ATTN: ALL GRAD STUDENTS MAJORING IN PSYCH
Local psychiatrist Dr. Hannibal Lecter, MD
is conducting a one-semester lecture course
on the general makeup of the Sociopath.
Open to 10 students only.
Cost is 100$ for full semester.
Those interested call 791-0087 between 3-5PM before Friday the 12th.
A stiff north wind ruffled the girl's strawberry hair, stirring pale red- blonde curls like the feathers of a bleached cardinal. She was busy scribbling the number on her hand with the blunt tip of her fountain pen when a voice drifted from over her shoulder.
"Where are you gonna get a hundred bucks, red?" The voice teased good naturedly, her narrow face breaking into a smile as her companion turned to glare.
"I'll work a few extra shifts. It won't take me long." Cora replied, turning back to her project and scrawling the last three digits on her palm.
"Don't you think you've got enough going on, Cor? I mean, shit, Rutherford's class is hard enough, plus you've got Fletcher and Griffith to worry about."
Cora capped her pen and rolled her eyes at her dark-haired friend. She started walking away from the campus message board, motioning for her companion to follow.
"Just because you were barely able to drag yourself through last year doesn't mean I'll have the same problem, Julia." The duo trotted down the worn stone steps, out of the breezeway and into the bronze-sepia explosion that signified fall's late arrival.
Julia punched playfully at her friend's arm, missing by a mile and thudding against her book heavy knapsack instead.
"Owow! What've you got in there, bricks?" She whined, nursing her throbbing knuckles as they marched across the quad.
"They're called books, Jules. Sometimes when you open them and stare at the little black scribbles on the page, you learn stuff. "
The student parking lot was sparsely dotted with a few lone vehicles. Almost everyone had gone home by this time of evening. The girls approached Cora's new VW, a present from her parents for finishing all her PreMed courses. The damn thing guzzled gas and got less mileage than the old Gremlin, but at least it ran and didn't have to be jimmied with a pencil when it stalled at a traffic light.
"Aren't you just the little comedian." Julia commented dryly as she slid into the Bug's passenger seat. Cora wriggled into the driver's side and gunned the engine, wheeling the little car out of the parking spot.
They rode in comfortable silence for a minute or so, as it only took that long to reach the student housing on the other side of campus. Cora coasted up to the first cluster of three-story apartments and slowed to a stop.
"Don't you want to come up for a while?" Julia asked as she opened the door, even though she already knew the answer.
"Nah. I'm going to call the number on that flyer and see if there are any openings left. Plus I've got a quiz in M-''
"Oh, fine, fine. Call me later."
- "I will." She wouldn't, but the act of saying it seemed to placate Julia, who waved a quick goodbye before trotting up the iron staircase to her apartment. Cora watched, golden eyes unblinking, until Julia dissapeared inside the apartment. Then she threw the car into first and headed home.
Her apartment was unerringly tidy and well decorated, something Julia teased her about to no end. Cora tossed her keys on the end table as she walked in, perhaps to prove a point, since she normally hung them on the little rack just by the door. Something warm and furry brushed against her leg, and she reached down to absently scratch the ears of the little gray kitten her boyfriend had given her the week before.
Boyfriend might have been somewhat of an overstatement on Cora's behalf. She and Dave had been...''together'' since the start of the semester, but certain aspects of their relationship were sorely lacking.
As she was bending to scoop up the feline, the phone in the kitchen jangled and sent a hard tremble through her body. The kitten scampered under the couch and Cora scrambled to yank the phone from the reciever.
" 'Lo?" She said breathlessly, stumbling over the kitten that darted from its hiding place and through the tiny kitchen.
"Hey, baby."
Cora cringed at the endearment and twisted the phone cord around her forefinger. She heaved a sigh and tried to keep the irritation from seeping into her voice.
"Hi."
"Got plans for dinner?"
"Yeah, I've made a date with my anatomy textbook. I think it'd be dissapointed if I cancelled."
"Want a study partner?"
"No thanks, Dave. I think I'd do better not to be distracted by you." There was a pause on the other end of the line, and then a muffled cough.
"Uh huh. Well...did you see that flyer I was telling you about?"
"Sure did. I was just about to call."
"Well, I'll go ahead and let you go. Call me later?"
"I will." She wouldn't.
"Alright. Bye, sweet-"
"Goodbye, Dave."
