Chapter 6: Psychiatrist

Thursday, June 12th, 2005

I stare out the window, watching the rain pelting this cramped little Stationwagon. I watch all of the houses going by in silence. All of them have at least one window with a light showing through. One of them has a girl of about 5 dancing in the rain in front of her house while a loving father watches her from the shadows of the front porch.

It all looks so happy. Once, I was that 5 year old, just dancing away, happy just be alive, while my parent advised and protected me.

Now look at me.

My mom speaks for the first time of this whole car ride, which is rare for her. Usually she's just chattering away. "Honey…"

I don't do anything except look away from the window into the rearview mirror at her.

"Katrina, please talk to me. You just won't say why it happened. Honey, why are you sad? Why…?" Her voice wavers on the last word and she almost starts to cry. She takes a deep breath to steady herself. "Why are you unhappy? What happened?"

I just glance down at my wrist, and the scabbed cross on it. I can't tell her why. I don't know the answer myself. "It was a kind of accident." I whisper.

She sighs. "Katrina, no matter how much you fight me, I'm never going to give up on you. I know we can fix this."

We can't. We can't, because it isn't my fault. You can't fix me because it isn't my fault. I'm suffering for no reason.

We drive for a few more miles. I turn back out the window and seeing the children jumping in big puddles, or splashing their friends. Having…fun. Fun.

I can't take the…pleasure of it all. I instead stare at my wrist, until I feel my car come to a complete stop. I look up, and I see that we've stopped at a huge brown building with only a few small windows. We're going in through a side door, so I can't see a label of what it is anywhere. And I don't care to ask.

Something strange is going on here. Mom is making absolutely sure that I don't know what this place is. I guess I'll find out. It's probably an insane asylum.

"Are you going to put me in a cage?" I whisper.

My mom just shakes her head and gets out first, and opens a large black umbrella. I get out and when she tries to get me under it as well, I move away from the protection and stand in the rain, staring up at the gray, gray sky. Rain splatters across my cheeks. I close my eyes, and try to become that little girl in the rain I saw through the window. That unattainable little girl.

I can't. I can't become her. The realization almost rips me apart.

I sigh sadly and go back under my mom's umbrella. I used to love the rain. Why not now? Why am I falling apart if it isn't my fault? Why am I being punished like this if it isn't my fault? Why is my mom going to lock me up in this asylum? Why aren't I trying to run?

Matching our steps so we both stay under, we make our way into the big building.

555555555555555555

We walk down several thin white hallways and finally stop in front of a door to a small office. Mom raps on the door and then opens it herself when she receives no response. Keeping my eyes down in case I'm about to be thrown into a straightjacket, I hide behind my mom. What a nice clean white floor they have here. Mom always wanted her floor this clean and it never happened.

"Shiori?" Asks a throaty man's voice from (I'm guessing) about 4 feet in front of me. "Is that you? Back so soon?"

So soon? What does that mean? She's been here before?

Is my mom a crack too? Like mother like daughter?

"Dr. Toad, I'm so glad I caught you! Last time I came here, the school was closed—"

Is this…is this really…?

"Wow, we certainly don't get many graduates dropping by! I'm touched!" He pauses out of happiness, I presume. "Well, so, what the hell did you come for, Bitch?"

It seems to have been a joke, since they both laugh. "Firstly, I wanted to thank you and all the other teachers for helping me achieve my goal."

"Anything for my dear Bitch!" I can just see him pinching her cheeks. If we were in Japan, that would be incredibly rude.

"But secondly…" My mom, as though anticipating me, steps to the side so fast that I have no time to stay hidden behind her. "This is my daughter, Katrina. Katrina, Dr. Theodore Wilkes, or simply Dr. Toad. Katrina, look up."

I grudgingly obey, and glance up to see a large man sitting behind a typical office desk littered sky-high with papers. I look at anything but him. The room is entirely white, and there is a changing table next to the desk. He must be a doctor. He's going to lock me up, but strangely, this thought invokes no emotion in me. Out of the corners of my eyes, I can see that his brown hair is thinning on the top of his head, he has really round brown eyes, and the happy smile of a child.

