Hydra.

“What?”

When the phone rang, I had no intention of working, no matter who called or what the job entailed. Tony Di Bianco was hard to say no to. With Tony you are polite.

“I need you to get rid of something for me.” It was his bum-boy Tazio the Knife.

Tony never talks on the phone. It's beneath his dignity. Presumably, he must have talked to his kids or his wife or his mother on the phone, or someone, during the course of his lifetime.

Tazio is a total lunatic. He never cares. A proper guy should wise up and assume someone is always listening. He would be right happy to go to jail and do twenty-five-to-life for his old friend Tony. Tazio’s a bug in every sense of the word. He worships Tony.

“I’m very sorry, you must have the wrong number.” I grumbled, dead tired after a long day.

I promptly hung up, but that was just our way.

An hour and a half later, I was sitting a little bleary-eyed in a back booth at the truck stop near the main Highway 401 interchange. My tail was clean, and I was using my spare car and my spare name. I just don’t know who I am anymore. It helps to be stone cold sober, and I got no wants and warrants and nothing up my sleeve. My prints aren’t on file anywhere. I’m never armed, and I never carry dope. Honestly, I have nothing to worry about. All I could do was to sit and wait and try not to worry.

Finally another guy came in. It was Phil, and thank God for that. So far, plenty of truckers and travelers had come and gone. I was getting a little antsy, what with the imagination working overtime and the knowledge of who I was dealing with. It is extremely hard to turn down work from these guys, and I was wondering what I had been tapped for. I was happy enough that it wasn’t Tazio or Tony.

I waved him over. Phil and I are troubleshooters. He’s got a full-time gig. I’m kind of a subcontractor. It’s like working on permit from the union local.

“Hey, Brad. Sorry to keep you waiting.”

“Hey, that’s okay, Phil."

He ordered coffee. We chit-chatted about sweet nothings. He had a wife and kid, I once had a wife and kid, and we always make sure to ask about each other’s wives and kids, right? He commiserated on my loss, but I told him not to make a big thing out of it.

“I prefer to try and forget.”

We went on to the Blue Jays, and then the waitress brought him a coffee and she was kind enough to refill mine. I handed her a ten and said “Thanks.” Being able to take a hint, she screwed off and stayed off.

Brad swilled the coffee down quicker than anything, but then all of us have iron guts and gravel-bottomed throats. He probably wanted to get home to the family.

We stepped outside and swapped keys. Phil told me to lose the blue plastic barrel in the back of his black pickup truck, a Dodge with a V-10 motor. Phil’s not an idiot. He had it strapped down properly, which is not easy to do with a barrel. I wouldn’t want that to come in through the back window.

“Any suggestions?”

“Not really. Just stop into the barber shop tomorrow and drop the truck off. If you come at eight, I’ll drive you home before I open up. If not, we’ll make arrangements later.”

“Any idea what’s in it?” I wasn’t that curious, but if there was a body in there, it would be helpful to know.

The contents of the barrel would have some bearing in my choice of disposal, obviously, and Phil gave it a moment’s thought.

“Pour it out into a pond or a ditch somewhere. Then take the barrel to a car wash and wash it out. I don’t know, blast off the label and squish it up or something and toss it out somewhere five miles down the road. Chuck the barrel anywhere, I suppose.”

“I could drop the barrel off near the barrel factory. I’ll go down Oil Patch Road and toss it over the back fence.”

An empty plastic barrel shouldn’t be too heavy. I worked in the recycling area when I was fourteen. Them old steel barrels, still half full of chemicals, solvents or motor oil or whatever, were pretty hard to handle, at least for a skinny kid.

"Sure. No one would even care. Anyway, Mister Bawnz can’t take the shipment right now. All those congressional hearings. They won’t do nothing to him, but it’s just too hot right now.”

“Okay, whatever." I would have preferred to know even less. “Do you think he’ll make the Hall of Fame?”

He grinned at that. Bawnz had the hits and the fans wanted another myth.

“Of course. I got a lot of money riding on it.” He had a gleam in his eye.

I was damned glad it wasn’t a corpse, although there are ways to liquefy a body. But then it wouldn’t have been such a rush job.

Phil handed me a thick wad of bills, and that was pretty much it. “Put it in number thirteen-twelve. Leave the keys under the passenger-side floor mat and lock the car,” I said.

“Okay.” He grinned and we shook hands.

All Phil had to do was to drop off my spare car and then walk two blocks and call a cab. If he was worried about leaving a trail, he could walk maybe ten or twelve blocks and be home in half an hour.

* * *

“The common pond hydra is a small, freshwater animal,” Detective Sergeant Andreas Papadopolous told me four days later, from across the little desk in the interview cubicle.

His angry black eyebrows, almost a mono-brow at the best of times, met heavily in the middle. His black mustache, thick and long enough to stick out past the end of his nose, quivered in outrage, but then we were friends once. We played Little League softball on the same team. Our team always came in last place, as I recall. In my whole career, I hit one home run, and I had one single-handed double play to my credit. I caught a fly ball and some guy was leading off from second base just a little too far. Dead easy. My homer took a funny bounce off the fence in the smallest of the parks we played in, and the fielder tripped and lost his glasses. No Hall of Fame for me. Maybe I should have gotten onto the steroids.

