Snippets as promised x Firstly - In'between Worlds
I dreamt once that I was flying like a great bird. I couldn’t turn my head, but I could hear the sound of the wind as my wings spread out, caressing the cold air as it sent me soaring ever closer towards the sun. I felt the heat against my skin and shrank away from it, enclosing my face and body with my wings. Thus I fell towards earth. No longer caressing, but plummeting to my doom. I woke with a shudder and I swear the bed jolted as though I’d landed upon it. I was home. I was safe.
Chapter 1
“Emily? Come on you lazy thing, wake up and hear the birds sing!”
I heard the words drift into my dream, but I didn’t want to open my eyes. I was warm, safe and away from the nightmare that was my life if I kept my eyes tightly shut. However, the insistent rocking back and forth that then accompanied the unrelenting singing of my name, over and over, forced me to crack one eye and glare as best as I could at my room-mate.
“There you are sleepy head. Come on out of that bed, it’s time to eat and breakfast is ready, so come on Emily, ready and steady...”
I should probably point out at this stage that my roommate has a dependency to say sentences that rhyme – much to mine and everyone else’s annoyance, but it is her only coping mechanism apparently, though I have no concept of how rhyming words helps her cope with her trauma?
“Come on, come on, it’s a beautiful day, hip hip hurray!”
“Oh, fuck off!” I snarled at her and pulled the covers back over my head. Sadly for me, one of the nurses was passing the open doorway at the time.
“Emily, you not up yet? Feeling okay child?”
I heard her soft footsteps approach my bed and with a loud sigh I peeped out from under the cover. “Sorry, no, just getting up if Jane would leave me alone for a moment...”
Hearing my hint, Jane clutched her arms around herself and drifted off into the corridor, “Oh my, oh my, time to fly...”
I sighed again and caught the eye of Margaret. She was one of the nice ones and although I was twenty-five, she still called me ‘child’ as she did everyone else. I liked it. It made me feel loved and I’d told her once, not long after arriving.
“I’m glad child.” She’d said, “because to me, you are someone I will strive to protect and care for, as if you were my own... but don’t tell the other nurses, they don’t like us getting too close, know what I mean?”
She’d winked at me then and given me a friendly nudge. Now, Margaret was looking down at me with concern and just a little disgust at hearing my language.
“Sorry for my language Margaret, Jane was annoying me.”
“Oh yes, good dream was it?”
I nodded, but found I couldn’t form the words to describe my adventure. I could feel the dream drifting away and knew that soon, I’d have forgotten it.
“Well, you know the rules child, time to get up and have something to eat before the canteen closes in half an hour... they have that yogurt you like, I saw it this morning.”
I smiled and pushed myself into a sitting position and yawned, “Okay, I’m up. I’ll do anything for one of those yogurts, you know me so well Margaret!”
Smiling, she left the room and the happiness left with her. My smile dropped from my face and I gazed out at the empty corridor and felt the terror return as I faced another day in this hell-hole. I swallowed hard and licked my lips as I urged my body to get up, go to the ensuite bathroom, wash and brush my shoulder length hair and dress in jeans and an Alice Cooper T-shirt. My slippers finished my ensemble and off I went, the smell of bacon and eggs guiding my way.
After my small breakfast of yogurt and red berries, a large mug of stewed tea and a piece of Galaxy chocolate given to me by a fellow in-mate I wandered back down the corridor towards the common room. I knew today was my turn with the psychiatrist Dr Marian Griffiths and I had half an hour before my appointment. On entering the large room, I was surprised to find it empty. It was rare to find anywhere in this place empty, there was always someone drooling, wandering, or merely sitting and staring off into space, which wasn’t so bad, but still, it was another person invading my space.
I wandered to one of the large oval windows that lit the room with morning sunshine and closed my eyes against the warm glare. I didn’t need to see outside to know what lay before me. A perfectly mown lawn that stretched for about an acre. Waist high bushes of Rhododendrons lay along one side of the lawn while on the other a hedge of lavender and Rosemary. Along the bottom of the lawn stood the eight foot high wall made to look pretty with roses creeping up and over.
The old hall was built in the early nineteenth century for some rich person or other, who’d died without having children. His wife had suffered from depression and hallucinations or something and as he couldn’t bear her going to some institution, he’d turned his own home into one. On her death years later, apparently still screaming about the ‘visitors’, he’d handed the hall over to the local authorities before dying himself of cancer.
I’d read the brief history in some pamphlet and had asked if anyone knew who these ‘visitors’ were? No one had given my question the time of day, fobbing me off with some incoherent answer; I’d not asked again. I had my own theories anyway. I was convinced the hall was haunted. I mean, it was the perfect setting wasn’t it? Old hall, lots of tragic history and now a home for the insane? So much negative energy had to conjure some kind of spirit?
Besides which, I’d heard strange noises in the night. Footsteps were normal throughout the night, as were groans, moans, screams and profanities, but these footsteps echoed and were loud, as if a giant were roaming the hallway.
“Whatcha doin’?”
I sighed loudly, opened my eyes and looked down at the woman staring up at me with intense interest. “Mia, what does it look like I’m doing? I’m leaving this place in my head.”
She nodded her head and hugged her raggedy doll tighter to her small chest. “Oh, well come back soon...”
“I will, but first I have to go to see the doc. You okay?”
Mia chewed on her inner check for a moment and rocked herself before leaning forward as another inmate shuffled in. “Not really. My baby won’t wake up you see and they’re blaming me... again.”
“Ah, I see.” I did of course as Mia told me the same thing whenever we met, which was most days. Her doll clutched to her bosom and the sheer sadness and grief of what she did edged into her face.
