Psycho Therapy

by Alan Spencer

  Dedication

  I want to thank everybody at Samhain Publishing, especially Don D'Auria, for putting their energies into releasing Psycho Therapy. For the readers out there who enjoyed B-Movie Reels and B-Movie Attack, thank you for your gracious support. I hope you've enjoyed going insane!

  The Waiting Room

  Craig Horsy touched the wet bandage taped to his forehead when he woke from a deep sleep. The tip of his finger was stained red. He was confused by the mysterious wound on his head. How did it get there? Who did it to him? He didn’t remember coming here. He was slumped upright on a brown leather couch draped in a layer of thick plastic. Confused by the situation, he attempted to stand up and walk. His skull was jolted by a shock of pain that delivered him right back down onto the couch.

  He gathered up enough saliva in his mouth to speak. “Is anybody out there? P-please, somebody, I need help.”

  Craig clutched the wall to pull himself up, and working slower this time, he inched up to a standing position. The dim light above him gave the room the dank yellow color of a chicken incubator. The room failed to jog a memory of how he came to be here until he noticed the red plastic hazard box for dirty needles propped on the wall. Today was his court-appointed visit with the psychiatrist named Dr. Richard Herbert. Now he regretted waking up. There was no way to prepare himself for the session of psychobabble and forced self-reflection, especially in his banged-up condition. Craig winced at the blinding-white headache flaring up behind his eyes. He was in the right place to cure the pain, he thought. Dr. Herbert could write a script, and off to the drugstore he’d go.

  He braced his throat to speak again when a young face peered into the room. Her lipstick was a shade too pink, costing her a decade of her youth, even though she couldn’t be a day over thirty. The woman’s cheeks were sucked in, as was her midsection. Her auburn hair was styled in a bun, and her black skirt and blue button-up top were freshly ironed, creating a secretarial look, even though she was wearing black running shoes.

  “Mr. Horsy,” she said in a sultry voice, “how do you feel?”

  He clutched his head in demonstration. “My head’s killing me. Can you tell me what happened? I can’t remember anything before I woke up here.”

  Without saying a word, she guided him out of the small room and into a carpeted hallway. Each door was closed, but the waiting room flagged his attention. It was a square with eight oak chairs and a coffee table. The front reception desk was a hole in the wall with a frosted glass window. An aquarium to the right displayed cichlids in a background of a fake deep sea. The blue-black fish swam among the remains of a submarine. There were no other patients waiting.

  “Take a seat, Mr. Horsy, and I’ll explain everything momentarily.”

  He smiled at the kind woman. “Call me Craig.”

  She had a soothing, reassuring voice. Some people’s voices had that effect on him, especially those who practiced medicine or worked in the medical field.

  “I’m Dr. Krone’s assistant, Rachael. It’s nice to meet you.”

  “Dr. Krone? I thought I was seeing Dr. Herbert. Am I at the right place?” He laughed. “Did I get the wrong information in the mail?”

  “It happens.” Her eyes fell on his bandage. “But I have your appointment in the books. They gave you the wrong doctor’s name, but thankfully, the right address.”

  She touched his shoulder, and when she bent down, he couldn’t help but enjoy the cleavage she presented. “About your head, you took a mean spill outside. Dr. Krone saw it happen from his office window. You were walking up the steps, and you simply slipped on the ice. He said you landed hard. You smacked your head on the guard rail.” She turned her head down to him in sympathy. “Poor thing, you look so confused. Can I offer you a drink? How about a soda?”

  “I’d love one.” He perked up. “And thanks for being so nice to me.”

  “That’s how we do things around here.” She walked into the back of the office, turning her hips in a practiced strut.

  She must really enjoy getting sodas for people.

  He looked over the table and the magazines, each of them up-to-date: Time, People, Cosmopolitan, The New Yorker, Highlights, National Geographic, The Reader’s Digest, and Mad magazine.

  “What, me worry?” he laughed under his breath, but then paid the price. He clamped his teeth, cursing and squeezing his eyes shut. A yellow flash of razor wire exploded in his cortex. “Christ, I might need X-rays. That was brutal.”

