Therapy Blog of Thordis Hendricks, July 2, 2012 (4:17 PM):
Back when I was in hospital, recuperating, I thought a lot about what my life had become over those months—that entire year, almost—before my second suicide attempt finally led to formal diagnosis, a plan of treatment, a potential way out of this ever-narrowing flesh trap. The way my perceptions kept on altering, as though filter were laid on top of filter on top of filter, yet so softly, so irretrievably . . . until finally, it was as though I woke up one morning to discover the way I saw things had always been inaccurate, horrifyingly so, and the systemic shock alone was enough to make me reach for something sharp.
Like I’d been born and almost died inside a prison cell, thinking that tiny bit of sky I could see through the window was the wide world, and me outside in it, walking, talking, laughing, living. Until that sky itself became a horror too, blue just a thin lid over black, gravity always in danger of failing before the upwards rush and airless fall into deep space—and it was that fear, that awful lurch, which wrenched me back in and reframed my understanding. Showed me the grave I’d all this time been trapped by, and began to push its walls in on top of me.
I feel better these days, of course, though not by much. But this, what we’re doing right now . . . this is supposed to help.
Therapy Blog of Thordis Hendricks, July 2, 2012 (7:02 PM):
All right, Take Two. Start over.
I moved into Shumate House almost immediately after my last consultation with Dr. Corbray, as an alternative to further hospitalization, which had been almost impossible for me to stand once the initial numbness wore off; constant panic attacks, five different drug combos tried and discarded, all clusters of side-effects equally disgusting. Like I’d been dropped head-first into a gluey swamp and left to thrash, studiously observed, but unaided otherwise.
But being rich counts for a lot, no matter how crazy you may be otherwise. And after Aunt Isa died, the portion of the Hendricks fortune that fell to me—administered, in trust, through my family’s firm—served to buy me into Shumate and pay for the almost-undivided attentions of Dr. Corbray. Which brings us here.
This therapy blog is predicated on the assumption—not completely inaccurate—that because my phobia means I can’t physically leave Apartment Five but my privacy-linked anxiety issues argue against around-the-clock live-in care, I should be required to provide my assigned worker (Yelena) with a between-sessions look at my thought-processes, so she can make sure my psychological baseline isn’t fluctuating wildly: No toxic thought-patterns, no repetition or obsessional looping.
Of course, it’s a model of exchange which presumes quite a lot, right from the get-go; that I’m not simply lying in session, for example, let alone out of session. That I really will write down a representative sample of whatever comes into my head between this time-signal and the next, if asked to, as opposed to simply . . . making stuff up out of whole cloth, because it amuses me, or because it gives me just the tiniest shred of control over what happens in a life otherwise dictated by other people. That I understand how directly I’m threatening my own welfare, if I do. That I can be trusted to recognize what is and isn’t appropriate behaviour, even for myself.
This last part isn’t completely up to me, though, thankfully. Since that’s supposedly what Yelena is for.
So: Today’s entry. Set the timer. Mark.
Saw Yelena yesterday, at 12:22 PM. She claimed to be late (was late, no reason to distrust her words by labeling them claims) because of traffic and construction. We took the usual roster of tests, blood, spit and urine, then talked about self-harm triggers for roughly the rest of the hour: how to qualify and quantify, make sure things didn’t progress beyond a certain level. Yelena says up to twenty-five per cent is allowable, but once you catch yourself imprinting, you need to move on. Sounds legit.
Talked about Internet access, settled on a protocol. The plan is still to use a family-friendly timer app to restrict potential surfing, allowing just enough time in a row to compose and post. The app in question adds up all your seconds, concurrent or not, and cuts out after a set limit is reached. I still can’t believe I agreed to this, but have the distinct feeling I must have been fairly high when I signed those papers. Impossible to tell, one way or the other.
So no looking things up randomly, or not randomly. No visiting the same sites over and over. No time-sinks. Team-mindedness is key. Just RL, baby, moment after dragging-ass moment of it. We already turned off the cable, and there’s nothing in my DVD queue but nature films. The books are all self-help. It’s daily meditation and morning pages and yoga from here on out, if and when the side-effects of the latest cocktail let me do a Downwards-Facing Dog without feeling like I’m going to puke. Hell, I can’t even sleep in too long, or the concierge comes knocking.
It’s a great system, really, and I’m honoured to have had so much “input” into its design. At the end of the day, though, I guess I’m just still not sure why there has to be so much care taken that my life, mine, my particular life, isn’t destroyed. I’m not sure why I should matter so much, to anyone, aside from basic monetary considerations. And I don’t know if any of this qualifies as allowable thought or not—if it’s sick, or simply logical. Something anybody else might wonder, given the circumstances.
Okay, that’s time. See you tomorr
Entry posted automatically. See attached IM exchange:
rostovy@monitoru.net What’s this stuff about “team-mindedness”?
hendricksnox@shumatehouse.com what stuff
rostovy@monitoru.net In Tuesday’s last entry. “Team-mindedness is key.”
hendricksnox@shumatehouse.com dont understand what youre saying. im tired.
rostovy@monitoru.net No, I understand that, I just need you to look at it again. It might be important.
hendricksnox@shumatehouse.com cant, tired, im done. took my pills. Bed.
