that car! And my cell phone! I had nothing!
I put the dog down and watched the car until it was out of sight. I looked around. The little animal was sitting at my feet, peering up at me affectionately. “What are YOU looking at?” I asked her. She barked several times. At last, with no other option open, I turned and went to the house and rang the bell.
A young woman about my age opened the door. She was holding a baby. It was one of those moments that your brain screams at you: Do not stare! Do not stare at this person! But, of course, you stare, anyway. The girl was an albino, with pale pink-white skin, snow-white hair and eyebrows, and eyes that were the color of robin’s eggs: pure, pastel blue. Everything about her was striking. She was probably the most beautiful woman I had ever seen.
“Hello,” the girl said as she opened the door. “Can I help y….” and she stopped dead in mid-sentence and stared at ME! It’s hard to describe. I felt dumpy and plain next to her, but I also felt incredibly DRAWN to her. I suddenly wanted to know her … talk to her … BE with her.
“Uh … Can I use your phone?” I stuttered. “I’m … uh … sort of stranded out here. I … uh … need to call a cab.”
Finally, she blinked. “Um … sure! Please … please come in!” She opened the door wide for me. The little dog took the opportunity and ran in ahead of me. At the same time, the baby held out her arms toward me, issued a loud “GOO!” and broke into a huge smile. “You seem to have acquired a fan club,” the pale girl said as I stepped inside. She actually blushed. “I’m one too, I guess. I’m sorry I stared at you just now. It’s just that … um … I’ve never seen another one before.”
“Another … what?” I asked. I was closer to her now. My skin tingled. I felt a little short of breath.
“Another one of us,” she answered, laying her hand on my arm. Her touch was almost electric. She smiled up at me. “You can FEEL it, can’t you?”
I tried to tell her that I had no idea what she was talking about, but my lips wouldn’t be a party to such an obvious lie. “I … I don’t understand what’s happening,” I told her.
“Oh, I understand it,” she responded, “but I have NO idea what to DO about it. Brenda will know.” She turned to face the empty hallway. “Brenda! Dee! Come quick!”
I waited only a few short moments before two more girls appeared, these slightly older … in their mid-to-late twenties, I suppose. One had long black hair and was slender, but looked sort of pudgy around the middle. The one with red hair was a bit taller and carried a notebook and pencil. They too were exceptionally pretty, and they too stopped short when they saw me and stared openly at me. I stared back. I was beginning to feel a little lightheaded. The same sort of odd attraction seemed to surround them like an aura.
“Holy cow!” said the redhead. “Brenda! Another one!”
But the brunette was already advancing toward me, her right hand outstretched toward me. I reached out to take it automatically. “I’m obviously Brenda,” she said cheerily. “This is Dee … and Willie. And you are …?”
“Uh … Wendy. Wendy Colliers. You see, my … uh … roommate seems to have … uh … left me here for some reason. Can I use your phone to … uh ….”
“You don’t need a phone,” Brenda said almost patiently. “You need to know what the hell is going on, don’t you? You need to know why you’re having this weird feeling, being around us, right? And I’ll bet you anything that you have a problem. A problem SO big and outrageous, that you haven’t even let anybody else KNOW about it. Isn’t that so?”
I suddenly found it hard to breathe correctly. The brunette … Brenda … was having the most profound effect on me of all. It’s almost impossible to describe my feelings toward her. I felt like if I reached out to her, and held her, and let her hold me, that everything would be alright. “You know?” I asked. I felt tears on my cheeks. “You know about them? You can help?” I looked around at the other two. “Are you the witches?”
Brenda winced. “We are NOT witches! I really, really wish people would stop calling us that!” She took a deep breath. “Now, come into the kitchen. I just made some tea … or there’s some coffee left, if you prefer.”
I followed them into the cooking area. I nodded in approval. It was a well set-up kitchen. One of them obviously knew how to cook. They put the baby into a highchair and put a fistful of Cheerios in front of her, which she started picking up in her pudgy fingers and trying to maneuver into her open mouth. Brenda poured a cup of tea and put it at one of the places at the kitchen table, indicating that I should sit down. The others settled into the other places at the table, and we all just sat there, staring at each other.
