crash, burn, bust - tale of a washout one [12 december 2023]=-=[tuesday]=-=(1345) Three years, just gone, with but a single swing of his fist. Anthony Bailey had always had a temper problem. It had cost him most of the retionships he had ever had in his life. It's what caused him to enter the military in the first pce, having been given the option by a judge to either enlist, or go to jail after beating up a one-time friend over a girl. Either way would cost him his freedom, he figured, but the Army could set him up for life if he could just keep things under control. That was his motivation, anyway. Maybe if he had any sense of personal discipline, his idea would have worked. Perhaps it was just never meant to be. Instead of being set for life, he was dishonorably discharged and got three years in prison on top of it. He just had to be right. Call it what you will, bad temper, toxic masculinity, provocation, but he couldn't keep it together while being dressed down by a superior, and he responded with his fist. Maybe if he hadn't hit the sergeant so squarely and knocked him out, they wouldn't have responded by throwing him in prison for so long. Thus, he was finally re-entering the world at 24 with nothing. Perhaps, less than nothing. You don't get good work with a dishonorable discharge on your record, especially in a city with a rge military and dependent popution. He had only a small amount of money to his name. No home, no car of his own. His parents had already decided to put him up for a while, but their generosity didn't come free. He'd have to beat the odds and find work. That, however, was a problem for tomorrow's Anthony. Tonight, he just wanted two things - a drink, and a fuck. He knew one bar in the city that wasn't owned by someone with military connections, so he wouldn't get shit from the ownership just for existing. And hopefully he'd find a girl there who was looking for a one-night fling. Unfortunately, he was going to have to walk there. He sighed, pulling the hood of his sweater over his head while the snow started falling. Of course they wouldn't give him a jacket, or a ride. He was less than dirt to them, left to make his own way in life - and given no options ahead other than backsliding and failure. --={@~~~@}=-- (1530) It took him nearly two hours to make the walk to the bar, which miraculously was still there and had just opened for the night. Anthony sighed. At least being in military prison meant mandatory physical training, leaving him in very good shape. He did ache a little, but it was a small price to pay. If the bar was an establishment of any type of repute, Anthony would face a barrier to entry - no ID. Fortunately, this pce didn't care, and he looked old enough despite having a bit of a baby face. His money was good, and that's all the bartender cared about - especially after the decent tip right at the start. He ordered a shot of whiskey and a beer and started to look around. The bar had become a bit of a dump in the st three years. It used to be a pce where college kids hung out, but while Anthony had been in prison, the bar changed hands and tried to pivot to being a sports bar. That led to them losing what business they had from the college crowds, especially as the college wasn't known for their sports teams. Unfortunately, one of the other bars was already a destination for sports fans, compounding their failure. So, it ended up hanging on as a bit of a dive, which for Anthony would prove to be a problem. This being that most girls wouldn't come near this pce, especially the type he was looking for. However, there was one woman there. She looked way out of Anthony's league, and honestly, way too good for this pce. She looked to be older, probably in her 30s, and she was dressed not only smartly, but in a designer suit. She could pass for a high-powered wyer or businesswoman. She was also fairly busy on her phone. Definitely not the type looking for a quick fuck, like he had hoped to see here. Anthony grumbled as he angrily downed his shot, before looking up at a TV and sipping his beer. A hockey game was pying. He didn't care, really. This night was a bust for him. He could already tell, even though he had nothing better to do for a couple of hours. He decided to waste that time getting drunk. A few men walked in, some walked out, but no girls showed up. None except that strange woman. If he hadn't written her off as out of his league, Anthony might have noticed her taking a look at him every now and then, before going back to tapping away on her phone. He had indeed piqued her interest, though unbeknownst to him, it wouldn't be for a fuck. The hockey game would eventually end, and the news would start. Just great, he figured. How te was it getting? 