  He rubbed his head as a cheap remedy. Maybe if you were being careful walking up the steps, you wouldn’t have fallen on your head.

  Last night, three feet of snow had fallen, and it wasn’t melting, it being ten degrees outside. Winter in Franklin, Indiana, was bitter.

  Rachael returned with a soda. “Dr. Krone’s ready to see you. You can drink it while you’re talking to him. This is a consultation. The first round is kept simple, so don’t be nervous.” She pointed at his bandage. “You’ve had a bad morning. This will be easy. Afterwards, we’ll send you down the street to St. Anthony’s to double-check you haven’t suffered any serious damage.”

  She then kindly ushered him down the hall to meet Dr. Krone.

  Dr. Daniel Krone

  Rachael opened the last door on the left, and Craig entered of his own accord. The door closed behind him shortly after he crossed the threshold. The room was a study. Bookshelves were lined with encyclopedias, each volume of the DSM—a book of diagnosed mental disorders, he recalled from Gray’s Anatomy—and a wide variety of psychologist’s aids. One caught his attention: Psychology and the Criminal Mind. An acorn-brown leather chair was positioned in the center of everything, and across from that, another of the exact chair. No couch, Craig thought, and was happy to note it.

  A calm, professional voice beckoned him, with what he imagined to be the tone of a seasoned Harvard professor. “Please sit down, Mr. Horsy.”

  The doctor rose up from behind his desk to shake his hand. “Stubby” was a good start to describe the doctor’s appearance. He was over three hundred pounds and five feet tall. His double chin was a marshmallow tire around his neck. His head was small, his chest was bigger, his belly wider, and his pelvis was the largest tier, and then his legs thinned out. A shock of gray hair topped his scalp, though it was thinning, leaving parts of his scalp visible. The doctor wore silver-rimmed glasses, and behind them, pronounced crow’s feet aged his face. His upbeat voice didn’t match his hard countenance. The man was in his late sixties, Craig guessed. The doctor looked weathered enough to be in his seventies, though it was impossible to know for sure.

  The oddest feature of the package—he wore running shoes.

  “I’m Daniel Krone,” he introduced himself, shaking Craig’s hand vigorously and not letting go until he was well into the next statement. “I’m glad you’re here. I’m sorry you took such a mean spill outside. I looked you over. It’s not bad. It’s merely a scrape that won’t require stitches, but I’ll send you home with bandages and antibacterial ointment. I’ll also point you to that clinic down the street, just to be certain, and I’ll foot the bill. I want my clients to be A-okay.”

  And not sue the pants off of you, right?

  The doctor pointed to one of the leather chairs. “Now have a seat. Enjoy your cola. Let’s talk.”

  Craig dreaded the coming moments. The visit itself was an admission he’d done something criminal. And he had. This was better than jail time, as Judge Ingram mentioned three weeks ago in court. “Yeah, let’s talk. I have things to,” he joked, quoting with his fingers, “hash out.”

  Dr. Krone gathered a thick manila folder and plopped down across from him with a twin pop of the knees. “I don’t let my patients sit on a couch facing the other direction. I wa
nt to see their faces. There’s nothing to be afraid of, Mr. Horsy, and there’s nothing to hide from me. I’m a professional. Everything shared between us is confidential.”

  “I understand.”

  The doctor removed his glasses and rubbed at his eyes, working the fingertips in for a good thirty seconds before stopping. “Listen, I know you don’t want to be here. Some judge sentenced you to chat with me for,” he peered at his sheet, “six months. Let’s make the best of this. You might even get prescription drugs out of it.” He gave Craig a smirk. “Would you like that?”

  Craig laughed awkwardly, caught off guard by the strange offer. “Well, now you’re talking. I like the way you think, Doc.”

  The doctor shuffled through the paperwork and located what he was seeking. “I’m going to read off your past criminal record. This is to get us on the same page as to what we need to discuss in our sessions. You admit what you’ve done, and we can continue on with the truth. This means I can better help you. The truth is key, Mr. Horsy. Without it, I’m not only out of a job, but the point of me being here is wasted.” He dabbed a crawling bead of sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand. “I must have the truth from you, if nothing else.”