Finally, I couldn’t stand it anymore. “How did you know about the voices?” I asked Brenda.
She smiled. “I didn’t, but I knew it would be something. Voices, huh? I’m betting they began when you started having sex … or maybe when you first started having your period. What do the voices tell you to do?”
I blinked and remained silent for a long time, thinking. My period. It HAD been just about that time when they started! How had she known that? I looked around at their faces. They weren’t rushing me. They weren’t prying. They seemed … helpful, understanding. I took a deep breath, and then I just started telling them everything! About the voices, about my day, about the weird feeling I was having right now, being near them. “But how did you know my problem started when I began having my period?” I asked.
“Okay,” she told me, “first things first. The reason that we’ve all been staring at you is because we all have a … bond, I guess you could call it. There isn’t a word for it, really … not that I’ve been able to find. But WE (she made a gesture that took in her two friends) call ourselves ‘Naturals.’ Obviously, you’re one, too. We didn’t know there was another one out there until now.
“Each of us started noticing our ‘talents’ when something happened sexually. Willie’s started about the time she first had her period; I didn’t notice mine until I started having sexual feeling about Freddy, my husband; and Dee’s didn’t start until she began having sexual feelings … about ME.” (She blushed when she said that.)
“But now … we’re going to help you, Wendy! We’re going to help you TWICE! We’ll explain all about this “Natural” stuff after we do something about your ‘voices.’ She turned to Willie. “Do you know anything about …?”
“Yes!” Willie squealed. She had obviously been agitated during my story, but hadn’t wanted to interrupt. Her excitement made me think of an exhilarated teen. “I saw Auntie help a girl once with EXACTLY the same problem! I know precisely what to do!”
She reached out to Dee and took her hand, then she took Brenda’s with her other one. Dee and Brenda both reached out toward me. “Take a deep breath, Wendy,” she said to me. “Here we go!”
“It can’t be this easy,” I muttered, more to myself than to them, but I did take a deep breath, and I reached out to either side and took Dee’s and Brenda’s outstretched hands. I looked around at them. Nothing was happening. I wanted to tell them that, but they each seemed lost in their own thoughts. The voices kept roaring.
It took me quite awhile to comprehend that, while no one was saying anything, I began to realize things about them that defied any logic. Brenda, for example, was pregnant. I don’t know HOW I knew, but I did … emphatically … without a doubt. I also knew that Dee and Willie had made love to each other that morning after they woke up. I had always told myself that I was tolerant of lesbians … even though I didn’t particularly like the concept. Of course, I’d never really talked to one about it before. And, I somehow knew, they weren’t really lesbians, they had male lovers, too (but no … they both made love to the same man!). How did I KNOW this stuff?!? After a long minute, just before I was about to say something to them, Willie broke the silence, and my crazy thoughts were suddenly forgotten.
“Please look at me, Wendy,” she said in a sort of hollow voice. I did so. “Now, close your eyes.” I did that, too. “All of the voices you hear are on a single plane. The plane is two-dimensional. If you look hard enough, you will see this plane. It’s going to look a little like a really big sheet of paper, and all the voices are on that sheet. If you try, you can imagine it easily. Tell me when you see it.”
It WAS easy to imagine something like that. Unexpectedly, amazingly, I saw it in my mind with distinct clarity. “Alright, I can see it,” I told her.
“Great. Now, that sheet contains all the voices in the whole world … but if you think about it, that number isn’t infinite. The sheet of paper DOES have an end. If you look to both the left and right, you can see the edges. You can SEE it, if you look. Tell me when you can see the edges.”
Once again, I could actually envision what she was talking about behind my closed eyelids. “I see them. I see the edges.”
“Great. Now, I want you to roll that sheet of paper up, from one side to the other. Just roll it up into a long, thin tube. And when you finish rolling it up, it’s going to look sort of like a long soda straw, all rolled up. A long tube.”
