Episode 4: The Influencer

The room seemed to be getting smaller by the second. My heart raced while I felt my face getting flushed. Certain things are meant to be kept secret. There are things that you want to bury in the deepest crevices of your mind, so you do all that you can to contrive new experiences and create greater moments in an effort to forget. Then when you do, the devil comes with the shovel of questions ready to dig up your old skeletons. And that’s where I am right now, face to face with the dark lord himself. Who would have thought the devil would have taken the form of a middle aged, balding man, with thick-framed glasses. “Claire, it needs to be discussed,” he said.

 I sat upright on the stereotypical psychologist’s couch which, to my surprise, was comfortable. After repositioning to face him, I couldn’t divert my attention away from the pimple on his nose.

“Charles, when a part of you dies, you don’t only lose a part of yourself, you lose the concept of reality,” I said.

 The expressionless demeanor on his face got under my skin. How can a person who appears to lack emotion be a master at triggering the emotions of others?

Charles began writing. I can see that he wrote down three words. He glanced up from his notepad and his brown eyes metaphorically rummaged through my mind. Oddly enough, as much as he was trying to read me, I believe I read him first. I could’ve sworn that I heard his question through his eyes, before it even came out of his mouth. “Where do you think it, all went wrong?” He asked. The surprise wasn’t that I knew he was going to ask me that, it was how heart wrenching that question turned out to be. As much as I like to be analytical, I never thought about it. But when I did, it unraveled sadness inside, a feeling which I thought I learned to negate. I turned away again before answering him, ashamed, after processing what I became. He’s going to pry it out of me anyway. Might as well just tell him now.

After a pause, I finally responded. “It was the moment she took her very first breath.”

Again, the scribbling in his note pad increased. Everything became quiet, except for the sound of him writing away.

“How does it feel to fail as a mother?”

 I felt a shock of anger jolt through my body and the lines on my forehead deepened as I stared at him. “Excuse me.”

He looked up from his notebook. “I didn’t say anything.”

 I wasn’t in the mood for mind games. “You said I failed as a mother.”

He calmly placed his pen down. “I can assure you, that I didn’t say anything. But is that how you feel?”

I checked the clock on his wall. Great, twenty more minutes to go. Ignoring his question, I lay back on the couch. Both of us sat there in silence. The sound on the clock seemed to be magnified. TICK. TICK. TICK. Isn’t it his job to get me to talk? Why is he just sitting there? The silence made me feel uncomfortable. My fidgeting only assuaged the tension momentarily until I couldn’t take it anymore. “What’s your game here? You think if we just sit here in silence, I will eventually start to pour my heart out to you?

Charles slowly removed the frames from his face. “I need those to see. Without these, all you are is just a blur.” I wasn’t sure how to respond to that, so I just sat still. He continued. “It’s hard talking to someone who you can’t get a clear picture of. It takes a lot of trust. I have to trust that you won’t get up and leave me here to talk to myself. Or, I have to trust that you won’t smash me over the head with something.”

 I waved my hand slowly in front of his face, but he just continued to talk without flinching.

“How do you know that I won’t use your thoughts and feelings against you? You don’t, so, I figure I level the playing field for you. Now, we’re both in a vulnerable position.”

 In a weird way, I understood what he was trying to do. And it seemed to be working. “Tell me about Jessica,” he said.

 Her name sent a shiver down my spine. “What did you mean when you said everything went wrong when she first took a breath? Are you implying that it was a mistake for your daughter to be born?”

 I was thankful that he couldn’t see the grimace on my face. His blind interrogation strategy did help me feel less judged and more at ease; however, I was still cautious as to safeguarding the whole truth and not letting my guard down. I finally replied. “It wasn’t her fault, it was mines. I was the one who brought her into this world.”

 Charles remained unmoved with his glasses off. It had almost been five minutes, and he just listened to me without writing anything down. “You don’t have to keep your glasses off,” I said.

He quietly placed the glasses back on. “When one sense is taken away from you, another is magnified. I couldn’t see physically, but I saw enough to know that you’re still scared.”

 He was right. His analysis made me question. What were those three words he wrote down from earlier?  My eyes wandered to his notepad and suddenly, we heard a knock on his office door. “Excuse me,” he said.

That was my only chance to sneak a peek at his book.

 I saw his receptionist through the halfway cracked door, trying to explain something to him. I quickly leaned over and saw the words he wrote from earlier. It read: She’s not alone. When I heard their conversation concluding, I quickly sat back down. What did he mean by she’s not alone? Then, what I saw next horrified me. Charles handed me a teddy bear. “My receptionist said that there was this strange gentleman in the lobby insisting that you have this. Did you tell anyone that you were here?”

It was Jessica’s, the same one she tried to suffocate me with when I was sleeping. I screamed in anguish as my anxiety consumed me. That was the last thing that I remembered before waking up face to face with what probably actually was the devil himself.

End of Part 1.