I wake up with the first rays of dawn, too numb to marvel at the notion of slumberless awakening.
Staying in bed seems to make less sense than leaving it, so I shuffle over to the living room. I have no particular purpose in mind other than moving my limbs. Some days are just not made for motionlessness.
The curtains are still drawn and the place is cavernously gloomy. The stuffy air reeks of stale beer and pizza.
I open the window, eyes pointedly averted from the view outside. Then, having let in some fresh air, I drag my nightsweat-sticky ass to the shower.
One full body coverage third degree burn later, I’m ready to start reacknowledging my affiliation to humankind. It feels nice in the first minute or so. The scent of soap and minty flavor of toothpaste, the fresh breeze from the open window. With yesterday’s staleness dissipated, the smell of cold pizza is light and unobtrusive. A pleasant reminder of yesterday’s delight.
But it’s not yesterday.
Yesterday I was making progress. I was doing it at my own slow pace and following my own crooked trajectory, but I had some vague perception of the objective ahead and the means at my disposal. Yesterday I had an ally. Yesterday I had hope.
Today I have nothing. It’s my first day with absolutely no one to trust- this time for real.
I feel like a child finally meeting an actual monster after years of stubbornly dreading the shadows under the bed. I miss the shadows.
Now what? The question reverberates from every corner of my newly awakened personal void.
I need to cancel the next appointment, for one thing. And the one after it. But what then? Can I ever face my therapist again? And what do I tell him, anyway?
“Sorry, some psychic creeps used your energy-sucking propensity as a means of getting to me and then mind-controlled you into sending me to babysit a vampire. So I can’t be seeing you anymore, alright? So glad we reached an understanding. Been a pleasure. Toodeloo!”
I see how something along these lines could put an abrupt ending to our meetings. I also see how it should prompt him to strongly recommend involuntary commitment. Good luck mentally pushing the nice young men with their clean white coats into letting me go. Ha ha.
And it’s not like I’m all stable and dandy and can go without treatment right now. Or bring myself to confide in another therapist. I get sick to my stomach at the very thought of telling my entire life story anew just so some well meaning ignoramus could peel away healing scar tissue to see where it hurts. Sisyphic doesn’t even begin to cover it. Not unless you layer the slope with loose lego pieces. And throw in a pair of ankle cuffs while you’re at it.
The cats are taking turns bumping into my legs as I pace from the living room to the kitchen and back. The little beasts are confused at their food bowls’ refusal to fill up in spite of the biped’s apparent wakefulness.
When the meowling finally outvolumes my thoughts I give in to the pressure. Who cares if they get used to ridiculously early feeding times. It’s not like I haven’t been waking up at the buttcrack of dawn recently anyway.
They tuck their muzzles unceremoniously into each other’s bowl, lifting their butts at me in what I want to interpret as some peculiar display of feline gratitude. If tails were signal flags, though, I’m pretty sure the fuzzy dicks would be signaling something between “it’s about time, bitch” and “now fuck of.”
I’m ready to resume my brood-pacing when I notice a small white rectangle on the floor by the door. I’m pretty sure it wasn’t there back when the cats assumed the task of corralling me into the kitchen.
I pause and listen. It’s hard to tell with all the crunching and munching sounds from the kitchen- one would think a small pride of mountain lions has taken habitat in there- but the hallway outside seems quiet.
I tiptoe towards the door, deminer-style, one careful step at a time. As I approach, I make a point of giving the envelope as wide a berth as the apartment’s size permits. The poor piece of stationary could as well be an open bear trap, ready to snap shut the second I so much as tap it with my toe.
When I finally manage to take a peek through the peephole, the hall looks just as empty as it sounds.
Then again, It would make little sense for the little shit to just stand there, waiting for me to pick the damn thing up. He can sense my response from the comfort of his own apartment just as clearly.
Joke’s on him, then. I’ll be damned if I give him the pleasure.
Now I only need to bring myself to dispose of the abominable thing. I tell myself it’s only the reluctance to touch it that prevents me from throwing it away. Nothing to do with curiosity. Or fear. Or hunger for communion.
