Session 109

Posted on Mon Sep 14th, 2015 @ 10:48am by Lieutenant JG Louis Hyde

936 words; about a 5 minute read

Mission: Of Gods and Men
Location: Holodeck

"My findings during my Starfleet training have been quite spectacular I must say. The depths of how beings behave is fascinating and I cannot wait to continue them right away.

My previous subjects have been of good natured quality. But I want to delve deep into the psyche of the opposite, the bad of ourselves. One has to understand completely the nature of the beast, whether good or bad.

For the past 1.5 months, I have been studying literary characters of earth's 19th & 20th centuries who were considered bad in a particular way. Henry & James, who have been very insightful and helpful in this study have been invaluable to me."

Louis took a deep breath. "Computer, end personal log and run program 'Miss Havisham' please." The room quickly morphed into an old Victorian era mansion that had been run down for several years. He had deduced that I was in the drawing room by the setup of several extravagant chairs that had not been maintained and a tea table that had layers of dust stacked on the surface with three ashtrays that had been used recently as evidenced by the ash brimming over the sides.

Dust and cobwebs filled the entire room and hardly any sunlight came through the windows because of the closed curtains. He noticed a towering bookshelf filled with books with a clock on the wall next to it that showed the twenty minutes to nine. He looked at the clock sitting on lamp table that read the same time. This had caught his attention.

"Who are you? Why are you here?" A raspy female voice said from behind him.

Louis turned around to see a middle aged woman wearing a dirty, torn wedding dress standing at the door. The skeletal looking woman peered at Hyde with her dreary looking eyes that had sags like he had never seen before. Her skin was sickly pale colored and had more wrinkles than a dried up prune. She wore only one shoe, which was peculiar and held a cigarette in her left hand.

"You are the master of this house, Miss Havisham?" He asked.

"This is the Satis House, is it not?" the woman responded. "What kind of man answers a question with a question. A pig no doubt." She took a puff of her cigarette.

Louis noticed the hostility in her words. "My apologies Madame. My name is Louis and I wanted an audience with you." He couldn't help looking at her raggedy dress and her bare foot which had collected dirt from walking barefoot around the house. "May I enquire, why are you wearing a wedding dress and only one shoe?"

She did not immediately respond, instead looking at him intently. "Men." She looked down at her dress for a few moments before bringing her head back up to look at Louis. Her dreary eyes had become distant, as if she were somewhere else and nothing around her, including Louis had existed. Her eyes started to water but before tears could fall she snapped out of her trance as anger engulfed her face before turning into sadness. "Have you ever been in love?"

"No, I have not."

"Because you're incapable of it, as are all men. Your kind think you can toy with a woman's heart as if it was just an object of amusement, don't you?"

Louis was intrigued by her hatred of men since it was the source of her vengeance, her obsessive cruelty, her revengeful nature. "I'm sure there are men whom are capable of love."

"Ha!" She laughed. "You think so highly of your kind, do you? Let me tell you a story, Louis, was it?"

She told Louis the story of her great love Compeyson and how he had left her on her wedding day. He had taken all her money she inherited from her father before she had even slipped her other shoe on at the precise time of 8:40. How she spent her years inside her house, never to leave, plotting everyday in how to get revenge for her heartbreak. How she had adopted a daughter, Estella, for the sole purpose of teaching her how to avoid her own fate, but instead molding her into a breaker of men which was fulfilling her need for revenge. "I stole her heart away and replaced it with ice. I taught her so well. How to manipulate, bend, and control until you had no use for them anymore for you to casually discard like tomorrow's trash."

She went into more detail of her daughter and some boy named Pip. Louis did not speak one word as she told her tale for over two hours, but to Louis it had only seemed like a half hour. when Miss Havisham finished her story, she crumpled to the floor crying, muttering to herself what sounded like, "What have I done."

"Computer, stop program please." The Satis House, along with Miss Havisham vanished. Louis was intrigued by how powerful love could break someone and turn them into a mad, vengeful, manipulative being. Miss Havisham's life was defined by one single tragic event which made her determined not to move on from that heartbreak as evident by her clocks. Then, out of manic obsessive cruelty she forms her daughter into a weapon , a form of single-minded vengeance pursued destructively. She was unable to see that her thirst for revenge brought suffering to others in her life. She had caused to others what she herself had experienced.

Interesting, Miss Havisham was an interesting study of revenge, jealousy, and the broken heart.

OFF

Lt. JG Louis Hyde
Intelligence

 

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