Stark: Ghost at the Banquet
by Randalynn
"You know I hate it when you stick your hand
inside my head,
And switch all my priorities around.
Why don't you go pick on someone your own size instead?
Go on without me, I'll just slow you down.
Go on without me, I'll just slow you down."
"You always say you know me, somehow I don't think
you do.
Maybe you should buy another vowel?
You're jumping to conclusions, so I can't keep up with
you.
Go on without me, I'll just slow you down."
-- Warren Zevon, "I'll Slow You Down"
From the outside, the house on the suburban street appeared well-tended.
The grass was cut, the hedges trimmed, and the exterior was recently repainted
in a pale blue that seemed almost feminine. Considering the hand she was sure
had painted it, Stark was not surprised.
She sat in her car across the street, watching the house and waiting for
the go-ahead from the prep team. The hate was still there, still strong,
burning deep inside her. It glowed white hot in her mind, and she cherished it
for the protection it gave her. It was her last line of defense against what
she could become -- what she would become if the hate ever failed her.
Every time she glanced down at the folder in her lap, it would flare
briefly as her eyes registered the pictures of the handsome middle-aged man,
and what he had become. Then she would look away and let it cool, just a
little. Keeping the hate balanced was an art.
At one point in the past, she had let it consume her. She needed to,
then, to overcome the programming they'd given her. She'd needed it to survive.
When she had killed the bitches who had done this to her, she was little more
than an animal. She was better now, relatively speaking. But she still needed
the hate. It was the only thing that kept her from becoming what the bitches
programmed her to be. Unfortunately, as a result, she was always a breath away
from becoming either an inhuman psychopath, or a happy play toy for anything
with a cock and an attitude. Too much hate or too little -- lean too far either
way, and she would be lost.
Sometimes she wondered if she was already gone, and just too stubborn to
admit it. She was nothing at all like the man she had been before they had
taken her, and nothing like the woman the bitches had wanted her to become. But
she always pushed that thought away. Unlike most people, she knew who she was,
and where she came from. And she had a purpose. If I am the walking dead,
she thought with a scowl, I'm going to rattle a lot of chains before they
lay me down.
The radio cracked into life.
"Process completed, Ma'am. They're ready."
She flicked the switch over her head. "Thank you, gentlemen,"
she said sweetly, her voice projecting a teasing playfulness she did not feel
at all. "You can go now."
Stark put the folder aside, snagged her purse from the passenger seat,
and opened the door. Knees together, she swiveled her lower body and placed her
feet firmly on the ground before rising smoothly from the driver's seat. She
wore blacks and grays, as she always did -- a mid-length black dress with a
smart charcoal grey jacket, black hose and calf-high black boots with
three-inch heels. Her blonde hair tumbled down over her shoulder in large
curls, and her pale blue eyes flicked cautiously to either side before striding
across the street. Her full red lips framed a cheerful half-smile of bright
straight white teeth, welcoming and friendly.
It was only when someone looked into her eyes that they realized she was
neither.
Her heels clicked their way up the front walk, her hips swaying, her
skirt moving back and forth against her legs. Her breasts bounced slightly as
she mounted the stairs. When she reached the door, she could hear the sound of
a vacuum cleaner running inside.
She rang the bell.
The vacuum shut off almost instantly, replaced by the sound of heels on a
small patch of hardwood floor. The door swung open, revealing a pretty brunette
with a stunning figure. She wore a light green dress in a floral print, and a
pair of sensible pumps. The plunging neckline revealed impressive cleavage,
framed by a string of pearls. As Stark looked into her face, she saw only a
cheerful smile and a twinkle in her eyes.
It made her sick.
"Can I help you?" The woman asked, her voice a contralto
melody.
"Actually, Donna, I'm here to help you," Stark said softly. She
muttered a twisted mess of syllables, causing Donna to smile wider, step aside,
and motion Stark to enter. The entryway was small and attached to the living
room area, which was tastefully decorated in a feminine style. No masculine
influences here, Stark thought ruefully. Not anymore. She looked at
the pictures on the walls and tables, of a group of four women happily doing
things together --dancing, cruises, even a camping trip.
"Excuse me," a sharp voice said from behind. "Who are
you?"
Stark turned around to see a slightly irritated woman in a sweatshirt and
jeans staring at her from the entryway to the kitchen.
"This is a friend, Marybeth," Donna said happily. "Miss
...?"
"Stark," she said. "Just Stark. And although I may be
Don's friend, I am most certainly no friend of yours."
Marybeth looked confused for a moment, then realized what Stark had said.
"D...Don," she stuttered, her eyes shifting to Donna's still smiling
face and back again. "There is no Don here."
"No," Stark agreed in a flat voice. "Not anymore. Not
since you killed him."
