Trip to the Shrink

                                      Trip to the Shrink 

      “Way I see it, there’s two types of people in the world; the fuckers and the fucked.  Sounds a bit dark, I know, but you gotta remember it’s all a matter of perspective.  Take you for example; you sit in that comfy chair, pretend to listen to people bitch for an hour, then sign off on some wonderful drug that makes everything okay till the next visit where you prescribe another happy pill.  Rinse and repeat and all the while they’re hemorrhaging money into your already packed wallet.  You, sir, are a fucker.  And in that respect I guess you could say we are alike…”
      The shrink looked at me with a trained patience that was blissfully false.  Knowing just the right things to say to get someone's dick in a knot had always come easy to me and this mockery of a doctor’s self-admiration (borderline self-lusting) was advertising itself like an eighteen-year-old stripper jonesing for some powder.  Nothing Pill Vendors hate more than being compared to one of their patients.
        His speech backed my interpretation.  “If you think we are similar then you have greatly underestimated the level of your illness.  Shall I elaborate on some of your past confrontations that have forced you into my office?”  A sleazy defensive tactic, being sure to remind himself of his nonexistent superiority over me.  Can’t say I blame him though, we all have our highs.  And I’m dead in the middle of mine.
        “Now that is an excellent idea.  Nothing like a trip down memory lane.  Personally, I think the story of me and that pregnant chick is a classic, but you decide.  Your office after all.”  I couldn’t help but laugh at the disgusted expression he roused while thumbing through the many pages of my signed testimonies.
        He made a useless attempt to make eye contact with me, going so far as to peer over the top of his designer reading glasses like an angered grammar-school teacher, then gave me an all too familiar but still fantastically enjoyable lecture. 
        “Alice Lylla," he read off the report, even though it was clear he had memorized the story.  "She was three months pregnant at the time you two met.  Parents where Jehovah’s Witnesses. When they uncovered her situation they sent her out of the house without so much as a change of undergarments.”
      “Ah yes, her filthy panties had the most alluring flower printed on the most obscene of places.  It’s no wonder they kicked the tramp out into a world where people like me roam about.” 
      The shrink paused for a moment and I laughed again at how cute his little tricks were.  Make a silence then be the one to break it.  Oh yeah buddy, you just got me by my big ol’ balls, don’tcha.
      “Had she not retrieved her keys and purse in a brief struggle with her mother, Alice would truly have had nothing.”  I watched the mock-doc forge a look of faux sympathy.  Might be able to fool the fucked, but not a fucker.  He continued to tell the story as though he were auditioning for the narrator of some after-school special.  “The girl had been a victim of ridicule at her high school.  She had a terrible stutter and was inept at befriending any of her students.  This pressure brought the poor teenager to offer her body in return for even the briefest feeling of acceptance, no matter how false it may have been.
      “She never discovered the identity of the father, there were too many partners at the time of conception for her to make any sort of educated guess.  And the unfortunate child barely had enough money to eat, let alone have a DNA test administered. 
        “Alice was forced to live out of her car.  Because her father had been a senator she had never needed to work.  She had no income for four weeks, just lived off of fifteen dollars she had left over from a shopping trip the day of her disowning.  Penny candy and fountain water were her nourishment.  It seemed she had found salvation when a young man of twenty-five approached her in a convenience store.  He asked her to diner and, after learning about her situation offered her a place to stay.  She claims trusting this man, Mr. Fredrick Kilt, was the biggest mistake of her life.”
      This telling of the story seemed almost too absurd.  I had to interrupt the arrogant narration, even if it meant displaying more of myself than I felt comfortable. 
      “What the fuck was this girl, a goddamn saint?!”  My voice quivered with rage as I spoke.  “The whore approached me with her shirt unbuttoned down to her little outtie bellybutton, bragging about her little breasts flying free.  ‘Ta-ta-take me with yo-yo-yo-you and I’m-m-m-m yours-s-s-s.’” 
        I gave a shortened version of her stuttered proposition.  Shortened because if I spent as much time as she had molesting the pronunciation we’d go over the fifteen minutes of our session.
        “No, she was a young and confused girl who happened to cross a monster.” 
        His all-mighty voice sent my lip into curl.  “Not so young she couldn’t get knocked-up.  Not so confused she couldn’t figure out which end, or ends I guess I should say, went in where.”
        “And so this degenerate took her into his apartment.  The first few months seemed normal.  He went to work, put food on the table, and in return she gave herself to him daily, though always of her own volition.  And he was kind to her, told her she was special.”
        “I wasn’t lying you know.  She was special.  She had been a fucker.  She had screwed over her father’s political career on the cusp of his announcement to run for president.  Had spread a rather nasty case of herpes to nearly half her graduating class.  And, what really makes her so goddamn special, she fucked up her own life in the process.  A fucker who fucked themselves.  Know what that made her…  Nothing.  And no one can be nothing.  Like I said, you gotta be one or the other.  I had to put back the natural order.  And since she had already messed up her first chance, I thought that maybe her life would go better if she was one of the fucked.”