“So?”

"In order to capture food and for self-defense it has a kind of poison. It has stinging cells in, ah, the ectodermic layer. These critters are normally pretty small, Brad.” Some deep tension lurked below the surface.

“And?”

“It’s just that when a hydra is cut up, even into fairly small pieces, it has the ability to regrow, like a lizard that loses its tail. They re-grow into whole and complete individuals. You kill one and you end up with four or five of them. It just doesn’t seem fair, does it? It’s just that you’re not such a bad guy, and it’s just that you went through some tough times, what with the losing your house and stuff, Mary and little Bradley getting killed by that drunk driver and all. You know we’re all genuinely sorry and all that. We’re just trying to keep you out of trouble here, Brad.”

“What are you implying?” The key thing is to be patient with the cops.

Amateurs think they can talk their way out of it and somehow go home at night. It’s the amateurs that fill up this nation’s jails. My lawyer will be here tomorrow for the bail hearing, and then I can go get a good meal and be at home and in my own bed by tomorrow night. And I’ll never do another minute in jail, at least not on this bogus little beef.

“What I am implying, is that you made a run for Tony Di Bianco, and that while you really didn’t know what you were doing... I mean, how could you know what a two-hundred-something litre drum full of concentrated growth hormone would do to a pond full of innocent little organisms? Uh... you are in one hell of a lot of trouble.” He growled.

“What are you saying?” I allowed just the slightest tone of rising impatience to creep into my voice and my demeanor. “What are you getting at?”

“What I am getting at is that now we have four people dead and an unknown number of ten-foot tall hydras. They’re running around in suburbia. They’re following the old river and the canal. We don’t know where they’re going to pop up next. They’re kind of hard to kill, and you really haven’t lived until you’ve seen your best friend and partner of fifteen years sucked in and ingested by one of those things.”

Andreas broke off for a moment to take a couple of deep breaths.

“And if you don’t wipe that smirk off your face, I’m...” He broke off in red-faced anger as a heavy knock came at the one-way mirror on the wall.

Detective Papadopolous — whom I had grown up with and gone to elementary school with — got up and stalked out of the room. His only other option would have been to beat the living crap out of me. It’s what I would have done if the situation were reversed.

“I don’t believe any of this.” There were guys behind the mirror. “Anyway, screw you if you can’t take a joke!”

* * *

They couldn’t charge me with anything. I bet they tried that scam on ten other guys. We all fit the same kind of profile or something. There was one bad moment when I wondered if maybe they had me somewhere on a surveillance camera. None of them other suspects knew anything more than I did, and arguably less. Tony and Phil’s names were never mentioned, except by the cops.

A few of the boys came around and picked me up in a limo a few days later. We got pretty drunk, at least I did, and they were all saying how Big Tony owes me. I never knew I had so many friends. All good guys, really.

As for the offer they made, I’ll have to think about that one for a while. It all depends on what he wants me to do. Sooner or later the authorities will kill off the last of those hydra-thingies, according to the news boys. Maybe we’ll get a couple of really cold winters in a row or something. That will probably kill them.

Now I’m on my way with the family firm if I want. There may still be time to back out. It’s better than social assistance, food banks, soup kitchens, and geared-to-income housing. There's no future in that. Tony takes the whole crew to Florida for a month every year. It’s first class all the way. This is the greatest country in the world.

END

This story originally appeared in Bewildering Stories.

Pictures: Lareaen Hydra, Gustave Moreau. Top: Daniel Stroupin, freshwater hydra. (Wiki.)

Gotchimon.

The whole town is breathing a collective sigh of relief. Today it was announced that the working class antihero ‘Gotchimon’ was arrested. Capable of leaping a tall outhouse with a single bound, faster than a speeding electric scooter, the man of pig iron, the man of kleenex finally got caught.

That’s not to say that he didn’t have admirers, because he did.

Gotchimon had been haunting parks, trails, and remote wooded areas within the city limits.

He liked to jump out and scare people, especially pimply-faced fat girls, who should in the opinion of this writer have appreciated the attention perhaps a little more than they did. Really, they should have been flattered by all the attention. A pudgy man in his Adonis-style underwear and a Nixon mask is a kind of unusual sight, even around here, but not exactly unheard of. The camouflaged, insulated, heavily lugged assault clogs were a nice fashion touch.

It’s hard to say what happened to Gotchimon. He started off well enough, drawing attention to the fact that this is a pretty boring little town, with insufficient recreation facilities for the poor, the lame, the sick, the weak, and those too cheap to buy a movie ticket or spend six dollars for a short glass of watery draft beer. Those who refused to rent a pair of bowling shoes, taking the chance of Plantar’s warts and foot fungus. Those who were too lazy to walk anywhere, or too cheap to get a dog for companionship, or perhaps they were too old to buy a skateboard and commute to the employment centre on a daily basis.

This is top secret, okay? But I used to hang out with Gotchimon. We went to high school together. Gotchimon was the one who was always sneaking into the girl’s shower room when the rest of us were clustered around the physical education instructor’s office, making a poor pretence that we didn’t understand the schedule. We were a diversion, and he did the dirty work.

We made a good team, the small group of us, mostly in our first year of high school.