Initial MonitorU Intake Report on Thordis Charlotte Hendricks, June 15, 2012
Prepared by Dr. Maurice L. Corbray, consulting psychiatrist
CC’d to Yelena Rostov, attending worker
Registered diagnosis of severe agoraphobia, mid-range obsessive-compulsive disorder and clinical depression with suicidal ideation. Subject is twenty-seven years old. Currently recovering from two suicide attempts, one by intentional overdose of prescription meds, one by radial/ulnar arterial self-exsanguination. Highest education a Master’s Degree in Comparative Religious Studies (incomplete). Formerly a T.A. at University of Toronto, now unemployed.
Subject presents as polite and reasonable, though with little emotional affect and micro-periods of disassociation. Prescribed regimen of Cymbalta (side-effects may include drowsiness, blurred vision, lightheadedness, strange dreams, constipation, fever/chills, headache, increased or decreased appetite, tremor, dry mouth, nausea, increased sweating and blood pressure, fatigue and reduced energy). Has agreed to daily yoga practice of roughly sixty to ninety minutes, plus guided meditation, both administered through Skype. Has agreed to participate in phobia-management exercises, and keep a recovery blog. Fees pre-paid in full.
Personal notes: With sufficient effort on her part, I see no reason why subject should not both make a full physical recovery and stabilize her phobia, eventually helping to develop a participatory management protocol which will allow her to graduate from Shumate House by next year at the latest. Nevertheless, given her history, I recommend a tight check routine—three days on, two days off, repeat—in order to ascertain whether or not Cymbalta is the best drug strategy, as well as an equally strict policy of nondisclosure about what happened to the last three subjects who occupied Apartment Five.
corbrayml@monitoru.net Just checking to see you received the Hendricks IR. Any questions?
rostovy@monitoru.net Yes, thanks. So what did happen?
corbrayml@monitoru.net When?
rostovy@monitoru.net To the previous tenants.
corbrayml@monitoru.net I don’t think that’s relevant.
rostovy@monitoru.net Then why did you mention it?
corbrayml@monitoru.net Feel free to do your own research, Yelena; I look forward to your report. All best.
From the official Shumate House introductory booklet, Shumate—Where Respite Makes Recovery:
What sets Shumate’s therapeutic facility apart from every other is our specific brand of total support-system immersion. By offering a well-rounded team of live-in, on-site care workers who follow the “Shumate Method” (first developed by Dr. Jerrold Shumate in 1979, to treat post-traumatic stress disorder amongst relatives of the Canadian members of Jim Jones’ People’s Temple cult), we guarantee our occupants a safe haven where privacy and anonymity are equally sacrosanct—a place of retreat and reconciliation where no one, no matter their range of symptoms, is ever considered unable to participate in planning their own recovery. . . .
Therapy Blog of Thordis Hendricks, July 25, 2012 (11:45 AM):
Timer on. Start.
It takes about a month to settle in anywhere, let alone get used to a new drug—if that’s not a truism, then it should be. So now we’re three weeks in, two days into the next seven, nothing but yoga and chores and blogging, pre-packaged food that comes by the close-wrapped tray, long baths with lavender for relaxation, changing my dressings, taking my pills. Each day ticks away in increments, slow-seeping, like that inescapable metallic taste at the back of my tongue, still there no matter how often I spit.
No anxiety, no worry: That’s good, right? No OCD twitches. Last night I noticed an actual ring inside the bathtub—a smeared grey scum of skin-cells, something I’d have to scrub at to get off. And I didn’t. Didn’t think about how I was stewing in my own dirt, like some horrible soup; just sat there and let the water lap up over it, out of sight, out of mind.
No pleasure, though. Anhedonia, just without the usual feeling bad about not feeling good. And my sex drive completely gone, too, but I expected that. Not like it matters much, in here.
I’m amused to note that the guided meditation portion of my sessions takes place while in shavasana, the pose most instructors usually strain not to call “corpse posture” (and Yelena’s no different, in this respect). I remember hearing about an existentialist yoga class they offered in Germany, pretty much corpse posture from beginning to end, which focused on accepting death rather than trying to distract yourself from it: “Your body will die. Your body will be a corpse. You can discard your body yet still exist. The signal cannot be stopped. . . .” Sort of soothing, especially if you repeat it so often it devolves into a mushy whirr of consonant-click and vowel-sounds, with no single part more significant than the whole: Ommmmm, just let it all gooooo.
But yeah, I can see how that probably seems just a tad morbid to concentrate on, as a mantra, especially when you’re dealing with a person who still has trouble picking stuff up with her left hand, because dominant hand automatically cuts deeper. So instead, Yelena just talks about breathing and tells me to keep my eyes closed, which I mostly don’t, because part of being a reasonable adult is making your own damn decisions and sticking to them. Lie there staring up at the ceiling (white stucco, each tiny plaster stalactite’s shadow a grey-black dot) ’til my eyes unfocus enough that it becomes some sort of infinite, negative-flipped space-scape, a white void pocked with black hole stars. . . .
(And think, sometimes: If only I had the right sort of charts, the right kind of database to work with, I might be able to figure out where that is, up there. If I only knew the math.
(But that’s monkey-mind, right, Yelena? Chatter. Better to shut it out, be in the moment. This dying moment, dying from one second into the next, never the same, always the same. This moment that only goes, forever, no matter what you do or don’t, and never comes again.)
I don’t dream, but last night I had a doozy . . . so clear, so detailed. Except those details were utterly foreign to me, as though they’d been broadcast straight into my subconscious from somebody else’s, detached but specific, a litany of intent. Should’ve taken notes, because all it is now is a general impression, but I remember thinking: Yelena will love this. Finally, something worth writing about.
So do you? Enjoy these entries, I mean. One of us should.