      Against my own will my breathing had increased.  I could feel my mind going numb, my groin becoming warm.  I had to focus, had to stay in command.  I looked coldly at the man sitting across from me, at his disquieted expression.  He might know.  He was a fucker in some respect, and you can’t hide from one of your own kin.  Slowly the numbing faded, the warm feeling became only a faint tingle.  And my purpose returned.  The why.  Why did I come here?  The answer was all to clear.  To bring order.  I sent my emotions deep within myself.  The time would come soon when I would let them all free.  When I would bask in the incredible sensation of turning the world right.  I apologized calmly to my doctor, and asked that he continue, being careful not to sound as excited as I felt.
          His irritating voice filed the air again with my conquest, competing only with the soft hum of the mock-doc’s idling air conditioner.  “In fact it appeared she had fallen in love.  He gave her flowers, bought her new clothes.  Even purchased several necessities for the arriving child.  It was not until she asked the man to be a father to the boy that things went awry.” 
          The doctor gave me a look I didn’t find all too pleasant.  It was understanding.  The piece of shit knew something.  I don’t know how or what but he knew.  All the more reason to stay calm.  Had to wait for the right moment, that’s all.  Then I could make the world right.  Then I could fix this injustice smirking at me under the careful guise of a psychiatrist.  “Why might this be?" he asked.  "What about helping parent this child turned this young man so wrong?  I see here it was the beginning to your horrendous lifestyle.”
            Easy there, Freddie-boy.  Just make up any reason.  He wants you to be an asshole so give him one.  “I didn’t want the tramp dumping her offspring on me.  Not once in the entire time she stayed with me did she offer to clean or go grocery shopping or get a job even.  Lazy little whore.  She would have shit the kid into my life and ran the fuck off as fast as her little whore legs could carry her.  So I took care of what needed taking care of.”  I watched him love-to-hate my partially false excuse.  He would probe no further.
          “From here on out the allegations are rather brutal.  You struck the woman several times, breaking her nose and two ribs and causing severe internal bleeding in her intestines.  You loaded her damaged body into the trunk of your car and left it running for roughly two hours, filling her lungs with noxious smoke.  Once you were sure she was unconscious you sold the girl to a prostitution ring where she stayed for two years before being sent to an undercover client.  Shortly after you were detained.  I think it unnecessary to announce the baby was lost.”
            “Would have been a bastard anyway.”  I smiled as I realized the clever little joke I had inadvertently made.  The shrink just frowned.  “Get it, ‘cause the baby would have had no idea who its daddy was?  Ah fuck man; you got shit for a sense of humor.”
            My heart dropped as I suddenly realized the doctor’s expression was not the same mock-patience he had been parading since the first time I had started speaking.  This new look was one of revelation.  A flash of intuition that was so close to knowledge the shrink must surely have sent his mind surging through ideas and theories so that he could discharge my hidden truth from his bearded mouth the way a rapist reveals the most terrible fears of their victim.
            A wave of razors stormed through my mind.  I had to act.  This false fucker, this fucker by trade was gonna out-do me.  Me!  The greatest fucker of them all.  But before I could move, before I could reach my hands around his head and jam my uncut fingernails deep inside his eye sockets, swirling the jelly of his eyeballs while he screamed and clawed and bleed and felt my thumbs plunder the spongy-membrane of his mind, before I could do what I came to do, he spoke and his words froze me in place.
            “Were you a bastard child, Fredrick?” 
          Oh how kindly he said this to me, how paternally.  Like his words were soft nurturing hands that coiled around all my sorrows, my insecurities.  Like his voice was a hot flush of air that carried away my pains as easily as though they were smoke, leaving my worries as unsubstantial as gravity on an escalating balloon.  “It’s okay, you can tell me.  I’m here to help you.”
            Inside my mind I warred with my body.  I slashed and cut and stabbed and raped and pleaded.  But only in my head, where all my actions were illusionary.  On the outside I wept.  Tears that felt terribly warm and sticky, like they were made of a hot molasses.  I felt my nose running hot mucous over my naked lip where I tasted their bitterness.  My mouth moved, my tongue rolled and against all my desires I spoke.
            “Left me.  Left me and my mom out on the fuckin’ street without a dime.  I was no more his son than she was his wife.  He didn’t give two shits where we ended up, so long as it wasn’t his life.  So long as we didn’t blow his career.”  I felt my eyes burning red, bloodshot from my distress.