  Craig mentally turned over the deeds of his past. “I only have one offense besides traffic tickets. This’ll be a short conversation.”

  “Aha.” Dr. Krone waved his finger. The man was clearly tickled by the chance to catch Craig in a lie. “I have access to detailed files, Mr. Horsy.” He turned over many pages before stopping to read one. “I’ll start with your childhood.”

  “My childhood?” Was this what the receptionist meant by taking it slow? Hearing this, he was eager to learn what his childhood record contained.

  What he heard had him reeling.

  “In the first grade, you punched Tim Morgan in the stomach during lunch. He knocked over your lunch tray, and you slugged him. Tim was a bit of a bully, I understand.”

  Craig threw his head back in one long nervous guffaw. “That was a long time ago, Doc. I mean, wow. Tim and I made up afterwards. I couldn’t play at recess for two weeks, and I had to write him a letter of apology. I was really hungry, man. He knocked over my food on pizza day. Pizza day. And it wasn’t the first time he’d done it to me on the good food days.”

  Dr. Crone moved on, satisfied by Craig’s reaction. “Third grade, you placed a whoopee cushion on Mrs. Steinman’s chair.”

  “And she said ‘Whoopee!’ She was asking for it. So book me, Dr. Krone. I can’t believe they documented this. What else you got? Now I’m really interested.”

  The doctor rattled the list off like a preacher at the pulpit. “You pulled the fire alarm three times at Parker Elementary. You lit a cherry bomb in the bathroom while you were being watched by a babysitter. Fifth grade, you removed a fire extinguisher from the wall and doused three girls as they were walking out of the bathroom. And then—”

  Craig cut him off, overwhelmed by how funny his record was. “I didn’t understand why the girls always wanted to go to the bathroom together. They mentioned makeup, so I decided to apply my own kind of makeup on them. Makes sense for a fifth grader to do. So I did it. I know, I know, I’m a jerk. But I was a kid. It’s not like I seriously harmed anybody. And I didn’t do it again.”

  The doctor became stern. “Seventh grade, you broke Drew Massey’s nose.”

  Craig lowered his voice. “Drew Massey, yeah, I remember that jerk. Middle school sucks, man. You understand. Kids make new friends. Old friends break apart. People are labeled and form their own cliques. I won’t make excuses. Drew was pushing a kid in the locker room with a developmental disability. He punched the kid in the gut when he couldn’t work his combination lock open. Drew denied it. But I protected Jake the whole year. Drew backed off after I elbowed him in the nose during a flag football game in gym class. The bully deserved it. Kids can be cruel. I was crueler.”

  “But you’re an adult now. You can’t win fights by starting them.”

  “What kind of philosophical talk is that? I was a prankster. I played jokes when I was little. I’ve gotten into fights. Who hasn’t?”

  “Tell me about Willis Young.”

  Willis Young was his best friend, and maybe still was, but he wasn’t sure.

  “I met Willis at Indiana University. I dropped out during the second semester. You know how it goes. You don’t know what degree you’re after, so you take your general education courses. The problem with me, I lost interest. Willis got his business degree and opened his bar called Half-Time. It’s a sports bar. I visited the place all the time.

  “I lost my job working for the city. I picked up garbage. I came in late too many times, and off with my head, right? So Willis offers me a job, and I really need the money. What happened, Willis’s brother also wanted a job. He gave it to Joey without telling me. I depended on that paycheck, and man, the tips would’ve been awesome. Willis offered me free drinks the night he told me about not getting the job, so I was drunk. I lost control, and, um,” he loosened his collar, “I threw a barstool at him. I broke his collarbone and nose.”

  Craig jumped to defend himself, “Hey, it’s nothing I’m proud of. I felt horrible afterwards. I had no right to do that. I lost control. I’d been drinking too much. I was lucky my sentence was just time served, and of course, these counseling visits.”

  The doctor scribbled notes actively. His tired features were animated. Craig wouldn’t call it a nervous tick, but it resembled one.

  The doctor asked, “So what are you doing for work now?”

  “Unemployed.” He wasn’t proud of it. Thirty-two years old, and no job, the next step in his life was undetermined, and a midlife crisis loomed on the horizon. “It sucks.”

