Compulsive: A Short Story
Content Warnings: Personality Disorder, OCD, OCPD, Disturbing Content, Violence, Unethical Behavior
That’s what came to mind as I listened to her hyper-ventilate. Slow, ragged breaths, in and out, originating from somewhere deep inside her sanity.
“Let” – inhale – “me” – inhale – “go,” she pleaded, barely able to speak through her panic.
“No,” I answered simply. “If I do that, the first thing you’re going to do is run to that door and start your little ‘ritual’… and we can’t have that,” I finished with a smile.
“But, Doctor,” she hissed through clenched teeth. “The thoughts won’t” – sharp intake of breath - “go away…they’re….getting worse.” Her face pinched up on that last word, pain etched into every crease of skin.
I gave a trite laugh. “Well, you know: sometimes it has to get worse before it gets better.”
I walked out of the room, closing the door behind me. I walked over to the observation pane – a floor-to-ceiling one-way mirror that allowed my associates and me to watch our subject.
She was pretty, as women go, but nothing spectacular. Long blond hair, brown eyes, and a surprising splash of freckles along the top of her cheeks and the bridge of her nose. Her petite body was restrained to a chair: hands cuffed behind the back of the chair and her feet cuffed to its legs.
“How is she?” I asked my nearest assistant.
“Heart rate: 195 per minute and climbing. Blood rate: much higher than tolerable and climbing too fast to even keep track of – “
“Brain activity?” I cut him off.
“Come over here,” he said, leading me over to a woman sitting behind a computer not too far away.
“Bring up the graph,” he instructed her.
A few clicks here and there, and I had a graph mapping out our subject’s brain activity – from the moment she entered the observation room to this very second.
“Her brain activity has increased over 50 fold since she arrived here at 09:00, Doctor.”
I checked my watch. Did he say 50 fold? It was only 11:30…surely two and half hours of not being able to satisfy a compulsion couldn’t do that to a person.
“Incredible….” I murmured. I looked back over to the observation room. The woman had her eyes closed, attempting to control her breathing. Sweat was dripping down her face relentlessly, seeping through her shirt around her neck and armpits. Her lips moved silently – whether in self-reassurance or prayer, I couldn’t tell.
“What do you want us to do now?” my assistant asked.
“Let’s let her simmer for a while longer,” I said, my eyes not leaving her quivering frame. “Feed her if she’s hungry; inject her with the serum every so often so she doesn’t have to use the restroom; make sure she doesn’t fall asleep; and” – I turned to face him, stabbing a finger in his chest for emphasis – “by no means is anyone allowed to talk with her. I don’t care if she tries to strike a conversation, plead for release, or even asks about last night’s game. Is that understood?”
“Yes, Doctor,” he answered promptly.
“Good. I’m going home for the night,” I announce to my associates. “I’ll see everyone in the morning.”
“Can you make her stop?” I yelled to my assistant.
“We’ve tried everything, Doctor, but she’s entered a psychotic state…unless she’s allowed to satisfy her compulsion, her mind will continue to try and relieve the stress created by her obsessive thoughts!” he yelled back.
I walked into the lab the next morning to our subject screaming. The sound was something like out of the depths of Hell – full of torment, anguish, and anger.
“It’s difficult for me to believe that there isn’t any other way for her to deal with this besides giving in to her OCD, Jensen!”
“My name is Johnson, Doctor! And like I said – we’ve tried everything, even our strongest sedatives! If we allow this to keep going, she might breakdown completely!”
“What would that consist of?” I screamed back.
“Well, first she would – “
“Walk over here! Come!” I led James over to another room where we could actually hold a civilized conversation.
“Much better. What were you saying, James?”
“Johnson, Doctor. I was saying that if we continue to prevent our subject from satisfying her compulsion, she will soon break down. And I’m not just talking mentally. Her mental state will be the first to go – reason and common sense gone. Areas of the brain shutting down one at a time like a cascade, starting with non-vital areas and ending with complete brain failure. And each area of the brain will have a corresponding physical effect.”
“Meaning?” I asked, not liking where this was going, but too intrigued to stop listening.
“If her Broca’s Area shuts down, she’ll lose her speech. Her motor cortex goes offline – she’ll be immobilized. Her occipital lobe begins failing –“
“She goes blind,” I finished for him. “And all because she couldn’t get up and go lock and relock a door seven times?”
“Yeah,” Jacob sighed, resigned.
I nodded my head and walked out of the room. The subject’s ear-splitting scream assaulted my ears once back in the observation room. I grabbed a whiteboard and a marker off an empty table. On it, I wrote:
I WANT EVERYONE CLEARED OUT OF THIS ROOM WITHIN THE NEXT 30 SECONDS – LEAVE!!