Shit, It’s like Colridge’s fucking albatros. And I didn’t even shoot it to deserve its burden around my neck.
Fuck you, Devin. Why did you have to tell me the triple-buggered truth about my shrink? Just to unburden your slimy ballless excuse of a conscience? Why don’t you take a dump on my living room carpet, since you’re so keen on thoughtless unburdenings and reckless sabotage.
No wonder you joined some batshit lonely virgin cult. I bet not a whole lot of folks appreciate your charming tendency to stomp all over people’s lives with all the grace of a rabid hippopotamus. Even the sad looneys in the Brotherhood probably don’t think you’re all that and a bag of chips. They only suffer you out of guilt, because they know you can read every bit of contempt they harbor towards you. Well, read this, bitch.
Great, now I have to make up even more lies to feed myself with the leftover pizza. That I do not regret any of the telepathic abuse I just sent his way. That he deserves every last bit of it. That sympathy should be reserved for people who don’t go around kicking crutches from under the mentally infirm. And my all time favorite- the one about how I can totally handle this on my own.
The air behind the curtain tingles with some kind of an alien out-of-body itch. Like a phantom limb whose live counterpart is secretly kept over ice in a remote lab.
I can’t recall ever being prone to emotional eating. Desperate times, however, call for desperate face-stuffing. Id est, doing my damnedest to fill up every cubic nanometer of my head with cold pizza.
Well, what do you know. There’s always room for another slice of existential anxiety. Between the window and the envelope, I regret not buying these horse blinders Aliexpress keeps offering me every time I order another sports bra and a dozen washi tape rolls. I also wish there was a formula to determine how far the enemy of my enemy maxim can be stretched before it snaps and hits you in the face like an overstressed rubber band.
With my stomach full, I can also tell myself it could be worse. This one is not a lie: I’ve only lost the healthy half of my emotional support mechanism. Imagine if he came after what really matters- pushed me into signing up for some kind of AA meetings. Now that’s some brutal shit for you. In the nightmare arena, “no beer” annihilates “no shrink” every time. Clean knockout.
On the other hand, people try to take away your booze all the time. Nothing says “I give a shit” like badgering your kith and kin about their drinking habits. Sometimes the whole world turns into one big prohibitionist propaganda platform.
Psychotherapy, on the other hand, is wholesome. Everyone loves self-analysis, self-betterment, even an occasional dose of self-pity, so long as a professional is involved. Having that taken away from you is like getting a slap on the wrist for doing your homework. What kind of monster does that?
One less dangerous than the one across the street.
Bored with the trivial mundanity of digestion, my innards turn to a new and exciting career path as an incubator for the grandmother of all stomach aches. Fucking cold pizza.
I exchange the rhythmic comfort of mastication for the partial anesthesia induced by mindless channel flipping. It’s all morning shows and news briefings. I try to avoid the latter, mostly out of habit. A good practice when every unexplained fatality may well be another smear of blood on one’s already closely painted poppy-red palms. A necessary one when said person is teetering on the edge of guilt-ridden psychosis.
Today, however, it’s the former that actually get to me. Channel after channel, a generic blonde used-to-be is praising the merits of mindfulness and emotional spring cleaning. Energy draining individuals got to go. Beware of toxic people, here’s how to send them on their merry way without contracting their negativity. And of course, always seek professional help.
Have the assholes in the Brotherhood actually gone as far as brainraping Lara Spencer and Hoda Kotb just to fuck with me a bit further? I’m appalled at just how non-ridiculous the thought has become.
Hoda (or one of the other two dozen or so typecast replicas from farther down the assembly line) is currently beaming at a motivational speaking guru type in rimless Steve Jobs glasses and a smug mandarin collar peasant shirt. The lower third identifies the man as one “Malcolm Ruthenberg, PhD, Department of Social and Behavioural Sciences, Virginia Commonwealth University.” I identify him as a douchebag.
The PhDouche keeps fiddling with a classic micro-dick Rolex protruding conspicuously from under one rolled up organic flax linen sleeve. I’ve never thought anyone could fidget with an accessory in a manner that makes them look more confident, rather than less so. I guess it’s hard to appear bashful while showing off a five digit Rolex. I’m willing to bet my last pair of matching socks that the thing is inscribed with words of insipid flattery form an obsequious body of secretly spiteful faculty peers or openly adulating students.
