Sleeping with Psychopaths: Jack and Martin Harrison
by Jack L. Pyke
Maybe it is all in the blood, right? That we’re talking brothers here? Martin, the psychopath, carrying a natural “born this way, baby” innateness and loving every “fucked up” ounce of who he is. Then Jack, the sociopath: born in the UK, but made through being denied a natural need to ease OCD trauma, then loving being cut during sex, where cutting his way through life then becomes the only way to fall in love with life.
In fact, it is in the blood, but Jack and Martin aren’t brothers; their relationship is never more complex.
Martin is what’s known as a “fragment” of Jack. A psychopath born through how when Jack’s world falls, Martin’s right there to ensure Jack survives. Only Martin doesn’t play by any lover’s rule when it comes to those who live close to Jack. It’s not helped with how Jack’s fallen hard for another psychopath: Gray Raoul, MI5 director of counterterrorism and culler: the Crown’s killer. If that doesn’t push all of Martin’s peer gameplay with psychopaths, Jack’s involved in a triad, where the third part to Jack and Gray’s relationship is… Jan. An accountant. One as… normal as any psychopath could wish to try and twist and taint.
But the question is always there: why would Jack himself fragment into a psychopath?
One Huge thanks to the Blogger Girls for hosting the second day of this Sleeping with Psychopaths tour. Today Jen asks one hell of a question that focuses on just why Jack might “Walk” into Martin:
Where did you get your inspiration for Jack/Martin, and what was your main course of research on the topic?
This is going to sound so strange to start with, but when I was studying at university, I wrote a play that centred on using lighting techniques, clothing, and changes in language to use one actor to play three different personalities: DID (dissociative identity disorder). At the same time Linkin Park had just emerged with Hybrid Theory, and I loved how the two lead singers had that calm/chaos approach to “Paranoia”, one of their singles off the album. Both were probably my first real steps into a fragmented mind and wanting to cover it in fiction.
A few months later, I came across a case study of DID, and it pretty much cemented where I wanted to go, mostly because the case study tore me apart as I went through it.
It dealt with a married woman, where both her and her husband were kidnapped. During the kidnapping, the woman was forced to witness her husband’s murder. She managed to escape, went home, and underwent therapy. Then one day she just disappeared. Family found her months later, working as a nurse in hospital: new name, new identity, new career, with no memory of past friends, lovers or losses. Most know DID fragments are created through chaos (not always, but most times), but the reason behind this lady’s disorder found that the second personality had been fashioned for one reason: to ease how she hadn’t had the medical skills to help save her husband. So even though she’d never studied nursing in her life, a fragment of her came in that had every skill set to cope where she thought she couldn’t. It was such a heart-breaking read, and still stays with me today. But it is the base for creating Martin, or how Martin would be born with a mindset to match those who played around Jack.
In Don’t, Jack’s diagnosed with OCD and an emerging authoritarian personality in his late teens. With the sociocultural backdrop he’s raised in, it all comes together to classify the sociopath in Jack. But as he finds himself trapped in the gameplay of psychopaths, where minds more twisted than his are making him lose his identity through their control and bloodied knife, Jack ‘walks’ into Martin, someone born into the game, with a psychopath’s mind and twisted drive to dominate his peers. Jack is then diagnosed with DID, and it meant that a whole host of research had to come in with all of those disorders to see how they’d work and fall together when it came to Jack and Martin. But they were always based on the realities of the disorders themselves.
For instance, in Antidote, where Jack tests his own OCD limits by dropping a photo of Gray out of alignment on a unit, then tries to leave it as long as possible before he has to straighten it? This is a therapeutic technique that’s used by professionals to help someone live with and manage OCD. So that by the time Jack’s kidnapped by Vince, and Vince tries to “straighten” Jack’s disorders by tying Jack up and leaving the photo just out of reach so Jack can’t straighten it… Vince looks to tear down not only Jack’s mind, but also the techniques that are usually put in place to help an OCD sufferer.
It makes Jack and Martin’s relationship a dangerous place for those around them as Martin re-emerges, but also to themselves and how they live, sleep, and eat as a part of the whole. There’s never any easy cures. But when you live with fragments like Martin, who are there for a reason, driven to protect no matter how twisted their gameplay, then perhaps cures are never the answer. They’re individuals in their own right, who need time to bleed out the stresses and strains in their own ways.
Thanks again to The Blogger Girls for having me today, and for Jen’s awesome question! Yesterday I was at Boy Meets Boy Reviews talking about Sleeping with Psychopaths: the cullers. Tomorrow I’m over at Kimmer’s Erotic Banter, sleeping with the ultimate psychopath… Gray Raoul! Please join me beneath the covers there too!
Thanks for staying with me during this tour!! For a chance to win a copy of Psychopaths & Sinners, please enter the Rafflecopter below!
In the aftermath of Jack Harrison’s release from the psychiatric unit, Gray Raoul’s first instinct is to take brutal revenge on the one responsible for financing Jack’s and Jan’s torturous psychological reconditioning. However, that person is a plays the game dangerously well, knows exactly how to manipulate everyone in Gray’s life. To help negotiate this delicate situation, Gray contacts Trace and his ex-Diadem Dom, Gabriel Hunter. But the more Gray seems to regain control, the clearer it becomes that there’s something not quite right about Jan Richards. Jan quickly unravels, taking Jack and Gray with him, and bringing out one particularly deadly player, Gray’s left with one last defence: break Jack down in order to partner up with his alter ego, Martin. But once freed, Martin has plans of his own, and he wants to make it personal with Gray. Complete trust between Master and sub, between Gray and Jack, will be tested to the absolute limit.
Carrying a tattoo on your skin no longer just comes with a risk of infection. Get the composition right, you have the latest mind-control drug on the market. It’s the sex-traders’ dream, or worst nightmare, depending on the concentrated dose of the ink—and just who’s wearing it.
The Blogger Girls 