And . . . done, in time. Timer off.
rostovy@monitoru.net Interesting stuff. You really should try to close your eyes when you meditate, though.
hendricksnox@shumatehouse.com guess so, just
hendricksnox@shumatehouse.com when i do i get vertigo
rostovy@monitoru.net That’s not good. Do you want me to send a doctor?
hendricksnox@shumatehouse.com maybe. dont know. maybe its not real vertigo, just
hendricksnox@shumatehouse.com dont know going to sleep now ok
rostovy@monitoru.net Okay, that’s probably best. Write down your dreams for me next time, all right, Thordis?
rostovy@monitoru.net Thordis?
Yelena Rostov, Notes:
Last three occupants of Shumate House Apt. #5 (in chron. order) = Marie Bissionette, Charles H. Siemanczski, Lloyd Lin Kuan-tai.
All 3 deceased.
Bissionette judged suicide, Siemanczski accidental overdose, Lin suicide. Siemanczski’s personal physician disagreed with coroner’s verdict—said there was no way his patient could take that much without noticing side effects/stopping before death, but no conclusive evidence either way.
Verdict might also have to do with fact that other 2 were found with plastic bags over heads but Siemanczski wasn’t. Possibly removed by accident during death-throes and just not found during investigation, mislabelled as trash.
Other possibility deliberate misdirection. But what would be the point of
Understandable why Corbray doesn’t want to talk about it. Doesn’t say much for Shumate Method.
Why/how would he think Thordis would ask about it, though?
Does it make sense 2 (poss. 3) people would all choose same strategy? They didn’t know each other. Timing alone makes that impossible.
Overdose/bag method pushed by Final Exit euthanasia rights activists amongst others—cult suicides, as per Heaven’s Gate.
But people do those in teams.
(“Team-mindedness”?)
Therapy Blog of Thordis Hendricks, July 29, 2012 (2:32 PM):
It took a while to figure out what the revealed shape of my life reminded me most of, but I stumbled on it, eventually; Google is our friend, even in the tiniest of possible doses. It was an oubliette.
An oubliette’s a kind of dungeon accessible only from a hatch in a high ceiling, basically impossible to exit without outside help. The word comes from the same root as the French oublier, “to forget,” because it was used for prisoners their captors simply wanted to disappear. Some oubliettes added the twist of being built on a shelf, a steeply sloping tunnel leading down to the moat or the sea—so you had the choice of letting yourself either slowly starve, or just to slip further down and drown.
The term’s also used to refer to ice formations over lakes, or other large bodies of water. As ice crystals form and air is introduced by the movement of the tides, secret tunnels hollow themselves out under the ice, rendering it treacherous. Prone to give way all of a sudden, a grim surprise, and plunge you over your head into water so cold it burns.
Oubliette, jaunty oubliette. And this place, Apartment Five, Shumate House—just a more comfortable version of the same? A place to be parked out of sight, out of mind, ‘til I’m all safely re-calibrated and refurbished . . . ready to take my place in the world as it is, rather than the world as I thought it was? Ready for public consumption?
Never let it be said I mind having somewhere to pull my head in, for a while; it’s kind of nice to have a safe little hidey-hole, I guess, when the open spaces outside remain so goddamn scary. Would be, at least, if I didn’t know that somebody else holds the keys—or if I had any sort of idea how long this particular set of adjustments is going to take, exactly, either.
No one likes to be forgotten.
On the other hand, the anhedonia my cocktail deals out mainly serves to make me wonder why anyone would struggle so hard to be remembered, to stay alive; how anyone could want so badly to prolong this particular . . . stasis, this awful pause between nothing and nothing. Because oh sure, I’m safe in here from the worst of it, the truly painful blankness, where input slips away until everything becomes equally hollow and sharp and unbearable—but so what? How much, exactly, is a life without extremes worth, when all’s said and done? No depression, no joy. Just grey, marching grey, simplest of all possible forward motions at barely impulse speed, like algae. Existing, not living.
But okay, enough, I didn’t forget: write down my dreams. Here’s one.
I dreamt I found a closet in that short little hallway between my bedroom and the living room, the one we both know backs onto Apartment Seven, which means there couldn’t possibly be a door there. So of course, I opened it. And inside it was full of what seemed like miles on miles of snarled yarn, knotted in on itself, all dirty and wet and vile-smelling. Yet in I went, clearing a path like Lucy through the wardrobe, the yarn-mounds getting progressively colder ‘til they iced up, froze almost solid, and I had to tear at them with my numbing hands, kicking myself free. And at last it gave way, became another doorway opening onto . . . nothing. Empty space, star-speckled, with a wind howling past me; a night sky too far away from any sun to ever see real daylight.
After which I heard a voice, some girl, and though I already knew it was a dream this only confirmed it, because it didn’t scare me at all that I felt as though I recognized it. Saying: They call it the Kuiper Belt. Think it’s a nothing place, all dead debris and endless absence, but they’re wrong, so wrong. With that little trembly note in her voice that you get when you’re so happy you’re close to weeping. Tiamat non delenda est! How could it be? It only moved—Translated (I heard the capital), like we’ll be. It’s real—more real, more beautiful than any agreed-upon construct in this whole “real” world. Perfect, like we’ll be perfect. Perfected. Perfection. The ur-planet. The ur-.
And everyone else will end up here, now, instead. No Heaven or Hell. Just a swirling knot of souls, too tangled to untie themselves without tearing, so far gone that by the time they come back ‘round again the earth’ll already be inside the Sun. Everyone who’s not us, sooner or later. Everyone who’s not tuned to the Signal . . .
