This psychological horror story is about manipulation, and how it never pays to use underhand tactics to bully, manipulate, or coerce other people to bend to your will.
Manipulation never pays
An old woman, with many of her grown up children having married and left her nest, lives in a house with her school of domestic helpers. She had only one divorced and presently bachelor son living with her. They run a cottage industry, making cooked food to sell to wholesalers, and retailers alike.
Many years ago, her son and her made a mistake, a very big mistake. The walls have ears and the surrounding beyond the walls have ears.
A nearby house of neighbors, seizes the opportunity. “Lay us the golden egg!” They cry. “Give! Or we report the act.”
The old mother fights back. “He can not lay any golden egg. Besides, you have no proof that he has done any wrong doing.”
“We have heard. We know what he did. A man was harmed because of what he did. ” Those neighbors said.
“My son is disabled. He does not know how to sabotage. He did no such thing.” The old woman said.
That house’s neighbors said to each other, “Maybe they need some persuasion.”
That very night, they started their campaign to render incentive for the old woman. The couple started their conversation in the early morning hour.
Old woman and her entire household of son and domestic helpers were awakened.
The woman next door to the old woman’s house, was jolted awake, but not her other two family members. This woman suspected it was the black magic that awoke sleepers, not the voices. The opportunists’ house was opposite the street. Old mother’s house was fully air-conditioned, with all the windows and doors shut. Sound would not permeate through solid, structural walls. It was the dark energy that carried the voices to the sleepers. Once awake, they would not be permitted to return to slumber again. Insomnia is a powerful tool to bend the knee. Every human needs to sleep. Humans can not stay awake to function, when they lack sufficient sleep.
The manipulator has the upper hand, when the hexed do not have the liberty of sleeping in the day. Otherwise, they would just sleep during daylight, when negative forces to disturb them do not work well.
Nocturnal disturbances became regular. The woman next door was upset but later grew accustomed to it.
Old mother talked loudly to her next door neighbor.
“Please help me. The neighbors opposite us are manipulative.”
Then the perpetuators heard and said to the woman next door to the old woman, “You mind your own business. If you interfere with my business, I’ll torment you with sleeplessness.”
The old mother didn’t give up her plan of manipulating her neighbor, to be her hands and feet to fight with the requestor. Since the subject couldn’t be persuaded, she tried to bully by coercion and abuse.
Every night, the old mother and her henchman, a wannabe star worker, discussed scenarios to play tricks on the woman next door. The old mother could not learn to practice negative energies, so she relied on her henchman to do the dirty work. The old mother was the boss who ordered her minion to wake up her hapless neighbor, one, two, three, four or five times every sleeping session.
As soon as the woman neighbor fell asleep after her bedtime at 10 pm, the henchman would call upon his negative energy to wake her up after 30 minutes or one hour. This routine was to frighten the sleeper and make her feel scared that she would not be allowed to sleep for the rest of her night stretching to dawn.
The henchman waited until the targeted victim fell asleep, then woke her up again after one or two hours. The henchman and the old mother would stay very quiet while this procedure of waking was being executed. They pretend that the sleeper woke up herself, to avoid being blamed. The sleeper knows that it is un-natural to be waking up every two hour or so. The sleeper is always awakened after two hours, like clockwork.
Initially, the victim was angry. She considered going to a police station to make her report of noise disturbance. She was aware she had to supply concrete evidence of noise disturbances. Most of the nights were quiet as the fighters used negative energy, which was silent. Negative energy is a silent weapon. The only defence is to tackle the user.
The old mother’s enemy pretended to be scared of negative energy too – especially the curse.
The old mother’s intellect tells her to execute this plan of constant awakening to disturb the sleeper and torment her into submission. She thought the sleeper would be abused enough to succumb to manipulation. The old woman said she used this method on the previous resident in that same house and it worked on that particular woman.
On the surface, it seems the victim is physically disturbed, psychologically tortured, and emotionally scared by this game of abuse.
However, since the target is determined not to bow to demands of coercion, the real loser is the manipulator, for alienating others against herself. Nobody in this world, and and beyond, is going to bow to torture easily. The old woman had shouted “Don’t help me. I don’t need your help. In fact, I’m showing how much I despise your paltry being, by antagonising you. I don’t need your interference. I’m disturbing you to spite my enemy.”
The woman next door is physically sleepy and a few of her cognitive abilities are affected by insufficient sleep. She is a devout Christian and practitioner of meditative praying. Whenever she is sleepless, she does not toss and turn in bed. She holds her prayer beads and prays. She increases her faith, psychological defences, emotional stability and makes herself mentally tired. Sometimes, she lulls herself to sleep, in spite of the strange energy preventing her from falling asleep. When she is awake, she is determined to battle the menace, manipulation and evil.
The woman next door learned resilience. She has coped with evil and negative energy, by meditation and increasing her positive thoughts. She has read research online about resilience and how it helps. The problem does not disappear, but resilience is a method of handling the problem. Young children have been taught for ages, in fact, since time immemorial, the nursery rhyme;
“Sticks and stones may break my bones,
but names will never hurt me.”
In modern times, this translates to
“Physical hardship may cause me discomfort and harm,
but psychological manipulation will never hurt me.”
The woman next door does not want to be a busy body, and interfere in other people’s quarrels. She is already forewarned that she would be sent upon by two groups of people if she plays the vigilante. She decides to thicken her resolve to stay out of other people’s battle field.
If she got sleepy during the day, she would have a quick shut eye at lunch time. Even several minutes was a good window of respite to fight her sleepiness.
The nightly battles of un-neighborly behaviors continued for more than one year. While the woman next door had grown mature, the old mother and her henchman did not. They persisted in using childish tactics.
The naughty neighbors living on the opposite side of the street have tried to end the old woman’s game plan. “It is no use trying to manipulate another woman to take your yoke. She will not yield. She is not responsible for you, nor your son.”
The old woman always tells her next door neighbor, “I have no other recourse. I’m using you to show my enemy that I have someone who might become my weapon to use against my enemy.”
That’s manipulation on at least two levels.
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