  Dr. Krone finally made eye contact. “I’d worry about getting your house in order before pursuing a job. Unemployment can foot the bill in the meantime. We need you clear of mind. I wish the government would truly focus on the people who need time. They should give you a few months to recuperate from your ordeal. Visit me daily, for one. It’ll take more than a few visits to cure you—anybody, Mr. Horsy. Nobody wants to spend the time anymore to be well. That’s American society. Instant gratification, throw some pills at me, maybe shock therapy, and boom, you’re good again.”

  He wasn’t sure what the soapbox spiel was about. A mantra of the field, he supposed. He’d already touched upon a lot of old memories and fresh wounds in a matter of fifteen minutes. Dr. Krone wasn’t doing a bad job so far, he admitted.

  He’d shortly change his mind.

  “Let’s go back to your prior record.”

  “Prior record? What other minor offenses have been recorded in the history of Craig Horsy?”

  The doctor simply stated the name, “Alice Denny.”

  The name ripped the smile from his face. The room closed in on him, then titled hard, so hard, he thought his head injury was flaring up again. The caught feeling burned in him and wouldn’t subside. How did he know about her? There was no official police report involving her. What happened between them was private.

  The response shot out of him as a threat. “I don’t want to talk about her.”

  The doctor weighed his reaction with calibrated eyes. “I can see your blood pressure rising. You’re a new shade of red. I’ve hit an important topic, haven’t I?”

  “Watch it. I don’t want to talk about her. Your receptionist promised this would be easy today. What’s my favorite pig-out food, what’s my favorite color, that bullshit. How would you know about what happened between Alice and me? Nobody does.”

  Cherry bombs and fire-extinguisher stories didn’t sound so ridiculous now, he thought.

  Dr. Krone removed a handkerchief from his pocket and waved it like a flag. “I’m trying to flush out what brings out your anger. Be honest with me. I’ve done my research on you, Mr. Horsy, to assure positive results. I know who your friends and family are. So I’ve taken the liberty of doing some preliminary interviews. I
’m hard at work for you. My patient’s success is top priority. You do have an anger problem. That’s why Willis was sent to the emergency room. I am correct, yes?”

  “Yes,” Craig admitted. “I’m quick to anger. Isn’t it obvious? I’m a hothead. Impulsive. I overreact, yes. You’re right.”

  “Then let’s hash out the issues, like you said. It can only help. Do it for Willis.”

  What’s with this guy, Craig thought. The doctor forewent the niceties and lunged straight for the throat. Craig couldn’t leave the session. This was court-ordered. Mandatory. He’d have to deal with the unusual doctor, like it or not.

  The doctor licked the tip of his Bic pen. “You have a lot of reasons to be angry, Craig. The issue is you need to learn how to manage yourself. If you can harm your best friend, what will you do to a stranger—or perish the thought, me?”

  “I wouldn’t harm you.”

  Dr. Krone grinned. The gesture accused Craig of lying.

  “Are you rattling the cage and seeing what you can shake up?” Craig popped his knuckles unconsciously. “Rachael said this wouldn’t be so intense.”

  “You’re a special case.”

  “And what the hell does that mean?”

  “You require immediate assistance. Everybody in your shoes does. You may not show the symptoms, but early prevention is the best thing to avoid the sickness.”

  Craig couldn’t relax in the chair, his shoulder blades and lower back becoming rigid. In that moment, he wanted to beat that self-satisfied smile from the doctor’s face. No. That’d validate my requiring immediate assistance. Maybe I am out of control. Maybe I do require ‘immediate assistance’.

  “I don’t want to talk about Alice, not yet. Maybe some other time when I know you better, okay?” He checked his watch. The digital face had cracked and turned black. “Is this session over yet?”

  “No.” The doctor slapped the file onto the ground, and one side of his face sneered hard. “None of this Q&A matters now.” He bent in closer, leveling with Craig. “My treatment is revolutionary. I won’t sling drugs at you or talk your head off. This is a mere preliminary to what we’re about to accomplish. You won’t have an anger problem when I’m through with you.” He rubbed the small patch of saliva from the corner of his mouth. “Do you have regrets, Mr. Horsy?”