~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.
She smiled back at me in response and she didn’t have to be able to read my mind to know how much I was now regretting lashing out.
“Sensitivity’s a weak quality to possess, Blake,” she told me in her languid tone of voice.
“Dr. Enin,” I told her, looking back down at her file. “In this office you will call me Dr. Enin.”
I didn’t have to look up to see that she was still staring at me. I felt her amused gaze on my face. “But Blake is such a nice name,” she nearly taunted. “You know what it means, don’t you?”
“Light and dark,” I said catiously, fearing where she was going with this. I didn’t like talking when she began the conversations; I felt she had too much control over them.
“Yes,” her voice was satisfied now. “Light and dark. Both at once. Don’t you find that interesting?”
“It’s a name,” I told her, flipping to the next sheet in her file, pretending to be reading.
“It has meaning,” she continued, still staring at my face.
“Every word has a meaning,” I dismissed, beginning to tap my figures against the edge of her file nervously.
“Some more than others,” she said mysteriously.
I expected her to continue, but she didn’t, much to my unspoken appreciation.
“Miss Letchly-.”
“It’s Doctor Letchly,” she interrupted, mocking me and imitating my tone of annoyance to mere perfection.
“You’re not a doctor,” I told her as calmly as I could manage.
“Well, then, why must I call you Doctor Enin?” she asked quizzically, leaning forward in her chair. Her long, curly black hair fell past her left shoulder and the contrast of its color made her eyes seem even more alien.
“Because I am a doctor,” I answered, aggravated.
“In-training,” she corrected.
I clenched my jaw. “Did Doctor Placatte tell you that?” I asked, still staring pointlessly at the papers in her file.
“Please don’t insult my intelligence, darling. I did nothing to insult yours.”
She was just playing with me now, like a cat with a mouse.
She leaned forward more, resting her forearms on her lap, eyes narrowed thoughtfully as she studied my face.
I chose what I hoped was the wisest thing for me to do and kept my eyes glued to the papers.
“I don’t need Louis Placatte to tell me anything about you, Blake,” she whispered, like it was our little secret. “They’ve already told me everything.”
I looked up then, enraptured with interest. I could tell this conversation was beginning to go in a direction where I knew I could take control and I was glad. However, the look on her face told me she didn’t intend on giving any control away to anyone any time soon.
“Who are ‘they’, Asiya?” I questioned.
She didn’t respond with words, but smirked as if to say “Don’t you wish you knew?”
I took my pen from its usual resting place on the desk and clicked it on, finally preparing to write something down on her record for today’s appointment.
Asiya Letchly had never opened up about anything before. Ever. And if she chose to now, I would prove a lot about myself.
“Do you hear people talking to you?” I asked, sounding bizarrely hopeful.
She laughed, a light, purely amused sound and rested her back against the chair again.
“What do they tell you?” I continued, still willing for her to say something indicating she was hopelessly insane and belonging in a prison, not a mental institute.
“I do like you,” she informed me, smiling mischievously. “You’re different from the rest of them. All young and hopeful. You still try with me. You even still believe in insanity.”
“You don’t believe in insanity?” I asked, almost laughing at how ridiculous the thought was.
She continued staring at me, the exact same superior expression frozen on her face.
“No,” she answered simply. “I don’t.”
“And why’s that?” I asked, doubting she had an actual reason.
It was beyond rare that insane people ever believed themselves to be insane and I had already heard arguments like “insanity is a myth” from lunatics hundreds of. I had thought she was more original than the rest of her kind, but I must have been wrong.
She paused for a moment, calculating her answer. “You consider me to be ‘insane’, correct?”
“Undoubtedly,” I responded, smiling foolishly. I was extraordinarily interested in seeing which direction she was going to take this.
“Why, because of my bloodlust?”
“That’s a huge part of it,” I said openly, completely uncaring about how offensive I sounded.
“And what’s the other part?”
“Your incapacity to feel sympathy or remorse,” I answered.