Dead air. She put the phone back in its cradle long enough for the dial tone to register again,and then she picked it up and punched in the number.
Ring, ring, ring. Cora was about to hang up when the fourth was cut off.
"Good afternoon, Doctor Lecter's office, how may I help you?" Droned a tinny voice, accent edged in Bostonian tones. Cora cleared her throat, glancing out the window as she spoke, her eyes catching and following the fall of a single, blood red leaf.
"Hi...uhm...my name's Cora Fielding, I saw the flyer on the campus message board.''
"Be at fifty-six Commerce at four tomorrow afternoon. Suite E."
"But I've got a class at three thirty..."
"And please, don't be late." There was a click, and a few moments of silence stretched before Cora shook her head and hung up the phone.
"Guess I'll miss my three-thirty, Cleo." She muttered to the kitten, who had curled around her ankle while she talked. Stooping down, she gathered the kitten and toted her into the living room, where a stack of notecards and ten pages of today's lecture waited patiently to be studied.
She settled into the couch, Cleo sprawling across her lap with all the luxury of an Egyptian temple cat. The robin egg cast of daylight's blue was fading into lush velvet, and Cora could see a sliver of indigo sky through the slats of the blinds. It was almost enough to distract her, and for a moment flashed the distinct memory of bare toes kicking at a sky that same color, lost in the gangling windmill of a little girl's first sucessful cartwheel.
The kitten lowed a recalitrant meowl when Cora displaced her in order to light the tip of lavender incense cone. Dry smoke wafted in syrupy coils, staining the air with that ashy-pale scent that Cora had come to associate as being strictly her own. Sufficiently lulled into a calm, quiet mode of study, she seized the belligerent kitten, who had now lost her sense of rest and was intent on inflicting serious damaged upon her benefactor's green sweater.
"Suit yourself," Cora declared, depositing her ill-behaved familiar onto the nubby oriental carpet. The kitten plucked at the pattern for a moment in a thoughtful knead, resigning to skitter under the couch when Cora swatted her reproachfully.
After half an hour, Rutherford's notes on the brain map were beginning to look a little less like Greek, and Cora felt the day's tension melting into her overstuffed sofa. Cleo had long since retired from her duty as destroyer of dust bunnies and was now comfortably stretched along the top of the couch.
The sun sank lower, and so did Cora's eyelids. Rutherford's class was boring enough; studying this overly intricate swill took more concentration than she could muster at the moment. Visions of the frontal lobe smeared before her eyes, and her chin dropped to her chest.
Bangbangbang! She sat up with a startled gasp, her textbook and notecards sliding off her lap and landing in a scattered heap at her feet. The kitten hissed at the commotion, her grey tail puffed like a bottlebrush.
"Who's there?" Cora called, her voice thick with anxiety and sleep-heavy surprise. There was no response for a moment, and then,
"It's me, babe," Dave's voice drifted through the door.
Cora cringed, and the revulsion she felt brought hot tears to her eyes. I'm twenty-two God damned years old, she thought bitterly, this should be gone by now.
She shoved that aching, distended feeling back into darkness, where it belonged. Now all that remained was the gentle, unflappable calm for which she was so notorious. Shaking off a cascade of nerves that grated against her spine, she plastered a thin smile across her lips. She'd be alright. Normal.
Dave knew, innately, that Cora was not pleased to see him. She never really seemed happy to have his company, something he could not manage to fathom. Her interest in him had been so obvious, the attraction so feirce that he had been completely taken aback by the sudden change when he finally asked her out.
They had spent several friendly evenings together in the company of mutual aquaintances, flirting shamelessly and talking, sometimes for an hour or more. Dave had immediately recognized her brilliance, and had been instantly drawn not only to her beauty ( which was formidable ) but also her insicive, dry wit and her sharp attention to detail. She was a challenge, and he adored that.
Everything had seemed to be progressing along a nice, even track, with a few phone calls and impromptu lunch meetings strengthening their friendship. It was when he tried to kiss her one night, after they'd seen a movie and gone to eat...she stiffened in his arms as if he'd struck her. It seemed to come from nowhere.
Why he continued this relationship, he would never know. She would not let him touch her, and sometimes she shunned him completely. She went through phases; it seemed that when his interest started to wan, she would reel him in again with a soft whisper or warm-wet eyes and a coveted chest to chest hug. And then her scent would remain on him for days, sustinence when she refused to see him or answer the phone when he called. Cora Feilding was finely wired. He knew this, and he loved her for it.