9pm already? He sighed as he took another look around. Still no girls. He decided to take one st look up at the TV. There was a report pying about a missing teenage boy, about sixteen or so. He shook his head, tipped the bartender a little more, then decided to head back to his parents' pce for the night. A few minutes after he decided to leave, the woman left as well. On her phone was a picture of Anthony and his military record. --={@~~~@}=-- [14 december 2023]=-=[thursday]=-=(1418) An old Plymouth Fury Suburban pulled up outside one of the grocery chain stores in town, and once it stopped, Anthony stepped out. The car was just a beater, but it ran well enough to get him around town for a job hunt. There was a "Now Hiring" sign in the window of the shop. This would be his fifth stop of the day. Three pces gave him applications. The fourth had a guy working there who knew just what Anthony did and had told him not to bother applying. Entry level work was pretty much the only option avaible to him, so either retail, fast food, or unskilled bor would have to be the ticket. And even then, his record would hold him back from a lot of opportunities. He walked into the store, making a beeline for the service desk, but just before he got there to ask about an application, the manager walked up. She was the wife of the sergeant he had punched. Deciding not to risk a confrontation, he decided to just walk out and head for the next pce to apply at. Unfortunately for him, as he walks out of the grocery store, the woman from two nights ago is leaning on the old Plymouth. She's dressed every bit as smartly as the st time he saw her, maybe even more so. "I hear you're looking for a job," she says. "You're not going to find anything in this town. Everyone knows about you." "Yeah? What's your point?" Anthony replies in a tired tone. His confidence has been beaten all day by either applying or getting turned down for, let's face it, shitty work. "Who are you anyway? I did all my time, so you can't be parole." "I'm the only hope for your future," the woman says with a confidence that is not unfounded, given her appearance. "You might be a pariah to these peons, but you're uniquely qualified for the job I have on offer." "What kind of bullshit are you even talking about?" Anthony asks. "If I was qualified for anything, I wouldn't fucking be applying at grocery stores." The woman walks over to Anthony and hands him a business card. "Meet me at the bar at seven o'clock tonight - nineteen hundred - and I'll tell you about the job, but I'll just say this - accept my proposal, and not only will you never have to worry about money for the rest of your life, but your parents will also be able to retire right now and live comfortably for the rest of their lives. Or you can keep trying to bang your head against a wall here to nd a minimum wage gig. Maybe this old beater will get you to the next town over and you might have better luck there for just as bad a job." She then walks away over to a bck SUV. Anthony looks at the card. Kelly Jourgensen. Wait a minute. He knows that st name. A guy named Jourgensen created a big hot app before he went to prison. Accession. The big gamer chat app. That must mean this woman has tech money. The offer might be legit! "Wait!" he calls out, but the SUV takes off with Kelly inside. He sighs, takes another look at the card, and gets into the Plymouth. Looks like he's got a date for tonight, but not the type of date he was hoping for. No, this could be far better if she's not talking out of her ass. --={@~~~@}=-- (1856) Anthony is sitting at the bar again, sipping a beer. He doesn't want to be too drunk when Kelly arrives. The television is pying a college basketball game tonight, and again, he doesn't really care. At least the hockey games occasionally have fights. Basketball is all skill, and to Anthony, all boredom. Two men walk in who look a little too respectable for this pce. They're dressed decently enough, and they're very rge and well built. Anthony had been at the minimum acceptable height for the military, and he always had a slight build, which of course caused him to have a chip on his shoulder the size of Denver. These guys look like they could manhandle him if they were so inclined. They split up, each sitting in a booth with a view of the one Kelly had been sitting at the other night. The clock strikes 1900... seven pm, Anthony really hates thinking of everything in military time, and Kelly walks in like she owns the pce. Hell, Anthony figures, she damn well might. Tech money is stupidly abundant these days. You make the next "it" app, and you're an instant multi-millionaire. Possibly even a billionaire now, depending on how the huge companies feel about what you've created. A few hundred thousand for a bar is