“Ah, of course. I nearly forgot you idiots think that I can’t feel,” she sneered. “Let’s focus on the bloodlust, shall we?” she suggested, annoyance flickering deep within her ruthless eyes. It was the only change in emotions I’d ever witnessed her make. “I’m insane, because I like blood. Not my own, but others. Is this accurate?”
“Yes.”
She took a deep breath and for a minute I thought she wasn’t going to respond. Her expression was consumed by some sort of passion as she began her explanation.
“Well, if that is the case, so is our country. So is our world. If I’m insane because I have bloodlust, then so is everyone that battles in the army, that gets into fights, that watches action movies, that volunteers to work in a blood bank, that operates to save a young girl’s life. If I’m insane, Blake, then so is everybody else.” Her voice had risen and she had begun leaning towards me again, more shiny black hair spilling over her shoulders.
I was shocked speechless for a whole minute, having expected none of anything she just said. On every one of our previous sessions, when Doctor Placatte was involved, she had barely spoken, barely even glanced up or displayed any signs of interest. And now, there she was, nearly yelling at me.
“I don’t think you can compare yourself to a surgeon,” I finally managed to say.
“If in this office, I must call you and that Placatte moron ‘doctors’, then I don’t think it’s that far of a stretch, do you?”
I blushed and looked back down at her file.
“Despite what you may believe, you’re in here for a reason,” I said, my voice low and weak sounding compared to hers.
“Oh, I know that,” she said with a dark chuckle. “But I can assure you that it’s not the reason you believe that it is.”
“Please tell me about your reason, then, Miss Letchly,” I responded sarcastically, hating how long this appointment seemed to lag on. I just wanted this session to be over with.
“You know what I did, Blake, don’t you?” she asked, a wicked grin on her face. “Does that file say it? Did Placatte tell you? By the way you find me so very mysterious, I can tell that you don’t know a thing about me,” she paused, allowing me time to let it all sink in. “I killed. I murdered. I stole the life right out of someone, without regret.” She paused again as this dawned on me. “Now, I know it’s difficult, but think logically for me, will you? Do you really believe that I would be in this institute, where the most evil person besides me is Larry the Janitor, who steals from the cafeteria when he’s hungry, if I killed someone? Don’t you find it strange?”
I froze and another chilling feeling ran through me. I had asked myself a similar question during each of her appointments. I hadn’t known that she had killed someone, she had never admitted it, but I had been positive that she was different from the others at the Institute. I had known she had done something drastic, but I’d never thought she’d admit to it. Especially not to me, who I always believed she hated more than Placatte.
“Well, let me tell you a little secret, Doctor Enin,” she said, her usual snarky tone drifting back into her voice. She stood in a graceful, fluid movement and placed her hands on my desk, bending slightly to level her eyes with mine. She looked like a feline, getting ready to pounce. “If I didn’t want to be where I am right now,” her voice abruptly lowered to a harsh whisper, “I wouldn’t be.”
She stayed like that for a minute, staring straight at me with her icy, inhuman eyes. All the while, I found myself completely unable to breathe.
I was terrified and I knew she knew it.
She gave me a satisfied smile, all anger and annoyance gone in a heartbeat. Her face looked angelic at that second- while she was smiling. So sweet and gentle, that I became breathless for an entirely different reason.
“I think that concludes today’s session, don’t you?” she asked, voice tranquil and eyes softened.
Without waiting for a response, she turned and strolled leisurely out of my office, light blue hospital gown flowing breezily behind her.
I sat there, staring after her, having recovered part of my ability to breathe.
Then, in some logical part of my frazzled mind, it struck me.
She had admitted it. She had said that she’d killed someone and that she didn’t care. This was enough to get her behind bars, where she belonged.
I let out a stiff chuckle that made me sound hysterical.
I could do it. I could avenge whoever’s life she’d stolen away.
If she had been placed in the Institute, the jury must have ruled that it was all an accident. But, I remembered her words clearly:
“I stole the life right out of someone, without regret.”
Today didn’t seem to be turning out so badly after all.
For those of you who have read my previous stories: You probably realize how different this is from what I usually write. However, I decided to take a shot at something a little darker for online. I hope you enjoy.
As always, your thoughts are well appreciated.