Authors Note
Nutroblaster: Sorry for the wait between chapters. Everything's been really hectic lately
Nico: Like what?
Nutroblaster: Like things you wouldn't understand! Ok.
Nico: Ok, Ok no need to gt all angry.
Nutroblaster: YES there is a reason. I have standardised tests coming up and I don't know what to do!
Nico: Just be calm an
Nutroblaster: Clam! Calm! I AM VERY CALM! YOU WOUDEN'T UNDERSTAND BECAUSE YOU GREW UP IN THE 1930'S!
Nico: I'll just do the discamer and then you can calm down k.
Disclamer: We do not own Percy Jackson and the Olympians series
Chapter 6
I endure a torturous therapy session and learn to speak English (again!).
She dragged me down the hall into a room with a sofa and desk. I recognized this place. His is where the psychologist questioned me. That's all I remembered.
Then the Fury asked me, "Do you remember this place?" as if she'd been trying to read my mind, but couldn't.
I let out a small screech then said, "Αρ.Πού βρίσκομαι; Γιατί πρέπει να το θυμόμαστε αυτό το χώρο;" ("No, where am I and why should I remember it?") I turned around to look at Tipsiphone, but in her place was a rather official looking physiatrists who looked a lot like a fury.
She stared down her crooked nose at me, and then looked at her clip board. "Nico di Angelo I presume?"
"Ναι, η λαίδη" (Yes… Ma 'me)
She nodded. "It's time to get started." Her voice was crooked just like her nose. It sent chills up my spine. She pulled me in and locked the door. We didn't take our eyes off each other.
She then sat down in the strait back chair and put on her glasses which had lain on the desk.
"So how has your experience been here so far?"
"Οκ, υποθέτω" (Uh… Ok, I guess)I lied. I didn't feel like talking to her especially if I couldn't speak in my native language. Normally I wouldn't care what language I was speaking in, but since she was creepy, I felt rather self-conscious. Furthermore, I felt like I was holding something very precious inside my mouth and if I spoke, it might fall out and I would never remember it!
"Have you met Mallery yet?" she asked.
"επιφ," (Yes)It seemed like a stupid question to me since they had us locked up in a box together.
"Do you like her?"
"επιφ," (Yes) Although she scared me, but I didn't mention it.
She got out a pencil and asked, "Do you go to school?"
I didn't answer.
"Can you read or write?"
I had gone to boarding school since I was six years old (That's 4 years and I was in 5th grade), to learn to do just this, but I could not read. My teacher thought I was either really dumb or really lazy (or both. Lazy people tend to be dumb and dumb people tend to be lazy.) I was sure that I was neither lazy nor dumb but there seemed to be no apparent reason for me not to be able to read (or at least read as well as the average 3rd grader). I read at a first grade level because when I saw letters, they looked like alphabet soup standing in a row (but in my defense, I have a rather large vocabulary and that's how I know I'm not dumb). I wondered if alphabet soup had anything to do with why I was here.
"Όχι, δεν μπορώ να" (No, I can't) , I said. I suppose I'll never learn to read now because when you don't have a home, you have no place to put all your books. You can't just carry bookshelves around with you and if you don't live in one city, you can't get a library card.
The lady snapped her fingers and asked, "What religion do you practice?"
I looked at her warily and opened my mouth, when I spoke; I spoke in English with my ordinary American accent.
"When I was a baby, I was baptized roman catholic," I said, but I didn't have much faith. I only practiced when Bianca told me to.
"Interesting," she said then wrote that down. She looked up at me intensely and asked, "Nico Di Angelo, tell me and tell me truly for I need to know, do you remember your parents?"
"The dead ones?" After I'd said this I realized it was a stupid question/answer because what other parents did I have?
She raised an eyebrow and wrote something down. It was probably something along the lines of "This Nico-kid is really clueless"
"Yes the… dead ones. Your deceased mother and father…. They're not alive are they? If they are, I should know about it," She said.
I wasn't sure what she meant by it.
"My dead mother died when I was one year old my father died when I was one and a half," I answered.
"Do you know anything about their lives?"
