I don’t know if the following is true, or rather the idle ramblings of a deranged mind. I found this curious collection of paper, meticulously numbered, stuffed in a bottle under a bench in the park. I was about to throw the bottle away when I saw the words HELP ME scrawled across one piece. I began to fish out the scraps and piece them together and became more and more fascinated as I read through this wretched tale. Perhaps you may know of this place and may be of some help? I am new here and don’t really know the area or the people who live nearby. For the sake of the poor soul who wrote this, I offer it, pieced together in one place and as faithfully copied as I could from the wrinkled and smeared pieces which I found in the bottle…..

HELP ME

They look out the window and watch me as I sit alone on the porch. I sit in the uncomfortable, straight backed chair and try to enjoy the soft sighing of the breeze as it passes through the leaves of the trees and dances through the tall grass. I try to enjoy the still quiet of the morning, punctuated pleasantly by the trill of the song birds and the hum of the insects.

The coffee tastes bitter and cools too quickly. I sit in quiet solitude, yet not alone. Oh, if I were truly alone, I might enjoy the morning, might enjoy the coffee. The chair might not seem so rigid. But I am not alone for they watch me constantly.

If I go for a walk, they follow along at a respectable distance, yet they follow. If I find myself alone in a room and close the door, they are tapping on it within minutes, checking on me, demanding entrance.

If I sit on the sofa and attempt to read, they are there in the room with me, chattering between themselves or trying to engage me in their ceaseless, mind numbing blather.

What they want of me, they will not say. When I ask, they merely look at each other and laugh. I have a small semblance of freedom, yet, when I try to go too far, they are there to stop me and bring me back to that bleak and dreary house.

You would think a man would not be held against his will by two women, could not be held against his will by two women, yet this is the circumstance in which I find myself. I am not a small or weak man. I am a man of average height, well muscled and fit enough, that when I go about alone, I am not fearful of my safety nor unsure of my ability to take care of myself if the need ever arise. By this reckoning, then, two normal women, even with malicious intentions, should pose no real threat to me or my safety.

These then, must be no normal women, for they have brought me to this cheerless house, and kept me against my will. They feed me well enough, and the house is not untidy, just wearisome. The windows are yellowed around the edges from age old dust which keeps out most of the light of day. The walls are drab with curling wall paper whose pattern and color have long since faded away. The carpets are mostly threadbare and dark, adding to the overall feeling of forlorn melancholy.

Inside, it is unbearably stuffy and warm and smells of unwashed, pungent bodies mixed with something gone bad. The odor pervades the whole house, so after some time inside, I no longer notice the foul stench of the place. But when they allow me to go about outside, and I can, once again, take in fresh air, the memory of what I have been breathing inside haunts me, for I know that soon, I must return to it.

I shudder at the thought of having to re-enter that dark place, inhale that fetid air, yet they merely beckon and I obey. When I have wandered too far or been outside too long, they simply summon me and it is as if my will has gone, for as much as I try to resist, it is fruitless. I must be under some sort of diabolic sorcery, how else to explain my situation?

They looked normal enough when first our paths crossed. Two women, both of above average height, both ample women, large, yet you could not call them soft or flabby. They are both of indeterminate age, old enough to be seen as women and not girls, yet not so old as to be unattractive in their way. One has long red hair streaked with golden highlights, the other has shoulder length, brown hair with some gray lightly shot through. They could be sisters, or well-matched friends, for their bodies are quite similar, and each has a roundish face atop a stout neck.

When we met, they smiled pleasantly and engaged me in conversation. Soon they were telling me of their woes with a leaky faucet and wondering if I knew of anyone who might be recommended to fix it.

Always ready to help, I volunteered my services and agreed to come by their place. After all, what had I to fear from these two pleasant women in need? Plenty, as it turns out.

As soon as I entered their house, I was put off by the putrid odor, but, I was determined to do what I had agreed, and I hoped I could accomplish the job quickly, that it would not turn into one of those endless, nightmarish jobs that go from bad to worse. Just finish quickly and be on my way, good deed done.

So I went to work and apparently, so did they. I moved swiftly through the job with no problems and soon I was finished and ready to go.

But they had been working as well and by the time I was ready to go, it was too late, the spell had been cast, if that’s what it was. I didn't feel it come over me, didn't notice any change in the air. Nothing was different, all was as it should be as I stood on their porch and bid them goodbye. They thanked me, and stood there with stiff smiles on their faces as I turned and walked out toward the street.

I got close, oh so close to the street, and felt nothing odd. I expected nothing to stop me from getting on with my life. As I was a few steps away from the street, one of them called to me. I turned and looked back and they motioned for me to come back to them. They said nothing, they just smiled and beckoned to me. I had no choice, no ability to counter their spell. I had to obey them.

I was surprised as my body responded to their gesturing, and my mind was no longer in control. I went back to them, I had no choice. I still have no choice. When they call, I respond.

The days pass, mostly uneventful. I sit in quiet longing to return to my former life. I scheme and plan ways to escape this madness, yet I am unable to put my plans into practice. They let me walk in the park, or spend some time outside. There are times we all go out together and visit public places, and at these times, when I would cry out for help to another person, my jaws are locked shut. I wish to speak, yet there is only silence. I can not will my thoughts to become words that might expose my plight and lead to my rescue.