Ten seconds later I was alone with the subject’s screams.
“Let. Me. Go. Now,” she growled. Her eyes were bloodshot and dilated. Any speck of humanity I might have seen yesterday was now long gone, replaced by fear-driven hatred.
“No,” I said simply. “We’ve been over this before.”
I paced back and forth in front of her, her eyes never leaving my form. I have to admit that I was slightly apprehensive; I felt like a prey – completely vulnerable and with no one to call out to for help. Yes…I did believe that if she got out of those restraints, she would kill me.
“Let me go, NOW!” she exploded, spit flying out of the corners of her mouth.
I stopped pacing and cleared the distance between us, putting my face right in hers.
“No,” I whispered coldly.
I backed off slowly, watching as her eyes grew wide. She looked as if she was shocked by what I said – as if I had somehow broken a promise to let her out eventually. Which, in a sense, I had.
“You must be Meredith,” I said, holding out my hand.
“Yes,” she replied, shaking my hand. “Please call me Mary.”
“Mary,” I repeated. “Pleasure to meet you.”
“Likewise.” She smiled sweetly, tucking a loose strand of blond hair behind her ear.
“Now, I understand you have severe OCD?” I inquired.
She shifted slightly from one foot to the other, obviously uncomfortable with this aspect of herself.
“Uh…yes,” she answered looking at the floor. She cleared her throat. “Every time I see a closed door – or rather, I should say more specifically, one that should be locked – I have to unlock and re-lock it seven times. Regardless of where I am.”
“I see,” I said, taking notes on my clipboard. “And do you know of any reason why you began doing this?”
She shook her head, looking ashamed. “No,” she whispered.
“I see. That’s fine – it’s just one of those things I’m required to ask,” I said, waving a dismissive hand in the air.
“So… I can still participate in the study?”
I chuckled. “Of course you can. Hopefully by the time we’re done, we’ll be one step closer to finding a safe way to help people curb their OCD.”
She smiled again. “That’s all I want,” she said.
“Uh…well, thank you, Doctor. It was lovely to meet to you.” She held out a hand for another handshake.
I shook her hand. “Thank you, Mary. We couldn’t have done it without you.”
She blushed and began walking to the door.
“So, I’ll check in tomorrow?”
“And should I bring anything?”
“No, that won’t be necessary.”
She stopped walking. “I thought you said it was a week-long study?”
“It is,” I concurred. “And that’s why everything will be provided for you – not to worry.”
“Oh, okay,” she said, reassured. “For a second I was imagining you doctors and scientists keeping me as a lab rat!” She laughed.
“Ha ha…no, we’re not authorized to do that, miss.”
“Thank god!” She waved good-bye and walked out, throwing her beautiful smile over her shoulder.
I think that was the last time I saw that smile.
Now she glared at me, her shoulders rising and falling with every labored breath she took. There was something building up inside of her, like a compact atom waiting to explode.
“You said…you…said….” she hissed.
“I said that I wasn’t authorized to hold you – not that I wasn’t going to,” I clarified.
“AAAAAAAHHHHHHHRRRRRRRGGG!!!!!!” she screamed. She tried to attack me, fighting against the cuffs. Her hair was beyond disheveled, wild around her and appearing to have a life of its own. Her eyes bulged black, no brown to be found anywhere in them. She bared her teeth, growling.
“When I get out of here,” she threatened slowly. “I’m going to RIP YOUR HEART OUT!”
I was scared. Too scared to think of a clever response; too scared to think of calling for a medical doctor to sedate her. After all, I was just PhD in astrophysics – not a doctor in medicine, or mental disease; just another curious member of the society we lived in.
I was scared. Too scared for myself to remember that she had been in this room for over 24 hours; to remember about the cascade brain failure Johnson told me about; to remember that underneath her predatory anger, she was human. And that’s how I justify what I did next.
I walked over to the door and, right in her line of sight, unlocked it. Locked it. And did it again.
I kept my eyes on her the whole time I went through her ritual. Her security blanket. Her antidote for whatever madness had been raging inside her mind her entire life.
With each click of the lock, I watched as she broke down piece by piece. I could see the cascade failure shutting her down, little by little. It was there, in her eyes…a gradually dimming light that I was snuffing out.
My subject’s body went limp, its mouth slack and useless. It looked up for a few moments as I came to the last click of the lock. Its eyes were milky white, two unseeing globes. I knew it had gone deaf only a few seconds ago, and now it was blind. How it knew I was on the seventh round, I never knew.
But when I finished, it smiled.
