“Ryan, I’m sorry. You should have received a letter about your appointment today.”
I stare at a woman in her early thirties, blonde hair piled into a bun on top of her head. Black-framed glasses sit on the edge of her straight nose, and brown eyes with licks of caramel look deep into mine. She’s thickly built, not fat, but curvy at the hips with big tits. Her pencil skirt flatters her rounded ass. I bet she can take some sexual punishment before crying.
“I didn’t receive a letter,” I snap.
She swallows before answering. I make her uncomfortable and those little tells nourish me and make me want to dissect her psyche. She looks at the receptionist who shrugs and goes back to filing. She’s new and it’s only now I’ve noticed that Janet, the bland old hag that usually mans the reception desk, is absent today.
“Come into my office for a moment.”
I flick my eyes back to hers. Her office?
She doesn’t turn her back to me, instead she steps aside and gestures for me to enter first. I hold in a smirk and take the few steps into the office. My eyes zero in on the nameplate now occupying Dr. Leighton’s desk.
Dr. Jenna Jarvis
“Aren’t Jenna’s usually porn stars?” I ask, straight-faced, picking up the nameplate and waving it in her direction.
Eating up the distance between us and taking the plaque from me, she places it back on the desk, her face snapping to mine. She tilts her head, studying me. I welcome her assessment and stare straight back at her.
“That’s a little juvenile for someone of your age, Ryan.”
It’s not a question but the quirk of her brow and the manner in which she speaks makes it sound like one.
“I feel at a disadvantage,” I reply, stalking to the window and taking in an open field laid out for miles. No concrete walls hiding the view from this window. I feel the burn of her stare heat my neck.
“And why is that?” she asks.
I turn my gaze back to her. “Well, you knew my name without me telling you, yet I learned yours from a name on the desk of the man I’m here to see. Care to tell me why I find you here, calling me by my first name like we’re high school friends?”
“Did you have many high school friends, Ryan?”
I can’t help but laugh at her attempt to Doctor/patient me before she’s even introduced herself.
She takes in my response and her shoulders relax.
“I wasn’t expecting you. I’m Dr. Jarvis. I’m sorry to be the one to inform you but Dr. Leighton suffered a fatal heart attack over the weekend and I’m his replacement.”
Holy shit, the doc bit it before getting to retire. It’s the end of an era.
“What does this mean for me?” I ask.
“Well.” She grabs a file from the stack laid out on the desk and flips through it, stopping to read for a few short beats before putting it down and leaning her ass against the lip of the desk. “Your probation period has ended. Dr. Leighton signed all the necessary documentation so you are completely under your own care. We want you to attend a weekly visit for the next year but that’s not compulsory. However, a six months review is.”
“So I’m truly free from here and this can’t be . . . revoked?”
Her eyes pierce me from across the room. “Unless you commit a crime that deems you a danger to the public or yourself, then no. This is it.”
Wow, this is it. I’m a little peeved I didn’t get to rub it in Dr. Leighton’s face that there is no cure for my kind of sickness.
“Dr. Leighton was planning on retiring within the next three months and I was to replace him and gradually move his patients over to my care, but circumstances have moved the process up, I’m afraid.”
She seems a little young to be put forward to take over Dr. Leighton’s role here, and the way she casually informed me of his death after I’ve been his patient for eighteen years makes me think she’s new to the field or just shit at her job like the rest of them. Such news could have an impact on a patient who actually had the ability to care about him. I’m curious to get inside her head and play with her.
“Shall we start then?” I ask
She looks flustered and rushes around her desk to collect a notepad and the file she looked at moments before. “I wasn’t expecting to commence your sessions until I had a chance to read over the rest of Dr. Leighton’s files for you.”
I stride over to the armchair opposite the desk and sit down. “You don’t need his. You can create your own.” I smirk and she straightens her shoulders, trying to Gauge if I’m playing her, but unlike her I’ve been playing this game a long time and can school my reactions and slip on a fa?ade.
“Okay, start from the beginning. Your earliest memory, or when you first felt . . .” She opens the file, flipping through to some jotted notes of Leighton’s and then continues. “Different from everyone else.”
I can’t believe she looked through jotted notes to ask me questions. There are eighteen years of files on me and she’s referring to some notes an old man scribbled down. I will indulge her and give her honesty. Dr. Leighton declared me sane and free, so what’s the harm in letting this rookie know just how deep my darkness lurks?
“Take a seat, Doc. It’s a long story.”
She takes the seat opposite me and nods her head for me to start.
“When I was a little boy, things didn’t make sense to me. For example, the affection others showed towards family members. Responsibility to care just wasn’t there. The need to comfort others was foreign to me. It wasn’t until I started kindergarten that I realized the reason was not my age, but it was just non-existent and this is who I am. I was entirely different from everyone else. They were bound by their emotions; it ruled them and separated me from the herd.
“I would sit and watch, fascinated by their animation, their joy at playing together or creating a picture their parents would gush about, hugging them when coming to collect them. What was it they felt that compelled them to want to hug, touch, care that much?”
“Did your mother not show you affection?”
“My mother never showed affection unless she was having a clean spell. She would stop dosing herself up on drugs and decide she wanted to play mommy and house. She would clean, and prepare sit down dinners, and act interested in us. She would turn up on time to collect me from school but whether she was the cracked up junkie or the Mother Teresa version of herself it made no difference to how I felt about her. I always felt indifference, and as I got older, disgust. Even at such a young age my demons were dark and bitter. Blake, my older brother, would eat that shit up. He craved affection from her and it didn’t make sense to me. He loved it when she took the time to prepare a meal for us, but me? I wanted to use my dinner knife to put her out of her misery. She was a pathetic excuse for a human being and those changes in her only ever lasted until the weekend when my Dad brought home his mediocre wages and they would fuck and get high.
“I remember the first time I saw them fucking. They were arguing at first and the raised voices woke me. I hoped one would finally choke the other but when I made it to the living room he was tearing at her skirt, pushing it up her thighs. He punched her in the face. The contact made a cracking sound and the look of pain on her face and the crimson bubble of blood that rose from her lip intrigued me.”
I stop talking to assess her reactions to my life story. She leans over to a side table next to her chair and pours water into a glass from a jug, then offers me some. Holding up my hand to refuse, I wait while she takes a sip.
“Please carry on. What happened after he struck her?” she asks.
“He fucked her.” I accentuate the word fuck, causing her eyes to clash with mine before she jots something down, making me smirk.