Buckingham Nicks-Part II of Fritz Series

Vienna Top of Her Class

***A/N mild sexual content nothing explicit***

"Hedwig and I lived together in Vienna while we were in school. We bonded...two Germans in Austria taking our university courses. Those were lovely days, I was so happy" Our chow is slopped into square compartments on our trays as we pass through the line for breakfast. Stevie's visit yesterday had the duel effect of granting me respite, and depressing me all at once. I've wondered more than once if Schlicz is truly mad herself, or maybe just deluded. To have collected these people in her own private menagerie, she must be crazy. But it shows an alarming amount of premeditation and calculation to "Gas Light" so many brilliant people...maybe she gets off on it

Max gets quiet as we pass the nurses station, our daily portion of pills passed to us in plastic cups. I've gotten pretty good at this "cheeking" thing and I seemingly gulp down my obligatory dose of horse tranquilizers and mood stabilizers, which have rendered most of the other patients nearly comatose. It's a sickening display, humans warehoused like boxes. Her failed and failing experiments forever lost to the ether. I sit with Henry, and the man he identified as Fivel. He's Russian and escaped from the soviet string quartet at a performance in Tammany Hall. His defection however lost him all of his friends and family, and since he's Russian he faced terrible prejudice from anti-communists groups in the states. He suffered in silence performing brilliantly night after night in the New York Philharmonic. Of course, he became despondent in his loneliness and attempted suicide several times. He met Schlicz and well you can guess the rest.

He's been here for five years, no family in the United States the only person to miss him. His cat, Minsk. Elaine is a sweet woman, tortured by her love of academia to the point she became obsessed with maintaining USC's undergraduate enrollment figures. The numbers were down by two percent one year and she became depressed...Schlicz offered to help her-that was three years and a lot of shock therapy ago, now she writes obsessively to the board of directors about how to fix the enrollment gap. She reminds me of Laura...

After breakfast is group which apparently consists of all of us admitting to our various faults real or imagined. We have to discuss a time in our lives when we felt like a situation we found ourselves in was out of our control...Irony thy name is group. I've been sitting in the common room watching Sesame Street thinking about what Stevie and Sara are doing now. Sara's probably eating her lunch and watching the same show I am, Stevie's most likely on the phone with her mother or my mother or Robin. She's probably a nervous wreck.

I keep coming back to how Schlicz did this to me, Max said it was implanted suggestion. Which I kind of understand...but it's not the what that bothers me. It's the how. How did she knock me out that quickly, how did she implant the suggestion? How did I not remember, still don't remember her doing this to me? How much of my daily life has been effected by what she did to me? I have to take an inventory of my life for the last six months. The end of our tour, Sara's birthday, my fight with Don, our house, my new song. Did she suggest it to me? What if she's manipulated my ability to play? I haven't noticed any changes. But if she can turn Fivel, and Elaine, and Henry into jellied masses of nothingness she can do it to me too.

Henry is the one to supply the answer no less than an hour later. It's time for my session again and he grabs my arm "Don't drink anything!" again Schlicz makes me her white tea. Again I hesitate to drink it, she says something this time and I consider my options. Drink the tea and make her happy, or listen to crazy Henry and not drink a thing.

"Lindsey, will Stephanie be coming today?" my heart beats faster, the threat is there if only subtlety. Drink the tea or no visit. I take a sip and it's bitter but hot and again I feel pleasant after finishing the cup. I answer her questions easily, and I even find myself agreeing with a few of her assessments and conclusions. The suggestions she's implanted in my mind come easily, freely. And I find myself describing in detail my affair with Carol Ann, which I know is fake. She surely knows it's fake. But she wants me to repeat it. Her experiment is working she can make me say and relive things that never happened.