Freefall

By Ken Blaisdell

Jamie Gaynor has Dissociative Identity Disorder, triggered by a sexually-abusive uncle when she was ten. Fawn is the "whipping-boy" alter-personality who presented to shield Jamie from the childhood trauma. Unfortunately, Fawn never receded into the shadows after the uncle blew his brains out, so now, in adulthood, she still steps in—uninvited—and complicates things whenever Jamie gets romantic with a man.

Brad Taylor is a handsome, charismatic, and wealthy entrepreneur with houses all over the US, and businesses all over Asia. He is also a psychopathic international serial killer who has slaughtered at least seven prostitutes while he fantasizes that he is murdering his cruel and abusive mother.

When they meet by chance on a flight from Tokyo to New York, it sets into motion an affair that has each of them wondering about the other's odd and mysterious behaviors.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ken Blaisdell
• Release date: Mar 31, 2023
• ISBN: 9798215533222

Book preview

Introduction:

My name is Dr. Roberta Travis. I am a psychologist in private practice, and I am the person on whom the fictionalized character Dr. Sawyer is based in the following story.

The person on whom the character Jamie Gaynor is based was one of my patients. I never met the person you will come to know as Brad Taylor, but I feel qualified to discuss him, nonetheless, which I will do momentarily. But first, Ms. Gaynor.

Jamie suffers from Dissociative Identity Disorder, or DID for short. It is the condition that was formerly called Multiple Personality Disorder. Most people will be familiar with the condition through exposure to the film The Three Faces of Eve, and the TV movie Sybil.

I don't feel it necessary to go into clinical detail about DID here, because I feel the author has done a thorough enough job of explaining the condition in narrative and through his dialogue scenes. Additionally, the condition is one with which most people can empathize. They can easily understand the attempt to mentally escape some horrific situation, even if they don't fully grasp the mechanism … and no one does, by the way.

In case the reader thinks that having an alter (the term for the second, third, etc. personality) is simply the host pretending to be someone else, consider the research done in the early 80's by Dr. Frank W. Putnam Jr., a psychiatrist with the National Institute of Mental Health.

Dr. Putnam conducted a series of EEG tests, recording the brain wave activity of ten patients who had been diagnosed as having DID, and identical tests on ten non-DID subjects of the same sexes, and similar ages. The normal, or control, subjects were given a week to create an imaginary alter personality, with as much history and detail as they liked, and to practice switching with that alter. The tests for all subjects were conducted on a different day for each personality.

When the EEG readings for the control subjects and their pretend alters were shown to EEG diagnosticians who were not aware of the test, they were easily able to match the readings of each host with their make believe alter. In other words, the brain wave patterns did not change appreciably, simply because the host was pretending to be someone else.

Examining the readings of the subjects who were diagnosed with DID, the experts did not make a single match between the hosts and their alters. They fully believed that they were looking at scans from twenty different people.

As I mentioned, no one knows how alters come to exist, why they have the personality traits that they do, or where they get the skills that they possess, but it is an indisputable fact that they do exist.

I will take a little more time here to discuss Mr. Taylor, than I did Ms. Gaynor. Taylor suffers from what is clinically known as Anti-Social Personality Disorder (ASPD); in street language, he is a psychopath.

There are a number of clinical criteria that are used to form a diagnosis of ASPD, but in my professional experience, the most telling sign for Mr. Taylor, and those like him, and the one that underlies virtually all of his behavioral traits, is that he cannot care about anyone but himself. The word cannot is used deliberately here, and should not be read as a synonym for does not.

There are plenty of people who are simply selfish, and therefore choose not to care about the next person. A brother takes the last can of soda from the refrigerator even though his sister said she wanted it, and had not had one yet. He will feel a twinge of guilt, but he is able to override it by rationalizing that if she wanted it that badly she should have been quicker, or that no food in the house has anyone's name on it.

This rationalizing to quiet his guilt distinguishes him from a person with ASPD. The person with ASPD would not have felt the guilt in the first place.

Some have managed to repress that emotion to a point it essentially doesn't exist. Those people are referred to in the field as sociopaths. The other group—of which Mr. Taylor is a member—were literally born without the capacity to feel guilt, compassion, love, or any other similar emotion. It is not a choice with them; they lack the ability.

The concept of being completely unable to feel the slightest compassion for another person is very difficult for the rest of us to imagine, and it is why I am taking some time to try to explain it. Without a firm grasp of what ASPD—in this case psychopathy—is, it is difficult to understand some of Mr. Taylor's actions in the following story, or to believe that anyone could really be like that. But trust me; they can and are!

