Title - After the Apocalypse - Part 2

Author - Kourion

Summary: "But I can't cry. Because I'm in a shrinks office - and the shrink just happens to think I'm homosexual. To cry would just...confirm that suspicion, now wouldn't it?" Franky centric/ noncon warning.

A/N: Please note: this story is written in a very, very atypical format. Experimental, you could call it. It may not be your cup of tea for that reason, or - more likely, due to violence and noncon situations detailed within. Proceed with caution.


"One need not be a chamber to be haunted." -Emily Dickinson


f r a n k y ' s P O V


Life in Bristol was supposed to be this whole...new start.

New start. New me.

New effort, Franky, said the dads. I had to make an effort. Things like this don't just go fixing themselves.

Unfortunately... part of the deal was that if I didn't talk to my dads, I had to talk to "someone." I almost told them to fuck off, too. Right then and there. To just fuck off, and to let all that shit dwindle down and die; that fire, inside. Except I don't think it ever goes out. That fire.

It continually burns.

And not even my adventures of wooden man! series is helping me focus these days.


Besides, I know better. Or I should know better.

But shoulds and feelings don't ever go hand-in-hand. You can't always help how you feel.

Even if I should know that it's not safe for me. I don't develop...these sort of feelings. Not for anyone. Especially not for a guy. Because I'm not an idiot: I know what that means. With guys. And it's not like I have feelings for girls, or something, either. Cause I don't. I'm not supposed to have feelings for anyone. So I don't.

Not even for myself.

No feelings.

nofeelings.

It's safer that way.


"They were having sex."

It's not a question. It's never a question when Madeline talks to me about, well, anything.

It should be. I mean, I'm the patient. And she's a shrink, not a mind reader.

Or so she says.

She does seem to do a fantastically grand job at mind reading, though.


My doctors name is Madeline Cahill.

Apparently, my dads think I should be talking to a woman doctor (and that the problem before was they kept giving me men doctors. Because, gosh darnit!, I'd be totally fixed by now if they had given me a lady doctor instead!)

Suuure.

As if... every fucking thing in my life was not already screwed to hell long before that night...

"Franky?"

I don't mind Madeline.

Not really. Not as far as shrinks goes. I mean, she doesn't insist on the whole Francesca Alice...thing. Not usually. Not in most of our interactions. Because she knows I don't feel like that anymore. Not like that girl. (Not like a girl, you mean?)

{like a victim. nomore. no more said therapist. the rapist}

Of course, that's what we are supposed to (quote unquote) "work on." My issues with...being a girl. If I feel as if I am a girl. Or if I just wish I DIDN'T feel like I was a girl. Or if I'm just trying to hide the fact that I am a girl.

I can taste blood.

"Hands at your sides, please, Franky."

I hear Madeline sigh, and suddenly realize that one of my fingers has found its way into my mouth, again. And that before I could help myself, my teeth were attacking my pinky.

My pinky finger feels warm and inflamed.

I self-injure, says the doctor.

Even the picking and the tugging and the gnawing on my hands counts.

Of course, I think that's bollocks.

It's just a nervous habit. And who wouldn't be nervous, given everything that happened?

"M'sorry," I add, resignedly - waving away my hand, and blotting the blood against my black woolen trousers. Men's trousers, rolled up 8 inches to adjust to my 5 ft 1 frame.

"Alright. Do you want some water?"

My chest hurts. If you were to shot-put me with a metallic weight - right into my core - it would feel like this.

I know it would.


I take the water proffered in the little dixie cup greedily. When I've drained the small container, I fiddle with the paper curled edge of the floral print paper, and slowly start to peel the paper apart. If you do it just so, you can take the flowers right off and leave a white, pure shell of a cup in its place.

"Did you want to talk about Mini instead, today?"

No.

No.

I really don't.

I force myself to swallow.

"Why do you ask questions that you already know the answers to, Madeline? I'm not...I...don't like Mini, as...as in..."

"Sexually?"

I should have worn my blazer. My blazer and my flannel red top. It's freezing in this office. And I'm stuck in a navy blue tank top, and then nothing on my forearms. Just bangles and a denim vest that leaves my arms bare. Goosebumps race up my arms in the next second, and I find myself rubbing my limbs, frantically. I force myself to stop the motion.

I feel so exposed.

"No."

I should have worn my blazer.

