Dreamer, Dream A Dream

Back in the isolated lonely world of the section psychiatrist’s euphemistically named ‘seclusion room’ young Lavinia Vitesse groaned in her sleep, twisting and turning fitfully, her limbs stretching and tugging at the bed restraints. This was called ‘dream deprivation’ - although not referred to in those terms officially. No, officially this was sleep research; an attempt to probe sleep disturbances and at the same time gain insight into her sweet young subject’s subconscious through analysis of her dreams. Whatever the definition, officially or not, it boiled down to the nurse sitting by her bedside and studiously watching the sleeping girl’s eyes for the first flickering of so-called ‘rapid eye movement’ that would indicate the onset of dreaming and waking her young charge by triggering a harsh and shrill buzzer paired with a mild electric shock.

It was true much of this could have been automated - the technology was relatively simple. An EEG recorder coupled to a computer to analyse brainwave activity with the subject suitably restrained in her bed would have accomplished much the same thing. But that was not the doctor’s way; she wanted the girl to be aware of that cloying claustrophobic feeling that came with always being under close supervision and of having no possibility of privacy. Conversely, at the same time she wanted the girl kept in total isolation, locked away in her own little secluded world. Consequently whichever nurse she left in charge - and there were three working a rota shift - was under strict instructions not to talk to the patient or otherwise engage her.

The Journal and a pen - the two chained together, and the whole chained to the bed rail - would be handed in silence to the bleary eyed girl, the nurse purposely avoiding eye contact. The patient, for her part, was to record, in sufficient detail as would satisfy the doctor, the dream she had been having when she had been awoken. She, too, knew better than to attempt to engage in conversation, despite the mental frustration of being so pointedly ignored. Only in her case it was not merely part of the task, it was through fear of the doctor’s wickedly-supple cane or the heavy leather strap she sometimes wielded across her bare behind. And she had been caned three times previously for attempting to converse with members of the staff without permission.

The nurse present on each of these occasions had played her part perfectly - much to the further frustration of her charge - simply ignoring the girl’s pleas for someone to talk to her and instead just quietly exiting the room without comment, leaving the girl pathetically whining for someone to just pay her some attention. The plan of action then called for the patient - or test research subject, as she seemed to have suddenly reverted to for the time being - to be left alone to stew in her own juices for a while. That was the psychological aspect of the punishment.

But there were always two parts to any punishment: Several hours of quiet, lonely tedium later and the doctor would appear, swishing her cane through the air or, more often, slapping that folded leather belt of hers against the black leather skirt that seemed a permanent part of her costume. Then without further ado and without a single word being spoken it would be pyjama bottoms and soft PVC pants down and pyjama jacket unceremoniously flipped up at the rear - and the hardest, most prolonged beating that she had ever experienced, bent over the tubular steel side-rail of the hospital bed, arms folded across the small of her back and cheek resting on the latex mattress.

If she had thought of that first time as longest - and certainly the hardest - chastisement imaginable, she had been wrong. Each of the two subsequent occasions had seemed somehow to have been made still more stringent, to have been extended still longer and to have taken her still further down the path of self degradation - to the point at which she had been prepared to beg and plead and agree to anything for it to end. Except that she knew better now than to actually beg or plead. When the doctor ‘corrected’ this ‘patient’ of hers under such circumstances it was a deliberately silent affair on both sides, other than for the sound of the patient’s own crying - that much was allowable. Begging would only prolong the affair, any verbalisation or protestation being interpreted as talking - and talking being permanently disallowed, unless spoken to first.

Once the ordeal was over the doctor would exit as briskly as she had arrived. Only now would she deem to speak to her patient or as much as acknowledge her, always addressing the girl in exactly the same words:

“I am your doctor, you are my patient, and you are simply going to have to learn to do as you are told.”

Seconds later a nurse would arrive to pull up her knickers and pyjama bottoms for her - she was no longer allowed to do it for herself. “A patient doesn’t dress or undress herself - a patient waits for her nurse to dress her” as the doctor was fond of saying. She was supposed to stand there with her hands hanging limply at her sides, or draped neatly in front of her with wrists crossed as if in wrist restraints, while a nurse fastened each one of those big fat rubbery buttons up the front of the shapeless pyjama jacket. She was a grown woman learning how to be a dependent child again. And it wasn’t easy despite what the doctor claimed, time and time again drumming it in to her that all she had to do was simply nothing at all. Being continually treated like an invalid was wearing her down; she would always reach for those buttons herself - and the nurse would turn her back, just walk away with no word of explanation. It was why she hadn’t had a change of pyjamas, why she hadn’t had a wash, why she, quite frankly, smelled, for want of a better word. She hated wearing the grubby sweat-laden flannelette next to her skin, but then again; she had no intention of going naked either.

Besides, the doctor would never stand for her going without her pyjamas - it would earn her another thrashing. It had taken three hard thrashings to get her into the things in the first place - and to get her through the door of this terrible room she was kept locked up in.

The restraints that were fitted to the bed and the combined seat and desk had terrified her, even though she had learned to sleep in restraints in the ‘school room’ and even in a straitjacket on occasion - all innovations that had been introduced by the new ‘dormitory mistress’, as the woman had been officially termed. Her shocked squawked outburst of “what are you going to do to me?” when she had first set eyes on her new home had been met with a raised eye and a simple, calm, yet enigmatic “I don’t intend to do anything at all to you, my dear - I am just here to help you adjust - this room will do the rest. I expect you, yourself, to do all that is necessary to bring about the changes I expect to see.