Donna became more confused, her eyes shifting from Stark to Marybeth and
back again. "I ... I was Don," she whispered. "A long time ago.
But that was before I knew who I really was. Marybeth helped me become the
woman I had always been ... inside."
Stark turned to her and spoke again, another tangled knot of sounds that
almost seemed like words. Donna's eyes turned vacant, and she walked to the
sofa, swept her skirt under her, and sat gracefully before dropping off into
sleep. Marybeth watched this happen, and Stark saw her eyes narrow when she
realized the truth.
"You know." Marybeth saw the look on Stark's face and stepped
back without realizing she was retreating.
"I know," Stark said, her voice dripping with loathing. "I
know everything. As soon as I heard about it, I tracked down the company
selling those mind control CDs and DVDs, and shut it down. We confiscated the
equipment for making those CDs, and the computers. We also found customer files
stretching back decades -- the addresses of murderers who never even stopped to
consider what they were doing to the people they supposedly loved. And the
weird thing was ... almost all of the customers were women. Strange, don't you
think? That those who are supposed to care the most, love the deepest, should
kill those they love so easily?"
More apparently random sounds slipped from Stark's lips, and Marybeth
found herself walking across the room to sit in the chair by the fireplace. It
was like she was remote controlled, which in a way is exactly what she was.
"Sorry for the puppet treatment," Stark said, then smiled.
"Actually, I'm not. We've been pumping subliminal programming into the
house for the past two days. The same sort of thing you used on Don, as a
matter of fact. It's nice to see it works just as well for me."
Still frozen in her chair, Marybeth found she could still speak. "H
... how could you ...?"
Stark shrugged. "Send a strong enough radio signal at any speaker,
and it will play what you send, regardless of whether the device attached to
the speaker is actually on. Or so they tell me." She raised her hands in
mock surrender. "I'm just the boss. I don't HAVE to know how any of it
works."
"Who the hell ARE you?" Marybeth's voice began to rise with a
mix of anger and fear.
"I'm Stark," she replied simply, sitting gracefully across from
Marybeth and crossing her legs at the knee. "For reasons of my own, I've
made it my life's work to rescue men forced into feminization and submission by
women like you -- or to balance the scales for those who cannot be saved, like
Don."
"What are you talking about? Donna is right there!"
"Oh, yes." Stark's normally beautiful face instantly became a
mask of hate. "Donna is here. But the man you married ... the man
you loved and spent twenty five happy years with ... well, he's gone
now." She rose to her feet and began pacing, leaving Marybeth to watch her
stride angrily back and forth across the spotless living room. "Don made
enough money to retire early, after a long and successful career working hard
to provide for you and your sons. He started spending all his time at home,
with you. At first, it was wonderful, wasn't it? Then things changed. He
started watching football and NASCAR all day. Messing up the kitchen and the
bathroom. Leaving his clothes on the floor. Inviting his friends to hang out
and drink beer. In your house. It was irritating at first, but as it
went on, you became angrier and angrier. There were arguments, and some
screaming matches. Divorce was mentioned, but no one was quite sure by
who."
"How do you know all this?"
Stark waved her hands in dismissal. "We interviewed the people in
your old neighborhood, and where Don used to work."
Marybeth frowned. "That's a lot of effort."
"I like to be thorough. No sense rushing to judgment, after all. As
much as I like to." She pouted briefly, then continued.
"One day, in the middle of all this domestic drama, your son and his
wife come for a visit. He's dressed in women's clothing, exhibiting perfectly
natural feminine mannerisms, gushing about clothes and make-up and hair,
helping in the kitchen. And there's your daughter-in-law Judy, dressing like a
man and playing husband to the 'new girl.' She tells you about these wonderful
CDs she used to change Kevin into Kira, a perfect housewife ... and a bitch in
heat in the bedroom."
Stark turned and stared at Marybeth from across the room, with a look
that made her wonder how this woman actually saw her. It was cold, but somehow
worse than the heat she'd shown only a few minutes earlier. As if Marybeth was
a specimen ... like a rare insect or bird.
"Now, here's some thing I just don't understand," Stark said,
her voice almost calm. "Kevin was by all accounts a good man. You raised
him well. He was a successful engineer. He loved tinkering with cars and
computers, building things in the basement. He read murder mysteries and
science fiction, and coached peewee baseball and soccer. He was a good husband.
He was your son. Now he's gone, and there's this ... thing called Kira
living in his body. All Kira wants to do now is clean house, watch soaps, and
make love to her 'husband' whenever 'he's' in the mood. A good little
puppet."
Now her voice turned sharp, and angry. "If someone did something
like that to someone I loved, they would be dead. I'm a simple girl with simple
rules, and no one messes with the people I care about. But you! You let your
daughter-in-law get away with killing the boy you raised. A good man. And then
you went and did the same thing to Don, the man you built a life with."
