Dear Reader:
In this tale, a wife pays a therapist to warp her husband's mind and force him into a life of submissive homosexual prostitution.
If this floats your boat, give it a go. If it doesn't, move on.
Regards,
Adam Lily
*********
I woke to the sensation of something being removed from my face. My vision went from black to a brilliant, stain-glassed blurry. And then I heard, "Mister Ross? Mister Ross, are you back with us?"
Someone said
uuuuhhhhhhh
. After a moment, I realized it was me. "Yeah. I'm here. Awake, I mean." I pushed myself up, but only a little. It wasn't easy. My bones felt like warm, rainbow-colored cotton candy.
A face came into focus in front of me. Doctor F. The quack therapist my wife was making me see. Practitioner of neuro-opto-adjustment-thermopylae-something or other. Dark hair, long thin face. Severe, arched eyebrows. Handsome, I guess. Some 1950s-television idea of a scientist.
"I feel really . . . caramelly," I said. "Melty. Like fleshy maple avocado wax." I frowned.
F read my confusion and smiled. He set aside the visor I'd been wearing. "This is the phenomenon I described before your session began. Some language confusion. Only temporary. About 20 minutes and you'll be, well, yourself."
My lips loosely chewed themselves. My left leg twitched, then again. Then my right. "Numb," I said. "Warm."
"That's normal, too. We talked about all of this, remember? Everything you're feeling will pass. You'll be fine. Like new."
I nodded, my head wobbly on my happy neck. "Yup, like new. Soon."
F smiled. "Good. Just breathe deeply. In, and out. There's water on the table beside you. I need to step out and consult with your wife. We'll be back in, together."
"My wife," I said. A jab of anger. "It's been three hours already?"
He chuckled. "Yup. I'm sure she got plenty of shopping done in that time. Now, you rest. Again, there's the buzzer if you need anything." And the tall, handsome quack left.
My anger turned from a jab into a burn. Shopping. Three hours. The fucking cunt could bankrupt me in that time. And it was me she was bankrupting, not us, not "Us," that mystical, mythical nothing the stupid twat was always nattering on about, like "Us" made our money, instead of me—
I caught myself. I was angry as hell. At her. Still, and always.
Well, great. The treatment hadn't worked, hadn't helped me "process" anything. That was $10,000 of non-insurance-covered neuro-ophthalmic-revision-visor-spartasmic bullshit down the drain. In addition to whatever Camille had spent on her shopping spree while I was under.
An investment in our future, she'd called it. Money down a hole, I thought. But I went along with it, anyway. To save our marriage.
Two years. This shit had been going on for two years. I'd had an affair two years ago with a woman I liked at a business convention. I'd never done anything like it, and I wouldn't have done so, but just before I got onto the plane to the convention, Camille and I had fought, horribly, so I nursed a six-hour coach-class fury. And the woman, she had just left a marriage with a man who made her feel stupid and worthless. We both needed someone else to nourish us. And, so, we set our lives aside, just for a short time. She made me feel appreciated. I helped her feel smart and valued.
A month later, my conscience devouring me, I confessed to Camille. I did the right thing. Which was a horrible mistake. Because she lost her mind. Instead of trying to understand why I'd cheated, and instead of respecting why I was confessing to her now, she seemed to draw just one conclusion: I was a monster who had hurt her. And I deserved to be punished. Repeatedly. For as long as we both lived.
Well. Okay. Be reasonable. Maybe it's not quite that simple. If it were, she would have just left, right? Taking half my money. In more lucid times, when we weren't fighting, we tried to repair the relationship. We went to therapy. We talked about unconditional love and forgiveness and "repair gestures" and "protecting the relationship" and how our fights had induced in me a type of post-traumatic stress disorder, which is what this current treatment was trying to fix. Which was all bullshit, because fuck that stupid cunt—
And that's how it usually went. I started out calm and reasonable, but devolved into rage. Two years of this stuff. It had to stop. Which is why, a couple of weeks ago, I'd told Camille: I'm sorry. I'm out. I'm sorry that I cheated on you, and I'm sorry I did this to us. But I can't be in a relationship where these kinds of fights happen, anymore. I'm out.
That was when she'd found Doctor F and his experimental therapy. A last chance, for both of us.
I breathed deeply, exhaled. I sat up a little more, mind and body recovering. I still felt mostly like melted wax. But good. Weird. Keep breathing. I sipped the water. My mind and body reassembled themselves.
The door opened, and Doctor F and Camille walked in. She was carrying a black plastic bag. No name on it, suggesting it was from a store so famous that it didn't need to advertise. She must have driven a long way to whatever store it was, though. F charged a lot, and he had some super-fancy equipment, but his office didn't show it. He worked out of an ancient office building in a blighted warehouse district. Broken roads and empty buildings everywhere. Urban blight. When I pointed this out to him, he laughed. "Offers fewer interruptions," he'd said. "More privacy."
F and Camille stood in front of me. "Mister Ross. Robert. Camille is here. Can you see her?"
I sniggered. "Of course I can. Camille"—
you fucking cunt
—"Did you shop well?"
Camille smiled thinly. "I didn't break the bank, Rob. Only got a great mani-pedi. This bag"—and here she raised it—"is just part of the therapy. You'll see."
"Okay," I said. I pushed myself up a little more. "So, three hours of neuro-whatever work. Doctor. What now?"
"Now," said F, "We test a hypothesis." And he drew Camille close to him, held her tightly, and kissed her. Passionately, for maybe 15 seconds.
He released her, and they studied me. "Well?"
"Well, what?" I said.
"Well . . . how did that make you feel, Robert?"
I fished around inside myself. "Um," I said eventually. "I don't think I felt . . . oh. Wow. I didn't feel anything. About that." I stared at them both. "How did you do that? I know I should be feeling . . . ." But, actually, I didn't know what I should be feeling.
Doctor F smiled. "It's fine, Robert. You're doing fine. Let's move to the next test. Camille, if you please?"
Camille reached back and unzipped her dress, shimmied it down her body, and kicked it off to the side. She was great at getting undressed at the drop of a hat. And here she was, now, in heels and black matching bra-and-panties. With little red hearts on each. One of my favorite looks on her. She hadn't sported it for years.
Hands on hips, Camille stuck out her chest, waved her hair partly over her face, and gave me the come-hither sultry look she'd bestowed on me in better times. In the past, just that look would've inspired us into an hour-long round of fucking followed by bathtub laughter. But now. . . .
"Robert? Please focus on my voice, Robert. Seeing Camille like this, how does it make you feel?"
"Um," I said. "Nothing. At all."