Research since the 1980's has suggested that damage to, or prenatal underdevelopment of certain areas of the prefrontal cortex may underlie the condition. Just as there are distinct areas of the brain that control speech, sight, motor skills, etc., this is the place where empathy—the ability to understand and share the feelings of another—resides.

In one neurological study, normal and ASPD subjects were shown emotional and neutral pictures while their brains were being monitored, in real time, for increases in blood flow and electrical activity to specific areas.

A photo of the Antarctic landscape evoked roughly the same analytical reaction in the inferior temporal cortex in both groups, as the subjects processed the image to identify the place. There was no emotional response.

When shown a photo of a baby cuddling with its mother, the emotional reaction to the recognition of love triggered an immediate and very strong reaction in the prefrontal cortex for the normal subjects.

The same photo shown to the ASPD subjects again produced a reaction in the inferior temporal cortex where the Antarctic photo triggered a response. This is because the photo had to be analyzed to determine what the reaction to it should be. They had no instinctual reaction to the image, because the place where that instinct would reside did not function for them.

That the subject cannot feel empathy and love does not mean that they don't understand the concepts of the emotions, however, and that is what can make them dangerous to society; they are very good pretenders and highly skilled manipulators.

An earthbound movie actor, by watching videos and by talking with real astronauts who have had the experience, may be able to imagine the feeling of weightlessness in space without ever experiencing it. Then, suspended from wires, he will go through all the right moves, have all the right reactions, and use all the right language to convincingly simulate weightlessness for his movie-going audience.

Through their life experiences of observing normal people, the ASPD subject will learn how to react to emotional stimuli that they don't actually feel. In the case of the cuddling baby photo, they will likely respond, albeit a second or two later than their normal counterparts, with the appropriate smile and "Awh." Many ASPD subjects are able to act out the emotion of caring, even of being in love, often with Oscar-caliber skills. Mr. Taylor is one of those.

In your introduction to Mr. Taylor you will see that he has some very serious issues with his mother. It might strike one as odd that a person who could harbor the level of hate that he does for his own mother is unable to feel love for anyone. But the explanation is quite simple; hate is not the opposite of love; they are not two extremes of the same emotion. Hate is self-centered. It manifests itself because the hater believes they have been wronged somehow by the recipient of their hate.

That person has done something, taken something, said something that the hater sees as a personal affront if not an outright attack, and they therefore feel perfectly justified in wishing or inducing equally bad things—or worse—on the offending person. Hate is the core emotion of the psychopath because it is the one emotion that is all about them.

Love, on the other hand, is all about the other person. It is compromise, it is sacrifice, it is accepting faults, it is putting another's well-being—or even just their happiness—ahead of one's own, and feeling good about it. In fact, it's not just feeling good about it; it's feeling good because of it. Sadly, it is impossible for Mr. Taylor, like all people with ASPD—psychopaths and sociopaths—to feel that emotion.

Researchers continue to debate how much early environmental conditions affect ASPD. It is generally agreed that sociopathy is often triggered by and fueled by certain events, especially in early life, that shuts the door on the ability for the subject to care about anyone but themselves. Most agree, also, that psychopathy is probably a combination of being born with an emotional deficiency, which is then augmented by traumatic childhood events. As you will see, if Mr. Taylor was born with even a tiny psychopathic ember smoldering in his brain, his mother managed to fan it into a full-fledged bonfire before he reached his teens.

Dr. Roberta Travis

Prologue I: Jamie Gaynor

Hello, this is Dr. Sawyer. What can I do for you?

The voice on the other end of the line struck Jamie immediately as friendly and caring; like she really did want to know how she could help.

Of the first two therapists she had called, the first sounded distracted; like she was trying to finish writing an e-mail when she deigned to pick up her phone. The other was brusque, bordering on rude. She refused to answer Jamie's questions on the phone, instead telling her to make an appointment if she wished to have herself considered for treatment.

Hi, Doctor. My name is Jamie Gaynor. How are you this morning?

I'm well, thank you, the doctor answered. How are you?

"Well, I can't speak for both of us, but I'm doing okay. I'm calling to see if you have experience with dissociative identity disorder, DID."

You believe you have multiple personalities? the doctor asked.

Right up front, I'd like to ask a favor, Doctor, Jamie replied. "Please don't answer a question with a question. I understand that you need to ask questions to do what you do, but when you ignore my question, it makes me feel very subordinate. I get enough of that at work."