"She even convinced Kevin he wanted a complete sex change,"
Stark muttered, folding her arms under her breasts and shivering. "Made
him think it was a reward. Just like you did with Don."
Marybeth said nothing. Stark stood over her and glowered.
"Now you're enjoying yourself, aren't you? You and Judy, with your
life-sized Barbie dolls. Life's just a great big party, isn't it? Donna cooks
and cleans, happily doing whatever you want her to. Then at night, she gets
into her little black dress and her four-inch heels and you all go out for
dinner and dancing, and maybe Donna catches herself a stud with an itch to
scratch and you send her off while you hunt your own man for the night. And I
bet Judy and Kira do the same. One big happy fucking family. Life would be
perfect, except for the whole 'murdering Don and Kevin' thing."
Marybeth felt a flash of anger. "You're crazy! They're not gone! Don
is right there! All you'd have to do to bring him back is use the right
commands!"
"Ha!" Stark strode angrily towards Marybeth, still frozen in
the chair. She put both hands on the arms of the chair and leaned over the
other woman. "You think so? You think the man you married is still in
there? After more than two years ... like that?"
"Of course!"
"Then go ahead! Call him back!" Stark turned her head and
muttered more syllables, and Donna roused slowly and looked at them both. Stark
turned and snarled in Marybeth's face. "Call him back, if you can!"
Marybeth felt a shiver of fear, and then spoke a few words in Donna's
direction. Nothing happened. She tried again. Still nothing. Stark put Donna
back to sleep, then rose from her position above the woman and took a few steps
back.
"Don is dead," she stated flatly. "Kevin's dead, too. They
started dying the first time you and your daughter-in-law used those CDs. The
programming on those things ... it goes into the deep structures of the brain,
writes over whatever it finds and replaces it with whatever the user desires.
That ... thing ... on the sofa is little more than a biological robot, a
Stepford Wives wanna-be, driven by a series of command pathways and overrides
set in place by you. Oh, it thinks and feels and primps and cleans, but it
isn't Don. The only thing left of Don is his DNA, surgically altered, shuffling
around in a pretty print dress and heels vacuuming your rugs and pretending to
be your sister, or your best friend, or whatever you decided you wanted instead
of the husband and lover you had."
Stark turned towards Donna, and sighed. "And even if we could
somehow bring Don and Keith back as they were, before you and Judy betrayed
them ... can you imagine the horror of waking up with two years gone and
discovering that the women they thought loved them had brainwashed them? Turned
them into paragons of stereotypical womanhood -- then had their bodies carved
to fit?"
Marybeth's lower lips trembled, but she refused to give up. "It's
not true. They can't be dead! You could use the CDs again to fix them,
reprogram them to be what they were!"
Stark didn't even bother to look at her. "The brain is not a hard
drive, you stupid bitch. It's living tissue. How many times do you think you
can re-write neural pathways? They're only supposed to be written once,
when you form the original connections. That's when you teach yourself how to think
... how to be the person you are. People are a sum of their experiences. Their
likes and dislikes change and grow over years of development. You deleted all
that when you wrote over it. And when you deleted that, you deleted Don. So
even if we used the CDs again without killing them both, it wouldn't be
bringing Don or Kevin back. We'd just be programming the biological robots with
a new set of instructions. They might behave the way you remember Don or Kevin
behaving, but they would just be going through the motions. The spontaneity and
creativity would be missing. The soul, or whatever it is that makes humans
individuals, alive and self-determining, would be gone."
There was a long silence as Marybeth thought about what she'd done. Stark
did nothing. Since she had been transformed, Stark had become surprisingly good
at doing nothing. Finally, Marybeth spoke.
"I don't care," she snapped. "Donna is here now, and Judy
has Kira, and if they aren't what they were anymore, they're still happy with
who we told them to be. That's enough for me."
"Well not for me," Stark replied in an even tone. "You
murdered Don. Judy murdered Kevin."
"Well, what of it? We're happy together now," Marybeth
continued stubbornly. "Why don't you just go away and leave us alone?
Donna is happy with me, and you'll only hurt her if you kill me now. She'll have
no one."
"I won't leave you alone because you murdered Don. You admitted it.
Without remorse." Stark turned back towards the motionless woman in the
chair. "I'm not going to kill you. That would be quick, and you don't
deserve quick. And even though Donna isn't Don, she still deserves respect in
his memory. To leave Donna alone and friendless after what you did would punish
her for your crime. No, you won't die."
Marybeth felt a brief spark of hope, an instant before she saw Stark's
lips move as if she's tasted something unpleasant.
