A night out

• What seems like an ordinary meditation seminar turns out to be the recruiting ground for an extremist cult that hypnotizes members to commit acts of violence. No one is immune, except Margaret Bradshaw.

I wasn’t looking forward to my first hypnotic meditation seminar. The man on the phone went to great pains to assure me that it would work, assuring me that they hadn’t had a failure yet in helping people to relax and sleep better. I have to say I was not expecting that it would, but my editor knowing my problem insisted I try and as he said, “I would be a prime candidate.”

Let me explain, I was born apparently a perfectly normal baby that was until I was about eight months old when I became listless and sleepy. Eventually it was found that I had a tumour on my brain that required urgent surgery. The surgery was a success in one way and I would live, but as my mother and father found, it was at a price.

The first problem or abnormality my parent discovered was that I didn’t sleep, and I mean didn’t sleep. Drugs didn’t help nothing worked, my mum and dad took it in turns to do night shift with me. I grew up desperately wanting to be just a normal little girl. I can remember that my mother and father always said that I was awake twenty five hours out of the twenty four, and I didn’t improved as I got older.  Yes I can remember that, and I was less than a year old. Not only that I can recall everything that I have ever heard, seen or done, yes that’s right, I do remember everything.

By the time I was starting school I had spent nearly as much time with various sleep specialists and doctors as I had with my mother and father. Drugs, well they could have been sweets to me, as non-worked.

 I left school at eighteen having sat my A levels and passed with credits that made the examination board insist I took the exam again. Sorry I forgot. (That’s a good one.) Yes my memory is photographic, going right back to long before my first day at school with Miss Blagden.

Anyhow, to get back to this meditation seminar, I turned up at the door prompt at seven thirty along with twenty nine other women. (Apparently it’s women only on even days.) To be shown into a softly lit room containing a large TV screen couches and soft, I suppose it was soft relaxing music. Our names being taken and ticked before we were allowed to select our own couches and settle down, and I have to say, that the couches were very comfortable.

What with the soft music and gently changing light display on the screen, it was quite easy to relax as two of the women attached various electrodes and pressure pads to our arms and necks.

Only then were we were introduced to our therapist a man in possibly his mid-forties who explained how the pressure pads and electrodes were there to measure our state of relaxation during the session. Here they would be, I presumed, in for I shock with me.

After about half an hour of talking the first session began. The music changed and the lights that had been randomly drifting across the screen changed to regular patterns which I have to admit were very relaxing.

“Do not close your eyes.” The man instructed. “Watch the screen and relax, let your mind drift with the pattern. He droned on and on as the pattern changed and the music became softer and more relaxing. Changing, twisting the colours and patterns. I had to admit to myself, it was if not relaxing, it was certainly fascinating.

This must have gone on for possibly half an hour before the man change this, before he began apparently at randomly to walk amongst us, saying first to one of the ladies and then another.

“Once you leave here, you will not unless asked say anything about having been here or even seeing the advert in the paper, do you understand? If asked you will say this. That your problem has been discussed, and it has been explained to you that you have been diagnosed with the nervous complaint of Micro Mysondria. If necessary you will say it is a nervous disorder that was easily treatable and that you have received treatment. Now watch the screen and remember the word Molog hearing this you will awake and do and say only what I have told you.”

As he said this, one of the women attendants was ready to assist the woman with her coat ready to be shown to the door. 

 “Open your eyes and watch the screen.” I didn’t know whether to or not but I did. The patterns were different, no longer relaxing; they made me think of; I wasn’t sure’ military possibly, and demanding.

It was as I lay watching the screen I almost laughed as over the music I heard him saying to the remaining woman assistant.

“Miss Bradshaw is one of the best subjects I have ever seen. Her pulse dropped almost immediately to forty seven beats a minute, a remarkable candidate.”

That had been another thing that had confounded the doctors. At rest my heart rate without any apparent detrimental effects could drop to around forty five beats a minute while my blood pressure would also plummet.

“What about the other two?” One of the woman attendants asked.

“Promising, not quite as susceptible but promising. We will know better next week when we take them deeper and into programing mode. Now as the rest are ready, you had better take them to the door and revive them, and then we can start on these three.”

The music and display resumed, different this time while he repeated instructions over and over again. Compelling us to return the following week and just what to say if asked.

Then the pattern of light on the screen changed again as he gave his instructions to the three of us. Instructions that were almost the same as to those that left but with one major difference, and that was that we should remember nothing about tonight other that we had a short talk, and an introductory meditation session. He also stressed that we must return on the same day and at the same time, the following week.