"Okay. I'll buy that. I do. But the boy. Matty? That sounds like a crush, you know it does. And yet, you want to argue that it's...not? Is that right?"

Why do I always have to be so cold?

"I wasn't...jealous, of her...Liv. No, it's not...no..."

"No?"

Madeline is just doing her i'm-a-patient-and-consoling-soothing shrink routine. I'll ramble and ramble and she'll come up with some garbage about repression or denial; I stare at my brothel creeper shoes. I count the black lace cords winding through into the white material. Back and forth, under and over, here and there and now and then, and gone. And gone.

Gone.

What does it mean to be real?

What does it mean to be gone?

And if you can make something seem like it never happened...well, then...did it?

When I glance at the clock next, I'm dismayed to see that barely a quarter of my session has passed.


"I'm not gay."

"I never said you were..."

"Mini, though - you say, like every fucking session...you say...you imply..."

"What do I imply, Franky?"

"That I - that I'm... I...I don't know. I don't really know! Or maybe I just don't want to know, because it's sick and-"

"Wait a second. This doesn't sound like you, and I think you know it; your dads are gay. Do you really want to state... that your position on homosexuality is that it's...a perversion?"

I suddenly want to cry.

Like really badly.

Like I'm back in Oxford, in that bloody fucking bathtub.

And this is so not right. It's not...accurate. It's so unfair.

Unfair.

But I can't cry. Because I'm in a shrinks office - and the shrink just happens to think I'm homosexual. To cry would just...confirm that suspicion, now wouldn't it?"

Crying would be like this admission of guilt.

guilty. guilty. guilty. youcouldhavebit and foughtmore

why didn't i fight more?

"Okay, Franky..."

But it's NOT okay.

"I'm not. I'm not! I don't...I don't care about...when others... If they are like that. But I'm not. I've never *been* like that. I'm not lying!"

It comes out in a rush, and I choke a little on the ending. My assertion is far from impressive.

"I don't...like girls like that, Madeline. I never have."

My eyes feel wet, but stupid little baby-me tried to show..."growth", and risk taking, and stretching out of "comfort zones" and stuff...

I was an idiot to choose a bloody girls tank top instead of my typical apparel. Never again. With long sleeves I could have...been covered.

Been safe.

"Ok. It's okay. You maintain you don't feel like that about girls, and I believe you..."

"I don't... about...anyone, though. Not...not like you mean. I never have and I never will. I just never will, alright?"

Oh yes. Oh yes indeed - my shoes are amazingly fascinating. Three freaking cheers to Franky Alice Fitzgerald for getting the fuckingest and most awesome shoes in existence!

With these shoes, I look like a little ventriloquist doll...

"'Not...about anyone'. Can you tell me how that works?"

I really don't know why my dads have to pay $200 a week for this woman to just paraphrase whatever I say. I mean, how is that therapy? How does that count as therapeutic?

"Why...why do all of your questions have to do with that?"

"With sex, you mean?"

I find myself moodily nodding at the fish -tank. Nodding at the small school of neon pink tetras.

I find myself blinking back traitorous tears, because oh, sure, little girl...you are just soooo normal with this subject, aren't you?

"Franky...you've got to understand. This fear, to this degree. These are not...normal responses for someone who is completely...healthy with the subject. Given your history, it's more than underst-"

I run my hands through my hair to get rid of the sweat. How can I be so cold and still be sweating at the same time?

not Normal. not Normal. abNormal. abnormal.

Freak. you'resuchanuglydyke.

"But it's NOT something that...I want to talk about. I don't...want to really discuss it, you know. I mean, I don't think it's the problem here anyway...I wasn't jealous of Liv. With Matty. Like that. I didn't...I don't want that. Not ever. And I can't...I know if they knew, my dads, they'd just think...it's because of Oxford and the party and everything... But it's not."

I feel trapped. I told them. I told both my dads that I don't need to be fixed.

"Yet you stayed. You didn't leave immediately. You stayed and watched two people doing something rather intimate."

"I didn't...mean to...see. I just...needed to use the bathroom, and it was upstairs. And then when I did see, it's like...I couldn't...not...watch. Not cause I wanted to see it; I...when I saw them, and what they were doing...," remembertobreathe, "...I couldn't make myself move. Leave. I didn't...like seeing him like that. But not because he was with her; it's more...because he was doing it at all."

don'tcry.

don't cry.

