Psychotic

Chapter 1 ✦

psychotic/sʌɪˈkɒtɪk/

adjective

relating to, denoting, or suffering from a psychosis.

"a psychotic disturbance".

I've wanted to go into the field of psychology ever since I was a young girl. I remember watching child's play and wondering why did Chucky still choose to commit crime when he was a convicted criminal being placed into a doll's body? Surely this was his second chance, a chance to repent and redeem himself, so why was he making the conscious decision to re-offend. As you can tell I wasn't like typical kids my age, once I reached the age of eight I decided experimenting on dolls wasn't going to cut it so I experimented on my hamster, then my cat, then my dog and so on. One day my parents realised their little angel was the one who was behind the mysterious string of deaths and decided to put me in a psych ward for a few months to cure my 'psychotic episodes' as they'd like to call it. But I wasn't psychotic, sure I heard voices but I never had delusions or hallucinations, so I decided to go into the world of psychology. I didn't want people testing on me or trying to cure me, instead it's so much more interesting to be the lab rat in your own experiment don't you think.  

Today i'm starting a new job, well in reality my first job, as a prison psychologist. Usually psychologists are assigned to a maximum security prison with offenders who are murders, sexual predators, extremely violent etc. If you ask me these are the most interesting kind of homosapiens to study.  

I drove up to the gate to see a security guard sat down munching at his greasy bacon burger, his feet placed on his desk with no care in the world. His parents probably never cleaned the house and never made him do chores which meant he never fully developed decent organisational skills. 

"Excuse me sir, my name is Anastacia Smirnov and I'm the new Prison Forensic Psychologist." I said while showing him my staff card. He choked a little on his sandwich as he scrambled to get his feet off his desk, putting his sandwich down where his shoes had previously been. He typed a few things into his computer and the barrier lifted up to let me through. After thanking him I drove through, parking into a free space. 

I changed into my leather heels and looked in my mirror to check if there was a single strand out of place. Once I was satisfied with how my high ponytail looked, I got out of the car and headed towards the entrance. I was greeted by a moody receptionist, her nails were chipped and the skin around her fingers were slightly peeled off. She either has an anxiety disorder or she must get bored a lot. After signing me in and telling me to wait for the prison governor she peeled off more skin, chewed it for a bit and spat it out again. Must be the latter. 

"Good morning, you must be miss Smirnov." A tall man with dirty blonde hair approached me. 

"It's a pleasure to make your acquaintance, governor." He shook my hand firmly, assuring me that he was in fact the prison governor. He showed me around the prison; where the inmates were held, where the cafe was, where my office was etc. 

"Could I have meetings with patients in the inmate roam free areas?" The governor looked a bit confused at my question. 

"You want to be in actual inmate areas?" I nodded. 

"You do realise the danger you'd be putting yourself in, even with guards patrolling the area you could still get seriously injured?" His features didn't show worry about my safety, however they did show fear about getting legal action against him. 

"I am aware of the risk. However, as Jeremy Bentham once said, everything is about numbers and the benefits outweigh the consequences."

"At the end of the day it's your call, you are the psychologist here." I smiled politely not knowing the chain reaction my decision would lead to. 

He led me to my office and gave me one of three keys.

"Who has the other two keys to my office?" 

"I have a key and in reception they've also got a key in case anyone loses theirs." In case someone loses their key or because you have trust issues, governor. If it was the former there'd only be two keys. I wonder if there's been a psychologist, or any staff member, go off the rails and lock themselves in their office. But I put my thoughts to one side and smiled at him. 

"Prepared are we?" I inquired, hoping he'd be stupid enough to let something slip; spoiler, he was. 

"Yes, of course, I don't want a repeat of the past." He said, mumbling the last part. Idiot. If you don't want someone to know something don't just say it quietly and hope they don't hear you, instead use your common sense and don't say it at all. Humans can't help themselves though, we talk too much and listen too little. "I'll leave you to it then, I hope you get to grips with the system as soon as possible." He said quickly. There was definitely some illegal operation going on here but if they don't get in my way, I won't get in theirs.