He positively jumps up and starts shaking my hand vigorously. "Katrina? I have heard so much about you from Bitch! I mean, your mother! Ah ha ha! It's quite an honor. Oh, Shiori, she's such a pretty thing! Your spitting image—OOH! Look at those green eyes! Quite lovely, quite lovely! Such a pale coloring though…" He lets go of my hand which was losing circulation, and turns back to her. "I am touched! You even brought your daughter back to meet me! Is she as good a student as you were?"

So that was this is about. This isn't an asylum at all. Mom just thinks she can cure me by MAKING me meet her old professors.

"She is a bright girl, much brighter than me. But I didn't just bring her here to meet everyone." My mother says. "She's ill."

Dr. Toad moves in a half second, slamming the back of his hand against my forehead. "Oh, goodness! You're right! Quite a high fever! Hm…"

My mom tries to say something, but before she can, he just runs away into a back room. In a second, he's back with a thermometer. He shoves me backward onto a doctor's table. "Lift up your tongue, Bitch Jr.!"

I open my mouth to scream at him at being called that, and he takes advantage of it and jams the stick into my throat. I gag and shut my mouth and he holds the thermometer there. He looks at it, and in three seconds flat he rips it out and goes, "Oh no, 102 degrees! You have a bad cold, Miss Katrina! I can fix that!"

"NO—" He runs back into that room and returns with a huge bottle of cough syrup.

"But I'm not coughing!" I tell him, and he ignores it. "Please don't do this." I say, and he just advances forward, vibrating with all his hyper energy, holding the bottle menacingly. "Don't make me hurt you." He moves towards me. "I'm warning you…" Again, again, again. "OH MY GOD I SWEAR IF YOU COME ANY CLOSER I'LL—"

I can't believe I fell for it again. He pulls off the bottle's cap in two seconds and jams the bottle halfway down my throat and I breathe some in. I immediately choke and die.

…Well, almost. In reality, I breathe in about a quarter of the contents and retch violently. He rips it out of my mouth, rattling my head, giving my headache the time it needs to attack violently, and runs around behind me and performs the Heimlich maneuver. I gasp, cough up some of the stuff, and start to hack up my right lung. I fall clear off the table I was sitting on, and start to implode on the floor.

"Now you're coughing up all that bad stuff in your throat." He simply strides towards my mom, who's staring in shock, lost for words. "Toad, what the hell…?"

"By forcing her to swallow the medicine through her windpipe, she is now proceeding to hack up all the phlegm in her throat that was making her cough."

"BUT I WASN'T (hack) COUGHING TO BEGIN WITH!" I scream.

"Now you are! It's a perfect remedy!"

"How, Toad?" My mom asks.

"It clears up the throat of a cold-ee!"

I think I'm going to kill him. I wasn't…fucking…coughing…originally…

"So, she'll be fine within the hour! Was there anything else that needed fixing?"

I hiss, in the deadliest, most dignified voice I can muster while dying, "No."

"Well, actually…" Says Mom, and then starts to speak in a low voice. I can't hear her above my hacks. Who the hell cares? One more of this crack's 'treatments' and I'll be dead within the hour.

Finally, the hacks stop after about 30 seconds, and I climb back up on the table for a seat and look up at them both. Mom finishes speaking just as I do it. She looks…ashamed.

I look at the doctor's face. He looks very worried all of a sudden, and I see him glance sideways at my…waist? No, something on my waist. I look down, and see that the way I'm holding my right forearm is that the cuts show.

I hastily turn it inside against my t-shirt, but the damage has been done.

All of his energy evaporates. "I see." He says sadly. After a pause, "Well…in that case, I'll be sure to get Dr. Martin immediately."

"What? What are you going to do?" I ask.

Mom says nothing. The doctor walks, not runs, out the door. In about a minute, I hear a banging on a door down the hall, and then, the next minute, I hear his clomping gait and the clatter of high heels on hard floor.

A woman? Why are they bringing a new doctor in?

