The Terror{blist}
Page 1
THE TERROR{blist}
A short story by
cseanmcgee
The Terror{blist}
Copyright© Cian Sean McGee
CSM PUBLISHING
‘The Free Art Collection”
Santo André, São Paulo, Brazil 2013
First Edition
All rights reserved. This FREE ART ebook may be copied, distributed, reposted, reprinted and shared, provided it appears in its entirety without alteration, the reader is not charged to access it and the downloader or sharer does not attempt to assume any part of the work as their own. Free art, just a writer’s voice and your conscious ear.
Cover Design: C. Sean McGee
Interior layout: C. Sean McGee
Author Foto: Carla Raiter
This novella was written under the influence of
KMFDM – NIHIL
for keli, nenagh and tomás
CHAPTER ZERO
“Do you feel bored often?”
“Yeah I guess.”
“Well, how often? All the time, most of the time, sometimes, hardly ever, never?”
“Well, it depends really?”
“But for the sake of this test, we’ll just say…?”
“Maybe a few times a week, maybe once a day.”
The Doctor looked estranged. That response wasn’t sitting on his chart. The boy was speaking outside of context. He was surely delusional but as much as The Doctor scanned over his page, he couldn’t find mild delusion as a common symptom of depression.
“Stick to the script,” he thought. “So, we can say, most of the time then?”
Gavin looked bored right now. He was sitting slumped in the chair, leaning his arms on his legs and hanging his head like a dead weight over the edge of his knees.
“It depends,” he said.
“Well, that’s not an answer Gavin. You have to choose one of the five responses.”
“But it depends. I mean, if I have to do boring things then of course I’m gonna get bored and if I don’t, well, then I don’t get bored.”
“How often do you do boring things? All the time, most of the time, sometimes, hardly ever or never?’
“I mean, my job it sucks and even television kinda sucks now. There’s never anything good on and they just keep repeating that episode that nobody likes.”
“So all the time then. Interesting.”
“So wait, the depression makes me do boring things that make me bored or the boring things make me bored and that makes me depressed?”
“That’s a very pessimistic way of looking at things? Have you always felt hopeless? How often would you say you feel hopeless? All the time, most of the time, sometimes, hardly ever, never?”
“I... well.”
“Ok, well I’m gonna go ahead and just tick most of the time here. Now, do you ever feel sad when other people are happy?”
Gavin thought about his brother and when he had proposed to his fiancée at Gavin’s birthday dinner. Everyone was so happy that night. They took all of the spoil away from Gavin and put all of their doting adoration to his brother and Fernanda, his stupid fiancée. His face scrunched and crumbled as he thought about that night and probably he didn’t know or he thought he was keeping a secret of it by saying nothing but The Doctor could read plainly, the expression on his face.
“Interesting,” he said, ticking a box. “Now, would you say you ever feel sad for no reason?”
“There’s always a reason to be sad.”
“Really, so you’d say that you find reasons in most things to be sad? So would you say that you feel sad all of the time, most of the time, sometimes, hardly ever, never?”
“That’s not what I said. What I meant was that if someone is sad then there has to be a reason. Like your cat died or some stupid TV show ended or something.”
“But you do feel sad then?”
“Well yeah, I mean everyone does. Just look at the television. All they show is some war or plague or some famine and you can't do anything about it and they make you want to, but there’s nothing you can do except feel sad. And you don’t ever hear about AIDS anymore. It’s still there you know, like in Africa and everywhere, it’s still this really big thing, but nobody cares about it anymore.”
“Does that make you sad, that people have AIDS?”
“Yeah I guess. I mean, it bugs me more that people stopped giving a shit.”
“And do you think about that a lot, death?”
“I suppose.”
“Ok, so I’ll just go ahead and tick most of the time then.”
