More rantings. More thanks to treneka for beta-ing.
Once, again, for the ffnet.proboards people. May you update soon. (NOT may the Force be with you, though that is rather tempting.)
O
Kristopher scratched his head, thinking over his latest patient's situation. He had recorded the session and was now re-analysing their conversation, making notes every now and again.
Briiing! The loud noise in his ear shocked him, and he jerked back from the desk instinctively. He pressed the 'accept' button on the earpiece, resolving to turn the volume down in future whilst working.
"Hello?" he asked, hoping it wasn't his obsessive-compulsive patient, calling for the hundredth time this week to reconfirm her next appointment.
"Hello Daddy! What time are you coming home?" a girlish voice responded.
"Kanan, Daddy's working right now. At about six o'clock, okay?"
"Mummy says hi," his daughter continued, ignoring what Kris had said. He was unsure if she had even registered that he had talked.
"Well say hi to her for me okay? And everyone else."
"Okay," the high, childish voice complied.
"I love you. Bye!" The background noise on the phone had been almost deafening. Kris smiled; the house was always a riot. They had three adopted children - Hakkai, his middle child was nearly fourteen and despised school. They had adopted him at the age of eleven, as it was still mostly babies that were adopted and they wanted to give other children a chance. His oldest son was another boy, a sixteen year old who had only come into the family a year ago. Haunami was a lovely boy, and he actually looked like Kris! The kids had wide circle of friends, who seemed to be magnetically attracted to the house, and no child had the ability to stay quiet for long, hence the locale din. He and J0annê were unable to have their own kids. The child he had been talking to was Kanan, his sister's child, named after her late mother. Kris and Kanan had been extremely close, and Kris had eventually ended up marrying someone who could have been her twin. In fact, their personalities were practically interchangeable, as it was.
After being gang raped and finding she was pregnant, Kanan had commited suicide, sickened by what she called 'the monster child'. Kris had been slashed on the stomach trying to defend her from the attackers and was left to die as they dragged her away. He would have killed to save her, but he could not save Kanan from herself.
After the culprits had been apprehended, Kris and Kanan had spent the next few months in hospital. Kris went to see her the minute he was able, only to watch her jump out the third floor window. He had run downstairs, unheeding of the staff's warnings that running might tear open his still healing wounds
And he watched, helpless as his sister bled to death.
The rapist's families stood about in the waiting rooms - they had the nerve to come and visit! - muttering stupid apologies that did nothing to bring her back. In his fury, Kris lashed out at them, screaming wordlessly, wanting to render them apart, to kill; an eye for an eye. Before he was restrained, some fought back in self-defense and he somehow got hit in the eye. The injury left him almost blind in his right eye now, and nowadays wore a monocle to help rectify it. He had tried corrective surgery at first, but it failed, making the damage permanent. He was let off by the court on claims of overwhelming grief. It wasn't he who had fought, wasn't Kris. It had been another man altogether, as if he were two men in one body. Sometimes he still caught a glimpse of that other man, but he firmly pushed him back down into the deepest recesses of his mind, never to let him out.
Kanan the younger onewas saved from her mother's womb, and lived the next five months in an incubator. Kris had claimed her; she was the first child to be adopted by J0annê and him. The small child was an innocent, everyday reminder of her mother, and looked just like her, luckily, for Kris knew that his darker half" would emerge if he ever saw a trace of her father, and he could not control that other.
Ironic, really, for a psychiatrist to have demons of his own. He was supposed to be a pillar of support, and get rid of people's anxieties. The twenty-eight year old rubbed his brow, unable to concentrate on work.
He gook out a V!$0®$ brand VR that one of his wealthier patients had given him in thanks for a successful course of therapy.
When he was younger, Kris had been quite an experienced gamer, but had given it up about seven years ago. This would be the second time he used the VR. He took out the recording chip in his ear, which was currently droning on about the patient's wife. The yellow visor just gave enough space for his monocle to fit. He joined the first game he saw, hosted by someone called Gojyo; six others were there already. The host was the last to enter the gaming room and they all went to the character creation page
Dokugakuji: wot r u ppl playing as?
Sanzo: 23, m
Kris called himself Hakkai online, as a tribute to his son. Occasionally, he would change to Haunami as well, though. He added that he would be a twenty one year old, male as well, and each player put theirs details in, ending up with two females and six males; a little gender biased, he thought.
One half of the page was chat, and the other was for character creation. Kris put in green for a favourite colour and left the rest blank. The good thing about the VR V!$0®$ was that it drew information directly from your brain, using your deepest desires, nightmares and memories to create a character. It was also completely hack-proof for safety, and programmed only to one person, although it could be passed around if a total memory wipe were performed. It
had been absent from the mass market for ages until the government had finally given it the okay.
Everyone seemed to choose a younger age range,; the oldest was twenty-five. Kris chose twenty-one because he would be fresh out of university, and both Kanan and J0annê would have been in his life. Then again, there was no higher-level education in ancient China.
Taking off the eyeglass, and rocking back on his chair, he polished his monocle absently on his shirt, waiting for the other gamers to finish.