The women are not unkind to me, yet, neither are they kind. They never touch me, nor do they demand anything of me. If I wish to cook my own food, I can cook under their supervision. If I wish to clean up a bit, this is allowed, again, under their supervision. Yet they do not demand I cook or clean or repair anything. During the days we just exist together in this bleak, stuffy house. I am quiet and somber, and they are constantly babbling between themselves, always talking of this or that. Sometimes arguing over meaningless things, but mostly just chattering away until I simply tune them out and lose myself in memories of my old life, or my endless, fruitless schemes of escape.

The days are long, dull and uneventful. Yet, the days are nothing to fear. It is the nights I dread. They terrify me. Not because of what I know goes on during the nights with these two women, but because I don’t know.

As the day draws to a close I become more and more fearful of the coming night and what it might hold in store for me. As darkness closes in, weak lights are turned on, casting just enough dull radiance to see, but not enough to see clearly, or expel the darkness.

I know that soon they will come for me, and I will have no choice but to follow and obey. I tremble in fear, knowing they will come, smiles on their faces, gesturing to me. And though I command my body to remain frozen in my chair, it rises of it’s own accord and follows them. I want my arms to reach out and hold each side of the door, preventing me from following, but my arms remain at my sides, and my feet move, one in front of the other, and I follow.

I know where they are leading me, and I know what will happen next. They lead me down the dark hall to my room, where they bid me lie on my small cot. They stand in the door, smiling and watching as I lie down for the night. I fight them, struggling, mentally to regain control of my body, yet to no avail. Presently, I am lying on the cot, just as they wish.

They come into my room now and stand over me, smiling, always smiling at me. Their ceaseless chit-chat, interrupted as they smile and nod, and I unwillingly do their bidding. What comes next, for me, the most terrifying moment. I watch them as they look down upon me, helpless on my cot, and they raise their hands and move them slightly, and my eyes close, and I sleep. I fight this moment mentally, I demand of my eyes to remain open, I open them wide in anticipation and force them to remain open with all my being. Yet, they close. Slowly it seems, my eyes close and the women gleefully smile. I feel my consciousness slipping away as my eye lids slowly close. My mind screams in terror, NO!! DON’T SLEEP!! And I tremble in such fear that sleep would seem impossible, yet, as my eyes slowly close, my consciousness slips away and my determination to remain awake fades with it. The last I see, before I sleep, are the faces of my captors, and their wicked smiles as my vision and awareness fade to black.

What happens during the night, I know not, nor will they tell me. When I ask, they just look at me and laugh or giggle and sometimes, they just smile and nod. When I yell and demand to know what they are doing with me, what they want of me, I am silenced and they just jabber away as though I am not there.

I know what I am wearing when I lie down at night. They always bid me lie down in the same room on the same cot every night, so I have come to think of it as my room and my cot. There are times I wake in the same room, wearing the same clothes and lying in the same place as my last remembrance of the night before, but many times, I wake in my room, wearing different clothes. There are times I wake in another room, in another bed and I have no memory of how I got there. At times I wake having bathed, or rather, having been bathed, I know not which, and I shudder at the thought of it being the latter, but, as I have no memory of the night, and since they will not tell me, I cannot know. Sometimes I wake in my room naked and bathed and there are fresh clothes to wear. Other times I wake in other rooms, in other beds, in other clothes or no clothes.

I know not the night before, to what circumstance I will awaken the next morning, and upon discovering, I cannot know what led me to it, nor what transpired during the night prior to my waking. They will not tell me.

In my old life, during the night, all I did was sleep and dream. There were no mysterious baths, or changing of clothes. Just sleep, dream and wake in the same place, wearing the same thing as when I slept.

Now, the unknown activities of my unwilling body terrify me as I struggle to remember even the slightest hint of what happened during the night. But there are no dreams or hints or shadows of dreams to even begin to piece together the night’s events. The not knowing what or how I am being used, or if I am being used is the source of the terror for me. When I wake, I find myself suffering no ill effects of the previous night, regardless of the circumstance of my waking. I am not sore from bumps, nor are there bruises. There are no marks of any kind, ever. I find no evidence of being poked, or prodded, nor of having blood taken against my will. There is nothing, nothing other then the circumstance of my waking is different then the circumstance of my falling into sleep.

Are they just having some benign fun, moving me around and delighting in my anguish and fear of the unknown, or is there something unimaginable being done to me, to my body as I sleep? Or am I being made to do something as I sleep? Something I would never be party to if I were in control of my own body. I cannot know. But the imagining is worse than the knowing, and the not knowing terrifies me each night. Yet there seems to be no escape. No way to thwart this evil that has me trapped within this loathsome house, trapped by these two wicked women who seem to take their joy in my mental torment.

I have been trapped here for many months and have managed to write this over the course of several weeks on various bits of paper when I have, for a few moments at a time been unobserved. Forgive the state in which you find it. Hopefully, you can piece it together and make sense of it. I plan to leave it in the park upon our next outing and I hope it is found and not cast aside as so much trash.

If you happen to know of an unkempt house near this park, where dwell two women as described above, please send someone to help me. Please make them stop and return me to my old life……