If Prototype-Hoda was an Irish setter she’d be passionately licking her nether parts and urinating excessively at the prospect of such proximity to the guru’s grandeur. Being the humble homo-sapiens that she is, she merely leers at the be-Rolexed specimen with glazed-over eyes and infatuatedly echoes his platitudes with bovine zeal.
“Think about it from this perspective,” Ruthenberg lets go of the 18K gold links to free both palms for the white male’s oldest bluff gesture of open relatability. “We all want to protect our physical body from toxins. Don’t we?”
“We all do, Malcolm. Of course we do,” the one-woman choir chants back. “Of course we do.”
The guru nods approvingly. I half expect him to throw her a treat and scratch her behind the ears while she gobbles it down.
“We read our nutrition labels and watch our carbs, right? We buy organic. We stay away from GMOs.” The audience cheers. I hold my head with both hands so it doesn’t bang itself to shreds against the coffee table. “We all love our clean green juices, like the one our lovely Lauren showed us how to make today, right?”
The camera pans out to reveal the studio’s kitchen area, where an emaciated hominid with a pre-melanoma tan grins at the audience from behind a glimmering steel-topped counter.
“So why do we let all this emotional toxicity into our lives?” He produces the most predictable rabbit corpse to ever be pulled out of a topheat.
The host is obediently ecstatic. I have a strong urge to feed her some real non-GMO produce, unengineered for edibility. Just to make her puke out Ruthenberg’s organic kool-aid right back into his shit-eating arrogant mug.
“Now, I know cutting ties with people is not easy. Especially when some of these people are our friends or relatives. There is a lot of shame involved. We let people down. We break fundamental social norms. We’ve always been taught to be nice, to be polite. After all, there is a reason why we form ties in the first place, right? Society depends on these ties, and we depend on society. Bottom line is, we benefit from bonding with others. So why hang on to relationships that not only fail to benefit us, but do the complete opposite? Relationships that use up our vital energy, giving us nothing in return? Relationships that pipe us with poison? Don’t we owe it to ourselves to cut such people loose?”
The audience explodes. The camera zooms in on a young woman in the front row, clutching a tiny crucifix pendant on a thread-thin silver chain over the front of a hideously sensible orange cardigan. She raises a shaking hand to brush off a speck of moisture from the corner of one big hazel doe eye.
Ruthenberg’s own shrewd weasel gaze comes back into focus, unnervingly dwarfed by the thick lenses, distorted into a pair of distant septic needle marks.
“Yes,” he hisses into the camera. “I know. I have been there- standing at the exact spot where you stand right now. Stranded. Lost. Unhappy. I know how hard it is to let go.”
He lowers his eyelids in fake humility, letting his voice drift away. As if choked by a painful memory. A courageous survivor with a dark past, the ultimate hero, he stands in front of his audience as the paragon of perseverance. He is their savior, standing barefoot at the gates of Heaven, reaching out to the meek with a stigmata-scarred hand.
I turn off the TV. Not a minute too soon, either. A second longer, and I’d be throwing furniture at the screen.
I hate Devin so much I could strangle the bitch with my bare hands. I may or may not be trying to do so telekinetically as I get up from the couch and go back to wearing grooves into the stretch of floor between the kitchen and the living room.
I want him out of my life. Him, his fucking Brotherhood of Creeps and everything para- and super- and un-bloody-heimlich. What wouldn’t I give to get this whole shitfest over with. What wouldn’t I do...
What would I?
I eye the envelope with the rare variety of loathing I normally reserve for aggressive panhandlers and door-to-door solicitors. I bet the prick next door is holding his goddamned breath. I no longer dare wish for such things, but the part of me that used to finds the thought of him not breathing more compelling than I’d like to admit.
I squat down rather than lean. Not because I’ve learnt much from my last attempt at weight lifting, or, God forbid, worry about back pains in my old age. Squatting simply feels more dignified than bending over. This way he can’t stare at my ass through the wall or something.