“Yes,” I said calmly. “I can see it. All rolled up.”
“And now, open your eyes and look at me, but look through the tube. Look through the soda straw.”
I blinked my eyes open and looked at her. “Alright, I’m looking at you through the straw.”
And what to you see? she asked.
“I see you. Just you … but … but … um …. Could you say that again?” I asked her.
You hear me, but not the other voices, right?
“How are you doing that?” I asked her. “How are you talking without moving your lips? Without opening your mouth?”
You can’t stop the voices, Wendy. But you can control them.
“How are you DOING that?!” I said frantically. But of course, there was only one real answer to that question, wasn’t there? And I thought: You’re using your mind, aren’t you? You’re talking to me with your mind!
But she just stared at me for several seconds. And I heard her think: If you’re trying to communicate with me, you can’t. I can’t hear YOU think. You are the only one with the gift.
“Gift?” I shouted. “For ten years now, this has been my CURSE!”
“There’s one more lesson,” Willie said, her voice coming a split-second behind her thoughts, creating a horrible echo. “Close your eyes. That’s right. Now, imagine that soda straw again. Can you see it in your mind? Okay, now, in your mind, take your thumb and forefinger, and reach out and pinch the straw closed. You’ll have to keep it pinched closed in your mind. It will take a little bit of an effort at first, but soon, it will just become second nature. Are you doing that? Alright, now open your eyes and let go of Dee’s and Brenda’s hands.”
I did. I looked around at them. Brenda was still very close to me. A sob rose in my throat, and I turned to her and clutched at her with my arms. And she held me, too, rocking me and shushing me as I cried. I looked up at her, looked around at the others, and I tried to make them understand.
“Silence!” I told them, shaking with emotion. “Blessed silence! The voices are gone! You … you SAVED me! I was thinking about … thinking about k-k-killing myself!”
Brenda began stroking my hair. “I’m afraid you’re not out of the woods yet,” she told me, backing off from me a little so she could look into my eyes. “You’re only halfway there, and WE can’t take you the rest of the way.”
I sat up straight and wiped my tearstained cheeks with my palms. “You mean, this is only temporary?”
“No,” Willie said seriously. “You can control your gift now. You’ve done that. And by relaxing your mental pressure on that ‘tube,’ you can ‘listen’ to whoever you want. You will soon find out that distance has no bearing on that ability. You can ‘hear’ anyone you wish, wherever they are.”
Dee took up the conversation: “But you’re a Natural, Wendy. You’re like us! It is in our nature GIVE of ourselves; to BELONG to someone.”
Brenda picked up the dialog: “I’ll bet that recently, you’ve been having thoughts … and probably dreams … of a … sexual nature. Giving yourself to someone … someone strong. Dreams of submission; of subservience; of obedience.”
I felt the breath go out of me. How could they possibly KNOW that? I blushed crimson and looked down at my hands and said nothing.
“It’s going to happen, Wendy,” Dee continued. “Very soon now, you’ll find that you just HAVE to do that … do it for real.”
“And as you might imagine,” Brenda concluded, “the chances are pretty good that such a relationship will NOT be a good one.”
“And that’s what happened to you girls?” I asked, looking around. “You wound up in some awful relationship with some awful guy?”
They all smiled brightly. “No,” Dee said, “we were very, very lucky. We found a benevolent Master.”
“All three of you with one guy?” I asked, incredulously. “And you want to make ME another one of his … what? … slaves?”
Brenda laughed. “We’d love to have you as our sister, Wendy. However, I doubt very much if our Master would agree to take on another girl.”
“BUT,” Willie said, producing a thin, inlaid wooden box, “we CAN help you find the right Master for yourself.” She opened the box and took out some cards, which were split into two thin decks in the wooden container. She put them together into one big deck, held them out to me and asked me to touch them. I was VERY unsure about this whole thing, but I did so. She laid out five cards in a “plus” formation, and, as I suspected, I saw that they were tarot cards. She studied them for a moment, after putting on a thick pair of reading glasses, but then swept them all aside and began laying more cards out in a pattern that I first thought was just chaos, but they soon formed a circle. She stared at the circle for a long minute, and then burst into laughter and stood up.
