If you are reading this tale for the first time I would urge you to start at Chapter 1.
Please provide feedback and vote, it makes me happy.
*****
The alarm on his phone went off at 7:30 and his eyes opened to a profound blackness that matched his mood. He pondered for a moment, wondering where his anger originated. After all, things were going his way. Last night's breakthrough was breathtaking. She had admitted that she wanted to transform, wanted love for the first time in her life. She had said something like she wanted love to course through her veins and feel its fire. She wept spectacularly and they feel into a warm and emotionally satisfied sleep.
So why the anger? Why was he pissed? Perhaps because he was denying himself. He should have fucked her, he though, he'd earned it but knew it was too early. Tonight he would force another break within her and give her a stark choice; become Mei Chun or continue to be the cold hearted Jenny and suffer even greater misery at his hands.
With his course plotted he looked for the courage to be cruel. That was going to be his challenge with Mei Chun. His struggle would be to stay in character and stay focused on his task.
He wasn't naturally ruthless, quite the reverse. He longed to be kind and tender with her but he'd given in to the temptation already and while it confused her, which was good, he couldn't make it routine. What he had in mind and what she needed required iron discipline on his part, even more so than on hers. He was leading her and she would rely on him. Half measures would be disastrous. A failed course of conditioning like this would only leave an incredibly bitter person more fucked up than at the outset.
He steeled himself, got up and tore the sheets from the bed.
"Get up," he said, using his gruffest voice.
She groaned.
"Get out of bed."
She groaned from within her torpor.
In fifteen seconds he emptied a half glass of water on her back. She shot bolt upright in the bed.
"You fucking bastard! You goddamn..."
He poured the other half over her hair.
"Get up and shower or I get more water."
"Motherfucker!" She got out of bed in a rage slapping and kicking and he pushed her back on the bed, rolled her on to her face, held her hair and spanked her several smart ones.
"You don't understand yet. I say move and you move."
"What about last night you asshole? You said you loved me."
"So I did."
"You lied to me? You fucking lied to me! You waited until I was most vulnerable and you made me tell you all that then you fucking lied to me."
She said, slowly and with great pain, "You motherfucker." She cried wounded tears as he turned a left the room.
She showered morosely, occasionally looking at his razor, wondering if she could cut her wrists with a five blade thing like that and deciding that she couldn't.
She went back to the bedroom, didn't find the robe and realized it was still on the stool. Wrapped in the towel she got it from the kitchen and put it on in the bathroom.
He'd cooked breakfast, she remembered wanting to do that for him, then hated herself for being so stupid.
When she sat down on the stool in front on the marble counter, he said, "You are not permitted to make assumptions, Mei Chun."
She stayed silent.
"Speak when you are spoken to," he barked.
"Yes, sir."
"You are not permitted to make assumptions."
"Yes, sir."
"This morning you assumed that I lied to you."
"Yes, sir."
"Why did you do that?"
"Because you fucking poured water on me."
"Was it acid I poured on you?"
"No sir," she was really saying 'fuck you' and he knew it.
"Why did I pour water on you?"
"Because I didn't get up when you told me to." She started feeling better. His calm way of explaining gave her a bit of hope that she had over reacted.
"That's right. You didn't respond when I told you to and you know that I will punish you for that."
"Yes sir."
"Was it a fitting punishment?"
"May I think about it?"
"For one minute."
She considered. She knew what was expected of her in general terms and she knew his reasoning. He was going to give her no choice but to change and he would use whatever he had to make it happen. Frankly a bit of cold water in the morning was a shock but, considering the treatment yesterday it wasn't really much.
"May I apologize?"
"If it sincere, yes. If you're going to use it as an excuse for snide remarks or a hidden insult than no."
"I am sorry for over reacting. It was just water and I should not have ignored you."
"Good."
She felt better.
"May I say something in my defense?"
"No. Excuses are not permitted in our arrangement."
"But..."
He looked at her with real anger. She dropped the fork she was playing with.
There was no more conversation as she ate the fluffiest pancakes of her life.
"Today you have a job."
"It's Saturday."
"So it is. Today you will volunteer at a place for troubled youth downtown. The taxi will be here in," he looked at the clock on the stove, "twenty-minutes."
"Yes sir."
"You'll find clothes in my dresser. Second drawer."