Which is what? I wanted to ask, desperately. But even as I strung the words, let alone sent them dropping to my tongue, it already had me; I was inside it, moving through it while it moved through me, all echoing clicks and breath and liquid twittering, keystroke static on an empty station. Classic SETI shit, Translating as it went. A cruel brightness that slapped me back down into the waking world again, even as it simultaneously revealed said “world” to be nothing but skin on howl, a burning scrim, the mere and flattest parody of whatever it was meant to conceal—
So, anyhow: Thanks for the cheap trip, Yelena, like I wasn’t already feeling . . . nothing enough, already.
Put that on your expanded Cymbalta symptoms list, and smoke it.
Yelena Rostov, Notes:
Kuiper Belt: The outer rim of the Solar System, a belt of asteroids and small bodies; includes Pluto’s orbit. Dreams of dark empty places common symbol of depression—may be good sign that T.’s seeing herself separate from it, rather than in it.
Tiamat: Babylonian dragon-goddess, slain by hero-god Marduk.
Interesting connection to Kuiper Belt—’70s pop pseudoscience said there was another planet (Tiamat, natch) where Belt is now, way-station for aliens; Belt’s supposed to be its remains, post-destruction.
(Like Chariots of the Gods? Grill T. on her reading before coming here.)
Tiamat non delenda est: Riff on Cartago delenda est? “Tiamat must not be destroyed”?
“The Signal”: ?
Handwritten “dream diary” of Thordis Hendricks:
July 31, 2012:
Dreamed I was living in a house, old & decrepit & dust-encrusted, & spent the whole day cleaning it. But when I had to muck out the basement, while I was down there I found a door in the floor & underneath the house a whole other house, equally dirty. So I went down there to clean up that one too & in its basement I found another door, another house, & so on. Smaller & dirtier & further down all the time, & they never stopped. I woke up before I found the bottom.
August 1, 2012:
Dreamed I was pregnant & had been for maybe a year & the doctor wanted to induce me but instead of going to the hospital we did it right here, in the living room. & then I started to feel sick & thought I was going to puke but instead I just doubled up & my stomach came open like a zipper, & inside there was just dust, red dust. & it all spilled out on the floor so I clawed at my own neck so badly I pulled my jugular open & bled to death, I could feel it happening. But I didn’t care.
August 2, 2012:
A knock at the door. It’s a package & I open it without thinking. A photo-frame with one tiny hole in it, like an ikon, black magic Advent window. An eye, peering out. So I slide off the back & find out it’s a picture of me laid upside-down, staring eye transmuted to blank terror simply by being reversed.
August 3, 2012:
Nothing.
August 4, 2012:
Nothing.
August 5, 2012:
Just floating again, out in the black on an orbital track so elliptical I knew I’d reach the thinnest part of my gravitational field & just slip off like a bead from a thread, go drifting away into nothing & never stop unless I hit something.
August 6, 2012:
Dreamed I was a horse with bones braided through my mane being ridden by something gigantic, this crushing weight, faster & faster, being ridden to death. Every breath a razorblade turning in my chest.
August 7, 2012:
Trapped under a car. I could feel oil dripping on me, maybe gas, or maybe I’d wet myself. That weird smell of hot rubber and dusty asphalt. & at any time the car might collapse further, something might spark, I might burn alive, but I don’t think I was scared. I could hear the Signal far off in the distance, getting stronger.
August 8, 2012:
Corpse posture meditation, & I felt like I was going to blend into the floor, all heavy & cold & hot at the same time, every part of my body ticking with life I couldn’t control. & then I was standing up & looking down on myself, & I looked so good empty, so perfected. Transitioned. But then I started to rot, & then I was melting, I then I was gone. Just the mat left behind.
August 9, 2012:
I was a man who wanted to be a woman, or maybe a woman who’d been a man. But one way or the other I was bad & wrecked now, broken & I knew it, & there was nothing I could do about it, because whatever choice I’d made was the wrong one. So I took a knife from the kitchen & started cutting parts of myself off anywhere I could & eating them, hoping that would help.
August 10, 2012:
Nothing.
August 11, 2012:
Nothing.
August 12, 2012:
Dreamed I was up on a hill & looked down into the valley & there were three people standing there with bags over their head, clear plastic bags, so I could see their faces when they all turned & looked up at me, but I didn’t recognize any of them. & I think they were trying to tell me something but it was too far away & I couldn’t hear them because of the bags & then I just woke up.
August 13, 2012:
Dreamed I looked in the mirror & I was somebody else, & then that person told me to go get ready because we were going on a long trip together & pretty soon it would be time to leave. But instead of packing or anything we just sat down in the living room & kissed each other & said goodbye. & then we both gave each other pills & we took them at the same time & then everything went dark & that was the end.
Yelena Rostov, Notes:
Some dreams seem specifically parallel to previous tenants—Bissionette (post-partum depression with self-harm), Siemanczski (Vicodin abuse after vehicular injury), Lin (body-image dysmorphia with false transgender self-diagnosis)—even though no way T. could know about any of that. But pattern v. clear, impossible to ignore.
All dreams end badly, but with no sense of unhappiness. Transfiguration imagery. Change resulting in bodily dissolution.
Who else lived in here, before the Big Three?
Check to see if pattern continues in either direction.
From the Obituaries Section of the Toronto Star, September 21, 2000:
Leora SOONG, beloved daughter and sister, 1968 to 2000. Passed away suddenly but peacefully of natural causes. Her father Pak, mother Nureet and brother Doctor Tardesh Soong ask that in lieu of flowers, cash donations be directed to the department headed by Dr. Maurice V. Corbray at Shumate House, in gratitude for their caring and professional treatment of Leora’s condition. No memorial service will be held.
