“I feel…a little better today, I guess. The…the compulsions are still there, but I know they’re compulsions, even if I can’t…always stop myself. It’s like my head is stuck on a track, and there’s…there’s no way off the track. I keep looking for a switch, someway to move past it, past what he told me to do that night…what I couldn’t do that night. I know that if I just…did it, I’d be free–”
“Richie, you know you shouldn’t think that.”
“I know, I know. I…I don’t…I don’t need more drugs, or a higher dosage! I…I won’t. It was just an admission of fact right? If I killed him. If I found him, and like…strangled him, or shot him, or ran him over with a car. If I just…thought he was dead. Maybe if someone told me he was, and really…really convinced me. Like showed me a finger! I could fingerprint it, and–”
“Richie, I think that’s plenty of sharing for this session. Why don’t you go to the nurse’s station,” the therapist said, tapping on the tablet beside him, while Richie stood up, wringing his hands, and went down the hall to take more pills.
Group. Jacob hated group–it was the worst part of the week, always. Still, Mark, his therapist, insisted on it. It helped, he said, to share your experiences with others. It helped you feel less alone, but Jacob always felt…alone here. He wasn’t like the other people here, in the circle–well, he was, in one very important way. But in every other important respect? He was very, very different.
How were they all the same? All of them had been, at one point or another, mentally manipulated or physically controlled by a Super, by a person with extraordinary powers. Well, more than that. The control had been so extensive, or so damaging, that they were all considered a potential danger to society at large. And so, until they were better, or fixed, they were locked up here. Richie there had been a cop. He’d had a run in with a Super connected to the mob, who had “convinced” him that he had to murder an important witness to a crime. He’d failed–and that had been five years ago. He couldn’t drop it. If he was out on the street today, he’d hunt them down just like before. None of them were responsible for these things of course–Mark always told Jacob that–but it was hard to believe you weren’t culpable in the failure of your own mind, especially when no one was about to let him leave any time soon.
“How about you, Jacob?” Mark asked, looking at him over the tablet, “We had an interesting conversation about your dreams in our last session, perhaps someone else is experiencing something similar.”
“I…I haven’t had any I’ve remembered lately,” Jacob said, trying not to show the frustration with being singled out to perform healing for people he couldn’t care less about. He didn’t see the point. Nothing he said was going to help these people–and nothing going on in their addled minds was going to help him either? Why pretend? And so, he refused–it was the one bit of control he still had. To just disengage. Jacob had only been here for a couple of weeks–this was only his fourth group session, but he refused to share anything. He wasn’t like the rest of them. How could they understand what he’d been through? Besides, he was in control, wasn’t he? The beast hadn’t broken out in days. He felt sane, though he wouldn’t for long, listening to any more of this.
Jacob, you see, wasn’t like the others in one very important respect–he was, himself, a Super. A Super who had, in turn, been controlled by another Super, and made to…well, lose control of something Jacob had never actually known that he possessed. Jacob had always known he was different. Faster, stronger, fiercer than other kids his age, bigger too, and always a certain hunger he could never really explain. He supposed, had things gone differently for him, he could have easily become a villain, of a sort. A bully, more likely. But that hunger had manifested as a desire to correct injustice, and so he’d registered and taken to patrolling the streets…but he hadn’t been at it for a few months before he wandered into a place he should have been more careful around–a bar run by another Super named Baccanal, an enchanter, of sorts.
One sip of his wine, and Jacob had been willing to do anything for the owner of the bar–and the more he drank, the more dedicated to him he became…but also, the more control he found himself losing. Control over something he’d never even known was inside him–a beast. Claws, teeth, fur–he didn’t recognize himself, soon enough, and Baccanal was thrilled at his newest acquisition, particularly when he discovered that the beast inside Jacob could morph into whatever animalistic form its new Master desired to see.
Jacob…didn’t recall much from the next year or so, of being pressed into Baccanal’s service. What he did remember…made him shiver with rage and humiliation. Becoming a satyr, waiting on tables in the bar, telling jokes and humiliating himself, usually. When Baccanal had a few special patrons come through, he would take on other forms, and service them as whatever mythical stud they desired–a minotaur, a centaur, more freakish forms he was glad the couldn’t fully recall. At long last, Baccanal had slipped up and gotten caught. Free of his enchanted wine, Jacob had managed to take control again…mostly. Due to the occasional slippage he’d experienced, and the fact that all Supers who were controlled had to undergo mandatory treatment, he’d ended up here, with these freaks, just waiting until he got the green light, and was released again. He hated being caged more than anything–and the beast in him was none to happy about the situation either.
Bracken's Corner 