But sometimes he wanted her so badly, it made him weak.
"I know you said you were busy," He apologized, feeling small under her gaze, even though she was half a foot shorter than he and there was only a cool kind of greeting in her eyes.
"It's alright, I was dozing off." Cora interrupted, uncharacteristically friendly. She opened the door all the way to let him in.
"I just thought I'd come by and see if I could tear you away for dinner." He couldn't resist reaching up to brush a stray curl from her forehead. The color reminded him of burnt honey. She didn't flinch, which surprised him a little.
"I can't," She said simply, smiling up at him. The lump in her throat was tangible. At any moment she would fly at him, tear at his face and hate him for wanting her. And then she would wear something slim and flattering and smell so sweet, and he would need her again.
Interpreting her answer in the only way plausible, Dave shrugged amicably and planted a quick kiss on her cheek. He stepped back, unaware of her sharp intake of breath and the way her nails dug half-moons into her palms.
"What time is your appointment with Dr. Lecter tomorrow?" He asked, leaning back against the door. Cleo stalked up to him, meowled a greeting and began batting at his shoelaces.
"Four. I tried to tell the secretary I had a class, but she wouldn't listen." Cora explained, nudging the kitten with her toe.
"I had the same problem. Mine's at two. But I talked to Dr. Griffith, and he said I could sit in on his noon class tomorrow. "
"Good." Cora's gaze shifted to the upset studying, and then back to Dave's stubble shadowed face. She smiled wanly and shrugged. "Guess I better.."
"I hear ya. Call me later. Sorry for disturbing you." He reached down and clumsily scratched Cleo's ears, offered a grin, and let himself out.
As Cora watched his car putter onto the street, she felt the threat of tears again. The spot where he kissed her cheek tingled and burned; it was as though she had been branded. She rubbed her skin, hard, but was unable to erase the thin, acidic layer of his affection.
Pushing all these unpleasantries to the side, she swallowed the chunk of pain in her throat and went back to work, the scent of lavender slowly replacing that of Dave's lingering cologne.
Local psychiatrist Dr. Hannibal Lecter, MD
is conducting a one-semester lecture course
on the general makeup of the Sociopath.
Open to 10 students only.
Cost is 100$ for full semester.
Those interested call 791-0087 between 3-5PM before Friday the 12th.
A stiff north wind ruffled the girl's strawberry hair, stirring pale red- blonde curls like the feathers of a bleached cardinal. She was busy scribbling the number on her hand with the blunt tip of her fountain pen when a voice drifted from over her shoulder.
"Where are you gonna get a hundred bucks, red?" The voice teased good naturedly, her narrow face breaking into a smile as her companion turned to glare.
"I'll work a few extra shifts. It won't take me long." Cora replied, turning back to her project and scrawling the last three digits on her palm.
"Don't you think you've got enough going on, Cor? I mean, shit, Rutherford's class is hard enough, plus you've got Fletcher and Griffith to worry about."
Cora capped her pen and rolled her eyes at her dark-haired friend. She started walking away from the campus message board, motioning for her companion to follow.
"Just because you were barely able to drag yourself through last year doesn't mean I'll have the same problem, Julia." The duo trotted down the worn stone steps, out of the breezeway and into the bronze-sepia explosion that signified fall's late arrival.
Julia punched playfully at her friend's arm, missing by a mile and thudding against her book heavy knapsack instead.
"Owow! What've you got in there, bricks?" She whined, nursing her throbbing knuckles as they marched across the quad.
"They're called books, Jules. Sometimes when you open them and stare at the little black scribbles on the page, you learn stuff. "
The student parking lot was sparsely dotted with a few lone vehicles. Almost everyone had gone home by this time of evening. The girls approached Cora's new VW, a present from her parents for finishing all her PreMed courses. The damn thing guzzled gas and got less mileage than the old Gremlin, but at least it ran and didn't have to be jimmied with a pencil when it stalled at a traffic light.
"Aren't you just the little comedian." Julia commented dryly as she slid into the Bug's passenger seat. Cora wriggled into the driver's side and gunned the engine, wheeling the little car out of the parking spot.