From the Star’s Local News Section, same issue:
Almost one year exactly after the shocking discovery of thirteen dead bodies in a private Rosedale home, Leora Soong, the final survivor of Marc-Andre Rozant’s Pure Signalism cult (a splinter faction of the larger Anunnaki Signalist Movement) died in her sleep late Sunday night. She was discovered early Monday morning by the staff at Shumate House, the care facility her parents had placed her in.
A former University of Toronto medical student, Soong first came to national attention after she fled the Rozant house early in the morning on September 19, 1999 and flagged down a passing police car, informing the officers who stopped that Rozant had ordered the rest of the group to commit a Heaven’s Gate-style mass suicide. By the time an armed response team had been summoned, however, Rozant’s plans had already been put into effect, with only one other cult member—ex-NHL goalie Tyson Legasse—left alive. Legasse claimed he had been waiting for Soong, his “double-harness team-mate”, to return so that they could “Transition together properly”. When Soong still refused to go through with the suicide ceremony, Legasse cut his own throat with a concealed knife and then bled out before paramedics could get close enough to treat him. . . .
Wikipedia Entry: Signalism
Anunnaki Signalism was a Millennialist cult developed and based in Toronto, Canada, though many members were recruited from America, Europe, Russia and parts of Asia through Internet proselytization. After a schism split the original Movement, the fourteen members calling themselves Pure Signalists retreated to their leader’s Rosedale house in 1999 to commit ritual suicide.1 The massacre’s single survivor died of natural causes a year later, while still in deprogramming after-care therapy at Toronto’s Shumate House facility.2
Doctrine
According to their internal newsletter, “The Secret Knowledge”3, the Signalists subscribed to the Tiamat/Anunnaki Theory, a variant derivation of the 12th Planet Theory of Azerbaijan-born American author Zecharia Sitchin, whose books propose an explanation for human origins involving ancient astronauts. Sitchin attributes the creation of the ancient Sumerian culture to the Anunnaki, whom he identifies as a race of extra-terrestrials from a hypothetical planet beyond Neptune called Nibiru. He believed this planet to follow an elongated, elliptical orbit in the Solar System, asserting that Sumerian mythology reflects this view. Sitchin’s books have sold millions of copies worldwide and have been translated into more than 25 languages.[citation needed]
The mathematical progression of Bode’s law suggests that a planet should exist between Mars and Jupiter, some 260 million miles from the Sun. 12th Planet Theory posits that this planet (which Sitchin identifies with the Babylonian monster-goddess Tiamat) did in fact exist, but was struck and destroyed by Nibiru as its orbit intersected with our solar system, thus giving rise to the myth of Tiamat being “torn apart and spread across the sky” by the usurper-god Marduk. Gravitational redistribution from this event pulled some fragments of Tiamat and its moons into the orbit of the remaining planets, while others were driven further to form first the asteroid belt, then the Kuiper Belt.
The Signalist Movement builds on Sitchin’s theories by claiming that the planet Tiamat was not entirely destroyed. Though its inhabitants did not possess the technology of Nibiru, they did possess a hypersapient spiritual tradition which led to their precognitive realization that such a collision was coming, and could not be avoided. They thus developed the Signal, a psychic “anchor” which would allow them to phase-shift the “best parts” of their planet and themselves into another dimension using zero-point energy. Like the Heaven’s Gate cultists who believed they could abandon their flawed human “vehicles” and catch a ride to Paradise on the Hale-Bopp comet’s tail, Signalists believe that by tuning themselves to the Signal’s frequency, they will be able to translate themselves to a perfected version of Tiamat through a process called Transition.
While most mainstream Signalists consider this process a lifelong evolution that concludes with natural death, a radical fringe current continues to advocate “active abandonment” of the body, as fleshly detritus, through suicide.
Signalist Litany of Intent
The Litany is printed in the masthead of each issue of “The Secret Knowledge”:
When the Signal comes, it will decode everything it touches.
When the Signal comes, nothing will be left unchanged.
The Signal will be a type of terraforming. A psychic terraforming. Our world will be remade from the inside-out.
Those who are Horses for the Signal will be Translated and Transition correctly.
Those who are not Horses for the Signal will Transition incorrectly, in that they will not Transition at all.
Horses must run in tandem, or the Transition will be disordered.
Team-mindedness is key.
Rehearsal is the single most important element in a correct Transition.
Rehearsal assures that the Final Checks are performed consistently and in unison, with perfect intent in action.
Two on two and two by two is the proper order, so both partners can support each other throughout.
Team-mindedness means: No one goes alone.
Team-mindedness means: No one is left behind.
To abandon team-mindedness is to abandon your partner, condemning them to an incorrect transition.
To abandon team-mindedness is the only unforgivable sin.
Yelena Rostov, Notes:
According to the Pure Signalism website (still online!), Final Checks =
Pair up.
Assemble materials.
Put bag over head (leave open at bottom, for mouth access).
Face each other.
Each team-member hands the other their dose.
Doses taken at the same time.
Wash down with vodka.
Repeat until dose canisters/vodka bottles are empty.
Tie each other’s bags.
Lie down in paired corpse posture, feet touching.
Begin Litany.
Wait.