Although Rene Beddenracker was a college dropout who had a beard, and spent much of the day hanging out in the staff lounge, trying to pick up chicks. Gotchimon had started off as a fairly normal boy, and at the time, the little palm-sized video recorder had seemed like a fun and easy way to make a scene and keep it going. It was all in good fun, and with the mask and the pink polka-dotted briefs, he never got caught. No one could give a description without breaking up in laughs, and the authorities thought it was a prank on the part of the victims. Most people who complained about it, ended up in detention, writing lines and quite frankly learning a valuable lesson about authority.

I think it was the adrenalin. He got addicted to his own brain chemicals. It was the thrill of the chase, the stalking of the game that got him. One wonders what might have happened if he had ever attempted to take it to the next logical step, the next level of the game. Gotchimon was traumatized as a very small boy, and I think it affected him badly.

I got the story from the friend of a friend, so I know it’s true.

It seems that old man Brady was looking for a pet, one that wouldn’t cost too much, and in fact the city had recently passed a cat-bylaw. People were complaining about cats crapping in the window-boxes, although I say it was raccoons and possums, as the window boxes were invariably up about the fourth floor. But no one ever listens to me. Anyhow, some crazy farmer who was going bankrupt, couldn’t wait for the provincial government to hand over five or ten million bucks to bail him out again this year, and so he was giving away all the livestock on his farm, that is to say anything he couldn’t comfortably eat.

Old man Brady was going up and down the side-roads picking up bottles and cans, as he was on a full provincial disability pension, and consequently starving to death, a long, slow, drawn out death. The federal government has just passed the “Right to die with dignity act,” after long consultations with various interest groups, such as the chemical industry, the tobacco industry, the asbestos industry, and the ear-candling and aromatherapy industry. So maybe things will get better for the disabled. It’s hard to say. Old man Brady had terminal flatulence, and so he was unemployable, if not outright disabled.

The short story is that old man Brady offered to take something small off of his hands, and he promised to look after it, and feed it, and walk it, and love it, and sleep with it. He promised that he would be a good owner, and that it was going to a good home, so the farmer gave him a duck.

The farmer gave him a duck out of the sheer goodness of his heart, hard as that is to believe.

Old man Brady was going home with that duck under his arm, when he passed a movie theatre. He couldn’t help but notice that a movie he had been waiting months to see was in town.

Old man Brady still had forty bucks left from his cheque. I guess it must have been cheque day, and he wanted to see that movie real bad. His rent was paid, and his dope dealer was on vacation in Cozumel, so he figured what did he need forty bucks for? He could always go to the soup kitchen a day earlier, or tomorrow, in other words.

So he shoved the duck down his pants, bought a ticket and went in to see the movie. At first, everything was fine, as he didn’t get out much. So even the opening credits, the grand symphonic overture to the film, was the best music he had heard in years and he was enjoying himself. It was nice to forget his problems for a while.

The movie theatre was crowded, and the movie got going, and old man Brady was really enjoying himself, when the duck began to get a little cramped in there. It started squirming around, and it was clearly uncomfortable in such close quarters. Taking a quick look around, old man Brady made sure all eyes were on the screen. Feeling himself to be safe enough, he opened up his zipper, and gently pulled the duck’s head out so that it could breathe properly, and look around, and that was fine as far as it went. He figured the duck might like to watch ‘Rocky XIV.’

But my old friend Gotchimon was sitting in the seat right next to him, as it was his birthday and his Aunt Shelley had taken him to the movies, as a special birthday treat. I guess he must have been about fourteen years old at that point, which is a pretty impressionable age.

All of a sudden he was pulling on Aunt Shelley’s arm, and whispering fiercely, and she just wanted to watch the movie.

“What is it?” she hissed in some impatience.

“The man next to me is exposing himself,” gasped the young fellow who would go on to become Gotchimon.

“Just ignore it,” advised his Aunt Shelley. “Maybe he’ll stop…”

“But it’s eating my popcorn!” complained Gotchimon.

So that’s probably what set Gotchimon off all those years ago, the ruckus, the uproar, all the women in the audience screaming, and all the men running around trying to catch that darned duck…all the attention that old man Brady got for that little escapade. It was in all the papers, and he was even on the TV, although at first the cops couldn’t figure out what to charge him with. Eventually they decided he was insane, and now he lives in a town not far from here. He wrote my weird Uncle Bob, once, and told him he’s doing fine, with his own room and everything, and all the crazy sex he ever wanted, and he even has pets, although why anyone would want to keep a rat in a hat-box is anyone’s guess.

It sleeps on the corner of his bed, or so Uncle Bob told me.

So that’s probably why Gotchimon was running round in a mask and his underwear—that’s what the slang word ‘gotchies’ means here in Canada—and according to Occam’s Razor, ‘all other things being equal, the simplest explanation must be the truth.’

Gotchimon had admirers, almost as many as the Mayor, one of those perpetual bachelors, although his secretary would marry him if she could just get him in front of a preacher. I figure if she can’t marry the Mayor, there’s plenty of guys on death row in the States, and why not try one of them guys? It would be about as much fun as marrying the Mayor, that’s for sure.