They rode in comfortable silence for a minute or so, as it only took that long to reach the student housing on the other side of campus. Cora coasted up to the first cluster of three-story apartments and slowed to a stop.
"Don't you want to come up for a while?" Julia asked as she opened the door, even though she already knew the answer.
"Nah. I'm going to call the number on that flyer and see if there are any openings left. Plus I've got a quiz in M-''
"Oh, fine, fine. Call me later."
- "I will." She wouldn't, but the act of saying it seemed to placate Julia, who waved a quick goodbye before trotting up the iron staircase to her apartment. Cora watched, golden eyes unblinking, until Julia dissapeared inside the apartment. Then she threw the car into first and headed home.
Her apartment was unerringly tidy and well decorated, something Julia teased her about to no end. Cora tossed her keys on the end table as she walked in, perhaps to prove a point, since she normally hung them on the little rack just by the door. Something warm and furry brushed against her leg, and she reached down to absently scratch the ears of the little gray kitten her boyfriend had given her the week before.
Boyfriend might have been somewhat of an overstatement on Cora's behalf. She and Dave had been...''together'' since the start of the semester, but certain aspects of their relationship were sorely lacking.
As she was bending to scoop up the feline, the phone in the kitchen jangled and sent a hard tremble through her body. The kitten scampered under the couch and Cora scrambled to yank the phone from the reciever.
" 'Lo?" She said breathlessly, stumbling over the kitten that darted from its hiding place and through the tiny kitchen.
"Hey, baby."
Cora cringed at the endearment and twisted the phone cord around her forefinger. She heaved a sigh and tried to keep the irritation from seeping into her voice.
"Hi."
"Got plans for dinner?"
"Yeah, I've made a date with my anatomy textbook. I think it'd be dissapointed if I cancelled."
"Want a study partner?"
"No thanks, Dave. I think I'd do better not to be distracted by you." There was a pause on the other end of the line, and then a muffled cough.
"Uh huh. Well...did you see that flyer I was telling you about?"
"Sure did. I was just about to call."
"Well, I'll go ahead and let you go. Call me later?"
"I will." She wouldn't.
"Alright. Bye, sweet-"
"Goodbye, Dave."
Dead air. She put the phone back in its cradle long enough for the dial tone to register again,and then she picked it up and punched in the number.
Ring, ring, ring. Cora was about to hang up when the fourth was cut off.
"Good afternoon, Doctor Lecter's office, how may I help you?" Droned a tinny voice, accent edged in Bostonian tones. Cora cleared her throat, glancing out the window as she spoke, her eyes catching and following the fall of a single, blood red leaf.
"Hi...uhm...my name's Cora Fielding, I saw the flyer on the campus message board.''
"Be at fifty-six Commerce at four tomorrow afternoon. Suite E."
"But I've got a class at three thirty..."
"And please, don't be late." There was a click, and a few moments of silence stretched before Cora shook her head and hung up the phone.
"Guess I'll miss my three-thirty, Cleo." She muttered to the kitten, who had curled around her ankle while she talked. Stooping down, she gathered the kitten and toted her into the living room, where a stack of notecards and ten pages of today's lecture waited patiently to be studied.
She settled into the couch, Cleo sprawling across her lap with all the luxury of an Egyptian temple cat. The robin egg cast of daylight's blue was fading into lush velvet, and Cora could see a sliver of indigo sky through the slats of the blinds. It was almost enough to distract her, and for a moment flashed the distinct memory of bare toes kicking at a sky that same color, lost in the gangling windmill of a little girl's first sucessful cartwheel.
The kitten lowed a recalitrant meowl when Cora displaced her in order to light the tip of lavender incense cone. Dry smoke wafted in syrupy coils, staining the air with that ashy-pale scent that Cora had come to associate as being strictly her own. Sufficiently lulled into a calm, quiet mode of study, she seized the belligerent kitten, who had now lost her sense of rest and was intent on inflicting serious damaged upon her benefactor's green sweater.
"Suit yourself," Cora declared, depositing her ill-behaved familiar onto the nubby oriental carpet. The kitten plucked at the pattern for a moment in a thoughtful knead, resigning to skitter under the couch when Cora swatted her reproachfully.
After half an hour, Rutherford's notes on the brain map were beginning to look a little less like Greek, and Cora felt the day's tension melting into her overstuffed sofa. Cleo had long since retired from her duty as destroyer of dust bunnies and was now comfortably stretched along the top of the couch.