But Leora Soong didn’t wait. She turned over and tore a hole in her bag, puked up her dose, ran out of the house before Tyson Legasse could catch her. Coroner’s records show he was already dying when the police got there—amazing he lived long enough to kill himself. But maybe he wanted to see her again, see her eyes when she turned him down. (Like he knew she would?)
IR on Leora implies that by the time she came to Shumate, she thought she made the wrong call.
Okay, so now we know why Shumate doesn’t take cult survivors/deprogramming jobs anymore. But
“The Signal” = Signalists? How can that
Checked Thordis’s browser cache. If she’s been looking at Signalist materials, I can’t find any record of it. But that wouldn’t explain how she knew about the other three patients, anyways. Or what Leora Soong and her Signalist crazy had to do with
No no no.
NO. No, that just doesn’t
Fuck.
Therapy Blog of Thordis Hendricks, August 15, 2012 (2:55 AM):
Found teeth in the wall today. Like there was a lump in the plaster I could barely see, but I could feel it when I touched it, so I went all through the place looking for something heavy enough to break it open, and then finally I did (edge of a plastic file-box from the closet), and I did. And it opened right up like a seam, and inside were these teeth buried deep enough I had to dig them out, roots and all. Too small to be an adult’s, with their enamel the colour of milk gone off.
How does that even happen, though? I mean, it must’ve been deliberate—somebody did that, but why? To leave something of themselves behind here, just in case
(that’s if the teeth were even theirs)
One way or the other, I think I maybe need to start writing down exactly when I take my meds, again. And how many.
Slept maybe an hour around midnight, and had that same dream about somebody standing at the foot of my bed, looking down at me while I slept. And it was me? Me looking down, me sleeping? And when I opened my eyes I was surprised, genuinely, to not find her still standing there. Surprised, and a little disappointed.
It’s very lonely, in here. I’m beginning to wish
(only beginning?)
well, more like—after all this time in Apartment Five—that I’m finding it hard to remember what it was like to ever be someplace
(anyplace)
else.
And the other thing that’s funny, just a bit: When your diagnosis includes suicidal ideation, why do the side-effects of so many drugs also include suicidal ideation? Cymbalta included, if I recall correctly; hoping you have a handle on that, at least, Yelena. Hoping you’re keeping track.
It just seems . . . contradictory.
rostovy@monitoru.net Dr. Corbray, it’s Yelena Rostov.
rostovy@monitoru.net Dr. Corbray?
rostovy@monitoru.net I sent you a report, Dr. Corbray. Did you get it?
corbrayml@monitoru.net
corbrayml@monitoru.net
corbrayml@monitoru.net Yes, I received it.
rostovy@monitoru.net All right, then
rostovy@monitoru.net Mind telling me what you thought?
corbrayml@monitoru.net Will be sending you my response in email form, so please check your in-box.
corbrayml@monitoru.net Signing off now.
From: corbrayml@monitoru.net
Date: August 15, 2012, 10:42 AM
To: rostovy@monitoru.net
Subject:Report (Thordis Hendricks)
Dear Yelena,
Following your account of what you term Thordis Hendricks’s “psychological degeneration” over her stay with us here at Shumate House, I went back and examined the Therapy Blog posts and dream diary entries you quoted in detail. Having done so, while I will admit the symptoms she’s been experiencing are extreme (enough so to definitely merit a pharmacological shift off Cymbalta, perhaps substituting Paxil or Celexa, followed by a full-scale treatment protocol reassessment), I’m not quite sure what else I’m supposed to take away from this laundry-list of additional implications, some of which appear to verge on the pathological.
To answer your questions, however: No, there is no way Ms. Hendricks could have learned the details of how Apartment Five’s former tenants died. No, I don’t believe there’s a “pattern” to those deaths, aside from the unfortunate tendency of addicts to overdose and depressives to commit suicide. And though I suppose it’s possible Ms. Hendricks might recall something about the Pure Signalism cult denouement—it would have been hard to escape that year’s news coverage without picking up any reference to it, especially here in Toronto—this idea of yours that Leora Soong’s completely coincidental stay at Shumate may have left some sort of toxic “psychic residue” behind that infects Apartment Five’s residents with Signalist ideas is both highly unprofessional, and scarily close to veering into the realm of paranormal mumbo-jumbo. We work for MonitorU, not the Freihoeven Institute.
I don’t want to re-assign you, Yelena, since I believe that would be bad for Ms. Hendricks—she needs continuity, especially now. But this is a conversation I really don’t want to find myself having with you again.
(By the way, in future, I would prefer to communicate by email rather than Instant Message, since the latter format is not exactly conducive to in-depth debate.)
Cordially,
Dr. Maurice Corbray, M.D., Ph.D.
Director, Shumate House
Yelena Rostov, Notes:
Asshole.
Okay, okay—
Supposedly, Shumate doesn’t accept cult survivors or deprogramming jobs anymore.
But Corbray was Shumate’s primary student; Corbray treated Leora Soong, so “well” her parents wanted everybody to donate to him. Corbray was the one who mentioned Apartment Five’s stellar tenancy record, in the first place. Why?
So I would go looking? So I’d figure out
(no, that doesn’t make any)
(or does it)
So here’s a thesis:
You have a—all right, say it—haunted apartment. Everyone who stays there gets sucked into the same routine: Final Checks for Translation/Transition; team-mindedness at work. She (Leora) convinces them they’re part of her double-harness pairing. And they go through with it, but they don’t stick around—they move on, somewhere else. She sticks around, and tries it again.
