The Package by Sebastian Fitzek

Author:Sebastian Fitzek [Fitzek, Sebastian]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781838934507
Publisher: Head of Zeus

28

Just as an alcoholic knows what they’re doing when they lift the glass for their first sip, so Emma knew what she was doing when she untied the string around the package. She was embarking on the most dangerous leg of her self-destructive journey, deep into the slums of her pointless existence.

One of the first things she had learned in her psychiatry lectures was the meaning of the word ‘paranoia’, which comes from the Greek and is best translated as ‘contrary to all reason’. Which was exactly how she was behaving at the moment: contrary to all reason. She was even committing a crime, although violating the law on the privacy of correspondence was the least of her worries. She was far more afraid of herself. What if everyone else was right? The police psychologist who’d claimed Emma had invented the rape to get attention. Jorgo who’d sworn he’d never given her a note.

But the package had turned up again.

Emma was sure that it contained the key to solving all the puzzling events of the last few hours, if not weeks.

But how many people had she met with a completely distorted sense of reality? How many patients had she treated, lost souls who did nothing all day long apart from mentally twisting their observations and experiences until eventually they could serve as proof for the most malicious conspiracy and persecution theories? Had she changed sides? Was she now doing the same?

Emma knew that you could see things differently. That although she’d discovered a number of ‘discrepancies’ in the past few hours, she hadn’t found an ounce of proof to suggest that this package was connected with what had been done to her. Even so, she cut her thumb on the edge of the paper as she tore it open.

She yanked the flaps apart, virtually breaking the package open, and with her right hand burrowed amongst the polystyrene balls that protected the contents during transit. Emma excavated boxes about the size of tablet packets with foreign writing on the top:

MOPФEЙ N60 TAБЛ.

There were at least ten packets, white cardboard with a sky-blue stripe, and Emma opened one of them.

Medicines after all.

Tear-sized, ochre pills in a transparent strip.

But what sort?

Emma had learned English and Latin at school, but no Russian. She picked up the open box again.

МОРФИЙ N60 TAБЛ.

Some of the writing was a reference to the dosage of the pills, she could work that out, but not the brand name or what it contained.

Emma found an instruction leaflet, squashed rather unprofessionally into the box. She unfolded it and the Cyrillic characters reminded her of the medicines on Palandt’s bedside table. She rummaged further in the polystyrene balls and came across something that curiously didn’t cause her to scream, even though she found herself holding a deadly weapon.

A plastic-handled scalpel.

Emma only gasped when she undid the already torn cellophane wrapping to expose a coloured blade.

Is that blood?

Struck by the surreal feeling that someone behind Emma was stretching out their hand towards her, she turned around, but nobody was there.

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