It's Simply Psychological

     ~Blake Enin~

Chapter One

She rested back against the blood red sofa chair in my office, fixing her icy blue gaze on me, causing prickling sensations to run beneath my skin. Her eyes bore through mine in a stare that was both intimate and knowing. It felt like she was seeing right through me, going straight to my head.

            I swallowed, attempting to tone down my nervousness.

            I always hated the sessions with her. I was glad they were only twice a week.

            I had faced psychopaths everyday for the past three weeks, but she was different. Smarter. Scarier.

            Psychopaths, although immensely sick in the head, had normal, human instincts. When they were hungry, they ate, when they were thirsty, they drank, and when they were tired, they slept. Just like sane people did. They had needs and drives and desires and they acted purely on those, making them generally very predictable.

            But not her.

            I had absolutely no idea what drove her, but it wasn’t natural, human instincts. No, she was nowhere near human. Not with those eyes, that voice, and that knowing smirk.

            I hated looking directly at her like I was at that moment. I hated when I was in her plain sight. When she could stare straight back at me, her eye’s target.

            I felt that none of my thoughts were private, like she heard every word that swam through my head. But I couldn’t control those words. I couldn’t stop myself from thinking about how much she frightened me, even when I thought she could hear every bit of it. I couldn’t stop those feelings from shooting down my spine whenever she looked at me with her cold, calculating eyes.

            I cleared my throat and glanced down at her file that lay open across my lap. The thing was pathetically thin, barely containing any information about her past or how she managed to get locked up in the Darien Institute. The only reliable records provided were the records of her previous sessions with Doctor Placatte, my advisor. He was usually there with me during a session, since I was technically still a psychiatrist in-training, but he was ill today, leaving me alone with her. I nearly called in sick myself when I found out he wasn’t going to be there.

            But, I couldn’t. I was young for my job, and therefore had more to prove. I could handle Asiya Letchly on my own.

            “So, I have you all to myself today,” she said in her sickly smooth voice. “How refreshing.”

            “Dr. Placatte will be back by your next session,” I assured her in what I hoped was a steady voice.

            She laughed breezily, and yet another cold feeling rocketed through me. “It’s such a shame, Blake, that you’re so frazzled by my presence. I suspect I would like you under different circumstances.”

            Something about that tipped me over the edge. I was her psychiatrist, I was the one in charge in this situation and here she was, laughing at me.

            I looked up at her with narrowed eyes, seeing the amusement reflecting back at me from hers.

            “Maybe if you were remotely sane, I wouldn’t mind you half as much, either,” I snapped back.

            Stupid. Very, very stupid. It didn’t matter how angry she made me, I was never supposed to show I was affected by anything she said.