"You won't die," Stark repeated. "I have something ...
worse in mind for you."
She spoke again, another twisted tangle of almost-words. A big empty hole
opened in Marybeth's soul, and suddenly she was thrust into memories so real
they HURT ...
... Don coming to her at the pub, asking if she'd like a drink,
looking at her like she was candy and almost too frightened to approach her,
making her feel special and wanted even though he'd barely spoken four words to
her and she looked into his eyes ...
... the first time they kissed, their lips meeting and her insides
melting and his arms around her and the whole world drowned out by the feeling
inside ...
... their first date, so handsome and her with her best dress on,
treating her like a princess, dinner and dancing and the whole time his eyes
never left her as he listened to every word, just happy to have her ...
Marybeth fell to her knees, her arms wrapped around her, her body wracked
by the power of her own past. Stark smiled grimly, and spoke again.
... she watched him as he held tiny Kevin for the first time,
carefully with a little fear, like just touching the baby would break it
somehow, his eyes wide with wonder and love as he looked down on his newborn
son and she realized how much Don meant to her, how special he was ...
... him hugging her from behind in the kitchen as she cooked, the warm
male smell of him filling her nostrils while his mouth softly kissed her neck,
his whispered words of love bringing tears to her eyes ...
... Don's arms around her on a Sunday morning as they slept, long
before Kevin was born, just a few months past "I do" and the
honeymoon still strong inside them both, "'til death" ...
Tears streamed down her cheeks, unheeded, unchecked. She lay curled up on
the floor, moaning softly, deep despair filling her to the core. Her heart
ached remembering the man she'd loved. The man she'd lost.
The man she killed.
Stark spoke a third time, and Marybeth rose to her feet. Tears dried
instantly on the outside, although inside her heart still screamed from the
pain.
Stark walked right up to her and looked into her eyes.
"This is how it works. You killed Don, and said you didn't care.
Well, I'm going to make you care. From this point on, every time you see Donna,
you'll relive the happiest parts of the life you shared with the Don you loved.
The Don who loved you."
She smiled. "You'll relive twenty five years of the joys and simple
pleasures your husband brought you, and bask in the love he felt and showed you
-- every time you look at the pretty puppet you turned him into. It will eat
you up inside. But that's where it will stay. Nothing will ever show ...
outside."
Marybeth's face grew calm, and it even smiled a little. But behind the
mask, she was an emotional wreck, battered by her own memories and the
knowledge of what she had lost.
"You can't leave Donna. Ever. You can't avoid her, either. It's
impossible with the programming we set up. You'll just keep doing everything
you've been doing. And you can't tell anyone what's going on in your head,
especially Donna." Stark looked over at the sleeping figure on the sofa
with pity. "Knowing how much just looking at her is hurting you would be
too much for her to bear. She may not be Don, but there's still someone there
-- an innocent who's suffered enough."
She looked back at Marybeth. "Instead, you'll just smile and laugh
and carry on just as you've always done, while on the inside you'll be ripping
yourself apart remembering all the good times you had with the man you
killed."
Stark picked up her purse, turned and walked to the front door. She
turned back to find a smiling Marybeth watching her, a touch of desperation in
her eyes.
"I made sure Donna won't notice anything out of the ordinary, like
an occasional tear or a trembling lip," Stark said. "I don't want her
asking questions you can't answer. It would only upset her."
"Why do you care so much how Donna feels if she isn't real?"
Marybeth's question was delivered easily, through smiling lips.
"Oh, I never said she wasn't real. I just said she wasn't Don."
She pushed a few stray curls back over her shoulder. "I've been through
something like what she went through. I'm pretty sure I'm still real. I'm just
not quite the man I was."
Marybeth's eyes widened. Stark nodded.
"I have to give her the benefit of the doubt, or start worrying
about myself. And I've got enough going on in my head as it is."
She said something unintelligible to Donna, and she began to wake.
"I'll just leave you two lovebirds to it, then," Stark said,
almost happily." She opened the door, letting light stream in from the
outside. "I have an appointment with Judy and Kevin next. Her punishment
won't be the same as yours. It wouldn't really work. After all, she had only a
few years with Kevin before she killed him, so the memories won't be as rich or
as ... numerous as yours. But whatever I come up with, I know it will be fun.
For me, anyway." She stepped out the door with a wave, pulling it closed
behind her.
As Stark walked across the street to her car, she grinned to herself. Trust
a ghost like me to stage an old-fashioned haunting, she thought savagely. And
the best thing is, she'll do all the haunting herself.
The black car pulled away from the curb, and the pale blue house on the
suburban street retreated in the rear view mirror.
"The party's over, bitch," Stark whispered as she
watched it disappear. "Welcome to your table in hell."
since 1/25/06