nothing to money like hers. She walks over to her booth, signaling for the bartender. Normally a waitress would bother with the tables, but this just shows how much pull she has. She talks with him and then sends him back to the bar. After that, she waves Anthony over. Anthony walks over and sits opposite Kelly in the booth. "So, about the job..." Kelly nods. "The job is a fairly simple one, though I'm not at liberty to go into too many details in a public space. I'm fairly new money, as you might have guessed by my name. Yes, my husband developed the Accession app." Anthony whistles. "He sold it for almost 800 million to that bookstore site, right?" "Yes," Kelly says. "So, consider the fact that I can back up every word I said about compensation without really flinching over it. I can casually throw around a few hundred thousand as you would five bucks for an overpriced draft beer." Anthony just nods. "I've got to be honest, I don't know what you see in me. I'm just a guy with a dishonorable discharge who can't even get a call back from the fucking taco pce." The bartender returns with two drinks - a mixed cocktail for Kelly, and a higher-end beer for Anthony. "Yes, you would be quite unemployable to pretty much anyone else with your history," Kelly says. "You're also the type who doesn't blindly submit to authority, you have a lot of fight in you, and you have military training." Anthony sips at the beer. "Two years of it until I KO'd that dickhead sergeant," he says. Kelly nods. "Still enough to start to be molded into a killer. I'll get to the point. People like me have a lot of enemies. I have all the bodyguards I can buy, some of the most advanced security on the face of the pnet, and I'm really not worried about my personal welfare. But some of my enemies have certain... proclivities that are very distasteful. Laws don't apply to them. If you knew what they were into, you'd probably want them dead." Anthony takes another sip of beer. It's actually pretty good. It's getting him very fucked up. "There's a lot that can piss me off, you'll have to be more specific about what they're doing..." "It involves young men and women, teenagers to young adults," Kelly says. "They go missing, and they're never found alive - and then when they are found at all, they're no longer the same people who went missing." She continues to speak, but everything starts to sound very slurred. She's barely touched her cocktail; there's no way she's drunk already... "What the hell...?" Anthony asks as everything starts to become blurry. Or he tries to, but it comes out very slurred. "Oh," Kelly says. "It's working. We'll talk again very soon," she says, though at this point it's practically unintelligible to Anthony. He tries to get up. He's not drunk; he's been drugged! But his arms feel like wet pasta, and they won't support his weight as he tries to push himself up using the table. He can't get up. He tries to speak, but it's slurred to the point of being complete and utter gibberish. As Anthony struggles to remain conscious, the two men from earlier get up and start walking over to the booth. They don't need to rush. He's going nowhere. The st thing he sees before everything goes bck for him is Kelly taking out her phone and making a call. --={@~~~@}=-- [16 december 2023]=-=[saturday]=-=(0739) "That incompetent overdid it on the GHB," Kelly says, sternly, as she watches on. She's looking on from a balcony over what looks like an operating theater. There are a group of doctors fully covered from head to toe below, with the exception of their eyes. There's no way to identify them, even to each other. None of them know each other's names. Instead, they're wearing nametags that say things such as "Doctor 1," "Nurse 3," et cetera. Anthony awakens to see all of this. He tries to shout, but nothing comes out. He tries to move his tongue around inside his mouth. It's still there. His vocal cords must be paralyzed. He tries to lift his head to look forward, but his head is restrained. The rest of his body is simirly restrained, not allowing him to move at all. There is a strange numbness in his pelvic region, but with everything else going on, he doesn't notice it right away. His eyes dart around as he tries to process what he is seeing. This is unlike any surgical theater he's ever seen before. He's not at a hospital. Why would he be? This has to be a completely private setup. Kelly walks down to the operating theater proper and looks over Anthony's body. He's been stripped completely naked. Unlike many who have been in the military, though, he has no tattoos. Good, she figures. Less to have to remove. A shame about the buzz cut, though. It'll take some time for his hair to grow back. There are drugs for that, but they don't really work all