The Doctor put down his file. Gavin tried to peek, but he couldn’t see. His then eyes drifted to the prescription pad on The Doctor’s lap. The handwriting was so neat but as neat as it was, it was illegible. It just looked like a whole bunch of wavy circles and Gavin remarked to himself silently at how they all looked like little nooses swirling off the ends of every word.
“So you do have depression but don’t worry, though depression is a deadly condition you shouldn’t fret, if we start treatment right away, we can have you on the road to betterment in no time.”
“How long is this road? And what is no time? Why do your answers get to be ambiguous?”
“So we’re gonna start you on Ciprimil, 100mg,” said The Doctor, ignoring his doubt. “And from there we will see what sort of results we get.”
“We’ll see? You’re not expecting the drugs to work.”
“Well, each person is different and requires different individual treatment.”
“And it can only be cured with drugs? You’re sure, there’s nothing else I can do?”
“Sorry, you’re confused; by different treatment we mean different drugs. But yes, drugs are the only way to contain your depression. And pretty soon, you won’t be feeling sad anymore and you won’t be feeling bored at your job or while watching television, everything will be back to normal. And that confusion should clear up too.”
“Wouldn’t it be easier to just stop doing boring things? You know, change my job, maybe stop watching television? Who knows, take up tennis?” Gavin said in a mocking laugh.
The Doctor looked annoyed by his attempt at humour.
“Things aren’t boring Gavin, you just see them that way. This is a condition of depression. You need to take your medication and then you can continue doing the same things except you will feel a different appreciation for them. You won’t be so negative all the time and bringing other people down.”
“So wait, are you curing my depression or my boredom?
“Just take the medication.”
The piece of coloured paper zipped as The Doctor ripped it away from the pad. Gavin noticed how The Doctor’s fingers sort of trembled as he outstretched his hand, holding the coloured prescription out for him to take. It wasn’t a lot. It was real subtle. He wouldn’t have noticed it had he, not the confidence issue making it so difficult for him to look people in the eyes when they spoke. Probably none of his others patients noticed. Probably he didn’t either. It wasn’t like his hand was thrashing about in some fit, it was just this subtle tremor like when you blow the steam off the lip of a hot coffee and a tiny bit of breath skims against the top and the coffee ripples lightly; not a lot, just enough so more steam comes back to the surface.
He thought it was odd though that The Doctor’s hand only tremored now and not earlier when he’d greeted him or when he rested his hand on the seat’s backrest waiting for Gavin to sit down, or when he listened to Gavin poorly describing how he felt or even when he was ticking all of those boxes and flicking the top of the pen so that it clicked all the way through the consult like he was counting the seconds without looking at the clock. They did, though, only tremor, the second that he held out the prescription.
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Strange.
Gavin looked at his own hands as he left the office. He held them out in front of his face with his palms facing upwards. They were so still. He tried thinking about things that he thought might stress them to shake or to tremble. But it didn’t really work because nothing really bothered him, not enough to tremble his hands anyway. He wondered then, what the doctor was thinking while he was holding out that prescription.
Gavin handed the receptionist the receipt for the consult.
“That’ll be three hundred dollars. How would you like to pay; in one installment, in two installments, in three installments, in four installments, in…”
Her mouth opened and closed like a back door, unhinged and molested by a strong breeze and a ‘could-care-less’ attitude towards keeping it shut. Her eyes, though, like fleshy barnacles, fixed themselves to Gavin’s constantly dropping stare. It was as if there were two of her; one was listing every possible box that could be ticked; throwing bails of sinking words from the bow of her thwarting tongue while the other was fighting to keep the shades above her eyes drawn for fear that a single blink might be enough for her to find her vessel shipwrecked on the isle of exhaustion.
“I’ll just pay it in one,” said Gavin.
“And how would you like to pay; in cash, cheque, card? And will that be credit or debit. We don’t work with any insurance carriers and we don’t offer receipts, sorry. Oh and do you have a parking receipt?”
“Yes,” said Gavin reaching into his wallet.
