Chapter 18: Sixteen - Reliving

Reliving

The only thing keeping me from walking out on Darren and slamming the door behind me was the fact that I genuinely liked and respected him.

If it had been Larky that was psychoanalyzing me instead of Darren, I’d have been out the door before you could even say “mentally unstable”.

“No.” I shook my head firmly. “I am not talking about that.”

Darren looked pained. Either that, or he really needed to use the bathroom. “You have to, October.”

“No, I don’t.” I countered, crossing my arms over my chest defensively. “You promised that I wouldn’t have to discuss this until I was ready. I’m not ready.”

He sighed heavily, pinching the bridge of his nose in frustration.

That simple act cranked my level of annoyance up a notch. I should be the frustrated one. I wasn’t the one breaking promises and forcing him to talk about something that he clearly didn’t want to talk about. He was.

It turned out that I wasn’t the cause of his frustration.

“This really isn’t my call, October.” He confessed sadly, tapping the notepad in his hand. “Dr. Larkson gave me strict orders to get you to talk about this today.”

I considered this. As much as I would have liked to continue being mad at Darren so that I didn’t have to talk about the incident with my uncle and aunt, I couldn’t. His claim that Dr. Larkson was the one making him interrogate me about the incident actually seemed legitimate.

She’d been trying to get me to talk about it for months, but I’d always managed to avoid the topic. And now, here she was forcing Darren to make me talk about it. She’d probably threatened his job or something.

Damn. That woman was one sneaky devil.

I sighed heavily, contemplating whether or not to give into Larky’s wishes and talk to Darren about that nightmarish night. It was either that, or risk getting Darren into some serious trouble with his boss.

I may have loathed Dr. Larkson to the very core, but I actually liked Darren. So, I guess you can understand my unwillingness to deliberately do something that would get him into trouble. I didn’t have to take my extreme dislike of his boss out on him, did I?

“Fine.” I huffed resignedly. “What do you want to know?”

His eyes widened, surprised that I’d given in. I almost laughed.

October Grimmes: Surprising people with her unpredictable nature since 1994.

Excellent.

Clearing his throat, Darren replied, “Well, you can start by telling me what happened that night. Close your eyes and think back to that moment. Try and remember the details.”

I frowned. I knew those words well. Dr. Larkson had used those exact same words on me when she’d first tried to get me to talk about that night. The minute my mind had transported me back into that house, my eyes had flown open and I’d run out of Dr. Larkson’s office. I’d spent that night battling nightmares. Was I willing to go through that again?

A quick glance in Darren’s direction told me that I had no choice in the matter.

Besides, I guessed that maybe it was probably time I actually opened up about that particular memory. It wasn’t going to do me any good to keep all that pain bottled up.

“It was the 3rd of December. I was spending my Christmas holidays with my Uncle Charlie and his wife while my parents were away in Turkey on a business trip. The voices…” I paused, wanting to – wishing I could – rewind time and change my words. To omit the part of the story I was coming to. “… the voices had been pretty quiet for a few days, so I didn’t really expect them to try anything.”

“These voices,” Darren said, interrupting me. “are they usually very chatty?”

I looked up, startled by the strange tone in his voice, only to find that he’d suddenly become very distant. He wasn’t the same Darren that he’d been in our previous session. He was a detached Dr. Darren Michelson. We were no longer two people talking in a room for an hour. We were patient and therapist.

He was psychoanalyzing me.

I felt my, already present, frown deepen. “When they decide to drop in on me, yes. But it’s normal for them to leave me alone for a few days.”

“And what was it about that time that was unusual?”

“They’d been AWOL for two weeks.” I replied, glad that he couldn’t see the goosebumps on my skin thanks to the thick sweater.

We heard a soft roll of thunder in the distance as the rain continued to fall steadily, fat drops pelting against the glass windows.

“I see…” Darren mumbled softly to himself before waving a hand for me to continue.

I inhaled deeply.

‘Anyway, since the voices had never left me alone for so long before, I assumed that they’d finally gone – and I remember being pretty happy that day because of that assumption. That night, my Uncle hosted a little dinner that he’d invited a whole bunch of important clients to. He was planning on wooing them all through dinner and then closing a career-changing deal with them at the end of the night. When the guests had arrived, my aunt and uncle entertained them in the living room until dinner was done, and well, guess who decided to show up?”

“The voices?” Darren volunteered, glancing away from his notepad to give me a look filled with both sympathy and intrigue.

“Yup.” I nodded, ignoring the skepticism in his voice and smiling wryly.

“And what did they do?”