that well. She'll simply have to wait until he can grow enough to attach extensions. "You crazy bitch, what the hell?!" Anthony silently mouths. "Please don't try to speak," Kelly says as she walks around the bed that he's on. "I get that you might be mad at me right now. You'd be totally right to be upset. I did tell you were perfect for the job. I lied. You're not perfect for the job... yet. But you are the perfect raw material to construct the perfect person for the job." She continues to slowly walk, locking her fingers together as she puts her arms behind her back. "As far as anyone knows, Anthony Bailey is already dead. Poor guy couldn't make it outside of prison and drove his car off of a bridge, going into a ravine... it was a shame to waste the car, it could have been restored... but your parents won't need to worry about the beater anymore. I was telling the truth when I said they could retire today. I also told the truth about you not needing to worry about money ever again. If you survive your mission preparation, money will no longer be a concern to you ever again." Kelly signals to one of the doctors, who hooks up a bag of liquid to an IV running into Anthony's arm. That feeling of everything getting distorted and blurry starts returning to Anthony as he struggles to stay awake. "Don't fight this," Kelly says. "We both know you'll be better off once I'm done..." Anthony continues to struggle as long as he can, but eventually the drugs prove to be too much, and he loses the fight. His body goes limp. Everything goes bck. "You're going to make a..." Anthony hears Kelly say before he completely loses consciousness. --={@~~~@}=-- (2145) Anthony awakens to find his body has been completely numbed. He's restrained, now sitting upright in a metal chair. It would be cold against his skin if he could feel anything. He can't blink. His eyes are held open. Violent scenes are pying on a nearby screen. This isn't simply violent television, even R or X-rated. This is scenes of actual real-world violence from war zones, brutal beatings, executions. About the only type of violence that isn't being shown is violence being done by women. All the perpetrators are male. He can't not watch. He can't not watch. He is being bombarded with this, and if his voice wasn't still paralyzed, he would scream. Unseen by him, Kelly and a doctor are watching from a nearby security room. "The goal here is to completely desensitize the subject to violence by presenting so much of it at such horrific levels that they feel nothing when presented with it," the doctor states. "We've made sure that he only sees men committing the acts so that he associates them with perpetrating violence and will be primed to attack them." "Very good. How long will this continue?" Kelly asks. "We've added a stimunt to the subject's IV. We can keep them awake safely for up to 72 hours." "Good. Keep the subject awake for 84," Kelly says, nodding. "Then let the subject sleep for a while so all of this can sink in." "Make it stop!" Anthony silently mouths. "Please make it stop, I'll do anything!" --={@~~~@}=-- [20 december 2023]=-=[wednesday]=-=(0621) After three days and change, Anthony is finally allowed to sleep. A weak sedative is applied. He's left sitting up in the chair. He would have a fitful sleep if he could move. His mind is wracked by nightmares. He would be screaming if his vocal cords weren't still paralyzed. All he sees in his mind is the violence. Violence done by men. Men like him. They're monsters. No. There's a part of him that doesn't see things as being that simple, that bck and white. They're not all bad. They can't be all bad. But he's bad. He was in prison for being violent. Doesn't he deserve this? He does. He's a man. He deserves everything that's happening to him. Where did that thought come from? He doesn't realize it, but the earphones he's been wearing have activated and started pying subliminal messages to him to influence his thoughts even in his sleep. The doctor remains in the security room, watching over everything that's going on. He holds up a small analog recorder. "Now introducing subliminal hypnotic audio to the subject as they sleep. The goal here is to drive the subject to self-hatred of and eventual rejection of a male identity. Combined with the exposure to violent media, this should result in complete obliteration of the masculine ego, given enough time. We can then start to build a new identity over that one. Admittedly, this will take some time. We will need to adapt the treatments and alterations as the subject's psychological profile is altered. Fortunately, our benefactress has ensured us that time is not of much concern to her." The conditioning continues throughout the day and there's nothing he can do to stop