What she knows could bring down the company so she will be sent to the company clinic.
Harriet was a good girl. She was intelligent, willing to learn and with a strong sense of justice. But that was the problem and that was the reason for a very discreet meeting in the Director’s Suite after hours one dark night.
Present were the Managing Director, The Chief Accountant and the Company Doctor. The MD said that surely an eighteen-year-old clerk could not have found out anything too serious in the company books. All they had to do was accuse her of theft and sack her.
But the accountant said that this solution simply would not work.
“We few know that the sole purpose of this company is to be a front for the Cambodian operation and that all the sensitive work goes through just one account amongst the thousands on our books but this girl is clever. She picked up that the Special Account was exempt from all the usual checks and she spent three lunchtimes going through the transactions. This girl knows everything purely because she is clever enough to have worked it out. We can sack her but she will then be out in the world and free to talk to anyone she chooses.”
The Doctor looked decidedly worried.
“You are not suggesting that we..” He drew his hand across his throat.
The accountant was probably the most intelligent man in the room as well as the most unprincipled.
“For the stakes in play, we could do that, unless you would prefer thirty years in jail. But the problem is that we would then have a killing to cover up and that could end up having the same effect. With most people we could buy her off but our Harriet is honest and I know she wouldn’t take a bribe, not even a big one. So, we have to get her off our hands in such a way that it won’t matter if she talks because nobody will believe her.”
Two pairs of eyes swung around to look at the Doctor.
“Well yes. I see. I have full access to her medical records and I could be creative. We have the Company Private Clinic and their Medical Director would be no problem especially if he saw her amended medical file. I believe she lives alone and her parents are way up in Glasgow so they would have no reason to disbelieve our records.”
And that was pretty much the end of the meeting. Harriet’s life was about to take a major turn for the worst.
The following day was a normal working day until the fire alarm sounded and the building was evacuated. Word soon spread that it was not a drill as the smell of smoke filled the ground floor. While the staff milled around in the car park, it was discovered that the small, locked room where confidential waste was stored awaiting collection was ablaze. All those bags of paper were burning furiously but the room had no windows so Security Officers were able to stand in the doorway with fire hoses and spray the whole room. The outcome was a bare room with blackened walls and an ash covered floor ensuring that there would be no need for a waste collection this week.
The staff were allowed back to work with almost no-one having any idea of how the fire had started. Harriet was at her desk in the Finance Office when a Security Officer came in to escort her upstairs. The frightened girl had no idea what was going on when she was taken into the office of the Managing Director and accused of setting the fire. Her mouth fell open in disbelief but her pleas of innocence were brushed aside. It was explained to her that, for arson against the company she could be sacked and reported to the police but the company cared for its staff and she was to be taken to the company clinic for her own good.
Harriet protested loudly and the two large men in white coats stood up from where they had been seated at the other end of the room. It seemed that her choices were either to go quietly or be restrained and led out struggling for the whole office to see. It was still very humiliating to be led out of the office by two Security staff and not even allowed to clear her desk or her locker or even collect her coat. The two guards sat silently in the back of the van with her for the drive to the clinic which was a mansion in its own grounds behind very high walls.
She was escorted to what could only be described as a padded cell and the door made a very final sounding clang as her escorts slammed it shut behind her. Now that she was alone and locked in, she could only sit on the bed, which was on a ledge protruding from the wall, while panic, helplessness and fear began to overwhelm her. The small black hemisphere set into the ceiling which could only be a camera did nothing to make her feel better.
Meanwhile, in his office, the director of the clinic was reading her medical records on the company database.
“Repeated psychotic incidents probably brought on by drug use in the past six months. Multiple incidents of self-harm and violence towards others. Frequent hallucinations which the patient believes to be real coupled to extreme paranoia culminating in an arson attack at Company premises.”
It was clear that this patient was going to require very careful treatment probably lasting several months. Most employers would simply terminate employment on medical grounds but the Company was known for its caring approach to all its staff. The clinic director would later be informed that Security staff had visited the patient’s home and found illegal drugs as well as confidential Company files which should never have been removed from the office.
Harriet was still wearing her watch along with her work clothes and her usual small amount of very discreet jewelry so she knew that she was alone for almost an hour before the nightmare moved up to a whole new level. A red-faced man in a white coat entered the room without knocking and he was accompanied by a large male orderly in pale blue scrubs.
