Penitence & Therapy pt4
“Sometimes I feel so empty, you know?”
An rhetorical, existentialist question the doctor had heard uttered, asked, probed and pondered upon many times before. To say yes, or to agree in any way with the patients would have shattered their fragile illusions that they were the only ones that ever felt this way. That they were all alone in their suffering is what brought them to the doctor, what he liked about them, what kept them returning to him week in week out, and he was in no particular mind to change it all too quickly for them.
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Truth be told, the doctor enjoyed their pain. There was the schadenfreude about him that made him good as his job of eeking out every little perversity, every hateful moment and bitter memory, that dragged painful pasts kicking and screaming into the teary light. How his patients cried and wept and wailed and raged! And every moment of it fed him that little bit more.
“Can you explain this sensation to me in greater detail, Jeremy, my boy?”
Jeremy clutched at his chests, his fists balled tightly about a half forgotten sensation that eluded him and could not really be described with mere words, which of course was itself a part of the problem. His hands clawed reflexively, as if they could somehow grasp this ill defined sensation from the gaping wound that gushed forth from his heart.
How do I explain something you clearly don’t feel, you fat fuck!? The thoughts were sweet, but suddenly bitter inside his mind, as if he’d mentally taken a bite too far into a slice of juicy, pink watermelon only to overestimate the depth of his own bite and in turn take a huge chunk of the tough, absinthian rind all the way to the fibrous and dirt covered green outer skin. You’re meant to be doing this for me!
Jeremy’s eyes narrowed. The doctor scribbled. Jeremry breathed in. The doctor continued to scribble.
“It’s like.. Uhh, it’s like there’s this vice around my heart, and the more I see people the more alone I feel. I just want to reach out, and when I try to touch someone, it’s like I’m simply… not there.” He paused to concentrate, brow furrowing “No, that’s not it. It’s like they’re not there. Like they’re all hollow, like a vacuum or something, and if I got close to them, they’d just suck me right out of myself and there’d be nothing left of me.”
“You’re worried they’d steal what quintessentially makes you ‘Jeremy’?”
“Yes, but no, like… No.” Jeremry sighed in a frustrated manner, steepling his fingers above his crotch, unconsciously playing with the grit under his nails. The doctors rooms were cold. Frigid almost. Quite possibly the reason why the great rolling mass that was this mental medicine man didn’t perspire. Although that still didn’t seem quite right. Especially as Jeremy was perspiring. And it created more grit under his nails. More filth. And he kept on plucking at it, scraping at it, removing it from underneath his nails unconsciously before flipping it into the great mass of the doctor’s plush carpets. And should Jeremy’s fingers find, on the few odd occasions that there was nothing further beneath his nails to pluck out, then they would merely absently stroke at his fingers, slowly caressing his own pads like the fleeting lips of a lover might during foreplay, gently stroking them with his own nails from the opposing hand like they were softly tasting teeth nibbling delightfully upon each pad, one at a time.
Jeremy noticed he was sweating.
He was sweating and the doctor was not.
The doctor continue to look at him patiently waiting for Jeremy to clarify himself, no doubt his exquisite gold pen poised to take more notes that moment Jeremy moved. No, he thought, fuck you! I’m not going to make this easy on you.
Jeremy cross his arms over his chest and shifted his head into a slightly more comfortable position on the Chesterfield Chaise lounge, refinding that precise groove that had been worn in by the thousands of heads that had arrived to that precise point, or more likely created it, before his own reached it.
A long, awkward pause. An uncomfortable silence. A profound roar of hush far louder than an-
“Perhaps we should shift tacts, my dear boy” the doctor suggested. “I want you to tell me about your dream again. Perhaps we can piece together some detail that you have missed previously.”
“Yeah,” agreed Jeremy, his arms unfolding as the doctor finally began to help him as he was paid to do “let’s do that.”
