This is something I wrote last week for my Tumblr blog to go with this charming pic I found and has nothing at all with the plot of the new book (I am STILL struggling with the opening paragraphs – proving SO difficult!). As you’ll probably know, I have used the idea of induced dependency to gain control over another individual in one of my books - Alice Under Disciplne, Book 1 - and elsewhere, but never by this route! But it is a nice idea - and would work.“Why the enema, Mrs Fotheringale-Sloane? Because your stepdaughter’s learnt to submit to the enema, happy with the notion that it can do her no harm, whereas she refuses to take any form of medication offered her and is deeply suspicious of any foodstuffs or drink that taste or smell in the least bit ‘odd’ to her. But you know, the alimentary canal can absorb some substances equally well when introduced from either end. So what I am doing here is introducing a mild – at the dosage she is presently receiving – but deliciously habit-forming sedative to the mixture of soap solution, bowel irritant and muscle relaxant we’re using.
You’ll have to stay out of sight of course, but I think you’ll notice the change in her already, when the nurse brings her in; more amenable, less argumentative, almost KEEN to receive her enema, though of course she wouldn’t admit it. You see, each time she leaves this room she is left feeling calm, relaxed and infused with a pleasantly complacent fuzzy woolly-headedness – until the drugs wear off and the jitters begin. And then she is whisked back in for another treatment. And of course over time it takes a little more to ease her nerves, leaving her feeling a little more euphoric, a little more woolly-minded, a little less able to concentrate each session – which in turn, given time, will leave her easier to handle.
She hasn’t become aware of any of this of course, the dosage has been incremented far too gradually for her to have noticed – and as her faculties become more and more compromis
ed, so it will become possible to move her on to stronger medication, and without the slightest hint of objection. The stuff I have her on at the moment is merely habit-forming from the psychological perspective, although we have gone to some lengths to maximize that dependency by helping her to associate the relief from anxiety she receives with the ritual of receiving her enema. But the sedative I want to EVENTUALLY lead her on to in this way has a reputation of leading to a deep-seated physical dependency in habitual users – in short; she’ll become fixated on receiving her enema and all the ritual that surrounds it.
Do you know, only yesterday she actually asked her nurse when her next enema would be, how long she’d have to wait? Apparently she was ringing her hands and pacing up and down so much that eventually her pyjama bottoms fell down around her ankles, tripping her over – hah, hah, hah, hah! Can you imagine? How funny!
Oh didn’t I say? Yes we’ve got her in those hospital-issue pyjamas now – we simply refused to continue with her enema treatments unless she complied with hospital regulations and handed over all her outdoor clothes, every last stitch. It was a good few weeks back now. Psychologically it would have been a very poignant moment for her; breaking with her old life and embracing the new; the moment she began to become a real patient.
In fact we gave her the standard hospital haircut yesterday – we want her looking as much like all the other patients as possible. She kicked up a fuss, but I took my cane to her bottom – six strokes soon quieted her down. Oh yes, she’ll bend, touch her toes, for the cane now if I tell her. The point is: the more she looks like the other patients physically, in her own eyes, the easier she will find it to begin to identify with them psychologically - and the harder she is going to find it to hang on to her old identity… I can promise that as more time passes you’ll find the Amelia of old fading away before your eyes like an old snapshot in the sun…”