“You are not going to BELIEVE this!” she shouted hysterically at her two friends. She turned abruptly to me. “Would you excuse us for a minute?” she asked, and pulled Brenda and Dee into a corner, where they huddled like players on a football team.
“You’ve got to be KIDDING!” Dee squealed.
“NO WAY!” Brenda chimed in.
They giggled and cackled like schoolgirls. “I’m telling you guys, this is REAL!” Willie whispered so loudly that I could easily hear her. “I checked it three times! And it’s going to be the real thing, no doubt about it! White picket fence and a mortgage and the whole nine yards! And KIDS! Lots of kids! She’s a virtual baby-factory!” They snuck peeks at me and giggled even more.
“How are we EVER going to convince Freddy to do it?” Brenda asked.
“Leave that to me,” Dee answered. She broke the huddle and walked over to the highchair with the baby in it. She unstrapped the tyke, and to my amazement, handed her to ME! “Wendy, could you watch Lizzy for a few minutes? We have to go talk to somebody.”
And they all turned and walked out of the room.
I felt like I was in a dream or something. And this baby absolutely adored me! She smiled and reached out for my hair and shivered with joy the way babies do when they get over-stimulated. The little dog walked over and plopped down at my feet. And my ears rang with the utter lack of sound. No voices. I still couldn’t grasp the wonder of that!
And then they were back with a tall man in tow … a man I recognized! He had sort of brown hair and sort of hazel eyes …but he held himself with authority, and he struck me as strong and forceful … the type of guy people notice. He hesitated for only an instant when he saw me, then walked right over and introduced himself. “Fred Fielding,” he said, and cocked his head a little to one side. “Do I know you?”
“Yes,” I told him. “You were my Prof in a Modern American Authors course I took three years ago.” I studied him carefully. “You look different. You’ve been working out or something.”
“Or something,” he responded quietly. “Have the girls told you what they want me … want us … to do?”
“No, Dr. Fielding, but I’ll do whatever they want me to. They saved my life. I’ll do anything you say.”
The Prof nodded. “Alright, then. Let’s go into the den and get this thing going.” He turned and walked out of the kitchen and down the hall. I stood up, trying to avoid the sleeping dog. Willie took the baby, and I let Dee and Brenda lead me after him.
“Will you trust us, Wendy?” Brenda asked as we all walked into a comfortable, masculine-looking den. “It’s going to take a lot of faith on your part.”
“Yes,” I answered immediately. “I think I’d hesitate if it was anybody by you. I mean YOU, Brenda. I don’t know why I feel that way about you, but I do.”
She nodded. “I won’t let you down.” She stopped and turned me toward her. I stared into her eyes. “Lesson one,” she told me earnestly. “Women should fight for their rights. But for US … for people like you and me and Willie and Dee ….”
“Naturals,” I said.
She smiled. “Yes, Naturals. Wendy, we HAVE to have a Master. We HAVE to give ourselves to someone … someone who will guide us, and protect us, and direct us to do the things only we can do. Someone we can … surrender to … completely. I know that deep down inside, that’s what you WANT to do, even if you haven’t admitted it to yourself.”
I couldn’t think of anything to say. I became aware that I was moist between my legs.
“Freddy is going to hypnotize you. He’s going to do it twice. And when he’s finished, you will never be free again. Never. From this evening forward, for the rest of your life, you will always belong to someone else.”
I glanced over at Dr. Fielding. “Him?” I answered. I found myself hoping that might be the case.
“No. But you’re going to be happy, Wendy.”
“Evidently, I’m going to be a baby-factory.”
She barked a little laugh, despite herself. “Will you trust us?”
“Yes,” I said resolutely. And I stepped away from her, walked over to the chair the Prof was standing beside, and plopped myself down in it, awaiting whatever fate had in store for me.