The director explained that she was being detained under the Mental Health Act for her own safety and that it was necessary for her to change into hospital clothing to ensure that she had nothing with which she could harm herself. Now that she at last has someone senior to whom she could speak, Harriet stood and began to tell all she knew about the financial misdealing which she had discovered. The director gave a shout and a second orderly rushed in from just outside the door. The two orderlies were very well practiced and, taking an arm each, they pulled Harriet backwards and off her feet before dragging her out of the room and down a corridor. The young woman screamed and did all she could to resist but it was futile. They came to another padded room which was little more than a cupboard; it was dominated by an ugly metal throne which was festooned with leather straps.
The two men stood with Harriet between them and took turns with one holding her still and the other unfastening and removing her clothing. They twisted her around and passed her between them as if she were a doll and in about two minutes, she was completely naked. They took her watch, jewelry and even her hairclips and then they forced her down into the terrifying chair and began fastening the straps around her forehead, thighs, waist, ankles, wrists and upper arms. She found herself barely able to move at all and forced to sit staring straight ahead with her legs wide apart and her pert breasts displayed between the straps which ran around her body above and below them. The men left her and slammed the door shut.
It must have been around 5 or 6pm when she was placed in the chair and no-one entered the room until around 8 the next morning. The chair in which Harriet was restrained had a toilet seat instead of an ordinary seat and she relieved herself where she sat as cramps in her muscles caused her to cry out in pain during the long night. The electric light remained on all the time and, above her, was the black dome housing the camera which allowed some unseen person to watch her lonely distress constantly.
By the time that they came to release her, Harriet was unable to stand and her mind was lost in a sleep deprived fog. Back in her room she was given a plastic tray containing a beaker of fruit juice and a slab of bread. After her meal, taken alone, they gave her the first of her constant stream of pills. It was always the same routine; if she failed to open her mouth a hand was pressed beneath her nose so that her mouth opened of its own accord and the pill would be placed inside. If she did not swallow, a huge hand clasped her throat until she almost passed out; then when she at last sucked in a lungful of air, the pill went down her throat. That was when fingers would invade her mouth to ensure that the pill was not somehow being held within.
After her time in the dreaded chair, Harriet was given a baggy, cotton gown which went over her head and reached to just above her knees. It was white. There were regular sessions with various people in white coats who would try to cure her of her delusions about the Company and it was emphasized that she needed to leave these fantasies behind if she were ever to be cured. After day upon day of taking whatever cocktail of pills they were forcing into her, she found that her memory was becoming unreliable. Sometimes she struggled to recall how she had first discovered what the Company was doing. Some details were getting away from her such as names of banks used to launder funds.
But her “progress” was too slow for her tormentors. One day her two orderlies dragged her to a different room which had an examination table as one would find in a doctor’s surgery. They did not ask her to lay on the table – they did not even speak – but her gown was stripped from her and she was strapped down to the table. Then a black, fabric hood was placed over her head putting her into total darkness.
Breathing within the hood was restricted enough but, suddenly, water was poured onto her face and she was sucking in more water than oxygen. Her panic at being drowned went off the scale. No-one knew that she was here; they could kill her and bury her body in the grounds. She was hyperventilating which meant that her oxygen intake decreased even more as her mouth and nose filled with water and she felt herself falling down into that deeper darkness.
When she recovered, the hood had been removed and she was staring up at the ceiling with one of her tormentors still holding the water jug. The man in the white coat was standing over her and he said that she must rid herself of all her paranoid fantasies about the Company. Unable to speak, she shook her head and the hood came down immediately followed by more water. She lost track of how many mock drownings she endured but, after yet another blacking out, she awoke on the floor of her cell dressed in her gown but with her hair still soaking.
The pills and “therapy” sessions continued and, each time that Harriet shouted at them or refused to co-operate in her therapy, she would spend another long night in that terrible chair. She was sure that she went for days without food but time, like reality, was becoming a very fluid thing.
The mind games continued. One morning, Harriet and the director went for a gentle stroll in the grounds with two orderlies just behind them. There were no questions, simply general remarks about the shrubs and the birdsong. As they walked beside the lake the director, jokingly, warned her to watch her step.
“The lake is deep. If someone went in there they may never be found.”