            This wasn’t the way this meeting was supposed to go.  I should have been in control.  I should have been making him cry like a hungry infant.  I could only sit and listen as my voice continued to reveal my hidden pains.  “My mom was very beautiful.  She found a man who said he would take care of us.  Put food in our stomachs and clothes on our backs.  We went to his home, a gorgeous suite overlooking all over Chicago.  The man said he had recently lost a son and so had tons of toys for me to play with.  He wasn’t lying.  He showed me a room filled with joys.  Toy cars, action figures, board games.”  My face fell into my hands.    I had no idea if he could understand me through my hysterical wails, but as I looked through a slit in my hands I saw what I had been waiting to see.
            Comprehension.  His face twisted into a beautiful display of terror.  From his forehead sweat fell in thick droplets.  His horror brought my mind back under control.  I was in command again.  My tears still streamed, but not in the rush they had so recently descended.  I allowed the speech to continue, meeting his eyes with a perverse hunger.
            “And that night, after he had taken my mother to his bedroom, he entered my room.  I watched as he closed the door, locking it behind him.  He held a finger to his mouth, telling me to be silent.  In the innocence of my youth obeyed.  And there, amidst piles of games and toys, the man molested me.  Never taking his eyes off my face, staring at me with the same icy blues I am looking into now.”
              The child molester jumped to his feet, running furiously towards the door.  He was much too slow, too old.  I pulled the back of his collar with such strength he fell back four feet.
              “For two years you abused me, you fucker.  You told me if I told my mother you would kill her.  I never said a word.  But you killed her anyway you fuck!  Dropped her into a river after you disemboweled her entire body.  No one would know she was gone, no one knew she existed at all.  Except your little boy-toy that is.  Your little fuck buddy!”
          I watched as the monster tried to claw away from me, shaking like an epileptic.  To my right a pewter lamp sat on an end table.  I lifted the heavy light, pulling its cord free of the wall and dimming the room.  With twenty years of hate pounding through my body I brought the heavy object onto the man’s leg.  His bone snapped easily.  One of the light’s legs was buried deep inside the man’s thigh.  His khaki slacks shimmered red as they absorbed blood pulsating from his deep wound.
          The shrink screamed for help, but knew there was no one to hear him.  I had carefully scheduled this appointment for a time when his secretary would be out for lunch.  He yelled again and the glorious sound of his vocal-cords tearing filled me with pleasure. 
        “Impossible,” he shouted at me with a voice that seemed to come from nowhere, as though it were delivered from some ethereal body.  “I killed you!  I tied you up and threw you into the river with your mother!”  He spoke as though this argument would erase his injuries and cause me to just disappear. 
        I laughed at him.  Laughed gleefully as I watched him grip his mutilated leg. 
      “Should have tied a bit tighter.” 
      I lifted the object over my head, felt blood trickle onto my face from where I had struck him.  I licked at the blood and smiled as the iron flavor filled my mouth.
        I dropped the lamp again, hitting him at the base of his spine.  I could feel his vertebrae slip out of place.  His legs stopped moving.
        The pedophile rolled onto his back, gripping his latest injury.  Screams still filled the air, but they were broken now, skipped like a damaged record.  I brought the light down for one last assault, landing squarely in his groin with every ounce of energy I could muster.  It tore threw his pants and revealed a bloody pulp where his manhood had once rested.
        I watched the child molester plead for his life.  He spoke words but I heard none of them.  In my mind the numbness had returned.  I was a spectator of my own actions.  I felt the burn of my muscles as I grabbed the man’s arm.  Felt sinew and muscle crawl between my teeth as I bit into the monster’s bicep.  Watched as the chunk of my flesh was spat onto his mutilated crotch.
        The only feeling that seemed truly my own was the warm blood filling my own groin as I climbed onto the man’s chest and brought my thumbs into his eyes.  I shoved them so deep into his brain my hand felt sore.  The muscles of his eyelid’s gripped my thumbs like a child’s hand.
        The expensive oriental carpet had become a shadow of red as it filled with the man’s blood.  I watched him squirm in his last few horrible moments of living.  Smiling as he tore at the air both viciously and desperately.
          “Remember how I said we were alike in some respects, how we are both fuckers?”  He answered me in moans that were completely unintelligible.  “I knew you would.  Well I never said how we’re different.  You see I don’t fuck children, you do.”  I brought my heel into his mandible, shattering the bone fragments back into his skull.  His body lay still.  I felt my tongue licking the last residue of blood from my lips.  The monster’s blood.
        I spent a moment examining my clothes.  With the exception of a few drops of red around my pant legs I was looking as clean as when I had entered.  I pulled the man’s wallet out of his pocket, two hundred fifty-five dollars.  I dropped the folded bills into my pocket, threw the wallet on the pedophile’s corpse, and exited the building.
          “Two hundred fifty-five bucks.”  I laughed again.  I was still aroused from the confrontation and knew exactly how to spend the money.  “Oughta be enough to get me laid.”