The paper feels rough- the unrefined, overpriced type. Eco-arrogant and holier-than-recycled. He even used a round little sticker seal. No monogram, thank Zeus. There is only this much second-hand embarrassment I can handle.
The envelope is practically judging me for not using a proper letter opener. I judge it back for being a pompous schmuck, just like its owner. It seems to be about to say something about sad lonely fruitloops exchanging abuse with inanimate objects, so I pull out the letter and throw the crumpled smartass on the floor. Not looking so superior now, are we?
“If you’re reading this, you must have reconsidered and decided to give me a second chance,” reads the first line. “It means a lot to me.”
Even his handwriting is pompously rounded. Like the signature on some little rat-faced consumption-ridden viscount’s love letter to his first cousin.
I flip the bird at our shared wall. It’s a fucking pterodactyl.
“You’ve got no idea how grateful I am for your cooperation…”
Sure, I’m hella cooperative once you hold a motherfucking gun to my motherfucking head.
“Nor how sorry I am for any distress or inconvenience I have caused you. I assure you you will be recompensed for any damages resulting from The Brotherhood's interference in your life, personal or otherwise. It lacks neither the resources nor the inclination to do so.
Before I proceed any further, I’d like to clarify that Dr. Zamanhoff did not, nor ever would, break any ethical code or breach patient confidentiality. At no point in our dealings with him was he made to disclose any privileged information. All psychic readings performed on him were superficial at best and concerned only the topmost layer of his personal thoughts, dealing with technicalities such as appointment times and some broader theoretical aspects of his trade.
None of the suggestions projected at him were, in any way, shape or form, at conflict with the Hippocratic oath. Any and all advice given as a result of such suggestions was given in good faith.
Accordingly, when he offered your name to the Coopers, he did so having in mind the best interest of everyone involved. He did not expose you as a patient, but rather presented you as an acquaintance of his. A childhood friend’s niece, if I recall correctly.
I rake my mind for the smallest trace of relief, probing every fiber of my conscious being. Not a goddamn molecule. Finecomb as I may, I only come up with bucketful after bucketful of the same fetid equal-parts concoction of revolution, distrust and humiliation.
It’s like the time at fourteen when I dropped my favorite album and tried to revive the shattered CD with superglue. Youthenesia remained mega-fucking-dead. It took me over a decade to finally muster the grit to throw it away, but it could never be played again. Even when I bought another copy to replace it, it wasn’t quite the same. Like I could hear phantom cracks in Mustaine’s voice.
But this is all beside the point. Regret as I may any harm done to you by either my own actions or The Brotherhood’s- which trust me, I do, and profoundly so
“Not as much as I regret having ever met you, you little piece of shit,” I whisper-yell at the wall.
The paper wrinkles slightly under my tightened grip, the letters shaking with poorly bottled anger. It takes about a dozen Tibettan asana breaths to get the text back in line. My diaphragm nearly collapses under the weight of so much forced zen.
- the crux of the matter is this: we have a common enemy whose deadly potential can only be rivaled by her malicious intent, and to defeat her we entirely depend on each other’s cooperation.
No pressure, though. And then, out of nowhere, like a motherjumping possession of his own:
So do yourself a favor and stop whining. Let’s get rid of the freaking monster first, and then we can go back to a long, miserable life of petty grievances. If we survive, that is.
Appreciatively,
Devin C. Laurel
“You goddamned cumlicking son of a gutter whore…” I blurt out in homicidal half-awe. The little fuck turns out even ballsier than I thought. Bitchin’ blazing uber-nuts ballsy.
I feel like someone has clicked a switch in my brain, cracking up the heat all the way to ‘sub-Saharan and counting.’
The hell with dejected and disenchanted. I’m all the way back to livid, steadily running murder-wards. A fire-spitting fucking cannon if ever I was one. And boy am I ready to charge. Just point me at the right motherfucker, supernatural or otherwise.
Conscious breathing is no longer an option. I do squeeze my eyes shut and count to ten, though. Or, rather, try to count up to ten. A knock on the door interrupts me at six.
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