“Oh, nothing much.” I replied sarcastically. “They just started screaming in my head, demanding that I pick up a small knife from the kitchen and slice my wrists in front of my uncle’s guests.”

“But you didn’t.” He commented, flipping to the next page in his notebook. In which, I noticed, he was scribbling incessantly in.

“No.” I affirmed with a nod. “I told them to go to hell.”

It had been the first time I’d ever defied the voices. And for good reason. Four years later, I was still being penalized for my disobedience.

“Why?” Darren scribbled a few words into his notebook.

“Why what?”

“Why,” Darren put the notebook down on the little table beside his armchair. “was it that after years of complying with their every wishes, you suddenly decided to stand up and tell them no?”

His question hit me like a bus driving at a hundred and twenty-five miles an hour. Why had I finally grown a pair and told the voices where they could get off? What had made me do it?

I’d never even thought to question my motives.

After a long, thoughtful silence, I finally pulled my gaze from the carpet, where I’d been counting the number of elephants weaved into the design,

“Because they weren’t hurting me this time.” I answered throatily.

“I’m not sure I follow you, October.” Darren’s azure eyes narrowed in concern.

I sighed heavily. “Before, when the voices told me to do things for them, the only person who got hurt in the end was me. Sure my parents and friends used to worry, but no one besides myself had to face any serious consequences.”

“and that night…?”

“That night…” I swallowed. “That night was very important for my uncle. If I did what the voices asked me to do, he could have lost a lot of clients, and by default, a lot of money for his company. He could have gotten fired. And as terrified as I was of the voices, I couldn’t let them hurt my uncle and his wife.”

“So you disobeyed.”

“Yes,” I nodded. “I disobeyed. I thought that by doing so I would be protecting my uncle and aunt…”

I felt the words get trapped in my throat, and had to cough them out. “But I guess I was wrong.”

Sympathy weighed down Darren’s next words, like an anchor would stop a boat at sea. “You couldn’t have known what… the voices would do.”

I noticed his hesitation to refer to what he obviously thought were a crazy girl’s delusions as actual things, but didn’t say anything about it. It obviously took a lot for him to even call them that, and I was grateful that he wasn’t trying to tell me that they weren’t real.

Yet.

“Of course I knew what they were going to do!” I countered, feeling angry tears stinging my eyes. “They’d been tormenting me for years! I was an idiot for not seeing that coming.”

“They’d never killed before.”

“A person? No, they hadn’t.”

The sounds of Darren scribbling furiously away in his notepad stopped abruptly, and I glanced up to see him watching me curiously from across the room.

“You said, ‘a person’ that time.” He said, his eyes narrowing in concern once again. “What did you mean by that?”

I felt my cheeks heat up as I realized the mistake I’d made. How could I have let my guard slip like that? In front of a psychologist, no less?  What was wrong with me?

“Oh, nothing. I didn’t—”

“October.”

Something about the stern tone in Darren’s voice made my excuses dry on my lips and for the second time in the past hour, I gave in again and told him what he wanted to know.

“They killed Cori.”

“Cori?”

“My hamster. Cori.” I clarified, feeling like a little child that had been caught with her hand in the cookie jar. I had no idea why, though. It wasn’t as if I’d done anything wrong. Then why did I feel as if I had? “When I was in the 5th grade, the voices didn’t like one of my friends. They said that she was too… concerned about me… and they wanted me to make her go away. When I refused, they killed Cori, my hamster.”

“Was he old?” Darren inquired over his pen. “Cori, I mean. Was he old?”

I shook my head. “Nope. Just a few months. And he wasn’t sick either, so don’t bother asking."

I heard the click as Darren shut his mouth.

“He just died?”

“Yes.” I sighed the answer instead of saying it, feeling a little frustrated by all the questions. Didn’t Darren trust me? Of course he didn’t. I was in a nuthouse and he was my doctor. What did I expect?

Suddenly, I wasn’t feeling very hospitable.

“He just died, okay? One minute he was running around in his little hamster wheel while I did my homework at my desk, and the next, there was this sickening laugh and Cori was twitching at the bottom of his cage.” I leapt out of my seat in a fit of sudden anger. “Are you happy now? Can I leave?”

For a second, Darren only looked at me, his dark blue eyes boring into mine. Studying me.

“Yes.”

I blinked. “What?”

“Yes,” He replied, standing up to face me. “You can go now. You’ve endured enough pain for one day, and given me enough material to satisfy Dr. Larkson. You can go now.”

I was out the door before I was sure that he’d heard my whispers of thanks. As I leaned back against his office door, sighing, I hoped he hadn’t seen my tears either.