"And you...felt rooted to the spot, but not out of...curiosity? Were you frozen?"

I pull my feet up to my chin. I need to feel something against my chest. I need to feel something blocking all this crushing air.

There's too much air in here, and I still can't breathe.

"You look like...you want to say something, Franky."

don'tsayit. don't tell her. don't.

"Holding back won't get us anywhere. You know that."

I feel something sour coil in my gut. Fear and anger and rage and something so confusing, and big - so massively big - I don't even want to start trying to identify it at all. I don't want to know what the feeling is. I just want it to go away.

So I stare at the fish-tank, instead of Dr. Madeline Cahill.

"How about if you tell me that one scary thought, Franky...the one thought that worries you most right now, and then we'll move onto something else for today... Deal?"

let'smakeadeal?

I'm five YEARS old and eating corn flakes at the children's home. Watching Monty on LETS MAKE A DEAL!

"I felt...almost like...cold and frozen and just...there. And I liked him. And in my head I thought...he was safe, cause he didn't seem like the other guys, but he is, and then...with Liv, I couldn't help think that..."

shutup

"I couldn't breathe. Not then, and not at Alo's party when...I saw them. And it just...felt like...his hands, on me. As I watched. That's what it felt like. Like - his hands on my throat, and around my arms and everywhere, and that just...that doesn't make any sense. How can that make sense?"

shutupnow

My throat feels like its closing up. Just like it did on that night - during Alo's party, on the staircase, in the dark - watching. And all I could do was clutch at my throat, and try to get rid of the sensation of hands and fingers and force. Force and pain and the confusion. Liking Matty. Hating sex. Hating how heavy they were and how I couldn't get up and how they didn't stop even when I screamed.

And then my voice was gone. Like in a nightmare. And you try and try to scream, and you can't. You can't scream, or move, and when that happens, all you can do is stay very, very still and just go somewhere else in your mind because you certainly don't want to stay in your body, in the cold, and the dark, with...

And then Madeline is sitting a couple feet from me, and is holding my hand, and it just feels really surreal. That she could be so warm in such a cold office.

"That's me, and that's you...here, Francesca."

Jeff's obviously been talking to her.

"Now. Right now."

And the whole room feels like it's swimming. I feel as if I'm actually trapped in the goddamned aquarium with the fucking tetra fish.

Everything is really blurry.

I just wish I knew if it was due to the fact that I'm trying not to cry.

Or if I'm just losing my mind.


When I get home, I don't talk to my dads.

I just hightail it to my bedroom and push my work station table across the door to keep everyone else out, and then toss my fall coat over my mirror. So I don't have to look at my face.

Or look into my eyes.

Realize I don't know those eyes anymore. Or worse - realize that I DO, and I don't want to know myself anymore. Except that I don't know how to be anyone but myself. I don't know how to even feel moderately safe without my stupid androgynous little boy body that I made and love and hate... all at once. That I turned boyish because that was so much safer, in the long run.


Even with the ciggie lighter pressed against my chest, I hate myself.

I need it, but I hate it. I let the flame lap at my left breast until the skin starts to blister and I want to scream. But the pain from fire is manageable. And, besides, I don't like my breasts anyway.

When I'm done, I put some polysporn on the skin, and then wrap my chest with gauze, a sports bra, my wife-beater, and my flannel shirt.

I have to be careful.

My dads - after all - saw my arms, and all hell broke loose. Jeff cried, even! And I just felt so awful.

But I also knew then and there that it helped. It did.

The pain from fire sticks with me, and just drowns out everything else. Every other horrible black feeling that makes me feel weak and needy and vulnerable. Those feelings just vanish...

The pain helps. It does. It does when you can administer it yourself. Because you know exactly what is coming, and when, and where. And you know all the awful things you felt before are going to fall so far back that you won't be able to feel them at all, really.

So, sure, I promised my dads that I wouldn't hurt or burn my arms again. I didn't break my promise.

They should have been more specific...

Because they'll never see this part of me, anyway. And I know it sounds like just one more freak thing that I do, but honestly - right now, lying on my back, with the room lights turned off while listening to Stevie Nicks and actually NOT hyperventilating...well, I'm okay.

I hurt, sure.

But I always hurt.

And at least right now, I can breathe again.