“Yeah, we don’t validate parking either. I was supposed to tell you earlier. There’s usually a sing here on the counter.”
“You mean this one here that says you don’t validate parking?” said Gavin, pointing to the sign.
“Oh, that’s it. So how would you like to pay?”
“Credit,” said Gavin.
He handed her the card. He wanted to tell her to be careful because it was just one rough handling away from snapping in two. He couldn’t explain it. He seemed to be the only guy whose cards always broke in half from carrying them in his wallet. I mean, what was he doing wrong? Was there a special way that he was supposed to sit that nobody had taught him? Should he have been flexing his other cheek to balance it out? It wasn’t the type of thing you’d ask a stranger.
As The Receptionist forced the card into the machine, the split at the bottom cracked that little bit more and the card bent back in her hands. Gavin thought it would snap then and there. It didn’t though; by some freak chance or maybe due to the universe’s apathy towards events like these; events that to Gavin were tantamount to proof of the cynical and mocking conspiracy orchestrating his preposterous life.
The Receptionist gave him the kind of look that said; “I would never in my life, ever, even if I were drunk, sober, stoned, in a coma, on crack or even dead; never, ever, ever, want to have sex with you.”
That was how Gavin understood her stare. And he knew it was because of the card. She saw it and she probably made assumptions about him straight away; girls did that sort of thing. But what was she assuming? That, Gavin, didn’t know. What do girls think? He wanted to tell her that she was pretty. He wanted to tell her that he wasn’t broke, just because his card was nearly snapping. And he wanted to tell her to be careful because if it broke, he wouldn’t be able to get another one, on account of not having a job and he was lucky he got this card because the bank messed up and accidentally sent him one when they were meant to revoke his overdraft. Someone must have made a typo or something and it worked in his favour.
He said nothing, though.
“Denied,” said The Receptionist. “Got another card?”
He didn’t.
“Can you try it again? There is credit on there” he said.
Worse than having a nearly broken card was having a nearly broken card with no credit on it. The Receptionist gave him another one of those ‘not-on-your-life’ kind of stares when he lifted his head in a polite smile to which he quickly returned his shameful eyes to the table where her fingers tapped on the buttons of the mouse.
While she tried the card again, Gavin gritted his teeth, watching her yank out the card and shove it back in as if she were stuffing a disparate pair of socks into a half closed drawer. Gavin winced, but the card didn’t break.
He noticed she was wearing a name tag and lifted his sight to read it. He never really used people’s names when he spoke to them, but he’d seen other people doing it and those types of people always seemed lucky, like good things were drawn to them. So why not? He adjusted his stare and focused on the badge, but he couldn’t make out her name. It was one of those silver badges and her name was printed in grey or silver too and the way the light was hitting her, it made her badge reflect like a mirror. So Gavin had to squint his eyes so that he could better see through the glare. And as much and he squinted and strained and as close as he leaned to her chest, he just couldn’t make out her name.
“Ahem,” she said, clearing her throat. “Get a good look?”
She looked angry and maybe she should have been, had he in fact been leering at her breasts and not at the silver name tag clipped to them. Gavin felt every prostrating eye arresting his regard from the rows of seats behind him. It was impossible not to feel the whipping tisk of their disapproval and knowing that their eyes were as wide as an open range with not a flicker of their lashes to dampen their outrage or concern.
“I wasn’t looking at… I was just…”
“Approved,” she said, ripping the card from the machine and handing it to Gavin in two pieces.
She threw the two pieces onto the table and she didn’t even apologise. Gavin took the two pieces of his card and carefully put them into his wallet. He hoped they wouldn’t become four. The Receptionist had a mean stare. Gavin wanted to tell her that he was sorry and that he wasn’t looking at her breasts and that maybe she should have her name on a plaque or on something that sits on the table in front of her and people can look at a tag on a cup or on the table to find out her name and not at her breasts.
“Thank you,” he said politely.