Talk To Me

28 || Therapy

The 1st Dialogue

Hi.

Well, hello. It's about time.

How long have you lived inside my head?

As long as you have lived. I've always been here. In the corner. Waiting for the day you'd finally find me.

I can't picture it though, like Jared did. I don't see a room, or you, or me.

Give it time. It'll all happen. This is your first time.

Yeah, I'm really new to this. Mind guiding me through our first...session?

Gladly. What's on your mind? I'm assuming the answer is: quite a lot, considering that dream you just had.

Of course you know what it was. I didn't expect to remember that. It was...strange.

Strange how?

Well, I thought I would dream about what happened after, you know. I didn't think I'd dream about the fight, I thought I'd dream about what followed it.

What do you mean? You dream about what followed all the time.

I wake up before it ends, though. I always wake up before I run out of the woods.

So that night you got lost with Olivia, that's not the recurring nightmare that's wounding your brain, is it? It's your other night in the woods.

Exactly. Not the night I ran away from the lake-house, but the night I ran to it.

How did you manage to not get lost?

GPS on my phone, of course. I wasn't ten years old and scared shitless without a phone again. I was an adult. An adult with a plan.

It's why you suggested the sleepover at Olivia's place; the woods were close.

Exactly. I thought she would think it ridiculous: sleepovers at our age? But she agreed; we hadn't seen each other in a really long time. Her mum and dad were lovely, so inviting. Putting the sleeping pills into the chocolate soufflé we had for dessert was too easy. I slipped away while they snored.

So she didn't hear you when you came through the back-door?

Of course she didn't. She never hears anything that doesn't concern her. She got disgustingly self-absorbed those last two months. It was almost too easy, slipping around her while she wasn't watching, swiping the poison from the cupboard and taking her wine glass.

Funny how she just drank it straight down. Didn't smell it, at least, and hesitate.

I told you, her mind was too preoccupied. She was past noticing all the little things. All she could think about was how I wasn't hers, how I was his fucking spawn, how she was going to write me out of her will.

Is that why you did it?

Obviously. I was born into a family of royalty. Whatever she says, I'm hers. I'm her daughter. All that wealth she inherited, is rightfully mine. Considering how poorly my college scores were going, I needed that money.

You became desperate, didn't you?

Exactly. And like I said, you can do anything if you're desperate enough. Adrian was desperate to have at least one night with my mother, and so he raped her. Steve was desperate to find out the truth about me, so he ran a DNA test. Adrian was desperate to escape the law, so he paid Michael a fortune to do so. Chelsea was desperate to perform at least one act of defiance against her asshole husband, so she came to visit my mother. Jared was desperate for his new family to not find out about what he'd done to them, so he shot Tallulah's therapist. And I was desperate to have a living of some sort when I would inevitably fail college, so I poured poison into my mother's wine. My inheritance—my RIGHTFUL inheritance—was the only thing I had to fall back on. I'm not taking it by force, or anything.