I know the police sergeant that busted him, a habitual liar, who shaves his legs, and claims to be a cyclist, although no one has ever seen him on a bike. But that’s another story. Anyhow, they got Gotchimon for ‘voyeurism,’ and ‘wearing a mask while committing an indictable offence.’

The sergeant, who earns about ninety thousand bucks a year, and allegedly an expert on psychological crimes, doesn’t apparently know the difference between voyeurism and exhibitionism! But that’s okay, as neither do the local criminal court judges. They’re all fifty-year-old unmarried women, and quite frankly it looks pretty bad for Gotchimon.

I figure they’ll send him up the creek for a long time. Maybe he’ll end up sharing a room with old man Brady, and they can talk about old times, sit there and watch porn movies, and compare notes on how best to abuse oneself.

I guess you could say the story has come full circle. And everybody likes a happy ending.

END

(Photo by 'Noodle Snacks, Wiki Commons.)

Vampire Ballerina.

The water closet gurgled alarmingly but she had no time to call the handyman.

Madame Pilon rounded the corner and almost tripped on the small and delicate figure of Emilie.

“Oh, dear, do you need to use the chamber?” she asked, for the use of Francais was one way she instilled higher culture, an awareness of a greater world into her young charges.

Emilie was about seven.

“No, Madame,” the lisping, half-whisper came in reply.

“Well, what is it, then?” Madame Pilon asked.

Emilie’s hand came up and she was about to suck her thumb, something Madame Pilon would not abide in her classes.

“Please don’t do that,” said Madame Pilon. “Come along then, we must begin the class.”

“I don’t want to,” said Emilie, turning her face away, and then looking back.

She clung to Madame Pilon’s legs, the top of her head obscured by the floating, shimmering tutu the madame wore when instructing.

Madame Pilon gently tried to pry her off.

“Emilie! What is the matter?” asked Madame Pilon.

“Marjorie’s being bad,” said Emilie, sucking her thumb in earnest. “I don’t like her anymore.”

“Oh, well, don’t you worry, we’ll soon put a stop to that,” Madame Pilon assured the child. “Come along now, let’s go dance and have some fun.”

Holding on to Madame Pilon’s left hand, Emilie struggled manfully to resist, and to hold Madame Pilon from going into the studio.

“Emilie!” gasped Madame Pilon. “What is the matter with you?”

“She’s a vampire,” said Emilie in a breathless revelation.

Madame Pilon threw her head back and laughed.

“Oh, Emilie! You are so precious,” she said, patting the wide-eyed child on the top of the head.

Dragging the child along the hardwood flooring of the hallway, with her little slipper-clad feet forlornly scrabbling in protest, Madame Pilon rounded the corner, laughing and giggling and trying to jolly the child along.

Emilie, clearly frightened or kicking up a fuss for some reason, wriggled and pulled and struggled to get away. Madame Pilon would have none of such misbehaviour in her school.

“Now, you must participate in the class, Emilie,” she said. “I don’t want to get in trouble with your mommy!”

“No! No!” cried Emilie, tears streaming down her round face. “I don’t want to!”

Madame Pilon pulled Emilie into the room, almost over-balancing herself, and turning, gently pushed the little girl over in the general direction of the long wall with its mirrors and the bar.

Faces in the mirrors regarded her in horror from all sides.

The silence was horrendous.

A cluster of little girls huddled in the far corner, faces white, and a deathly stillness hung over them.

Monseiur Arpeggio lay on the highly polished parquet, beside his piano, in an ever-widening pool of bright red blood. His dead eyes stared accusingly at the slowly turning ceiling fan as if to ask one final question.

Madame Pilon stood rigid in shock, staring at the smeared, wet, bloody little red footprints on the floor. Her mouth opened to scream. She heard a snuffling sound behind her and she spun around.

Marjorie was there, with dark red stains all over her normally pristine tutu. Her face was red and wet, and covered in gore.

She had a wild look in her eyes. Madame Pilon’s hand flew up to her mouth, staring at the unthinkable, the incomprehensible.

Marjorie took two steps and was upon her, clinging, clambering, crawling up her front…Madame Pilon screamed at the strength of the little girl, and the look in her eyes, and the fangs, and the blood all over the place.

Madame Pilon screamed, and screamed and screamed, but there was nothing to be done about it.


END

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Untitled. Excerpt WIP.

“I want you to get something for me.” Teddy was a pompous ass, but he paid well and had the nucleus of a good operation.

“Some Prince fancies himself a racing driver?” Dan watched the croupier, sure that this was it.

“Another card.” Teddy was not very drunk tonight.

Maybe later.

“You always want something.” Thornton was holding at eighteen, with the Ace of Hearts and the Seven of Clubs, which as any fool knows is a pretty good hand.

The game was Blackjack, good old twenty-one.

Teddy nodded in simple justice. Dan Thornton was one of his newest operatives, one with a lot of potential. The problem was in getting him to take it seriously

“Hit me.” Teddy looked at the card and grimaced, but held comment.

Dan didn’t care for politics, and he had no great ideological concerns. If only he wasn’t so caught up in the dream. A more cynical outlook might have been helpful. The man didn’t have a political bone in his body.