"Their lives?" I asked as if this was a foreign concept. I thought about death so much sometimes it was hard to remember that dead people even had lives too and that life is more important than death. After all, in life things happen and you can do things and become important but in death you just lay there until you turn into dust. Then you don't exist.
"Do you know about your mother's life?" she asked.
"Y-yes her name was Maria Di Angelo," I said. "She used to live in Italy, and then she moved to the USA. Then she met a guy, had two kids and died."
It occurred to me that everyone's life story ends with "…and died". It seems strange that anyone would ever want to read someone's life story.
You alertly know how it ends….
"Do you know anything about your father? Was he also from Italy?" asked the psychiatrist.
I felt like I'd been hit in the back of the head with a binder full of paper work. I raised an eyebrow, "My father? I don't even know his name! He either abandoned me and Bianca when we were babies or died and he's most surely dead now!-(He's really old)," I said.
The psychiatrist nodded like this was a good sign and she wrote something down.
"Do you by any chance feel then need to vomit?" she asked.
"Excuse me?!...uh….I mean no," I said. That was an awkward question, but I suppose it's a psychiatrist's job to ask awkward questions. "What kind of question is that?"
"Just conversation sweetie," she said and wrote more stuff down.
I looked at her funny. Then she asked me more awkward questions and then, it was time for me to leave –And by leave, I mean return to my cell-. Room 206, (Tipsiphone escorted me there by dragging me by the straight jacket) where rather green looking Mallory stood in the corner. Her bowl was empty and she had a small bit of vomit on her straitjacket. The food must have made her sick.
Tipsiphone locked us inside and left again. Mallery looked at me sympathetically and sighed.
"This is why I usually don't eat the food here," she said. I nodded quietly. "How was your 'therepy'?"
She looked pitiful, but her voice sounded full of life almost healthy.
I couldn't help noticing her eyes. They were the colour of her straight jacket, a faded grey colour as if they had once been a brighter, more beautiful, but that'd all been worn away leaving her eyes only a shadow of what they once were.
"How did you learn to speak so many languages?" I asked.
"You can speak English again!" she exclaimed. She seemed like she needed that bit of good news because in spite of everything her face brightened up a little. (:As much as your face can brighten up right after you've vomited on yourself.)
"Yes, but you didn't answer my question," I whined.
"I had an unusually unhealthy amount of free time," she said.
"Did you ever have electric shock therapy?" I asked.
Her smile dropped. "Once."
Then, she froze. Actually froze isn't the correct word. She got really quiet and stopped moving.
****AWKWARD SILENCE*****
"Listen," she told me. So I got quiet and sat really still (both of which do not come easily for me).
Outside the door we heard the furies speaking in their fury language. "Grunt, growl, grunt moan, moan, grunt, moan"
There's a lot of moaning and screaming in the asylum, but it doesn't sound like the fury-language. Their language is rhythmic and very distinct. Mad people are not. I felt like I should know what they were saying, but I didn't. I just knew that whatever it was it sounded important.
(A.N. Here's the English translation anyway!
Magera (the psychiatrist): I know we have to hide these kids, but must we also hide them from themselves? Are we to convince them that they don't exist? Are we to erase their memories? Is that even possible?
Tipsiphone: You are to convince them and not we for you are the psychiatrist- Not us! Why would you say "we"?... And the answer is yes you do have to erase the boy's memory but the girl is not so important. She does not know what she has yet seen.
Magera: Is this really nessary ? It seems to me like a waste of time!
Tipsiphone: Yes very nessary. We have our orders from Lord Hades to keep them out of harms way. If it were up to me I'd put them in the river of Styx and they'd have their very existence washed away. They shouldn't have existed in the first place.
Magera: But they do exist. If it were up me I'd kill them and then they could be with their father, but alas he wasn't them alive.
Tipsiphone: Killing them would be a lot easier.)
(silence)
I couldn't understand what they were saying. Mallory was looking at where the voices were coming from. Then she looked at me.
"You heard that too right? It's not just my insanity?" she asked.
"Yeah, but we might just be hearing things"
She looked away. "Usually when two or more people here the same things, it tends to be real. Do you understand what they're saying?" she looked at me like I was supposed to.
"No."
Of course I didn't. I didn't think any human could...
