The Mind Manipulators

Dr. Kerryn

Kerryn opened her eyes. Finally, she was done with scene after scene of newbie attempts at manipulating her mind. There were holes in all of their stories (they were new of course) but for some reason the last one struck her. Brushing the thought of the strange underwater world aside, she wrote down the remarks she had on every scene and waited as the mid-way students prepared themselves. Their assignment was to confuse her by creating multiple bursts of scenes with no logical ties in an attempt to scare her. Kerryn was mentally prepared for this and she had seen almost every possible scary situation you could think of, but there was occasionally someone original and creative enough to come up with something that could shake her.

“Are you ready Dr. Kerryn?” asked her technician Joan.

“Yes Ms. Joan, I’m prepared,” Kerryn answered. There was a rule at the Academy that you called everyone by their title and first name. Nobody really bothered with last names anymore; each person had a number instead. Joan nodded quickly and pressed a button. Kerryn closed her eyes and forced herself to relax.

A man runs at me with a scarlet knife flashing, dripping with blood. I try to run away, but I stumble and fall. He catches up to me and-

A doll sits opposite to me, nicely arranged among all the others. It’s a sweet little porcelain faced girl with an odd grin on her face. Suddenly her head turns and she jumps at me, waving her thumb-less hands in the hair. I feel a sharp burst of pain and-

A dog lies in front of me yelping in pain. A long cut along his entire stomach is gaping open so I can see his organs. A wolf sits beside the dog and starts to eat the dog’s internal organs. It turns and opens its bloody mouth, baring its teeth at me. It leaps and-

I find myself in pitch black darkness, not a single thing in sight. The room I am in is very small. The darkness smothers me and I feel short on air, even though I’m not claustrophobic or scared of the dark. I realize I’m being suffocated to death and so I thrash around, and when I surface I realize it was my own mother trying to kill me. Then a strange thought occurs to me. My mother doesn’t look like that! She has dark hair and dark eyes like me, not blonde hair and blue eyes and most definitely not tanned skin! At this realization the force supporting the vision around me crumbles and-

Kerryn opened her eyes again. The student she had been up against must have panicked once they realized they had failed to fully control her and released their control on her mind. She sighed. The poor kid would most likely be kicked out and end up on the streets, not able to return home because of the oaths sworn and papers signed. The parents would come on Visitor’s Day and discover that their gamble had been for nothing.

Joan looked at Kerryn sympathetically. Neither of them liked when a student failed. Gently, Joan inquired,

“Are you ready Dr. Kerryn?”

“Yes Ms. Joan,” she replied tensely. Once again, Kerryn tried to relax, but this time to no avail. She was somewhat caught unawares when the first images flew by.

I’m driving in a race with dozens of other cars flying around the oval track with me. Thousands of people are in the stands cheering us on. I realize this is the last lap of the race and I am in first. The first three corners go terrifically. At the last one however, a car from behind jostles me. I spin wildly out of control screaming in terror. The car seems to take on a mind of its own and we go flying over the barriers and into the crowd. The last thing I see before impact is a little boy’s joyful expression turning into one of horror.

“Prepare for launch! In t-minus 10 seconds… 10…9…8…7…” I am so excited for the launch of this spaceship! We have taken months, years in fact to reach this moment. After such meticulous work and many delays, the ship will finally set off into space. “6…5…4…3…” It’s so close now! Soon my name will be known throughout the world because I am the Chief of Operations, making me responsible for the huge success, of course. “2…1… We have lift-off!” I look up to the sky and gasp in awe at the huge ship rising quickly into the sky. Unexpectedly, there is an explosion and the ship is torn to pieces. Within a few split seconds flaming pieces of debris are raining down on us. We dodge and duck every which way, but it is not enough. Our pride and joy is what causes our own demise. I watch every single one of my colleagues die, and then I look up in time to see a particularly large chunk falling down towards me.

Water. It surrounds me, but not in a pleasant way. I am drowning and my limbs are too heavy for me to move. My lungs burn and I make an attempt to breathe in, but all I receive is a mouthful of water. The pain goes on and on as my field of vision gets smaller and smaller, blackness consuming it. I feel a soft and warm hand touch my shoulder and I turn to catch a glimpse of a strange creature. The image of the being is haunting; not because of its scariness, but because of how alien, how inhuman it is. Yet, there’s something there that my muddled mind cannot quite grasp, a concept just out of my reach. The being is strangely familiar and I can almost feel the memory connected to it come to mind, like a word that your tongue can’t seem to spit out even though it’s right there, almost (but not quite) tangible. The darkness is pulling at me even more, consuming everything around me, weighing down on me, my heart pumping wildly and then-!

…Then nothing.

Just nothing. A void. No colour, no physical sense of anything. I cannot feel, see, hear, taste or smell anything. It is all gone, any connection to the outside world. There is only the inside of myself, inhabiting whatever space (if any) that I take up. My mind still works, with plenty of little thoughts running through my head, but oddly empty despite that; it lacking the added complexity of processing all of my senses. Fear features predominately in all of my thoughts, numbing my mind. Unexpectedly, the fear is gone, and with it the numbness. The full scale of having no senses, no perception at all except for having the capability to think, hits me all at once. This is what truly scares me.

The nothingness.

The emptiness.

The void.

 I wish I could scream, but I have no mouth to open, no air to breathe, heck, no lungs to breathe air into. I have no vocal cords, I… I have nothing and therefore I am nothing. This only makes me want to scream even more and gesture to the world what I mean since I am mute. Alas, I cannot; I have no body. I exist only in nothingness.  But wait! If I am nothing, then why can I think? If I exist in thought then I must exist, that settles it. Yet the horror is still present in the back of my mind, tainting every thought.

Kerryn shivered as she came to. No abrupt awakening this time. Still, the last scene had been absolutely terrifying. The thought of not being, not even being dead, just not existing, was an original idea, one she had never come across before. How unusual. The student, whoever they were, had not tried to jar her as the first had, only to leave her with that prickly feeling on the back of her neck that would not go away. Perhaps this tactic was even more frightening than the first.

“Dr. Kerryn, any comments to add to the report?” Joan asked her quietly.

“Yes Ms. Joan. Are you ready to transcribe?”

            “Yes,” she replied after a bit of shuffling around. Kerryn couldn’t be sure, as she had still had her eyes closed, but she suspected Joan had been snacking.

“Commencing comments. Student is very successful at scare tactic in an emotionally manipulative way. I, Dr. Kerryn, recommend this student for Team Leader. The student is proficient in creating stories with very few plot holes of any sort. Their mental capabilities are strong, especially for their age group. I also recommend that we S.T.A.R. this student and keep a close eye on them for future references, specifically with regards to the possible new division to be created. Best regards, Dr. Kerryn. End comments.”

The strange thing was the first two scenes were fairly typical, no real genius there. The last two however, the final one in particular, had been pure gold. Usually students were one or the other and rarely an equal combination of both. This one was certainly out of the ordinary.