(A/N): So this is my first story for this category. I hope you enjoy it, and please leave me a review telling me what you thought.
HEAD SHRINKING
It was like any other day in Los Santos. The sun was shining, the sky was a brilliant blue, and the screams of innocent bystanders blew through the air like a hot wind. It was music to Trevor Philips' ears.
He and Michael were driving (well, speeding) along in downtown Vinewood, cheesy, mass-produced pop blasting out of the radio. The psychopath saw his friend bobbing along and so he promptly turned it off, a grimace tattooed on his thin, chapped lips.
"How can you listen to that shit?" He probed bitterly.
Michael shrugged. "It's catchy,"
"Catchy?" Trevor parroted, "Just like the warts on my dick? It's fucking fake trash, just like everything else in this city."
"Hey, it's just a song. Chill out." The older man laughed.
It was an awkward laugh, Trevor noted. He didn't believe it for one second.
"No."
"No?"
"No, I don't think it's 'just a song', I think it's you crying out for help, Michael."
Michael looked at Trevor skeptically, and with a hint of anger igniting in his eyes he gripped the steering wheel tight until his knuckles began to turn ivory.
"And how'd you figure that out, huh?" He asked.
"You're changing. This place is making you change. Before, you were just an fat, lazy, good-for-nothing, oafish-"
"All right, pal-"
"Unloyal, cenile, slippery, angry-"
"I get it, T-"
"Lying, deceiving, backstabbing piece-of-horse-shit-"
"Will you shut the FUCK up, Trevor!?" Michael yelled. "Geez, you're more whiney than my fuckin' wife. Seriously. Chill the fuck out."
Trevor lowered his tone, calmer, but still too nagging for Michael's liking. "All I'm saying is that you need to wake up and smell the shit-coated roses, sugar tits, 'cause what you're living in is the opposite of reality."
"Oh, well thank you for your proffesional psycho-analysis, Trevor, really. It's honestly made me reconsider my fucking lifestyle." The older man said sarcastically, dangerously swerving past a man on a bicycle. "I think I'll go join a fucking monastery."
Trevor rolled his eyes. "Well I'm certainly doing a better job than your fucking shrink, pal." He grunted. "In fact, I think you should consider paying me for sessions instead of him."
"You really believe you'd make a good psychiatrist?" Snorted Michael.
"Yeah," the psychopath confirmed, "I do."
"Okay then." Michael spun the car around and started making his way to Friedlander's office.
Trevor was confused. "Where are we going?"
"To visit my shrink. You can see how good he is. Plus, it'll give me an excuse to finally stuff you full of muscle relaxants so you'll calm down."
"Calm down?" He repeated, "When it comes to chaos I'm not as bad as you, pal!"
Michael scoffed. "All right, let's see. Have I ever kidnapped a 60 year old house wife?"
"That beautiful woman, who I did not kidnap, I saved her from that monster, is 57, and... no you haven't."
"Have I ever ate another human being?"
"Well, no-"
"Have I ever started up my own fucking meth company, dropped kids off at cannibalistic cults, tortured someone, burnt down houses, or murdered hookers?"
"All right, all right, I get your fucking point. But I know for a fact this quack won't change me like you." Trevor predicted.
"Just try it. One session, and if you don't come out a Mormon I'll buy you a beer."
"Deal."
An impatient knocking from behind the door made the psychiatrist jump in his seat. He got up quickly and opened it wide.
"Michael, oh... you brought a friend..." He said in slight surprise, as he watched his grey-haired patient walk through, followed by a balding, brutish-looking bull of a man wearing a sceptical frown. His odor, the foulest stench Friedlander had ever smelt in his life, bitch-slapped him right in the face as he passed him. It made his eyes water.
The two men sat down on the leather couch, Michael leaning forward in his seat like he usually did, and the stranger with his grimy boots on the coffee table and his tattooed arms folded tightly across his chest. He held an arrogant air about him, which the doctor despised. Friedlander sat opposite them in his armchair.
"So, Michael, what can I help you with today?" He asked as politely as he could muster. The new fellow scared him. His eyes were too bright and too big. His coy smile was sickly and deranged.
"I'm fine, doc. It's this raving lunatic here you'll be having the unfortunate pleasure of listening to for the next hour, not me." He stood briskly and made his way to the door, turning back towards his friend, who was grinning. "Please try not to murder him, Trevor, okay? He's the only shrink I have. I'll pick you up in an hour; I've got to meet Amanda."