Fair enough, Sawyer said. You're absolutely right. The answer to your question is yes. I have a good deal of experience with dissociative identity disorder. Which is why you caught me a little off guard. I've never had anyone call and tell me that they believed they had DID, before. It usually takes weeks or even months to get to that diagnosis. Have you seen another therapist?

No, Jamie said. "But I've done a fair amount of research on the subject, and I have the classic symptoms. I was sexually abused as a child, but have almost no memory of the acts themselves; my only memory of them—how I know they happened—is what my body felt like afterwards.

"And now, sometimes when I have sex I have complete amnesia about it—like back when I was being abused. I only know that I've had sex because of how I feel physically … and often how I look. Other times, I have a vague recollection of what went on, but the memory is more like I was watching someone else through the fog in a poorly-lit room.

Based on what I've read, I'm guessing that I have an alter who first presented herself when I was a kid to protect me from the trauma. The problem is she never bothered to leave even after my live-in uncle—the abuser—blew his own brains out. Jamie chuckled, and added, I don't know whether she thinks I still need protection, or she just likes sex.

I have to say, Dr. Sawyer replied, that I've never had a prospective client come to me with this level of self-diagnosis. Are you and this alter co-conscious? Dr. Sawyer assumed that if Jamie had read up on the subject, she would know what the term meant.

No. I've never met her, Jamie said. I don't even know if she uses a name different from mine. Like I said, I'm guessing that she's there based on the symptoms. I talk to her, but she never replies.

Does it seem that she only presents during sexual activity?

"And high levels of stress ... which leads to sexual activity. My guess is that when I was a kid she would come out to protect me as my panic rose when I heard my uncle come into my bedroom. And now she still jumps out of her closet to 'protect' me when I get too stressed about anything. She protected me when I was a kid by taking over and having sex with my uncle; apparently she equates stress with sex, and she's never learned any other coping techniques to deal with it.

But you know, now that I've said that, Jamie went on, "it seems like the times I have no memory of the sex are the times that it followed some stressful situation. The times I vaguely remember have been on normal dates. Well, as normal as my dates get."

Interesting, Sawyer replied. Tell me about the stress-induced sex. Can you give me an example?

Sure. It's why we're talking, right now, Jamie began. "I'm a pilot in the Air Force. I fly the big AWACS warning and control planes out of Tinker. About a week ago, I had my semi-annual check-ride, and the instructor, a colonel known as a hard-ass, was throwing situations at me so fast I was almost ready to grab a parachute and leave. I'd never been so stressed since my first solo landing. Well, I managed to pass, and after we landed and I'd gotten through the debriefing, my friend appeared to protect me from the stress I'd been feeling."

But you weren't still in a stressful situation by then, were you?

No. That's the whole point. Apparently that doesn't matter to her. Once the trigger's been pulled by the stress, the gun's going to go off, even if it's a delayed reaction.

How do you know she was there if you're not co-conscious? Sawyer asked.

I get a slight headache when she switches. I've read that a lot of DID people get migraine-like headaches, so I guess I'm pretty lucky in that regard. Then I feel like I'm freefalling for a second or two, and then I just sort of go to sleep—for want of a better description—while she goes off with my body. When I wake up I'm someplace else and can usually tell that I've had sex.

Sawyer knew that many DID patients experienced the headache Jamie talked about during a forced switch. If the host and alter became co-conscious, and the switch was voluntary, it often became minimal, or stopped altogether.

"Has she ever presented during the stress of flying?" Sawyer asked.

No. Never, Jamie answered. My guess is that she doesn't know how to fly … just have sex.

Is that what happened after your check-ride?

"It was headed that way, but it ended up being a case of coitus interruptus. Apparently, I went into town where my friend was letting—probably encouraging—a guy in a bar to get real friendly with me.

"I was in uniform, and a couple of young lieutenant big-brother types who were there decided that the guy's pawing was disgracing my uniform. Words were exchanged, a fight broke out, and when my friend finally left me, I was in the back seat of a Security Forces truck with the two lieutenants, on the way to our base commander's office.

"So, after my CO chewed some ass and dismissed the lieutenants, he really came down on me. He told me that this wasn't the first time he'd heard about my unladylike behavior while in uniform, and that if I wanted to keep wearing my uniform—and more importantly, my wings—I better get help for what he said was my hypersexual behavior. He said he wasn't about to send a nymphomaniac up in an aircraft with thirty young men. He cut me some slack by not sending me to the base shrink, which would probably have gotten me grounded pending some kind of evaluation. So, I got on-line to find some help."