Teddy suppressed a giggle, which wouldn’t be seemly. Tonight Theodore Swainson, Lord Rokeby, was on his best behaviour, and speaking in his posh accent. He had a few of them, as Dan knew, his working class and Cockney accents would have done him good service if he went into vaudeville, or what passed for it over here, the British music hall circuit. Dan supposed in its own way, it was much like the racing circuit, and a bit of a hand-to-mouth existence for the actual performers of that fine art of mimicry. As a spy, it came in handy no doubt. Dan had seen him in action, and he was good. He had one of those pale, shapelessly ovoid faces that without that bit of a mustache, the hair dyed and combed differently, could be almost anyone, male or female, of a certain height and weight.

The game went on, quietly and professionally.

It was time, and they showed their cards. Teddy had held at fifteen.

The croupier grunted and lugubriously shoved a stack of money at Thornton. The impression he gave was one of sheer boredom, but the repressed glitter of humour was there in his eyes. The game was rigged, for a modest fee. A close observer would have seen that what Dan won corresponded pretty nearly to what Teddy lost, and then the house got their percentage as well. This was a good way to pay agents, and Dan had an appointment in town anyway. He had left a suit for alterations, and it was on the way to Italy, where he had another appointment.

If anyone asked, he could at least account for the money. He had paid taxes on it and everything.

The casino was a watering hole for big predators and small fish. Which Thornton turned out to be was entirely up to him. Working on the assumption that all governments are corrupt in all kinds of little ways, and Monte was no different than other places, meant that Dan had to show up if he wanted to get paid, and it was perfect cover for a professional driver. They tended to live large and die in spectacular fashion. It was not unheard of for them to leave a good-looking corpse, although it was kind of rare. Teddy wasn’t lackadaisical or irrational. It was sheer random arbitrariness, of a kind that must have made it hard for any foreign counterintelligence service to keep up with his movements, at least not without blowing their own cover.

Dan always looked forward to the game, but to him, the enjoyment was in the winning, or rather the illusion of winning. Maybe it was just the illusion that he could win. For part-time work, it paid very well and he needed the money to continue with racing in Europe.

“What is it this time?”

“A friend needs to see you.”

“You don’t have any friends.”

“True.”

They waited while cards were dealt.

“I want you to see a man.”

“And?”

“Listen to what he has to say.”

“And then?”

“He’ll give you a package.”

“What? That’s it?”

“What if something goes wrong? Presumably this is something, um, interesting.”

Dan wasn’t all that curious, but he needed to know the risks.

“Yes, it’s valuable and important.” He held Dan’s eye for a second to drive home the point.

Teddy smiled. He was here to gamble, and he had a big pile of chips.

“You’ll know what to do.” His eyes swiveled back to the table.

“It’s not so much the judgment, although yours is considerable. It’s the speed. We’d like to avoid complications.” Teddy pulled out a slip of paper and gave it to Dan.

It was the usual sort of a place.

“You’ll recognize the person who comes. The pickup is in Geneva.”

Teddy had his own special little branch working out of the basement of Whitehall and he knew all sorts of people. He never made the mistake of believing any of them were his friends.

Dan debated whether or not to put a little down on another hand, but he doubted if the croupier, who had just shuffled up with a fresh set of cards, would be so generous now that Teddy had tipped him a microscopic nod. Teddy’s eyes widened at something or someone and a scent washed over his left shoulder.

“Well, well, well. Dan Thornton.” The throaty, husky voice, smooth in its timbre, was enough to make any man sit up and take notice.

It took a moment for it to sink in. A chill went over him and the hair on his neck prickled in shock. He turned, and froze when he met those eyes and comprehended the meaning in the lady’s sardonic grin. She had her chin up. Dan Thornton had always been a sucker for a lady with a good chin, and she had dark blue eyes too.

It was her, all right, and after all these years, she was as beautiful as ever.

It was like a trap door opening up under him all over again.

END   Note: The year is 1938 and the action takes place in the casino at Monte Carlo. Dan's a racing driver, and perpetually short of money. Readers are welcome to check out my books on Smashwords, where 'The Handbag's Tale,' a short story in the noir detective tradition, can currently be had in all formats for free.

Fear Conditioning.

by The Evil Dr. Schmitt-Rottluff.




The intertwined dance of aggressor and victim reveals the social complexity of the encounter. Does fear ever go away?

This phenomenon has been studied in an emotional spin on good old Pavlovian conditioning in a variant called fear conditioning. An unsuspecting laboratory animal is introduced into a dimly lit cage, which is equipped with a speaker and wired with a floor grid. In the initial session, an unfamiliar but otherwise innocuous tone beeps into the chamber for a minute or two.

The mildly curious rodent pads around the cell, sniffing its environment, but is otherwise unconcerned by the noise. In the second session, “the fun begins.” When the beeping starts, so does a mild electric shock to the feet of the animal. The creature crouches and trembles, its cardiovascular system ratcheting up into overdrive. It only takes a few sessions, sometimes as little as a single session, and the connection between the tone and the painful electric jolt is firmly cemented in the creature’s mind.

Very quickly the sound alone is enough to elicit the fear response; and the rodent freezes in place, heart rate racing, blood pressure soaring to three or even four times the values observed in the initial pain-inducing sessions.

What is even more striking about this research, the associations between fear and environment are so strongly forged that many researchers believe they may be permanent.

