Silvers Hollow by Patrick Delaney

Author:Patrick Delaney [Delaney, Patrick]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Oblivion Publishing
Published: 2021-06-01T04:00:00+00:00

have you suffered from any recent hallucinations or fits of epilepsy?

What kinds of questions are these, anyway?

I still don’t know what I’m doing here. Don’t know why I came at all. I’ve never seen a psychologist before. I’ve never needed a psychologist. While I’d argue that they have me confused with someone else, the receptionist does claim to recognize me.

She seems to have calmed down for now. She’s gone back to her typing. On a typewriter mind you. Not a Mac. Not a Dell, or HP. A typewriter. Like the ones Ernest Hemingway and Agatha Christie used. The oldest computers I remember using had that old game The Oregon Trail on them. You remember: the same one that would tell you that you died of dysentery. Or a snakebite. Or that your whole family drowned in the Kansas River. I remember wondering when I was older if the little people in the game would have gone mad if their entire family had died. Would they have had survivor’s guilt? How much longer would they have stuck around until they couldn’t live with themselves anymore? Until they decided that maybe it was better to be dead rather than to go on living without the people that mattered to them most?

This typewriter. The tapping. It makes the cogs in my mind come to life—makes them grind.

Either this practice is really in trouble after the so-called “emergency,” or they don’t believe in technology.

Have you been treated by a physician or hospitalized in the last year?

Ugh. How many more of these are there? I feel that same itch under the soft skin of my forearm. My nails carve red welts into it, sawing back and forth.

Why does it feel like there’s something inside? Buried beneath my skin?

Are you currently taking any prescription medication or anti-psychotics?

It’s surprising how invasive these seemingly innocent questionnaires are. The psychologist is making everyone fill these out before she’ll see them. Isn’t that cheating somehow? Shouldn’t she be the one asking me these questions?

I should just mark NO for all of them. They claim that I’m a patient here, so clearly she should know these things about me.

Or maybe she’s lying. Maybe the receptionist is lying? But why lie? What purpose would that serve?

Have you ever experienced emotional or physical abuse as child?

The pen stops.

The typing stops.

The sounds cease.

During childhood, I preferred to pretend that things like “abuse” didn’t exist. That it was impossible that somewhere, someone was experiencing something horrible that I couldn’t stop. That it could never happen to me, or Ivy. That my parents weren’t capable of anything like that.

Instead, I preferred to believe that we just were. We were there with Mother and Father living with these strange little idiosyncrasies within our family that I never really understood.

But I adapted. I was the chameleon. The invisible champion. The one who would be there when the dust settled to show them that I didn’t need them any more than they needed me.

My mind drifts through the darkest parts of space, past dimming stars and lost dreams and arrives at the red door.

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