And what kind of help are you looking for, Jamie? Sawyer asked. Do you want to try to exorcize this alter; do you want to try to fuse and become one with her; or do you want to become co-conscious with her and coexist?

Which is faster? Jamie asked.

"There's no pat answer for that. Sometimes an alter will respond to the therapy by understanding that the host is no longer in danger, and they'll move into the background and never switch again. I personally don't believe they ever really leave, however.

Other times, especially if there's more than one alter, it's almost like group therapy. I'll work with them to understand their individual reasons for being—which is almost always to protect the host, even if that supposed protection is misguided—and try to find some common ground that they can all support on behalf of the host.

I'm open to any of those solutions, if you're willing to take us on as a client, Jamie said.

Absolutely, Sawyer replied. Looking at her computer screen, she went on, I have a nine-thirty, Wednesday morning.

Do you do any evenings? Jamie asked. I'd like to keep this under the radar. Asking to be excused from duty will raise all sorts of flags.

How about Thursday at seven?

Perfect! I have the address, so I'll see you then. Thanks, Doctor. Good-bye.

Dr. Sawyer typed Jamie's name into her calendar. It wasn't hard to squeeze her in because the calendar was completely blank after 5:00 p.m. Sawyer hadn't worked nights in years. But Jamie and her case just seemed so fascinating to her, that she decided to make an exception.

If Dr. Sawyer hadn't been convinced after talking with Jamie on the phone, then by the end of their first session, she was sure that Jamie's self-diagnosis was correct; DID was the only explanation for all of her symptoms.

At the beginning of the third session, Dr. Sawyer commented, You know, it surprises me, Jamie, how comfortable you are with your alter, considering that she refuses to present herself to you, and with all the trouble that you say she gets you into. A lot of other patients would be very irritated with her.

Jamie shrugged. "I can't be too angry with her, she said. She's probably the only reason I survived my childhood with my sanity intact. She was my whipping boy, so to speak. She took the abuse, and hid its memory away in some corner of my brain that only she has the key to. As hard as I try, I can't remember anything my uncle did to me after, I think, the third time. And those times were just oral sex; I know he went a lot further than that later on."

Would you mind it if your alter presented to me, and we were able to talk without you being here? Sawyer asked.

I guess not, Jamie said. If she wants to come out, I guess I'll just go wherever it is I go when she's using my body for sex.

How about it? Sawyer asked the alter. I'm not sure why you don't want to communicate with Jamie, but I'll respect your decision, and promise not to share anything with her unless you say it's okay.

The doctor watched, fascinated, as she saw a change come into Jamie's face. Her mouth curled into a small slightly pouty grin, and her eyes relaxed, appearing larger and softer. Even the doctor, who had seen physical transformation in patients as alters presented, was surprised. Jamie was an attractive woman, but this alter was downright sexy.

Hi, Sawyer said to the new personality. I'm glad you feel comfortable enough to come out. Do you have a different name than Jamie's

Jamie's other self got up out of the chair, walked across to where Dr. Sawyer was sitting, and stood in front of her. She leaned down, took the doctor's face between both of her hands, and then kissed her on the lips.

The kiss was passionate from Jamie's side, but the doctor remained completely neutral. She neither responded to the kiss, nor pushed her away.

After ten seconds or so, Jamie's alter broke the kiss, stood up, and with a smile and slightly breathy voice, said, Hi Doc. You can call me Fawn. It's a pleasure to meet you.

Hello, Fawn, Sawyer said. You're not familiar with the custom of shaking hands?

Too many germs, Fawn said with a laugh as she returned to the chair. You never know where peoples' hands have been.

Well, please don't do that again, Sawyer said.

Loosen up, Doc, Fawn said with a chuckle. If you're not bisexual, you're missing out on fifty-percent of the fun.

My sexual orientation has nothing to do with it, Fawn, Sawyer replied. If we're going to help Jamie, the client-doctor boundaries must be recognized and maintained.

Fawn grinned and raised one eyebrow—something the doctor had never seen Jamie do—and said, "So, you're not saying that your not bisexual, then?"

I'm not commenting on the subject at all, Sawyer said. "I'm much more interested in your sex life, and why you won't let Jamie share in it. I understand that you presented to protect her when she was young; that was very courageous of you. But she's a grown woman now; a healthy sex life is important."

Courageous? Fawn repeated. "I don't think it takes too much courage to do something you like. Did you forget why our friend here came to see you in the first place? Her CO said she was hypersexual—a nymphomaniac. In other words, a slut. Well, he was talking about me, not Tinkerbelle, here. She wouldn't know which end of a stiff dick to start working on first."

