Psycho Therapy (2 page)

“I lost my job working for the city. I picked up garbage. I came in late too many times, and off with my head, right? So Willis offers me a job, and I really need the money. What happened, Willis’s brother also wanted a job. He gave it to Joey without telling me. I depended on that paycheck, and man, the tips would’ve been awesome. Willis offered me free drinks the night he told me about not getting the job, so I was drunk. I lost control, and, um,” he loosened his collar, “I threw a barstool at him. I broke his collarbone and nose.”

Craig jumped to defend himself, “Hey, it’s nothing I’m proud of. I felt horrible afterwards. I had no right to do that. I lost control. I’d been drinking too much. I was lucky my sentence was just time served, and of course, these counseling visits.”

The doctor scribbled notes actively. His tired features were animated. Craig wouldn’t call it a nervous tick, but it resembled one.

The doctor asked, “So what are you doing for work now?”

“Unemployed.” He wasn’t proud of it. Thirty-two years old, and no job, the next step in his life was undetermined, and a midlife crisis loomed on the horizon. “It sucks.”

Dr. Krone finally made eye contact. “I’d worry about getting your house in order before pursuing a job. Unemployment can foot the bill in the meantime. We need you clear of mind. I wish the government would truly focus on the people who need time. They should give you a few months to recuperate from your ordeal. Visit me daily, for one. It’ll take more than a few visits to cure you—anybody, Mr. Horsy. Nobody wants to spend the time anymore to be well. That’s American society. Instant gratification, throw some pills at me, maybe shock therapy, and boom, you’re good again.”

He wasn’t sure what the soapbox spiel was about. A mantra of the field, he supposed. He’d already touched upon a lot of old memories and fresh wounds in a matter of fifteen minutes. Dr. Krone wasn’t doing a bad job so far, he admitted.

He’d shortly change his mind.

“Let’s go back to your prior record.”

“Prior record? What other minor offenses have been recorded in the history of Craig Horsy?”

The doctor simply stated the name, “Alice Denny.”

The name ripped the smile from his face. The room closed in on him, then titled hard, so hard, he thought his head injury was flaring up again. The caught feeling burned in him and wouldn’t subside. How did he know about her? There was no official police report involving her. What happened between them was private.

The response shot out of him as a threat. “I don’t want to talk about her.”

The doctor weighed his reaction with calibrated eyes. “I can see your blood pressure rising. You’re a new shade of red. I’ve hit an important topic, haven’t I?”

“Watch it. I don’t want to talk about her. Your receptionist promised this would be easy today. What’s my favorite pig-out food, what’s my favorite color, that bullshit. How would you know about what happened between Alice and me? Nobody does.”

Cherry bombs and fire-extinguisher stories didn’t sound so ridiculous now, he thought.

Dr. Krone removed a handkerchief from his pocket and waved it like a flag. “I’m trying to flush out what brings out your anger. Be honest with me. I’ve done my research on you, Mr. Horsy, to assure positive results. I know who your friends and family are. So I’ve taken the liberty of doing some preliminary interviews. I’m hard at work for you. My patient’s success is top priority. You do have an anger problem. That’s why Willis was sent to the emergency room. I am correct, yes?”

“Yes,” Craig admitted. “I’m quick to anger. Isn’t it obvious? I’m a hothead. Impulsive. I overreact, yes. You’re right.”

“Then let’s hash out the issues, like you said. It can only help. Do it for Willis.”

What’s with this guy
, Craig thought. The doctor forewent the niceties and lunged straight for the throat. Craig couldn’t leave the session. This was court-ordered.
 
Mandatory. He’d have to deal with the unusual doctor, like it or not.

The doctor licked the tip of his Bic pen. “You have a lot of reasons to be angry, Craig. The issue is you need to learn how to manage yourself. If you can harm your best friend, what will you do to a stranger—or perish the thought, me?”

“I wouldn’t harm you.”

Dr. Krone grinned. The gesture accused Craig of lying.