In a minute, the two people arrive inside the room. It's Dr. Toad and a middle-aged woman who looks like she might have once been very beautiful in her twenties. In any case, she still thinks she is, at 40-something. She's wearing a mini red dress, still has her short black hair shoulder length, and has those glamorous high heels to match her dress. She has on tons of red lipstick, too.

My glare says all I need to say.

She just looks at me. I look back. She finally says, "You. You. Leave at vonce." With a really creepy accent, to my mom and that quack.

My mom waves goodbye, but Toad doesn't acknowledge me on his way out. He seems too sad.

Once out, she sits down on the doctor's chair facing me. "You are Kat-a-rina, correct?"

"And you are Dracula's wife?"

"My real name is ov no eemportance. I am…your psychiatrist."

(DUHN DUHN DUHN!) I actually flinch when she says the word. In the voice of Darth Vader to Luke, 'I am your father…' equals, 'I am your psychiatrist.'

"I undairstand zat you cut yourself?" She asks, pulling out a pad of paper.

"It's what I do to pass Saturday nights." I hiss at her. How can my own mother have done this to me? She thinks…she really does think I'm insane! And now she's trying to fix me and she can't!

"Vass zis your first time?"

"Yez, it vass." I say, in a pronounced imitation of her Transylvanian accent. "Are you sure you're a psychiatrist?" I can't talk above a whisper because of Dr. Quack, though.

"Yez, very much so. Shall ve continue? Vy did you cut yourself?"

"Have you ever…killed anyone?"

"No. Vy?"

"Because you're looking at me like I'm a roast chicken or something…"

"NO! Vy did you cut your vist?"

"My vist?"

"No, your vist."

"My vist."

"Yes."

"Hm…I don't feel like telling you that."

Her soulless black eyes pound into me. "Tell me."

"No."

She stands up. "TELL ME!"

"NO!"

In a second, she appears before me, standing over me. She must be like 5'11". I recoil a little. Also, I'm still laying down.

"You don't vant to share vith me? Play it your vay."

"Oh my god you really are going to kill me. SECURITY!"

She bends all the way over and claps a hand over my mouth. "NO! Let me ask you ze question…have you ever killed anyvon?"

I stare into her eyes in shock. "What…what…"

She takes advantage and pulls me up onto the table from the ground, so that she doesn't have to be bent double. "Your mother says that you have fully denied ever killing anyone lately. I want to see if that is true."

I start to pant hard, her face inches from mine. "It wasn't my fault. IT WASN'T MY FAULT!" She looks a little frightened, and that tiny fear is all I need to move on. I shove her away from me, feeling my panther blood bristling. She falls flat on her butt, and I stand over her. "I'M A GOOD PERSON, OKAY? I AM! I KNOW I AM! MIE AND LAHRI WEREN'T MY FAULT! I DON'T CARE WHAT YOU SAY! I—AM—GOOD!"

I get ready to stomp on her, and she screeches just loud enough for my mom and Toad to come bursting in. They see the scene before them through wide eyes. The vampiress lying on the ground beneath a girl that suddenly looks a lot hairier (and scarier) for some reason.

I regain control of the demon and step off her. I stare at the fear in her eyes, and it all becomes too much, in that single instant, of three fearful eyes on me. I shove past the doctor and my mom and fly out of the whole goddamn school.

I charge straight into the car, somehow not slipping at all, and I shut myself into the back seat, curled up in a ball and—what do you know—crying again. I shiver. What's wrong with me? What's wrong? Why am I acting like this? I have no reason to. I'm a good person. I should act like this because I'm good. I'm good. No one can understand that I'm perfectly fine. I'm just under stress. I'm a good person that's only suffering from a little sadness.

Right?

555555555555555555555555

Author's Note: If any of you are annoyed that she keeps repeating herself—'I'm a good person' and 'I'm not a killer' etc., I understand totally. But actually, this is actually a common symptom of depression. Trying to escape yourself by telling yourself that you aren't at fault—every second of the day. And, the angst ends in chapter 8. For those of you who hate angst (glares at Tracey), at least keep reading until then. So, just to clear that up, now I can say, REVIEW!