Because she feels bad about pulling out. Because she feels
(alone, and lonely, so lonely)
(just like Thordis)
And it doesn’t matter at this point if she really-for-truly thinks that all her dead friends wound up on Lost Planet Tiamat in the Paradise Dimension, or whatever—fact is, wherever they did end up, she’s not there, and she never will be. Not unless she can find someone else, the right someone else
to team with.
And Corbray’s not stupid, just a bastard. So what is it for him, some kind of experiment? Like: Hey, I wonder what happens if we put this sort of person in Number Five? Or this one? Or
(because I think I know)
I mean: How many times do you have to do this, exactly, to figure out the truth? How many times do you have to repeat a routine to know it’s never going to
Oh God, I have to get Thordis out of there.
Skype log transcript of conversation between Yelena Rostov and Thordis Hendricks, recorded on August 15, 2012 (3:15 PM to 3:27 PM):
Yrostov: Thordis, are you there? I can hear you, but I can’t see you. Do you have your camera turned on?
ThordH: Yelena?
Yrostov: It’s me, yeah. I need to speak to you right now, about—
ThordH: Ha, that’s so weird. I was just going to call you.
Yrostov: You were?
ThordH: What did you want to talk about?
Yrostov: Well, I—was worried—
ThordH: Oh God, this about the blog, right? Listen, I feel so stupid, I was just . . . you know how it is. My sleep’s been really upset, and I just get down.
Yrostov: So you didn’t find teeth in the wall?
ThordH: No, that part was true. I mean, it’s all “true.”
Yrostov: I don’t—Thordis, I’m still not seeing anything, can you try again? I just want to talk to you about these . . . patterns in your blog, this toxic repetition, these weird turns of—okay, there, that’s better. Are you still having those dreams?
ThordH: Sure, sort of. But ever since you sent Lee over, things have been so much—
Yrostov: Excuse me, who?
ThordH: Lee, Yelena. You know. She’s been taking me through the meditation sequences in person, and it really helps clarify things. I mean, at first I was a little leery, but turns out having somebody in my space isn’t so bad, when they really know what they’re doing.
Yrostov: The meditation—
ThordH: Corpse posture. The whole rehearsal, Final Checks and all. I can hear everything perfectly, now; I understand. It’s Translated itself for me, so I can return the favour. And it’s just, it’s just, so—
Yrostov: Thordis, wait, slow down. Breathe. I, I need to make sure you know what you’re doing, that you aren’t gonna hurt yourself—
ThordH: Yelena, c’mon. What is it you think I’m going to do?
Yrostov: I—look, that doesn’t matter right now, I’ll explain when I get there. Just . . . stay put, hold on. Don’t do anything. Okay?
ThordH: No, I’m interested—hurt myself how? Why would I do that? It makes no sense. I’d never do that, not when I came here to get better. No one would. Right, Lee? I’m right, aren’t I? Tell her.
Yrostov: Thordis—
ThordH: Tell her, damnit!
Yrostov: Thordis. Focus. Who’s...that behind you?
ThordH: I told you already, Yelena. Lee.
Shumate House Site Incident Report for August 15, 2012, filed by Saracen Security Guard Margaret Cuchner:
12:00 PM Arrived on site to relieve previous guard. No further incident.
12:30 to 15:00 PM Checks as usual, nothing to report.
15:15 PM (Approx.) Care worker Yelena Rostov entered lobby, greeted me and registered. She then proceeded to Skype with Apartment 5 (Thordis Hendricks) on her tablet, while I filled out site log.
15:25 PM (Approx.) Rostov became upset and waved me over. I heard what I assumed to be tenant Hendricks rambling incoherently. Rostov pointed out what she said was an intruder in Hendricks’ apartment. Hard to see, but looked like a female figure standing behind Hendricks.
15:30 PM (Approx.) I triggered the panic button, summoning police and paramedics, and left my duty station to accompany Rostov up to Apartment 5. No response to knocking and calling. I tried security fob, but apartment door was unresponsive. When I recommended waiting for police, Rostov broke glass on fire extinguisher cabinet and used extinguisher to break door-handle, then kicked in door. I proceeded to do quick check of apartment, but found no intruder.
15:35 PM Police arrived on site and accessed my walkie-talkie. I explained situation. Officer Brian Lum stayed at front desk to direct paramedics, while Officer Chimo Moche joined Rostov and myself upstairs.
15:38 PM Officer Moche, Rostov and myself located Hendricks lying in her own bed, apparently unconscious, with blue lips and a plastic bag half-full of vomit over her head, knotted around her neck. At same time (approx.), paramedics arrived on site and were directed upstairs by Officer Lum. They began resuscitation efforts on Hendricks, broke open bag and turned her over on her stomach. Hendricks coughed up more vomit, then opened her eyes briefly and began to breathe again, erratically.
15:45 PM Paramedics removed Hendricks to St. Michael’s Hospital. Officers Lum and Moche asked me if I wanted to prefer trespassing charges against Rostov. I replied that I was not authorized to do so, and asked to be allowed to call my immediate supervisor on site, Dr. Maurice L. Corbray. Officers Lum and Moche asked Rostov to remain in their custody until Dr. Corbray got here. Rostov agreed.
15:50 PM I re-set alarms in Apartment 5.
16:17 PM Dr. Corbray arrived on site. He elected to waive charges, but told Rostov she would be let go from her current position with MonitorU, and that she no longer had security access to Shumate House. Rostov turned her I.D. and fob over to me.
16:30 PM Rostov, Officers Lum and Moche and Dr. Corbray left site. I proceeded to fill out Site Incident Report.
Signed, Margaret Cuchner #TU-4445-000097.