There’s this guy, and he’s like, he just sits in a chair. Currently, there’s nothing wrong with him, wellll, not physically or anything. H’s just sitting there leaning over something. He’s in this kind of pool of light being made by one of those lamp shades that you always see in detective movies. Just those wide cones ones that somehow always find their way into a warehouse or something, and even though all the lights should be on a circuit and go on and off together, there’s just this one light. Totally on its own. It’s this one light that works, and the guy is always underneath it.
You know how in movies the guy is usually tied to the chair he’s sitting on, and there’s a couple of guys there who are about to kick eight kinds of shit out of him because they’re looking for drugs or something. I dunno.
This guy’s just sitting there though. He’s not tied up or anything. Just sitting there at a table.
Nothing special about him. Nothing specialabout the chair he’s sitting on. Nothing special about the table I guess. Nothing special at all except for this one light that’s just got him under it, and should have lit up the whole fucking room a little bit by reflecting off the polished concrete floor… except it doesn’t. It’s like that light is fighting back shadows that are trying to crawl in under the little lit up area underneath it.
He’s just sitting there at the table, which is just one of those crappy, plastic folding tables you get for about sixty bucks at a hardware store. He’s just sitting there and snipping at something.
Snip goes the shears boys. Snip snip snip.
Only they’re not shears, they’re nail clippers. He’s clipping back his nails. Only his clipping back more than just the bit that grows over the finger. He’s clipping waaay back. Clipping back the nail. Clipping back the finger. Just going to town on his fucking fingers.
I figure this dude just ain’t right. Can’t get right. He probably needs some help or some shit to stop doing this, so I walk up behind him and it’s like walking through one of those really strong winds. You know, the kind you have to lean into to get anywhere. So I try to run, and it’s like running underwater, or like I’m stuck in golden syrup or something.
People aren’t meant to get anywhere in a dream like that. It’s some sort of psychobabble bullshit about a neurosis about not getting anywhere in life, or not getting away from your problems, or just not fucking getting to where you’re meant to be. But it wasn’t like that, because I do manage to get to the guy. Just really slowly.
And every step I take, every time I get a little bit closer, he screams in pain, and a few more cuts open up on, but he’s still got his back to me and he’s still fucking clipping and I’m running harder and going slower and trying to get to him to make him stop.
When I get close enough to him to reach out and touch, he just smells fucking gross! Like bong water that’s been left to go and get mold, and piss, and day old spew. Like a butcher’s shop in summer when the power’s gone out and the meat’s all spoilt. It’s just rancid.
I say “Hey, put those down. You’re just hurting yourself!” and he’s all “Nah, man, it’s cool. I’ve gotta do this, or they just keep growing.”
You kind of get it’s a dream when shit like this happens, but another part of you just keeps going along with it. It’s like a really shitty movie that you can’t be fucked turning off because the alternative of dealing with your own mundane shitty life is just too much, so you keep on watching even though you can’t believe anything that’s going on. But anyway, I just don’t get it and I tell him so. “Why does it hurt?” he says “Why are you doing this?” and he’s still clipping his fingers to the bone! So I do the only thing I can think of to stop, and I tear his arm off. Like, right out of the socket. The kind of stupid shit you only see in a movie, only it doesn’t come right out like you kind of expect. It’s more of a slow, snapping, stretching kinda pull, like with taffy, and then there’s just blood pissing everywhere, and he’s still crying at me to stop.
I tell him I’m not the one doing this, I’m here trying to help him which totally does not make any fucking sense cause I just tore the bitch’s arm right off, and he’s screaming now “Stop, stop! Oh god, Stop!”
I look around, and god’s not there. Really stupid, right? Like Jesus is just going to be there, wink and give me the finger guns and pass me a beer. But it’s a dream… so you go with it and I tell him there’s no god here. Only now he’s screaming about the pain and he keeps it up and so I tell him that if he wants to know pain, I can give him a personal introduction, so I take that knife to his damn balls and I slice… And the fucked up part is that after that I eat them!
You might also like to read:
- Penitence & Therapy pt2
- Penitence & Therapy pt3
- Penitence & Therapy pt7
- Penitence & Therapy pt5
- Penitence & Therapy pt6
Tags: NaNoWriMo, Penitence & Therapy