The doctor had then gone on to explain, rather obliquely: “I shall be here for you when the time comes - but it will be up to you to ask for help - and to tell me how to help you. That’s not to say that the hospital’s usual high standard of discipline won’t be maintained, quite the contrary. You will wear those pyjamas at all times, day and night, you will do exactly as you are told and there will be absolutely no talking without permission or unless I address you.”

Bzzzzz - She’d barely heard the buzzer nor even felt the stinging electric jolt in her urethra, though the resulting reflex contraction of her bladder was making itself felt. Somewhere in her subconscious she was dimly aware of a warm trickling sensation along her inner thigh as a meagre thin stream oozed from the tip of the electrically conductive catheter that was taped up against her leg. Even in the, now interrupted, dream state she had been in there had been no escape from the confinement of the institution; a kindly-smiling, understanding nurse, having taken her by the hand and guided her into the doctor’s consultation room, had just that moment seated her on the commode and...

“Wake up, dear - you’ve been dreaming again.” She was being gently but insistently shaken by the shoulders, simultaneously becoming aware that already the back of the bed was being raised and she was being helped up into a seated position. Blearily she opened her eyes; the white plastic bound book with its attached chained biro was already waiting open in her lap and the pen was being pressed between her fingers. Had she dreamt the nurse’s words? She knew she must have done - the nurses weren’t allowed to speak to her, she knew that. But it had felt so good to hear another human voice, a voice that was other than the doctor’s - how could she be sure?

Without glancing at her patient, looking down only at the book, the nurse tapped the page meaningfully with her long index finger. Shakily - and for the umpteenth time that sleep-period - the girl began to write. Then - tossing down the pen and pushing away the journal - she began to weep hysterically, her shoulders shuddering up and down. The shapeless pyjama jacket moved with her, her breasts - now notably more pendulous than they had once been - swinging loose beneath the draping, sweat-stained fabric and the jacket’s column of heavy, ugly off-white rubber buttons jiggling around like bugs attracted to something rather less than savoury.

The words poured out of her mouth in an uncontrolled flood of emotion, her gasping sobs punctuating her speech like transient eddies thrown off by rocks in a stream, the enunciation hesitant and drowsily-slurred like the ramblings of a long-term drunk: “Please, please let me sleep, please, please talk to me, please someone just talk to me - just once, please someone, anyone pay me some attention.”

No sooner had the outburst cleared her lips than a cold dread ripped through her soul. She knew well the ramifications of what she had just done: Reinvigorated by the dregs of yet another enforced emptying of her bladder, several thin swollen tram-lines, etched deep into the peach-soft flesh across the full width of both bottom cheeks, throbbed in time with the pounding of her heart as a reminder of her last indiscretion.

Through a blurred veil of tears she saw the blank white A4 pages of the ‘dream analysis record’ pushed back on her lap and a finger forcefully tap the page. Simultaneously she felt the soft-grip plastic biro thrust between her fingers. As if given a second chance, she resumed scribbling down her thoughts, part recollection, part distorted perception, disconcertingly finding herself smiling as she did so.

Somehow she struggled her way through a page of spidery drunken script, having been shaken awake more than once when her eyes had fluttered shut and the pen had dropped from her fingers. Her task completed, she pushed the journal away once again, closing her eyes and fully expecting to be allowed back into a prone position and the sweet caress of sleep... sleeeeep... It was not to be.

“Come along, dear - up we get.” It was the doctor’s voice.

“Wha...wha...what?” The girl’s mind was a fog of confusion, her vision blurred - the lids she had somehow forced open, her willpower bolstered by the unspoken threat of punishment. The nurse was nowhere to be seen, her white uniform dress and starched apron replaced by the unmistakable glossy black of the doctor’s tailored leather skirt, the silky tan sheen of her stockings and the starlight-sparkling mother-of-pearl buttons fastening her customary fitted white silk-satin blouse.

“It’s time to get up. You’ve had your afternoon nap - it’s time for your next psychoanalysis and psychological evaluation session. We need to have another chat about your sexuality - do you remember? Your sexual orientation, we prefer to call it. All this nonsense you spout about boyfriends and marriage? Then, if you’re a good girl, cooperate, answer all my questions without any of that silly self-delusion and concealment and do well in your session - well, after you have had your meal you can have another nice little nap. Won’t that be nice? Remember: It’s all up to you - and I always wheedle it out of you anyway, in the end. I am a psychiatrist after all, you know.” An arm wrapped in motherly support around her patient’s hunched weary shoulders she led the stumbling girl out in to the glare of her office, the lighting having been intentionally turned up beforehand.

Floppy-headed the girl looked back over her shoulder at the chamber she was now obliged to call home, her eyes reflecting the window nestling behind its field of bars high up, beneath the ceiling - it was a gesture of desperation rather than defiance; a gesture that did not go unnoticed by the ever-observant woman psychiatrist. The girl was looking for something, something to distract herself by. There was leverage there, leverage she could put to good effect...