"I can't promise anything!" The other man shouted after him as he left. He turned to stare directly at the psychiatrist, eyes twinkling with madness, and Friedlander swore at that moment he felt his heart drop out of his ass. "You gonna fix me up good, doctor? Been a long time since I've been in therapy."
Friedlander wasn't surprised but decided to act intrigued. "You've been in therapy before?" He asked.
Trevor nodded profusely. "Oh sure! I've been examined by head shrinkers all my life."
Friedlander leaned forward in his chair. "And why do you think that is?" Inquired he.
"Well," the psychopath began snidley, his eyes narrowing in scepticism, "Michael told me you were a good psychiatrist, so why don't you figure that out yourself."
The doctor was stunned, but didn't appear it. "Speaking of Michael, he hasn't told me a lot about you... Why don't you fill me in?"
Trevor eyed the man suspiciously before nodding. "Okay. I'm Michael's best friend, even though he's kind of a dick. I'm a businessman-"
"Oh, that's interesting. What business? Retail?"
"You fucking serious? Trevor Phillips Industries; meth, my good man. The drug that men use."
"Me-Meth?" Friedlander repeated dumbly.
"Correct-a-mundo, doc." He smiled that shark-like grin of his and briskly jumped up from his seat in a flash. "I mean, look at me! I'm in the greatest shape of my life." He punched- no, stabbed the air viciously like it was an enemy or, perhaps in his case, an innocent bystander. Friedlander felt himself flinch.
"Okay, I've heard enough. Tell me about your childhood." Said the doctor as he mentally planned to make an emergency exit. He didn't know why he asked that question; it was the worst question of all. This guy (yes, his mother told him to never judge a book by its cover) looked like the poster child of childhood trauma. The words just rolled off of his tongue in a flurry of panic.
The strange man, staring at him with his too bright and too big eyes, burning holes through his skin, clenched his fists. "Fuck you."
"W-What-"
"Fuck you," he growled again with a deep voice like thunder, "I don't like this topic. Change!"
Friedlander felt his slippery tongue start to throttle about in his cotton-dry mouth again like a rabbit caught in the talons of a hawk. "Now don't be like that, Trevor. I've noted that you're having trouble expressing yourself. Maybe because you come from Canada, am I right?"
What the fuck, Isiah?
If looks could kill, doctor Friedlander would be drowning in his own blood right about now.
Trevor, the psychopath, the maniac, the lunatic, was seething with rage. The therapist pinpointed a large, throbbing vein in the corner of his forehead. Those big, bright eyes were now filled with insane fire.
He got up slowly, oh-so slowly, and strode towards the older trembling man, who was about ready to soil himself.
"I think it's time for me to play psychiatrist now, pube head." He said devilishly, grinning at his prey like a demon.
Michael threw his car into park as he stopped in Friedlander's driveway and got out. Never again would he agree to play tennis with Amanda straight after she had just finished taking her self-defense classes. She got a good few precision shots straight to his groin, and, man, did his balls hurt.
He made his way up to the doctors office and noticed that it was quiet.
Too quiet.
Preparing himself for the worst, Michael slowly opened the door and his aching testicles shrivelled up like raisins at the sight he was greeted with.
Trevor was in the doctor's shirt, which was all ready stained with something, dried blood he guessed, and trousers. He had also bound and gagged an underwear-clad Friedlander and was about to give him what looked like a homemade lobotomy.
"Stop squirming, or I'll miss and get you in the Thalamus,"
"T?" Michael said quietly.
The younger man looked up at the intruder and smiled innocently. "Oh hey, Mikey. You want a pick-me-up too? It's all the rage these days. No? Okay, but you're missing out on all the fun!" He went back to the doctor and was just about to hammer the pencil in through the corner of his eye with a book on abnormal psychology, when Michael stopped him. Friedlander screamed through his gag, which was one of Trevor's socks.
"Trevor! Fuck, stop!" The older man shouted, nearly at hysterics.
"What!?" He shouted back, hurling the book at his friend.
Michael dodged the book and dragged the psychopath away from his shrink, who smelt like urine.
"Did you fucking piss yourself?" He asked him, disgusted.
"Uh, no that was me," Trevor said casually. "Okay. that was a good session. Same time next week?" He smiled and waved and walked out.
Michael shook his head and followed. Friedlander fainted.
"Ah, I never liked that guy, anyway." Said Michael.