Anne · Part 2

Anne · Part 2 (2/2)
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Distracted by the nudity, tormented by the unfamiliar plug in her bottom, Anne worked hard to climb the rungs of the wheel, holding on to a horizontal bar. If she did not climb fast enough, if her arms extended too far or she let go of the bar, the supervisor would crack her whip in warning. The rungs hurt the arches of her feet (she had not yet learned to balance on the balls of her feet) and she panted for breath as sweat drenched her. She was ready to die, she thought, when it was her turn to rest. This torment continued for the balance of the afternoon until, aching all over from overworked muscles, Anne and the others were allowed to stop.

The women put on their simple dresses, and Anne wrapped herself in her blanket, as the supervisor marched them back upstairs to their cells. "No talking." she barked, cracking her whip, when Anne tried to ask a question.

Anne was huddled in her blanket on the bed in her cell when Matron appeared. "P-p-p-p-please." said Anne, pointing to her bottom.

"The plug should stay in." replied Matron. "You will have daily treatments until the toxins have been flushed from your body."

The evening meal in her cell, was boiled potatoes in milk, with some dried apple slices for dessert. Later, Dr. Aston visited her. "Well, Mrs. Marlow, are you feeling better yet?"

"N-n-n-no." replied Anne, shaking her head.

"No? Well, you soon will feel better, once the poisons have been purged from your body and you respond to the benefits of good diet and exercise. I'll look in on you again tomorrow."

Exhausted, Anne slept more soundly than before. The next day was exactly like the first, except that Anne's bum hole had been stretched, and it was harder to hold in the scalding fluid that Matron injected, so the plug was used to contain the scalding liquid inside her until Matron judged it time to expel the contents of her rectum. Later, her muscles screamed in pain as she "exercised" on the treadmill wheel. The evening meal of potatoes and milk was supplemented with boiled cabbage and an ounce or so of boiled meat, mostly fat. Apparently the order to fatten her up was taken seriously, for she was allowed second portions when she asked for them.

For three more days she spewed her guts, though at least Matron removed the anal plug before Anne labored on the treadmill. Then it was Sunday, a day of rest. The women were issued proper dresses (but no corsets or hats or shoes) and taken to a chapel for Church of England services, conducted by Dr. Aston. Anne, of course, had never been confirmed in the Anglican Catholic Church, so she was unable to take communion, but it was a comfort for her to again experience the sense of community that comes from sharing a religious service with other people. There were, she estimated, about twenty women, ranging in age from perhaps sixteen to very old, fifty or sixty. Two were restrained by strait jackets, and some tended to look distracted and to talk to themselves, but it was, just the same, a Christian service.

Monday, after breakfast, she did not have to drink the purgative brews, and there were only three applications of the clyster, so it was still morning when, denied even her simple dress, she was led, wrapped in her blanket, outdoors, into a walled yard, some sort of forecourt for the stables. She saw the sun for the first time since her arrival, though the sun was a weak white spot in the overcast sky. She looked around and saw faces in the windows of both the mens and womens wings. The snow was cold on her bare feet, and the blanket was inadequate to keep her warm. They led her to a kind of marble table and, to her horror, took away her blanket.

Anne wailed at her situation, naked, exposed to both the chill wind of winter and the gaze of strangers. Quickly, the nurses forced Anne to lie face down on the stone slab, and they strapped her ankles to one end and her wrists to the other. The cold stone, like a horizontal grave stone, pressed against her thighs, her belly, her breasts. She was helpless to raise off the freezing table as they stretched her as tautly, She might have been on a medieval rack. Her teeth chattered as the warmth drained from her body by the cold, smooth marble. Then, to accentuate the torment, the nurses drenched her with buckets of icy water.

Anne gritted her teeth and tried to bear the searing cold. She could not move, not even shiver, tied as tightly as she was, but her lips fluttered and her teeth chattered. Never had she been so cold. As the minutes passed, her mind became confused and her body numb. She knew that death by freezing was a real possibility, and she tried to pray, though no intelligible sound escaped her lips.

Just as she felt life slipping away, a new pain tormented her. In her befuddled mental state, she had not noticed when two men approached her, carrying bundles of birch twigs. Now, systematically, the two simultaneously whipped her back and buttocks and legs with the birches, as if flogging a criminal. The pain restored life to her frozen body, brought screams from her blue lips, until she could bear no more and fainted.

