I approached the door to Killer Clown's cell. Can I still call her that? I had fixed that I hoped. Connie, it was Connie Dee's cell. There were two guards seated on chairs to either side of the door, I recognized Dawn as she nodded at me in greeting. Made sense, post a medic where the injuries were most likely to happen.
"Good morning Dawn, any word on Sharon?" I asked politely.
"She was discharged yesterday and is at home with her son and a live in caregiver for the time being. She also got a generous out of court settlement from the drunk driver who caused the 'accident'." She replied happily.
The man beside her, Chuck that was his name, grunted. It translated in guy speak to 'Glad to hear it.'
"And Janet, how is her jaw?"
"Still wired shut so she is taking her meals through a straw. She asks me to weigh her every morning and is tracking it on a chart in the barracks, bitch." Dawn replied, half jokingly.
Chuck gave the same monosyllabic grunt with a slight change of inflection, which in guy speak meant 'Huh, what's going on?'
"And Chantal?" I finished with a sly smile.
"Taken down a few pegs and it's about time, she was getting annoying. By the way, I have a list of people who are interested in a one-on-one session if you have any vacancies in your schedule." She laughed.
"How about you, are you on the list?" I replied seductively, leaning against the wall beside her and making no effort to disguise where my eyes went.
She laughed the laugh of a confident woman. "Well, maybe. But purely for research purposes of course."
Chuck, gave a snort that was the equivalent of him rolling on the floor laughing. I laughed too, then nodded to him. "Nice talking with you."
He bobbed his head a fraction of an inch, guy speak for 'Yeah, we should get a beer sometime when you are free.'
"And how is she doing?" I asked, standing and gesturing to the steel door beside them.
"Well, she hasn't hurt anybody deliberately over the last couple of days if that helps. Still crazy as a bag of cats though." Dawn replied warily.
"Thanks, that actually does help a lot. Time to get into character." I pulled on the white lab coat I had been carrying and settled the clip board in my arm, then gestured to Dawn. She checked the video monitor to see that Connie was in her bed and away from the door then waved the key card and let me in.
The room was a mess, furniture tumbled and as broken as a strong woman could do with steel and plastic. The walls were smeared with her blood from her bruised and torn knuckles and her food was scattered on the floor. She was lying in the bed, sobbing quietly and didn't acknowledge my presence. Still, I approached warily but I didn't detect any of the previous violent intent that she usually radiated, just sorrow and despair.
"Connie." I said quietly then touched her bare shoulder. She flinched slightly but didn't move and I slid into her mind.
It was chaos, even more chaos than before. The carnival was a mess, midway games destroyed but not rebuild as before. The crowd of faceless thoughts milling aimlessly, not rushing with their previous frantic purpose. The big top tent sagged on its pole and everywhere I saw her father's face it was frozen like a realistic mannequin. When I kept her from killing her father, I had changed Connie Dee's entire perspective on the world, but now she didn't have anything to replace it with.
I pushed my way through the crowd to the trailer and looked through the window. It was just as I had left it, Connie and her father were on their knees sobbing into each other's arms, her mother stood there woodenly like a robot awaiting a command.
I slid into the mental projection of her father, I wasn't worried about her hurting him now so my mind could safely occupy the space. I rose to my feet, pulling her up as well. She looked up at me, eyes red and nose running freely as she sobbed.
"It's alright darlin', its alright. You don't need to cry anymore, I have a new job for you and you need to be happy for this one."
I pushed further into Connie's head, finding her emotions and encountering a seething lake of arousal. At one end there seemed to be a dam, blocking a now empty riverbed that led to a sharp volcanic type landscape. Her rage, her anger was now dormant but her base level of arousal was starting to boil over. I couldn't stop it, not yet, it was fed from somewhere deep inside her mind and it was likely that I could never choke it off completely. It was just too much who she was, instead I needed to channel it somewhere else and the only place that could match the outlet that rage gave her, was lust.
I dug a trench, a canal of sorts through the landscape of her mind channeling that roiling lake of emotion into her sexual arousal. Like a savannah after a thunderstorm, her mind soaked up the torrent of stimulus. I kept the flow comparatively small, I didn't want to change her too fast, she would be impossible to control. I still needed to sculpt her psyche to respond to this new way of thinking. She might not want to kill men anymore, but I didn't want her attacking them on sight either.
She shuddered, her eyes clearing from the tears as she gasped with the new feelings coursing through her. She looked up at me with a smoldering look as her lust began to burn. "Really daddy, what do you want me to do?" She said in a sultry voice, her hand sliding up over my chest to rest on my shoulder.