any of it. He could try to resist if he were awake, but then what? If these people are willing to inflict these sorts of psychological torture on him, what kind of physical torment are they willing to visit upon him? Time no longer has any meaning for him except as a measure of how much he has already endured. He lost track of that while he was still awake. Thus, he has no idea what time it is when he finally awakens in a cold sweat. As he does, stimunts are re-introduced to his system. Thus, within minutes, he is jolted from half-sleep to being wide awake. The videos start to py again as binaurals start to py through the headphones. This time, there's violence of a different sort, some of it sexual this time. It's men performing the acts again, to women, to other men, to men who look like girls. His eyes are forcibly reopened, and he can't look away, no matter what he does. "No..." he silently mouths. If he could hear himself, he'd notice his voice is quieter, softer than normal. It could be from the fact that his voice has been paralyzed for several days. Another doctor is watching from the security room as this goes on. "Continuing my colleague's approach, now we are introducing sexual violence imagery to the subject. Combined with the auditory stimuli, the goal is to pce the subject in the mental position of the victims and increase their feelings of both hatred of and inferiority to men." He tries to endure it as his eyes water. He shouldn't be doing this. He shouldn't be here. He shouldn't be enduring any of this. He's crying, and he's internally beating himself up for it while he sees the continuing violent acts on the screen. They will do this to me. Another intrusive thought. What kind of crap are they pumping into his head? They will do this to me. I am not like them. I am one of the ones they attack. They've already stolen my life from me. They put me here. There are no signs that this will stop any time soon. It may never stop. Will it ever stop? Please make it stop. I don't want this. I'll do anything. Tell me what you want. Please. Please! He screams again, but with his voice in the shape it's in, it comes out as a high-pitched but soft squeal. --={@~~~@}=-- [22 december 2023]=-=[friday]=-=(1735) Anthony awakens in a cell, naked. There is very little in the cell except for a bowl with some cereal bars and a banana, and a mattress that at least looks slightly more comfortable than the one he had to ensure in prison. The cell does have a toilet, at least. He's famished. He hasn't eaten at all for eight days. They've been keeping him hydrated, but not fed. He can feel that he's starting to get thinner from the ck of food and exercise. He checks his body. His throat feels weird. Something's missing. "What the..." He's taken aback by the voice he hears as he realizes his adam's apple has been altered. It's no longer as prominent as it was. His voice is much lighter and softer than it was before, and it's lost resonance. He then takes the opportunity to check the rest of his body. His chest seems normal, though he can already start to feel the outline of his ribs. He checks below the belt, and his worst fears are realized. He's been castrated. They took his balls. They took his fucking balls! He grumbles a bit as he sits down on the cold concrete floor and gets into the food. He has to eat something, miniscule as the portions are. He has to survive this. Someone has to pay. Men have to pay for their sins. No. He tries to focus on Kelly in his mind's eye. She's the one who has been doing this to him. Yet, as he considers just what he could do to the woman, he starts to fsh back to the videos he's seen, and he's disgusted. He nearly vomits from the reaction to it all. He can't do it. He can't even start to pn out just how he'd do it. He has to pay. No! Again, with the intrusive thoughts! What the hell are they putting into his head?! "What the hell are you doing to me?!" he shouts, and yes, his voice has indeed been altered. It's as if puberty's effect on his voice has been mostly reversed. He sounds like a girl trying to speak like a guy. There's no reply. He wasn't expecting one, of course, but he was hoping. Frustrated, he gets up and takes the bowl with him to the mattress. It doesn't seem as though the food is drugged, at least. Small favors. There is nothing to do in this room though. Once he finishes eating, he quickly becomes bored. He doesn't have the energy to work out, most likely due to being castrated and being without testosterone. But as he tries to let his mind idle, he's assaulted by all the things he's seen and heard over the past week. He realizes there's one thing he can do. He can go insane. That seems to be what they want, anyway. Eventually, sleep takes him again. More torture awaits...