Anne awoke in a tub of hot water, her teeth still chattering, even as her skin turned red like a lobster. Dr. Aston and Dr. Wilson stood beside the tub, watching as she was brought back to life. At last the chill was gone and the heat became oppressive. Anne tried to raise herself from the tub, but Matron pressed her back down. "That's all right, Matron. Let her get out. There is no need to prolong her discomfort. Dry her off with soft towels. My, the birching left some nasty welts…and give her back her dress and blanket. Give her an extra blanket, too, and let her recover in her cell until dinner."

The following day, Anne was subjected to the American chair, which Dr. Aston and two nurses demonstrated for Dr. Wilson. First, Anne was strapped into a strait jacket, a kind of canvas coat with closed sleeves. First, the waist was constricted, like a corset, until Anne could hardly breathe. Then the arms of the coat were crossed beneath her breasts and fastened together behind her, so her arms were tightly hugging herself and were entirely immovable. They seated her in a chair which could pivot around a horizontal axis. They strapped her in, with belts around over her breast, around her waist, and across her lap.

To test the bindings, they rotated the chair forward in a half circle, so Anne was upside down, and then tipped it backward in a complete circle, until Anne was once again upright. A wooden box was placed enclosing her head, so she could breathe but could not see her surroundings. She felt the chair, with her in it, lifted, and they attached it to a turntable which could rotate around a vertical axis, propelled by a crank and connecting rod to a tall lever.

Anne, of course, could not see what was happening to her, but Matron signaled to a nurse who leaned on the lever. As the lever moved forward, the chair rotated a half turn, and pulling back on the lever completed the turn. After a few turns, the lever moved smoothly back and forth, as if the nurse were churning butter, and the chair rotated smoothly at a constant rate. Anne, of course was conscious of spinning, but that was nothing terribly unfamiliar. As a child, she had enjoyed whirling on her toes until, dizzy, she collapsed on the floor laughing. This was similar, except that she could not stop when she wished.

The chair slowed, and Matron removed the box from her head. "See the nystagmus, the twitching of the eyes."

"Yes, she must be very dizzy."

The box was replaced, and the rotation resumed. However, when it had reached a steady speed, the chair was suddenly rotated around the horizontal axis, so Anne was facing downward. The result was instant mal de mer, intense nausea and retching, though Anne had nothing in her stomach to throw up. She made incoherent noises like an animal in a trap, but the multi-axis spinning continued until she was, almost, driven to a true insanity.

The chair was stopped and the box removed. "Mrs. Marlow, can you hear me?"

"Ullk! Awrgh! Ak."

"Take her back to the women's ward. Don't leave her alone, lest she choke on her tongue."

Back in the common room, the nurses were distracted by some sort of emergency, and Anne, still in the strait jacket and unable to stand, was left on the floor. Slowly, Anne regained her senses.

"Eh, it's the new girl."

"What's yer name?"

"Ah, ah, ah…"

"Oi, she ain't got a name!"

"Shame she can't even stand. Let's have some fun with her." Someone kicked her hip. "Stand her up and let's see wot she's made of."

"Let's make 'er ride the horse."

"Yes, the horse." They stood Anne on her feet and lifted her skirt, so as to examine her womanly parts. Someone brought out a blanket and rolled it into a thick rope. They passed the rope between her legs and raised the ends, until Anne's weight was supported by the blanket and her feet left the floor. Three women held each end of the rope, and they started a sort of tug of war with it, pulling it up and down, back and forth, while two other women steadied the helpless Anne so she would not fall off "the horse".

"N, n, n, n, noooo!" she protested, as the wooly blanket was forced upward, parting her labia and rubbing intensely on places Anne had never touched. N, n, n, nahhh."

Laughing, the inmates continued, forcing the helpless Anne to ride the bucking "horse." In time Anne's protests stopped. Then she began to giggle. "At's it. Keep it going."

Anne's giggles became louder and more continuous, until she was laughing and choking. "Oh, God!" she screamed. Instantly, the women dropped the blanket and scattered, trying to hide in their cells or elsewhere. Anne lay on the floor, her skirt around her waist, the rolled blanket still between her legs, her breasts heaving as the constricting strait jacket was making it difficult to breathe.

