The Music Of Lies - #3

The psychologist's office does not seem to belong to the kind of man who would allow a underage citizen to make an appointment. All the furniture is made of smooth, polished oak, the beige walls bearing regal looking paintings of landscapes and Greek goddesses. A water fountain stands proudly next to a coffee machine to my left, on one of many small tables that decorate the edges of the room, most covered in trinkets and small statues. A few metres in front of me across the Indian-style carpet is a desk stacked with neatly organised paperwork.

I've been waiting for what feels like hours, though to be fair I did arrive slightly early. But it's almost twelve o'clock and the doctor still hasn't-

Click. Creak. The door opens behind me and turn on the brown leather sofa to see who entered the room. A man with a navy blue suit and blue and grey tie walks calmly into what I'm assuming is his study, sitting down behind the desk and begins to file through some notes.

Moments turn into minutes and I begin to get impatient. I realise I'm tense as a bowstring, my muscles pulled taught, sitting very straight with my sweating hands on my knees. Eventually my
short temper breaks and I give a significant cough.

He looks up.

'Yes?' He says, as if I've done the strangest thing by interrupting his work.

'I'm h-here for my appointment.' I say, my voice sounding strange to my ears.

He nods, looks around as f waiting for something to happen. Then, when nothing does, he goes back to his notes. Frustration begins to condense a the back of my mind.

'I'm Amy Briscoe.' I say impatiently. And before I can continue the psychiatrist's head snaps up, a glint of realisation in his eyes. Before he can talk I speak again, a wave of words now pushing to get out of me into the room, asking for answers.

'Why did you let me make an appointment? I'm sixteen, a parent or guardian should have done that for me.'

I only tried for one because I was desperate for escape, desperate to get rid of the thing inside my head. I didn't care if it was madness or real, I wanted it gone. And that's what I'm doing, even if sending to an asylum is the only way.

'What's so special about me to you? Did you read my-'

'Yes Miss Briscoe, I did read your letter. I let you make an appointment because your condition... Interested me.'

The wave as broken and crashed on my parted lips. I'm completely lost for words. I stare at him like a dying fish, until eventually I manage to stammer something out.

'That's illegal.'

'It is.'

Silence.

'I could report you for this, it's kidnapping, it's-'

'But murder is also illegal, and I have a feeling that when you're found dead and stuffed into a freezer with all the evidence pointing to your parents you would have wished you hadn't reported me - if you were alive that is.'

This shuts me up completely.

'I know what's inside you. I'm not going to diagnose you with schizophrenia because that is not what you have. I'm not going to prescribe you drugs because that would make your kind weaker and more vulnerable to it. And I'm not going to send you to a rehabilitation centre because It might kill everyone in there, or worse, multiply into their bodies.'

From all the things he just said, all my questions he just answered and all the more he's created, the only thought that appears solitarily in my head is that I don't like the way he said the word 'it'.

'You've given it your own name.' He says, looking me in the eye as if he's trying to see past it into my mind 'In your letter you called it the Darkness. Well I call it the Typhon Effect. My colleagues call it madness. But whatever it is, whatever name it has, I've dealt with it before and you're going to have to trust me.'

My brain has gone numb, my lips feeling a if they've been welded shut and my body is stiff as a board.

'I can help you.' He says it with such a sincere voice I almost believe him. 'But this won't be easy Amy.'

Finally I speak.

'I... I know.' I pause and swallow 'What are you going to do?'

He looks at me for a moment, sizing me up.

'I'm going to vivisect your mind, and I'm going to need your help.'

I'm sorry this took so long to appear and I'm twice as sorry if it's disappointing. If you're following Amy's story however, she will be back for part 4 in December 2012.