I admit I was a little frightened, but I was also curious. Being awake the whole session, and with the memory that I had I had no problem going over every detail of what had happened. Back at my flat I put everything down word for word, and with descriptions of the three women and the man on the computer.

Oh have I said, I work as a reporter for the local paper. Yes I know I remember everything just like my computer, but I find it saves time putting things I need into the computer as they happen, just in case I urgently need to print them off.

The following week I reached the door just as one of the other women did. I couldn’t believe it, the instant the door opened her face went completely blank; luckily I was stood to one side of the doorway where I could see without being seen.

Copying the blank look I followed. This time there were just the three couches facing the screen. The woman I had come in with, well she just stood there blank faced and immobile until one of the three women took her arm and guided her to a couch, and then it was my turn.

It was only a matter of minutes before the third woman was brought in to the room and settled on the third couch.

Now from where I was on my couch I couldn’t see either of the two other women and I was starting to feel a little nervous as the music started again. More military this time and the light patterns were different.

It was a different man this time, tall middle aged and bearded. At first he was quite calm and composed, and rational. But then as the session progressed, he became more and more animated. Getting louder and more agitated as he condemned certain organisations and the ruling classes associated with them, while glorifying certain oppressive political regimes. Standing there spraying spittle as he shouted.

“Parasites they are, feeding off the down trodden workers.” Working himself up into frenzy for another half hour of animated spittle flecked propaganda.

I had to follow the lead of the two other women, act the part and remain completely passive, while the three, call those usherettes were getting almost as agitated as the speaker. I was now beginning to have an inkling of where this was going and I didn’t like it. I left that night knowing I had to do something but what?

The following morning sitting at my desk mulling over what I had seen and heard, I was asked to listen to a recording of a clandestine interview.  Seeing the recorder gave me an idea. It was all built into a lady’s watch, if I could borrow one of these.

Talking with my editor it was arranged I would have the watch while Martin, one of our best crime men would wait outside, as my editor said.

“Just in case.”

It was almost the same as the previous week but with more vitriol directed at those running the country, police and army. How they oppressed the down trodden workers and the need to take action, violent action. I lay there practising my old relaxation rhythms that were as a child supposed to induce sleep in me. They never worked.

This time as we stood outside the door to the building, my two companions were spitting vitriol about politician’s, the police, businessmen, the army, and in general the mass of the population. I joined in adding my six pence worth before we parted, cautioning each other not to say a word or reveal what we were planning to others.

Reveal what we were planning to others, we had no idea about anything planned, but I was certain that by next week we would.

The next morning when we produced the recording my editor went ballistic. Telling me I wasn’t to go there again, but like I said,

“If I don’t and something happens that we could have prevented what then, at the moment I am above suspicion, I am their star pupil so to speak. And I’m curious as to just what is planned.” Eventually it was agreed that Martin would once more be outside not just awaiting but listening to my transmission and to act as a backup if things started to go wrong.

The first part of the session was almost a repeat of the previous weeks. That was until three stylish handbags were brought into the room. At that point it all changed.

We received our instructions. We were to become heroes of the liberty and freedom party, make our mark in public, and to do this we were presented with these three very stylish and expensive looking small hand-bags, and three envelopes. Only then did we get our instructions.

In the envelopes there were cards, we had been given passes to get into parliament for next week’s big debate. Not just to the visitors’ gallery but to mingle with many of the MPs. We were instructed to get as close to as many of the cabinet as we could, our prime target was for one of us to meet or get close to the Prime Minister. At that point we were to open our bags and tear out the inner lining while shaking the bag.

As the door closed behind us, what excitement there was between at least two of us.  Going to Parliament and meeting the cabinet and top politicians, even meeting the Prime Minister. We had no idea what the reason for this was and that we were to tear the lining out of our expensive bags, well it just seemed to my two companions perfectly normal.

The first thing our editor did on hearing the recording was phone the police. It wasn’t just the police that turned up it was three military men and two men from Porton Down. The bag was quickly sealed in a plastic container before being placed in a locked metal case.

My recordings were listened to in silence, and then I had to explain my unique disability while Martins photos of the other two women were snapped up and gloated over by the very high ranking police officers. Then Martin produced some photos I didn’t know he had taken. The photos were of three women and four men. Good ones of the two men who were immediately recognised and brought exclamations of delight from the police officers. When I told them there had been others and didn’t just describe them in great detail but sketched them as well, well that brought hoots delight.

You want to know what had been planned? Well the handbags contained a powder and activator that when mixed created a deadly nerve gas that would have contaminated a large part of the palace of Westminster, not to mention killing a great number of MPs.

Me my self, well I met the Prime Minister, and I’m no longer working as a reporter. I now work for H.M. Security Services, and that’s all I can say.