The sun sank lower, and so did Cora's eyelids. Rutherford's class was boring enough; studying this overly intricate swill took more concentration than she could muster at the moment. Visions of the frontal lobe smeared before her eyes, and her chin dropped to her chest.
Bangbangbang! She sat up with a startled gasp, her textbook and notecards sliding off her lap and landing in a scattered heap at her feet. The kitten hissed at the commotion, her grey tail puffed like a bottlebrush.
"Who's there?" Cora called, her voice thick with anxiety and sleep-heavy surprise. There was no response for a moment, and then,
"It's me, babe," Dave's voice drifted through the door.
Cora cringed, and the revulsion she felt brought hot tears to her eyes. I'm twenty-two God damned years old, she thought bitterly, this should be gone by now.
She shoved that aching, distended feeling back into darkness, where it belonged. Now all that remained was the gentle, unflappable calm for which she was so notorious. Shaking off a cascade of nerves that grated against her spine, she plastered a thin smile across her lips. She'd be alright. Normal.
Dave knew, innately, that Cora was not pleased to see him. She never really seemed happy to have his company, something he could not manage to fathom. Her interest in him had been so obvious, the attraction so feirce that he had been completely taken aback by the sudden change when he finally asked her out.
They had spent several friendly evenings together in the company of mutual aquaintances, flirting shamelessly and talking, sometimes for an hour or more. Dave had immediately recognized her brilliance, and had been instantly drawn not only to her beauty ( which was formidable ) but also her insicive, dry wit and her sharp attention to detail. She was a challenge, and he adored that.
Everything had seemed to be progressing along a nice, even track, with a few phone calls and impromptu lunch meetings strengthening their friendship. It was when he tried to kiss her one night, after they'd seen a movie and gone to eat...she stiffened in his arms as if he'd struck her. It seemed to come from nowhere.
Why he continued this relationship, he would never know. She would not let him touch her, and sometimes she shunned him completely. She went through phases; it seemed that when his interest started to wan, she would reel him in again with a soft whisper or warm-wet eyes and a coveted chest to chest hug. And then her scent would remain on him for days, sustinence when she refused to see him or answer the phone when he called. Cora Feilding was finely wired. He knew this, and he loved her for it.
But sometimes he wanted her so badly, it made him weak.
"I know you said you were busy," He apologized, feeling small under her gaze, even though she was half a foot shorter than he and there was only a cool kind of greeting in her eyes.
"It's alright, I was dozing off." Cora interrupted, uncharacteristically friendly. She opened the door all the way to let him in.
"I just thought I'd come by and see if I could tear you away for dinner." He couldn't resist reaching up to brush a stray curl from her forehead. The color reminded him of burnt honey. She didn't flinch, which surprised him a little.
"I can't," She said simply, smiling up at him. The lump in her throat was tangible. At any moment she would fly at him, tear at his face and hate him for wanting her. And then she would wear something slim and flattering and smell so sweet, and he would need her again.
Interpreting her answer in the only way plausible, Dave shrugged amicably and planted a quick kiss on her cheek. He stepped back, unaware of her sharp intake of breath and the way her nails dug half-moons into her palms.
"What time is your appointment with Dr. Lecter tomorrow?" He asked, leaning back against the door. Cleo stalked up to him, meowled a greeting and began batting at his shoelaces.
"Four. I tried to tell the secretary I had a class, but she wouldn't listen." Cora explained, nudging the kitten with her toe.
"I had the same problem. Mine's at two. But I talked to Dr. Griffith, and he said I could sit in on his noon class tomorrow. "
"Good." Cora's gaze shifted to the upset studying, and then back to Dave's stubble shadowed face. She smiled wanly and shrugged. "Guess I better.."
"I hear ya. Call me later. Sorry for disturbing you." He reached down and clumsily scratched Cleo's ears, offered a grin, and let himself out.
As Cora watched his car putter onto the street, she felt the threat of tears again. The spot where he kissed her cheek tingled and burned; it was as though she had been branded. She rubbed her skin, hard, but was unable to erase the thin, acidic layer of his affection.
Pushing all these unpleasantries to the side, she swallowed the chunk of pain in her throat and went back to work, the scent of lavender slowly replacing that of Dave's lingering cologne.