From This Narrow Life, the blog of Thordis Hendricks, September 30, 2012 (1:28 PM):
But why would I do that? I remember saying. It makes no sense. I would never do that. No one would ever do that.
I would never take three pills, take a sip of vodka, take three pills, repeat until gone. I would never have a bag over my head already when I did it, conveniently open at the bottom and hiked over my nose to free my mouth. I would never peel it back down again after I was done and knot it, once, twice, three times. I would never.
Never make my way back upstairs, weaving slightly. Never feel stuffy and warm and happy and only slightly queasy. Never lie down flop on my bed (our bed), and close my eyes.
Thinking: I would never, no one would. I’m not doing it now.
Except, of course, that I was.
Anyhow: This is what happened after, as far as I can figure out—
I ended up at St. Mike’s, in a private room (thank you, Isa’s money). I remember Yelena sitting by my bed, but only vaguely; I think she might’ve been holding my hand. She looked so tired.
(The weirdest thing is, in context, how I don’t remember “Lee” at all. I read that Skype log and I’m amazed it’s me talking, though it certainly sounds like me. Nothing seems familiar. The dreams, I at least remember having them. But this girl, this—whoever she was? Nothing.
(And I even looked up Leora Soong on the ‘Net, too. Totally unfamiliar.)
Dr. Corbray came by a week later, trying to convince me that Yelena was somehow responsible for what’d happened. I disagreed. By that time, of course, the next part was all over the news; I guess he was trying to do damage control, in his own fucked-up way. Maybe that was all he’d ever been trying to do.
It’d make me sound entirely too nice to say I don’t blame him, exactly. Because I guess I probably would, if I let myself think about it. One way or the other, he lost himself a customer; whether or not that’s “enough”, given circumstances, I don’t know. The family lawyers kept telling me I had a serious case—one even said Yelena should co-sue with me, for wrongful dismissal, once her own legal issues were settled. But it’s not like Corbray can do it to anybody else now, either . . . so, kind of a moot point.
Because that was another thing Yelena was doing, apparently, at the hospital—she got hold of my fob, waited ‘til that guard she found me with was off-shift, then used it. Went in through the fire access door, which I didn’t even know you could (but then again, how would I?). Went upstairs, got back into Apartment 5 . . . where she came up with enough salt to pour around the place that, when she followed it up with gasoline and threw a lighter in after it, the salt helped act as a firebreak and kept the damage confined to the apartment. No casualties, no damage to the rest of the house—but #5’s gutted. Whatever they put there next, it won’t be the place Leora Soong died in anymore, and maybe that will help.
I’d like to find Yelena, not that I know how to go about it. I’d like to thank her, except that no one really knows where she went, after. The fire department says there weren’t any human remains in the ashes, and you’d think they’d be able to tell. So hopefully she got out, changed her name, went underground; maybe she’s working another job somewhere, keeping her eyes peeled for things other people don’t want to let themselves see. Maybe she’s sitting in front of a screen with her IM left open like some high-tech Ouija board, waiting for someone’s words to fill the box, seeing where they’ll take her. Maybe she’s telling Leora’s ghost the equivalent of Sit down, Miss Soong, we have a lot of work to do together.
Or maybe she walked into that whole Translation routine with her eyes open, wielding a skill-set I’ll never possess. Maybe she took Leora’s hand and pulled her on with her, so they ended up . . . somewhere else. Not the Kuiper Belt, hopefully, but hell, I don’t know. I don’t know.
(I’ll never know.)
So: This is the new blog, obviously. I’m out of Shumate, on a different cocktail, into another apartment; I go out every day, at least for a little while, and I make myself look up steadily, training my eyes on the blue, the clouds, trying to not think about the cold, huge black lurking behind it. The same black which encircles us all, no matter where we choose to hide, just beyond this planet’s pitifully thin atmosphere-skin. Because there’s no place we can go to escape it, even in our dreams—like death, it just is, and nothing helps for long.
But this much has changed: Instead of thrashing around and trying to avoid them, what I do now is make myself think these thoughts through, all the way, allow myself to, and then I let them go. Get into corpse posture, lit or fig; shut my eyes, and breathe. One day I’ll stop, and maybe I won’t even notice. What happens after that is beyond my—or anyone else’s—control.
This is the truth of what I have, what I am—it may get better, but it doesn’t get cured. You find a pattern and settle into it, hoping it holds. And so every day, every night, I feel things moving all around me, a pulse like some universal heartbeat, a million minds rubbing in from every side, pumicing their thoughts against mine. A Signal of sorts, though whether it comes from inside or out-, Tiamat or God or the underside of my very own personal chemistry-soaked brain is simply impossible to tell, or prove.
Which means, our various faiths aside, that we should probably try to be content to deal with the immediate, and let the rest take care of itself.
Still seeing signs and portents everywhere, no matter what, and letting them wash over me, resistlessly as rain. A shadow in a room, darkness on darkness. A light through the bedroom window, shining from nowhere, which follows you everywhere you move to, so you always wake up with it in your eyes. A car alarm that goes off all the time, especially in the middle of the night. Or a voice in your mind, only vaguely familiar, mourning—
Team-mindedness! I broke routine, broke faith. I let my partner down. So I can’t go on, not now, not yet. Not yet. . . .
If that’s Leora Soong’s voice, though, I don’t owe it to her to remember. I don’t owe her anything.
Instead, I sit here typing and I take my pills, determined to keep on living, still haunted or not. Which I am, surely. Aren’t we all?
In a way, every ghost is only our own.