It was all very jovial but the threat was very clear. Off to one side of the lake stood a mini digger, one of those machines just large enough for one man to sit in the cab. The digger was simply parked but it had obviously been digging a narrow trench about ten feet deep; the soil from the hole was piled to one side. The director explained that, whenever work was done in the garden, great care was taken to preserve the unspoiled look.
“We backfill the soil, the grass grows again and you would never know there had been a hole there.”
All the veiled threats were to come into sharp focus that afternoon when two orderlies came to her cell and dragged her out and down the corridor to the room with the examination table. As they entered the room, Harriet froze in horror. A rope noose hung in the centre of the room suspended from a winch set just below the ceiling. The winch had been wound downwards so the noose was some five feet above the floor.
Rough, uncaring hands stripped her gown from her and her wrists were tied tightly behind her. She fought as hard as she could but it was pointless. With her hands bound, they could easily move her to the noose and slip it over her head before pulling the knot tight around her throat.
While she was in this helpless position, one of the men knelt and bound her ankles and then the second man moved to the small control box on the wall and pressed a red button. There was a muted electrical hum and she felt pressure increase around her throat and then a definite upward pull.
For a minute the powers of gravity and electricity were in balance and then her feet began to lose purchase on the floor. In another second the floor fell away and her struggles were causing her body to twist and spin in the air as she rose still higher.
In traditional judicial “long drop” hanging the victim falls through a trapdoor and the force of that breaks the spinal cord causing instant death but where there is no drop it can take several minutes for full strangulation to occur. The self-preservation instinct was causing Harriet to gulp in what little air she could squeeze through her constricted throat but each breath was more painful and less effective than the one before and she knew that she was losing the battle.
Suddenly, she felt her toes and then her heels touch the floor and she could breathe filling her brain and body with oxygen and sweet relief but then the winch worked again and the floor once more abandoned her. They were playing with her. At one point her feet were about five feet above the floor and she could look down at the two men who were watching the spectacle and showing every sign of enjoying themselves.
She must have passed out from loss of air because when she regained consciousness, Harriet was lying naked on the floor with hands still bound but free of the noose. One of the men was untying her ankles. Harriet expected to be dragged back to her cell but they had other plans.
Once her ankles were free, her legs were forced wide apart and greedy paws found her most intimate parts. Harriet was a virgin and, apart from a doctor, no man had even seen her naked before she came into the clinic.
There was no pretense at medical procedure or even formal punishment. These men knew that they had complete freedom to do whatever they wished to do to her and there would be no reprisal against them. Harriet was officially a madwoman and whatever she said would be dismissed as a delusion.
Her attackers shed their trousers and freed their disgusting and bloated sexual organs. Her virginity was brutally and painfully taken from her as the second man rammed his organ down her throat causing her to yet again fear being choked to death. The weight of the man was rendering her immobile as her body was forced down against the floor and he bounced and moved above and within her. They changed places several times and her body became a mass of pain covered in bodily fluids, both theirs and her own. The whole room stank of sex.
For some of the time she was on her belly with her buttocks raised skywards for her vagina to be penetrated from behind and then it was not just her vagina which was under attack. Her anus was so small that she did not believe that it could accommodate them without her delicate flesh being torn wide open and damaged far beyond recovery. She wished that she could lose consciousness but, for some reason, that did not happen. The innocent girl was forced to experience and remember every thrust, every new assault and every indignity, humiliation and torment.
When the men’s lusts were finally sated, they left her on her back on the floor while they washed themselves and then they gave her a fairly perfunctory wash down with cold water and paper towels. They presumably did this to remove the worst of the evidence rather than out of any consideration for her welfare.
By this point Harriet had lost all sense of time or chronology of events. There were more pills, more time in “the chair” and more therapy sessions. But eventually she was returned to the wild. Someone from Security visited her and showed her photographs taken inside her own flat of drugs and drug paraphernalia which bore no date. It was made clear that, at any time, this evidence could be shown to the police as newly discovered and with her “mental illness” still on file, she would probably be committed to a secure hospital.
The Company wanted to keep her within their control where they could keep a watch on her so she was given a very junior job in the mail room. After the effects of all the drugs from the clinic she was unlikely to ever have any more senior role and, strangely, she came to like wheeling her mail trolley around the building. People knew that she was “a bit simple” and they treated her well and the post room in the basement was warm and away from the hustle and bustle of the upper floors. She hoped one day to become a senior post clerk.
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