This is an idea I have been pondering for sometime and I just finally decided I had to write it before it drove me mad. So, this is another story that with have a history base to it and have psychological analysis to the best of my abilities. If something is wrong or a stretch and you know this because you work in the field or study it, please tell me. I am mostly using my own experience here.


Prologue: And So It Begins

Well… Today is my first day working here, but I suppose first I should explain where and what here is.

Where consists of the United Nations in Geneva. What consists of my job as a psychological therapist. Apparently, a rather large group of people who work here need a therapist on hand twenty-four seven, for whatever reason. As of yet, I do not know the patients or the reason for needing a therapist always present; I will be briefed on the specifics of my job in a few hours. All I know thus far is what I have divined on my own. The future patients must be a good deal important because I had to go through rather grueling and incessant questioning by the FBI and various equivalents to from other countries—some of which I needed a translator to understand and be able to answer the questions. I am fairly certain that these agencies now know more about my life than I do.

Anyway, I arrive several hours early today in order to get my office put together. In all honesty, the space is somewhat small, not that I am complaining. I am just not sure if all of my stuff will fit once it is out of boxes. All of my CDs, books, pictures, and other useful items I often put up and display will indeed be hard-pressed to fit.

One might ask why all of the things I have mentioned I find to need in my office. It is my thought that they are indispensible tools to my practice. These objects serve a dual purpose in actuality. The first is to put patients at ease; I have found that allowing them to see my interests and to ask questions about things that catch their eye tends to make them less tense, less guarded, which allows me to more easily talk with them. The second reason is just as important as the first. Often patients will comment on a particular CD, book, or picture I have in my office. This is a very simple way to get to know them. The preferences typically help me to establish several things about them from the start, but at the least they help to establish a basis for frame of mind and personality. To gauge their own interests is like peering through a window into who they are.

Glancing at the antique grandfather clock against the wall near the door, I note that I have almost three hours to get my office as I want it to be before the person who had hired me over the phone will be filling me in on the exact job description. He will also be telling me for whom the counseling is and should be giving me a file on all of them containing basic facts.

With a small smile, I realize I must get to work if I wish to have my office in tip-top shape. First impressions are most important, after all. Therefore, I set to work immediately, starting with my plethora of books, many of them antique, all but a few leather-bound. Within an hour of climbing up and down an old-style English bookcase ladder, I have all of my books properly on the built in, floor to ceiling, wall-to-wall bookshelves.

My next objective is my CD collection, which is quickly sorted by genre and then alphabetical order. This music collection of mine ranges from Mozart to the Beatles to the Black-Eyed Peas and nearly everything in-between, excluding heavy metal, screamo, rap, and extreme forms of country.

Allowing myself, after nearly two hours, to stand, straighten out my back and to stretch, I glance around the room that is slowly falling into place.

Facing the door, the wall of bookshelves is to the right. The wall opposite the door has several wall-mounted shelves and a TV. In front of this wall, there is a leather sofa and matching arm chairs on either side of the sofa, a coffee table centered in the middle. Still facing the door, to the left sits my desk, I find it an uncommon advantage with meetings that I am the first to see them rather than the other way around as it gives me a brief moment to analyze. In front of my desk are two wingback armchairs, large enough in the back to make it nigh impossible that someone at the door might see who is sitting in them. Behind the desk are more wall-mounted shelves.

I use my remaining hour to hang artwork and photography as well as place different busts, models, and other such items on the various shelves. Everything on one shelf has to be somehow related to one another and all of the various works of art have to be as straight as I can get them.

I am just about to turn my attention to my desk when there is a knock on my door. I straighten my skirt, blouse, and glasses then walk over to the door and touch the handle.

Following the intake and release of one calm, steady breath, I ready myself, open the door, and so it begins.


Hope you enjoyed. The chapters after this will get longer, but this is the prologue.

~Kanae~