“A period of safety illustrates this lingering power of conditioned fear. If the tone sounds many, many times without the shock, the intensity of the rat’s fearful response slowly decays, neurobiologists call this deceptive calm extinction. But the connection between fear and sound hasn’t dissolved; it has merely retreated underground. One shock—or even the rat equivalent of an overwrought Monday morning—and the fear circuit is reactivated,” according to Debra Niehoff, Ph. D. “The rat cowers in a corner of the cage, clearly anticipating the long-ago shock. The brain has not erased the fearful memory, it has simply created…a fragile detour that can be blasted away by stress or familiar environmental cues.”

The briefest exposure to stress can have profound results on behaviour. In a procedure known as time-dependent sensitization, (as described in the previous chapter,) a mouse was placed in one chamber of a two-room test cage. Ten seconds later, a light was flashed and a door revealed to reveal a nice, inviting, dark escape hole. When they darted in, they received a stiff shock.

For the next six weeks, the mice were returned to the lighted chamber for one minute every week. The door was kept closed, but the animals were periodically reminded of their previous experience. With each reminder, these stress-sensitive mice became more and more fearful. They jumped higher and faster at sudden noises, when placed in a maze, they exhibited symptoms of fear, some crouching in corners and others racing from wing to wing of the maze. Of the original thirty animals, twenty-five never completed the experiment, having killed each other in episodes of vicious fighting.

The neurons, the neural pathways regulating fear turn out to be very similar to those regulating aggression, and can be kindled by the same stimuli.

The response to stimuli can change over time, and the initial response to the first incident of harassment can be quite muted. Reports from veterans dating back to WW I, plus more recent work into PTSD has shown veterans, as well as adult survivors of physical and sexual abuse during childhood, had significant deficits in short-term memory. This is especially true for the recall of verbal information.

But even hardened and objective researchers were taken aback by the results of MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging) scans in a group of twenty-six veterans with PTSD and a carefully matched control group of twenty-two other subjects.

Patients with PTSD had clear evidence of a structural defect, an average eight per cent reduction of an area on the right side of the brain in the region of the hippocampus; and the greater the area reduction observed, the greater the memory deficit. High levels of stress and threat over a long period of time, cause structural and functional changes in the brain.

Simply put, a single spouse with dependent children undergoing harassment will suffer long term effects, even after the situation is resolved. “Harassment is the gift that keeps on giving.” The children will also suffer long-term effects. In a recent editorial in a community newspaper it was stated, “The children of broken homes cause huge costs for society.”

“Trauma not only leaves visible marks we can observe on the outside, imaging studies suggest that it also leaves marks we can observe on the inside,” according to a well-known researcher, John Krystal.

Whether trauma is the result of violence in combat, a criminal act, or parental rage, brain imaging demonstrates that one reason victims can’t “just get over it,” is that the violence has been almost literally “seared into their brain.”

Adrenaline is well known for its ability to crank up heart rate, respiration and metabolism in the face of an emergency. But it is the sympathetic nervous system and norepinephrine, the chemical precursor of adrenaline that alerts the adrenal glands in the first place, this triggers the heart, lungs, vasculature, (e.g. increased blood flow), stomach, and muscles. Thus the familiar symptoms of emotional arousal.

The perception of threat is a brain process. Alarming events, disturbing thoughts, even the apprehension caused by the arrival of an envelope from a lawyer or the income tax people; wakes up the sympathetic nervous system and triggers defensive responses.

This is the neural aspect of the flight or fight decision-making process.

Painful to remember, trauma cannot be forgotten. Symptoms like flashbacks and intrusive memories are part of emotional memory, the darker side of a neural process that can also remember in exquisite detail every aspect of the birth of a child.

So are the intense feelings of fear, rage, and panic that survivors experience when confronted with even the most trivial similarities between events in the present and violent events or traumatic events in the past. Their bodies continue to react to certain physical and emotional stimuli as if there were a continuing sense of annihilation. Fear conditioning stimulates the startle reflex in humans. Researchers at the National Centre for Post-traumatic Stress Disorder reported that eye blink responses to a blast of white noise were significantly higher in Desert Storm veterans suffering from PTSD and women who had suffered childhood abuse, compared to otherwise normal test subjects.

The consequences of violence, the terror of seconds suspended between life and death, do not vanish, for they have been burnt into our memory banks. Impossible to erase, they are all too easily reawakened.

END

(Photo: white rat in sleep deprivation experiment. If he falls asleep, he gets wet. Jean-Etienne Poirrier.)

The Evil Dr. Schmitt-Rottluff also appears in 'On the Nature of the Gods,' available from Amazon and other fine online retailers. This links to the paperback version.

'On the Nature of the Gods.' Excerpt.

Hope Ng baked in the hot sun, rising ever higher in the desert sky. Tied with rawhide thongs at ankles and wrists, scratched, bruised and with her clothes half torn off, the raven-haired Hope prayed for a miracle.

Deep in her heart lurked despair, for persistent struggles in the chill dawn hours had convinced her escape was impossible. Nearby, the thin tendril of smoke and rank smell of the fire was the only trace left behind by the war party.