“Are you rattling the cage and seeing what you can shake up?” Craig popped his knuckles unconsciously. “Rachael said this wouldn’t be so intense.”

“You’re a special case.”

“And what the hell does that mean?”

“You require immediate assistance. Everybody in your shoes does. You may not show the symptoms, but early prevention is the best thing to avoid the sickness.”

Craig couldn’t relax in the chair, his shoulder blades and lower back becoming rigid. In that moment, he wanted to beat that self-satisfied smile from the doctor’s face.
No. That’d validate my requiring immediate assistance. Maybe I am out of control. Maybe I do require ‘immediate assistance’.

“I don’t want to talk about Alice, not yet. Maybe some other time when I know you better, okay?” He checked his watch. The digital face had cracked and turned black. “Is this session over yet?”

“No.” The doctor slapped the file onto the ground, and one side of his face sneered hard. “None of this Q&A matters now.” He bent in closer, leveling with Craig. “My treatment is revolutionary. I won’t sling drugs at you or talk your head off. This is a mere preliminary to what we’re about to accomplish. You won’t have an anger problem when I’m through with you.” He rubbed the small patch of saliva from the corner of his mouth. “Do you have regrets, Mr. Horsy?”

“Who doesn’t?”

“Do you wish you could’ve done things differently? We make a lot of choices in our lives. I’m sure you’d like to relive some of those choices and change things—even if it’s just in your mind. And let me say, I’ve done it before.”

“Done what before? I’m confused.”

“Never mind.” The doctor placed his fingertips together. “What I’ve begun to say, we’ll address later. I think I’ll head straight into my next step of treatment.” He raised his head to meet Craig's eyes. “It’s the most effective.”

“Why not jump right into it if it’s the most effective?”

“My line of questioning serves to open up that brain of yours. It stirs memories to the surface. Good ones. The ones I can use.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” He didn’t expect the visit to be so out of the normal. He’d been on the verge of tears, thinking about Alice, and now he was genuinely concerned as to the effectiveness of Dr. Krone’s program. “Use my memories for what? Can you give me a little bit of information here? Layman’s terms.”

Dr. Krone’s eyes went small, and then they went soft again. “First, would you talk a little about your wife’s death?”

Craig was unable to curb his outburst. “I’m done! And fuck you! I want to see Dr. Herbert. You’re a crackpot. I’m here for twenty minutes, and you’re already asking me about Katie. Aren’t you supposed to build up to that? Yes, you are. This is ninth-inning shit, not first pitch.”

The doctor was pleased, speaking above a whisper. “This is how you’re supposed to react.”

“Oh, here’s more psychobabble talk. Do you have a self-help book for me to buy? Will it explain to me how to fuck my own brain? And let me guess, you’d like to watch?”

The doctor clapped his hands together once. “Oh, this is splendid.”

“I won’t go to jail.” Craig bolted from his chair and hovered at the door. “I’ll tell them about you. I’ll visit Dr. Herbert. According to my documents, I’m supposed to see him anyway. I’m sure it’ll hold up in court.”

“Absolutely, but you won’t be leaving anytime soon to do those things.”

Craig’s blood was stewing in his veins. “And why the hell not?”

“Go ahead and leave,” the doctor suggested, waving his handkerchief in dismissal. “I’m done with twenty questions. Do as you wish. I’ve got you worked up. You’re ready for the machine.”

Craig refused to play into the doctor’s game. He prayed every psychiatrist wasn’t this unprofessional, or else he was prison bound.

He stormed out of the door and slammed it closed, hearing from the other side a set of plaques collapse from the wall.

There goes Dr. Krone’s well-established career all over the floor.

Craig rushed to what he guessed was the exit, taking wide, fast steps, the escape being fifteen paces north of him. Rachael wasn’t in sight, though he didn’t bother to glance at the main desk to say goodbye.

Then a cold drop startled him. It stained his eyebrow. Blood. Touching it, he found the bandage was sodden through. Why hadn’t Dr. Krone said anything? Was it bloody during the interview?