"Mrs. Marlow, are you all right?" asked the newly arrived Dr. Wilson. Anne could only gasp. "Is this woman having a fit?" he asked the cowering inmates, who obviously were afraid of punishment for simply having a bit of fun with Anne. No one wanted to speak. Dr. Wilson knelt beside Anne and deftly undid the buckles and ties which held her confined in the canvas jacket. As soon as she could, she scuttled away from him, pulling down her skirt and trying to cover her shamefully exposed genitals. "Mrs. Marlow, are you all right? I thought I heard you exclaim,'Oh God'."

"Someone fetch Matron. I fear Mrs. Marlow has gone quite mad. I never did trust those Americans."

Anne managed to sit up, and she looked at Dr. Wilson with new insight. "Dr. Wilson." she said in Latin, "I am quite as sane as you are."

"Did you just speak to me in Latin?"

"Yes."

"But you can't even speak English."

"I am a clergyman's daughter." she said in passable Latin, "and reasonably well educated." she added in Greek. "Since childhood." she continued, reverting to Latin, "I have had a speech impediment which makes it difficult for me to express myself in my native tongue. However, I can sing in Italian or French, and speak Latin, Greek, and a bit of Hebrew and Icelandic, for those tongues, so foreign to me, apparently reside in portions of my psyche which do not share the impediment in my native speech."

"Oh, God." said Dr. Wilson. "And you were laughing. The melancholia is cured?"

"I think so, learned physician."

"So the chair of Dr. Rush was an effective treatment, in spite of my doubts?" He was speaking Latin, now, and the watching inmates of the asylum were completely perplexed.

"No, the chair is an abomination. The cure came from my sister inmates, all, supposedly insane. The order of commitment, it said I suffered from hysteria, did it not?"

"Yes."

"And 'hysteria', from the Greek, is a state of mental aberration attributed to the female organ, the womb."

"Yes, that is the commonly held hypothesis."

"These women, by making me ride the horse, as they put it, must have adjusted my womb, and cured my melancholy, for I felt a euphoria such as I have never before experienced, and you heard me laugh. As further evidence, I believe a quantity of fluid exuded from my female orifice. Perhaps a congestion of the womb, and an impounding of natural fluids, was, in fact, the cause of my condition."

"Amazing. Please come with me, Mrs. Marlow. We must inform Dr. Aston."

Some days later, Dr. Aston approached Anne. Anne was dressed in the same clothes as she had worn when she arrived at Aston Asylum, and she was housed in a cosy room in the central, administrative, portion of the building, a room with a feather bed and a cosy hearth. She had been working closely with Dr. Wilson, and they had repeatedly demonstrated that a new treatment, involving pressure and friction between the lower limbs, was, indeed, effective in adjusting the condition of the womb and raising the spirits of female patients. Further, they had shown that the clyster, irrigating the bowels, was misapplied.

A stream of tepid water, applied instead to the regions of the forward orifice, was also effective in revitalizing a congested womb. Several women, not just Anne, testified to being able to feel the paroxysms of the womb and the releasing of fluids, with a resulting general improvement in temperament. "I have been in communication with your husband, and he says he does not want you released to his custody. In fact, he says you are not properly his wife. He is seeking an annulment, claiming you were never properly married and that, in any event, the marriage was never actually consummated and was therefore invalid. He intends, I gather, to remarry as soon as possible.

He says, however, that the payments for your maintenance here will continue as long as your live, and he prays that we will keep you here."

"I suppose I should call you Miss Jones." said Dr. Wilson.

"Or Anne." she noted.

"If you would consent, Miss Jones." said Dr. Aston, "we would be pleased to have you remain here on our staff. I shall be retiring soon, and perhaps Matron, also. I'm sure Dr. Wilson would be pleased to have you as an assistant."

"Yes, Miss Jones. Please stay. You have been invaluable to me." Impulsively, he took her hand in his.

"Dr. Aston, Dr. Wilson." she replied, in fluent Latin, "As a Christian, as one who strives to help the unfortunate, I shall be happy to stay here and assist you in your research."

Anne · Part 2 (2/2)
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