Veronica Topple and the Machine of Deluded Dreams

Chapter 4 - Visions

I no longer fear hell. I have lived through worse and endured, hell would be such a paradise in comparison. It was such a startling revelation, with pain blasting through every fibre of my body, I had that one clear moment of clarity when I realised that truth. Pain and suffering meant nothing, I could endure it all and still survive. Once I realised that, nothing Doctor Preston did mattered any more, I had become immune.

***

"I am impressed," Preston said. "You should be proud of your son, none of the test subjects made it to twelve treatments without breaking."

"And yet after twenty you have still failed to deliver me my son," Frederic shot back with anger.

"I must say, it is perplexing," he said. "It seems she has developed an immunity to the pain and the treatment is no longer having the desired effect. I have some ideas, but they will be risky," Preston said.

"I don't care, do what you must, I have five weeks to present my son to board, if I fail to do that, I will lose control of my company," Frederic said, sounding panicked.

"Then I shall proceed against my better judgement," Preston said. "I trust you won't hold me responsible if you son expires from the new drugs."

Frederic paused to consider the risk and then dismissed it. He had already gambled everything on this treatment, what was one last cast of the dice. If his son died, his legacy would die with him and his son would be buried as a man. He would have to console himself with that. "Just do what you must," he said, a slight trace of remorse in his voice.

"Then give me another week, a change may be what is needed to finally break his mental illness," Preston said.

Frederic paid no heed to what the doctor said, his mind was elsewhere, watching the wretched human below who was a mere shadow of the son he once knew.

***

Three weeks of treatment had taken its toll on Veronica's body, while the mind remained resilient, the body had wasted away. She had rapidly lost weight after that first week and now appeared anorexic. After her tenth treatment, she began to retain her memories, a development that concerned Doctor Preston. It soon became apparent that further treatments were having less effect, instead of creating a strong aversion to all things female, it seemed that Veronica had developed an immunity to the pain, and when that occurred, its effectiveness became less until it had no effect at all.

With her memories came new behaviour. Unable to escape or commit suicide, she resorted to vomiting in an attempt to starve herself to death, and when that happened, Preston was forced to change his tactics. She was no longer allowed freedom of movement in the times she was left alone in her cell. Now, if she was unattended, she was restrained in a straight jacket. And yet, despite that change, she found ways to make herself sick. When she started to rapidly lose weight, Preston had her restrained and fed intravenously, and when she was deemed strong enough, the treatments resumed.

After sitting through another session of bazar hallucinations of her life as a boy and yet again seeing through the illusion, she remained in her seat while another round of torture was administered. She heard, rather than saw, Preston leave the room and drew some comfort from the fact that the man was no longer there to gloat over her pain. Somewhere, her father watched, she was sure of that and had wondered why he had not come to see her and gloat over her situation. That made her wonder if he found her current situation distressing. Which led her to ask her self why he was putting her through all this.

The door opened and the man she hated most returned. He spoke to a nurse and the projections stopped along with the electric shocks. The pain of the injection lingered, but she had become almost immune to it by now. With some relief, the wooden batten was removed and she was able to flex her jaw.