As the shadows shortened, the first pangs of real thirst came, and she knew dread. She was going to die out here, never mind the carnage that had once been a peaceful train of settlers heading to a better life. It was all gone now, with clumps of bodies, families and individuals still recognizable in the stiffened attitudes of death. Most of the long line of wagons still smoldered.

Overhead, ominous black shapes circled, the long tip feathers trembling, always seeking an easy way. Their bony nostrils would be flaring in excitement, heads craning to take in the scene and the forms below.

It wouldn’t be long now, and they would come down. They would land within fifty yards, maybe closer. Then the awkward, half-hopping, half-sideways shuffle would begin. They would screw up their courage. They would look her over carefully. Their desperation for a meal and simple competition against their peers would embolden them. They might start on the dead first, but sooner or later she would be food for the vultures.

It would be better if she died of thirst or starvation first.

Somewhere nearby a hoof clinked against stone, a tiny, insignificant sound, but one out of place in a country still quiet after a windless dawn.

Hope’s heart thudded at the thought of them coming back to take care of some unfinished business.

Again it came, the strike of bone on rock, as two small birds in a scraggly bush in her peripheral vision dropped out of the thin foliage and fluttered away, towards the sun and into deeper shadows.

“Who’s there?” she called in an agony of suspense.

She prayed they would just kill her quickly and have done with it…

There was a faint but guttural grunt and several thuds came through the sand under her back, but she could hear little over the soughing of a rising breeze. Hot, sharp grains of sand stung her cheek, wet with fresh tears.

A hoarse breath, sounding wet and thick, came from right behind her head where she couldn’t see it, no matter how she twisted her neck and shoulders.

“Oh, my God,” she said.

Was she to be eaten by a Grizzly or a big cat? Her mind worked frantically to analyze the sounds. She sobbed in fear and frustration, yanking to and fro in fury, in one last forlorn attempt to break free. A horse blew, and a long dark shadow fell over her face, revealing in black silhouette the head and forequarters of the animal, one with a halter and a patch of white on the forehead.

“Ah!” she breathed.

She fell back on the sand exhausted again.

“Howdy, ma’am,” said a deep male voice, cultured and somehow unsullied by the twang and drawl of the typical Southern male. It was an honest voice, a good voice.

Leather creaked and another shadow fell across her as she looked up at her saviour in relief and a special kind of pleading humility.

“They give you a rough time, ma’am?” he asked, and she finally got a glimpse of his face.

She gazed breathlessly into kindly blue-black eyes, unusually large and expressive, tall and broad-shouldered as he was. The big fellow took off his hat, revealing a widow’s peak, and long dark hair sweeping out like the waves from the front of a windjammer. He mopped his brow with a blue and white paisley bandanna, carefully replacing his headgear.

“It—it was horrid,” she said. “Oh, thank God you’re here!”

“Indians are smelly, beastly creatures,” he advised, kneeling close and raising a canteen to her lips, the canvas cover delightfully cool and wet on her sternum, still heaving with exertion and emotion.

He dribbled cool, cleansing water on her lips and she tasted it greedily.

“They killed everyone, men, women and children,” she said in a gush of release. “They tied me up and were fondling me, and kissing me, and touching me. I think I belonged to one of them. Or rather two of them had a share in me, or it might have been a lot worse.”

“Yes, the other ones would have to show at least some respect for the property of a chief,” he said. “They was probably just funnin’ with you, ma’am.”

At the time, she was sure they were going to do it. What had gotten into their heads, to make them just break camp like that and go madly riding off was a mystery she had no interest in solving. Her head thudded back down into the sand. She lay there breathing quietly in a state of near-bliss.

'On the Nature of the Gods' is available from Barnes & Noble.   Blurb: Jeb is one of the toughest men alive, and he demands respect. After a personal humiliation at the hands of the New York City cops, he sets out on a trail of vengeance. In company with his intuitive horse Rooster, it leads him to the evil Dr. Schmitt-Rottluff, the gaslight era's virtuoso of illicit cloning and mind-bending manipulation of the human genome.

Excerpt: Core Values.

Earlier that day, for some unknown reason probably related to stress, Bru suffered his first anxiety attack in at least a couple of years.

This time around, at least he knew what it was.

That didn’t make it a whole lot easier to deal with. An anxiety attack is a symptom, not a disease. In essence, it is a symptom of intolerable stress, a warning signal to the individual to shut down for a while. Back in about November, 2007, he literally pulled over to the side of the road, and called his mother to talk for ten or so minutes until an attack passed. He simply couldn’t drive.

He was too scared, too shaky. And for no reason at all.

He was afraid he wouldn’t make it home. It didn’t have to be a rational fear by that point. He was afraid his knocking knees and shaking hands would make it impossible to drive, and he feared calling for help.

He feared fear itself.

And who could he call? Certainly not the Lennox cops. What would he tell them?

‘Hey! You guys were right! I really am fuckin’ nuts…?’

It was like he lost all physical strength in his body.

He was afraid of everything; and nothing at all. He wasn’t afraid of a lamp or a TV set. It was his thoughts. He was afraid of walking into a store and what if? What if Mr. LaSally and some friends should see him?