She said, "Yes sir," put the fork down on the empty plate and went to get dressed.
New jeans and a blue shirt. No panties or bra.
She came back out holding the collar.
"Will I need this?" She twirled it around her finger by one of the D rings.
"Not for the kids but that was a smart ass comment and you won't be making those anymore."
"Yes sir." It was another 'fuck you.'
"Be good today. Be oh so good."
"Yes sir."
##########
Philip spent the day catching up with the work he'd neglected the past week while his focus had been on Mei Chun. There was a lot and rather than complete his duties for any one client, he did the minimum for all of them. Enough to keep them quiet.
He was on good terms with most of the IT managers so there was room. It was a nice thing about what he did, he had lots of room.
He found his attention hard to keep fixed and thought about her several times an hour.
At about noon he fixed a sandwich and ate at the work area so he could browse and review the project. There was plenty to find online, most of it written by crazy or just evil people about how to destroy someone's personality. Basically how to turn someone into a zombie through abuse and deprivation. He didn't want a zombie. He wanted the woman he knew, or had a good idea, that she could be. But some of the tools were the same. He had found a guy who claimed to be a professor of psychology at a prestigious university, 'a name instantly recognizable,' he'd said. He made contact through email. Sure enough he sent his messages from a gmail account but the computer he used was on the Columbia University network. He had become sort of his advisor on this project and they were in frequent contact.
The plan was simple. Remove the props supporting her current personality and replace them with a structure that created a new self-image. Once the image was created she would herself seek to support it and slowly, over months, the newly grafted personality would become as much her own as her current one.
The root cause of such shifts in personality is a collapse of the perception of self. The brain finds it too difficult to support two contradicting fundamental ideas about oneself and it abandons one in favor of the other, or sometimes an entirely unrelated third idea. High order cognitive dissonance required resolution one way or the other. Either the behavior changed, the belief changed, or justifications were made.
The belief in her own self-worth, 'I am a good person', is in conflict with the knowledge that she uses those that care for her. The justification had always been that she was 'liberated' in the feminist sense. Turning the tables on men and being a sexual predator was her way of fighting society's sexual injustice.
So Philip would brush aside the bullshit, give her no choice but to see the contradiction, give her no shelter in justifications and force her into maximum dissonance. Then he would give her a way out.
Personality change happens all the time, to everyone. It just happens too slowly to notice. Personalities make subtle shifts back and forth every day. One day someone might be more patient than the day before, or less so.
What was striking about a religious conversion or cult brainwashing was the speed and single direction of the transformation. The Patty Hearst kidnapping in the '70s was a good example. Miss Hearst was locked in a dark closet for days, kept near starvation, tied, beaten and abused. When not in isolation or being insulted and demeaned she was given lectures and praised for repeating the ideology. Within eight weeks she was writing letters to the media denouncing her 'capitalist pig' parents and robbing banks.
Philip had no interest in this level of transformation. It was sick. Despite what he was telling her, he wasn't creating a slave. It was mostly a conditioning trick and another tool to crack open her personality. He wanted to refurbish Mei Chun, rather than remake her as an automaton. Therefore he could not go for quick results, smashing carelessly. He had to delicately, relatively speaking, remove what was worst about her and uplift the inherent good within her.
Philip sought to transform Jenny into Mei Chun and he would increase the pressure on the former personality while nurturing and rewarding the latter. A point would come when she would have to make a decision on which person to be and it seemed that she was already leaning toward Mei Chun.
##########
Phil wrapped up work at 3:30 and began on dinner. He was going to make something fabulous and if she didn't deserve it he'd make her a cheese sandwich. He'd have her eat it while he ate seared sea scallops and mashed potatoes, broccoli with hollandaise and warm leak and potato soup.
He got a call from Sarah at the center and she reported on Mei Chun's performance. No cheese sandwich was needed on the menu.
At 5:25, Mei Chun rang the bell from downstairs and pounded on the door. He buzzed her in and listened for how her foot falls sounded on the stairs. He could tell she was tired.
"Hi," she said as he opened the door. "Buy me a goddamn bra." She trudged off to the bedroom, pulling the shirt over her head as she went.
"Naked?" she asked.
"Yes," he replied looking between her bare back between her shoulder blades.
He hadn't really thought of whether she should be naked at all times around the apartment, but he liked the sound of it and turned off the air-conditioning.