Perhaps if you gave her the chance, Sawyer replied.

The last time she had a cock in her mouth she gagged, puked her dinner all over the bed, and cried for an hour.

Was that when her uncle was abusing her?

Yeah. The third time. She was ten years old, and the idiot thought he could deep-throat her.

Is that the first time you presented?

"I came out the next time her uncle came to her room."

"How old were you then?" the doctor asked, knowing that alters took on a whole range of ages depending on what they were trying to protect the host from. Sometimes they aged with the host, other times not. They could even be the opposite sex.

Eighteen. I was legal so I could do anything I wanted with him.

How old are you now?

Still eighteen. Me and Peter Pan; we never grow up.

How many alters does Jamie have? the doctor asked. She knew that it was rare for a person with DID to have just one.

I'm it, Fawn said. I'm the Peter Pan to her Tinkerbelle.

She also knew that it was not uncommon for one alter to not know about all of the others, and in some cases, any of the others.

"Getting back to Jamie's childhood; you enjoyed sex with her uncle?" Sawyer asked.

Not at first, Fawn answered. He wasn't very good. He was all wham-bam, thank you, ma'am, you know? He just wanted to get his rocks off. I tried to get him to try different things; to take his time, but he was all about the control; he didn't want my suggestions.

As far as he was concerned, Sawyer said, "you were ten years old; it's hardly surprising that he didn't want your advice about sex. But it sounds like you encouraged him."

"I never seduced him, if that's what you mean. I didn't invite him into the bedroom, and I never came out until he came to Jamie. But once he was there … it's like Confucius said; 'If rape is inevitable, lie back and enjoy it.'"

I'm quite sure Confucius never said that, Sawyer replied. "And what about the present? From what Jamie's told me you're quite the seductress, now."

"After her uncle popped himself, she didn't have sex for about ten years. Ten years, Doc! You know how frustrating that is? Christ, she wouldn't even finger herself after she reached puberty. If I hadn't popped out in the shower once in a while to take matters into our own hands, her pussy probably would have healed closed from lack of use."

Sawyer wondered if Fawn was trying to get a reaction from her by using vulgar language, or if that was simply the way that she talked. She suspected the latter, but decided to ignore it, either way.

So, after her ten-year hiatus, Sawyer asked, what happened when she finally did have sex again?

Fast-forward all the way through high school—where there were plenty of boys who would have crawled over broken glass to get into her pants, by the way—and stop at sophomore year in college. Enter Freddie Lundquist, Fawn answered.

"She and Freddie dated for about a year—and by dated, I mean studied together, went to the movies, held hands, and kissed goodnight. I was beginning to think that his childhood might have been as screwed up as hers. I mean a year, and he never even tried to cop a feel of her tits.

"Then one night, they're alone in his dorm room, and for God only knows what reason, they start kissing like they actually mean it. Little by little, he moves his hand closer to her tit, and surprise of surprises, she doesn't stop him! She's finally figuring out that sex can feel good.

"So they lip-lock and he fondles her boobs for a while, and then he gets really bold, and he moves down to her legs. She's enjoying the attention, and she's actually getting wet for the first time in her life.

"Then he goes for the gold, and he moves his hand in under her skirt, and starts to rub her pussy through her underpants. Well, she stiffened up like she got an instant case of rigor mortis. I think she probably had a flashback to when her uncle first touched her there. That's when we switched, and I took over."

"So, you presented to protect her like you had back then? Did you get the sense of flashback, too?" Sawyer asked.

Fawn laughed. I switched because she was shutting down during the first sex we'd had in a decade, Doc! A girl has needs, even if only one of us knows it.

Did Freddie notice the switch? Sawyer asked.

I doubt it, Fawn said. Why would he suspect anything like that? But I took it easy on him, knowing it was his first time. We got naked, he had a good time with her tits, we tried a little oral—of which he was a more willing getter than giver—and we ended up by stroking each other off. It was kind of fun being with someone that new to sex. I was looking forward to more dates with him; I had plenty more to show him.

"And did they continue dating?" Sawyer asked.

For a while, Fawn said. After a couple more grope sessions, she got so he could actually get his finger inside her before she started to freeze up and I'd have to take over.

Did you eventually have intercourse with him? Sawyer asked.

Yeah, but he wasn't very good, Fawn answered. "What he really liked was getting head. Turns out he was gay.

"Jamie showed up at his dorm room unexpectedly in the middle of the day one time, and caught Freddie in a sixty-nine with the kid who lived across the hall. My first thought was, Cool! He's