He could imagine Walter or one of his little buddies phoning the cops and telling them, ‘I’m afraid for my family,’

Brubaker was afraid of being sent to jail, or the loonie bin; over and over again until he just couldn’t take it anymore. Brubaker feared the loss of control. The very real possibility, as it felt sometimes, that he just might go and do something impulsive and stupid.

He couldn’t defend himself from accusations of mental illness, and so what if some weirdo claimed to be fearful of him? Is that why some of his buddies followed him once, down in Waltonburg? Was that why some guy in a blue Lumina slid to a halt beside Bru and Willy up on that church roof in London; rolled down the window, popping off pictures with a telephoto lens, and then yelled and screamed some incoherent abuse at the two of them? Who are you going to call, once the cops have you labeled paranoid and delusional?

Oh, yes, Brubaker hated those mealy-mouthed little dickheads, those arrogant Lennox cops more than he could describe. He had no good way to articulate that kind of anger. It always sounded too much like hate mail.

He was afraid that he would get up one morning, go downtown and drive his vehicle through the front doors of the cop shop, leap out and try to kill as many as he could before they shot him. He was afraid that his future would be so bad, so evil, so degrading, so fucking demeaning, that he would jump off the Bridge, and considered it mightily well before rejecting it.

All he could do to cope was to think of the rest of his family.

Was he afraid of himself?

Didn’t he trust himself?

Didn’t Brubaker know himself?

Coming later, it was these questions that ultimately saved him, but that was later.

He had to suffer through it for a while.

He suffered through it too many times, when he was sitting in the living room, watching TV. He couldn’t even remember what was on now. But he had these crazy attacks that sometimes lasted two or three hours. To simply to walk outside, made him feel better—go in the house, and he felt worse.

Today, he figured he must have been thinking the wrong thoughts. Sifting through the past with a fine-tooth comb, re-opening old wounds, re-fighting old battles. Re-writing old, ‘Thomas Paine,’ speeches,’ re-analyzing old evidence, old incidents. He probably caused his own anxiety with what Tony Robbins or someone like that might call, ‘bad self-talk.’

Still, it could be pretty scary.

When the first one happened, he really did think he was going mad. He wondered if maybe what they said was true? Was he really, actually, mentally ill? The prospect, the future, of what his life would be like if he couldn’t control his demeanour…

Life wouldn’t be worth living. They could take away his freedom for any little excuse or provocation.

People like LaSally could remove his humanity and to make him a monster on any complaint.

For those dingbat Lennox cops to predict; “Mr. Brubaker is an unexploded bomb waiting for a chance to go off…”

The power of suggestion is very strong. The cops have manipulated many a person due to their knowledge of human nature, which they get to study up close and under extreme circumstances.

Now Brubaker knew how they abused it from time to time.

He figured it out, all on his own.

In an anxiety attack, the heart palpitates and races. It becomes erratic in its pulse. The lungs tense up. All the muscles tense up. Sweat pours down the armpits. It is a blind, unreasoning, naked fear, nothing more. It doesn’t have to be logical. Breathing is shallow, rapid, and unsatisfying. There is no visible cause, and no rational reason.

What am I afraid of?

It’s just a TV set, just a room, just a carpet, a chair, a window!

Brubaker, like many a man or woman before, feared the loss of control. The loss of his mind. The loss of identity. The loss of a soul may seem very academic, but Brubaker liked his brain, his mind. He liked it very much. And you don’t know what you have until it’s gone.

Brubaker liked being who he was.

The accusation of mental illness was an assault upon his identity.

It affected him very badly.

The truth was, he let it get to him.

Brubaker’s brain was a finely-honed tool, a precision, highly-developed instrument capable of amazing things. In the final analysis, it was all he’d ever really had.

Without mind, our own minds, we do not exist.

We have no self.

Focusing again on the page, with his eyes tired and sore, his mood not happy at all, Brubaker read on in the hopes of finding some kind of serenity in the classic words.

It was a tough go tonight.

At the height of the crushing burden imposed by the ODSP, when they were all over him for months; with incessant demands for information, holding back badly-needed forms, demanding his books, (and when he turned them in, he didn’t hear back for two and a half years,) Bru got up one morning.

He got all dressed up in his best clothes after a shower, and a clean shave.

“So; what’s your big plan for the day?” asked his father, with what would be called a sneer in a less-jovial man.

Bru knew his old man had no respect for him; that’s why he always treated Bru like a six-year old.

“I’m going downtown to kick some Nazi butt,” he told the old fellow shortly.

He began by going to the library, and going on their computers, and studying the ODSP guidelines in detail. It took days, weeks. Months. He studied the newspaper files on micro film.

He carefully studied every human interest or bad fortune story involving disability, and mental illness, and all kinds of social issues. At some point he bit the bullet and took on the government. It was a one-man effort.

It’s a funny thing. When Bru began to fight back, when he realized he was not alone; and that tens or hundreds of thousands of disabled people were violated every day, when he realized that they needed him, Charles H. Brubaker; to fight for them; his anxiety attacks miraculously went away.

Brubaker had been called. And the lessons of history were there, for all to read.

“Serenity is mine,” he murmured.

The book faded out again. He laid it aside.

From time to time we need a reminder of who we are—and who they are as well.

It was one of the many things he had learned over the years.

‘If you do not confront your problems, they will overwhelm you.’


END

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