Supersoldiers R Us

Four years ago I was working as a caregiver to the elderly, for a private Montreal company that catered to well-off clients, including two senators, the wife of the man who designed the Montreal metro, the mother of a McGill psychiatrist specializing in adolescent schizophrenia, and other fascinating people. One of my last clients was a beautiful, elegant 70-year-old woman whose husband had recently passed away. She now lived alone in their two storey duplex in a middle class neighborhood. Her client description was nothing special ("Highly intelligent. Likes to talk. Can be repetitive.") but didn't prepare me for being a live-in companion to a woman who I began to realize had been MKed while growing up in a remote northern village, and had likely killed people -- at least that would be my guess judging from her scattered references to violent events in her past. The more she talked about her life (in long staccato monologues delivered across her tiny table in a cramped kitchen, where I would be jammed into a space between the overloaded counter and the wall), the more I noticed signs that she had trained as a child to be something *very* special, probably a supersoldier, gaining a black belt in karate and learning to fly planes by age 12. Early on she had made friends with girls from the nearby native reserve but got in trouble with police for hurting a boy who had harmed an animal. She told me she was a witch and much of her house was permanently decorated for Halloween, orange and black knick-knacks competing with mirrors and photos of her as a bride. She barely spoke of her late husband whom she had found in bed one morning "already blue" - just as her father had also died suddenly when she was a teenager and turned up blue in his bed where she found him. Her dad had been an elite Dutch naval officer who came to Canada during the war and was involved in building a supercomputer on the St Laurence Seaway. When the young Queen and Prince Philip visited Canada in 1957 they toured the facility and had dinner with her parents on the base - or so she told me. Ten years later she landed a summer job as a hostess at Expo 67 - meeting visiting dignitaries and showing them around Montreal. That was how she met her first husband, and later had a son who worked for NASA. One of her nephews played hockey in the NHL - his photo hung on a wall in her basement with other memorabilia. One painting featured an array of swords and knives. Over the next few days we got to know each other. Far-fetched and boring as some of her stories might have seemed to other caregivers who likely heard them over and over, I believed them and was interested. I recognized details that fit the profile of a MKULTRA child subject. Sometimes she seemed to switch personalities and would speak to me in a little-girl voice -- this was when she would be at her most repetitive and plaintive. At other times she interacted as an adult, answering my questions with precision, as if surprised to be taken seriously. Once I even brought up my own past as a child in mind control experiments at McGill - she seemed to appreciate having someone to confide in about her own experiences, even if empathy was clearly not her strong point. Once or twice we went for walks. I had been told she could walk for hours and had exhausted previous caregivers -- supposedly she was unable to sleep otherwise and would lie awake all night with the lights on if she didn't get her exercise. But she and I never went farther than the local convenience store where she ordered take-out coffee. Covid lockdowns were in force and she refused to wear a mask so we were quickly escorted outside where we bumped into a neighbour of hers, a man who seemed to know her very well. As I mentioned, she was very striking with long thick white hair - the lower half still dark from a dye job - and she had a distinctive fashion sense: she was a knock-out in pastel track suits. She would have had many admirers had she not been so demanding of her listeners. I managed to last two weeks with her. I would escape to my room with my phone whenever her grueling monologues became too much. Towards the end I lost patience with the needy child alter who cornered me for hours in a one-way conversation, and told her to grow up - a bad thing to say but I had started feeling trapped in more ways than one. The doors in her home were bolted from the inside. A set of keys usually hung from a hook in the hallway -- without those keys you couldn't open the front door or the downstairs basement door that led to the garage- the only two exits. I found out only later that she had physically attacked the previous nine caregivers. My supervisor neglected to tell me I was live-in #10 in the four months since her husband had died. On a Friday afternoon at the end of my second week, while she was in her room watching a video, something made me get up and go looking around for the house keys. They were missing from their hook which was unusual. I went into the living room and by chance or maybe sixth sense I found them in the place where she had hidden them. As I turned to go back to my room, she came out of her room and lunged at me, shrieking and digging her nails into my face. For 5'5" she was incredibly strong but I managed to push past her and get to my room where I barricaded myself, blocking the door with a large chair. Even with me leaning my whole weight against the door she almost forced it open a couple of times. Luckily my cell phone was in my pocket so I could phone for help, once she stopped kicking the door. I called my company and told them to send the police -- they didn't believe me at first and put me on hold. Finally my supervisor picked up and agreed to call the niece who was a doctor and "knew what to do". Meanwhile I could hear Susan in the kitchen FaceTiming her son in Tennessee. He phoned me on my cell to find out why his mom was accusing me of assaulting her. He told me to stay in my room while he spoke to my company and called his cousin, who was a doctor and lived less than an hour away. What had set her off was a piece of heavy furniture in her room that she had insisted on moving an hour earlier -- she thought something had fallen behind it that she wanted, and to reach it we had to shove the huge dresser away from the wall, which I was not keen to do for some reason. In the end, there was nothing behind the dresser and this plus my negative attitude triggered her wanting to kill me. Our standoff lasted for two or three hours. Had the police been called they would not have been able to get in the door because even though I had the keys she had several large kitchen knives, one of which she had used to drive away the last caregiver. In the end her niece, the doctor, who had her own set of keys, let herself in and took charge. Seeing my face she said, "She really got you, didn't she?" She calmly collected her aunt's things, helped her pack an overnight bag, and she and her husband drove us all to the Jewish General Psychiatry department where nurses in Covid protective gear and plastic face shields admitted Susan, who had already spent considerable time in their ward and knew the drill. I was sent home but returned the next day to feed her cats. I forgot to mention she had two, and also several feral cats that she would feed outside her basement window. I got paid extra for my two weeks with Susan, owing to how well I had handled the client, and Maria my supervisor thanked me and said she would be terminating that contract for good. I wrote a report which I sent to the son, omitting to mention his mother appeared to be a mind controlled super soldier with assassin programming, but he probably already knew that. It's a small world when you're MKULTRA.