This is one of those places that will inevitably be closed down. I’ll hear about it on one of those investigative news programs.

He decided he could better inspect the bandage in his car. Closing in on the exit, he reached out for the doorknob.

The knob was the only part of the door that was real.

Staggering back a step, he muttered, “You’re kidding me.”

He jangled the doorknob, and it ripped from the wall, plaster pieces crumbling to his feet. It’d been glued in place. The door frame was painted brown. A faded purple drape shielded a fake glass pane. How hadn’t he noticed it before? Obvious was too light of a word.

And then something sharp nipped him in the back. “Ahhh!”

Rachel’s soft smiling face turned maniacal. She wheezed from a cracked-open mouth that issued the tang of cinnamon hard candy.

She was laughing, enjoying his shock as he faltered to the floor. “This’ll be a simple visit.
A summer’s breeze, Mr. Horsy!
”

The room twirled. He was spinning slowly on a merry-go-round. His vision turned into ripples of water, and he reached out to touch the ripples, but he came up empty and feeling foolish. She shoved him down the rest of the way to the ground with a kick to the back of his knees. He landed face-first against the carpeted floor, the ground smelling of rubber and sterile cleaner. She straddled his back, and another cold prick to the neck later, he plunged under those ripples of water into unconsciousness.

Dr. Krone stepped into the waiting room and looked down at Craig’s body. “Another patient for the machine, and this one shows serious promise.”

Rachael knelt down and stroked Craig’s hair, stretching out the individual curls and letting them bounce back into their natural position.

Then she smiled up at the doctor. “He does show promise.”

The Machine

An ammonia tablet was broken under Craig’s nose, rudely waking him. The room buzzed with rusted gears grinding against each other, dueling with the chug of a roaring diesel motor. A white screen on the wall directly in front of him glowed bright with artificial white light. He imagined the gates of heaven opening, it was so blinding. The remainder of the room was cast in pitch-darkness.

Ca-clink.
It sounded like metal catching metal.

He attempted to speak, but his lips were numb. Craig couldn’t shift his tongue. Trying harder to feel his body, he vaguely sensed his arms pressed against two wooden panels. Leather restraints strapped his extremities firmly into place. He couldn’t move.

A metal object touched down around the circumference of his head. It felt like a crown. The metal was ice cold against his skin. The ticking of the machine increased, and something swung down fast in front of his face. His skull was pricked by dozens of needles. He stiffened involuntarily. He twitched. His arms began to spasm. His back tightened, vertebra by vertebra. His head radiated warmth. His ears buzzed with mechanical locusts. A copper tang filled his mouth. His eyes leaked hot tears. He’d describe the overall feeling as being plugged in and hooked up to electricity.

The machine grinded faster, humming, churning, working. A mucous-laden startle escaped his throat after a pair of red binoculars was lowered in front of his eyes.

Wuuuuuuuuuum.
The machine revved itself.

The binoculars exuded golden light. Pain flooded into his eyes. The gates of heaven were opening once again.

A voice echoed in the room, emanating from the walls, rising up from the floor, and reverberating inside of him. “It’s going to get uncomfortable, Mr. Horsy.”

You’re too late if you were trying to warn me, you bastard.

“Calling me a bastard won’t solve anything,” Dr. Krone laughed. “I can hear your thoughts. They come out of that speaker in the corner. I’m hooked up into your mind.”

Jesus Christ.

“Yes, Jesus would be impressed.” He’d done this many times before, Craig could tell. “Now calm down. I need you to relax.”

The doctor peered into the magnifying lenses over his face and twiddled a circular knob. The change lowered the brightness of the light, but only by a slight degree. Everything was bathed in electric white, the concentration of dozens of computer screens. The headache worsened by the second. His brain was heating up.

“I should let you know that when you signed the court order, you consented to this treatment. It’s a brand new therapy. I’ll have you a changed man in less than four hours, I promise you.”