“Well, I’ll see you tomorrow Mia, goodbye.”
Picking up her dolls hand, she made it ‘wave’ at me before shuffling off into her favourite corner of the room where she’d make a little den of the chairs to play house with her ‘baby’. The nurses would encourage her to put the chairs back but after a few minutes, she’d make another den and it would begin again.
I’d been horrified the first time I’d heard of the reason for her incarceration. Aged seventeen, she’d become pregnant after a gang rape of four boys aged between fifteen and nineteen, who’d done it as a dare. Mia had been considered a little ‘slow’ by the children and adults in her village and nobody believed her until the evidence of that night became clear.
Her father owned a farm and on seeing her swollen belly had taken a shot gun and found the boys one by one, blowing off their weapons and leaving them to bleed to death. One boy survived apparently, but he’s not in a good way. He then turned the gun on himself, leaving Mia and her mother to cope with the aftermath of his actions and the consequences of the attack.
Four months later Mia gave birth to a boy. Her mother only left the room for a few minutes to visit the bathroom. On returning, she found Mia alone, calmly sitting up in bed holding a raggedy doll to her breast. The hospital staff searched high and low for the child, eventually finding his remains in the bushes beneath Mia’s window, ten stories’ up; she’d flung him away like garbage.
I watched her for a moment as she began turning the chairs to make her little den that would help her feel safe for just a little while before movement near the doorway caught my eye and I turned to find one of the nurses watching me. She was one of the newer ones who still wasn’t sure if this was the job she really wanted and always became flustered if a patient caught her eye.
“You have an appointment this morning with Dr Griffiths in ten minutes...”
I continued to stare at her, “I know.” I couldn’t keep the contempt at being reminded out of my voice and I saw the flicker of fear on her face.
“Right, okay then...”
I watched as she quickly turned and left the room and let my shoulder drop. It felt like I had a permanent knot in them and my neck was sometimes so rigid from tension it hurt my head. I gently rolled them around and gazed out of the window once more. It was a few minutes walk to Dr Griffiths office; I wasn’t in any rush.
I didn’t move as more inmates tottered into the room in ones and twos, like Noah and his Ark to be saved, but for what, I had no idea. Eventually I sighed loudly and left. The corridor was no longer silent, but people filled it, coming and going, or merely standing looking lost. I hurried through the double doors and ran up the flight of stairs to the second level to the offices of the doctors. I moved to the side of the carpeted corridor as two orderlies escorted a women from another office. She looked fairly sedated; a newbie, you could tell them a mile off.
I knocked on Dr Griffiths door and opened it before she bade me enter. It was my one rebellion, my one tiny bit of control in this place, and she knew it.
As always Marian Griffiths was dressed impeccably in a loose black skirt, a white shirt with a maroon scarf hanging around her slim neck. I couldn’t see her feet, but guessed she would be wearing short heels to lift her five foot five stature just a couple of inches. Her chestnut hair was piled high on her head and somehow it always looked perfect, even though loose strands fell all around her head. I wondered if she spent hours in front of a mirror to make it look that way. She never wore much make-up, she didn’t need to. She was quite attractive and I guessed her age to be late forties. No wedding ring, possible lesbian; I’d ask her one day.
“You checking me out as usual Emily?” Marian smiled and I grinned back having been caught in the act.
“Of course Dr G, you always impress me with your wardrobe!”
Marian inclined her head in what I presumed to be a ‘thank you’ whilst indicating the armchair opposite her desk. I sank down into it, listening to the squeak of the leather and shuddered as the coldness of it penetrated my thin T-shirt. Marina noticed.
“If you prefer the couch...?”
I glanced at the beige two-seater that sat along the far wall and shrugged, “This’ll do, for now.”
“Okay then. Where would you like to start today Emily?”
I shrugged again, “No idea. I wish I could remember stuff to tell you, but, I can’t.”
Marian looked down at her notes on me. “Can you recall our last conversation?” At my nod she continued, “You became quite upset with me. How do you feel at this moment?”
“At this moment? Pissed off with my room-mate and sick of being here. I hate being dictated to and I hate being inside. I want to be outside in the fresh air.”
“I understand that Emily, but last time, you attempted to leave, do you remember that?”
“Of course I do. I punched that nurse pretty hard for grabbing me like he did, so you put me in confinement for my own good.”
“You still sound angry about that.”
“Wouldn’t you be? Put into a place for crazy people and your rights taken away and treated like a third class citizen... of course I’m angry.”
“You think you’re third class?”
“I don’t have any say in what happens to me do I? So yeah, I’m a slave to you and this place.”
Marina wrote a few notes and closed her file. “Alright Emily, I understand. You’ve been here five months and it’s been slow progress, which can be frustrating for you, but we have to try and get to the bottom of why you did what you did and help you remember it.”
I shrugged refusing to agree and looked away towards the window. My thoughts flew through my head and I tried to keep my face blank as the memories flew past like a film. I remembered everything. How could I ever forget, but how could I ever tell them? It was impossible and the irony was that if I told them the truth, they’d lock me up!
“Emily? Where did you go just then?” Marian’s voice filtered into my awareness and I quickly blinked away the burning tears.
“Nowhere, just fazed out.”
“I see. And during this ‘fazing out’ did you recall any details of why you were here?”
I began to bite my nail nervously under Marian’s gaze. I knew what she wanted me to say. That I killed a man, then we’d talk about blame and guilt and repercussions and forgiveness and then they would do one of two things, keep me here indefinitely or send me to jail for murder for a very long time. I doubt that if I told them the truth they would forgive me and release me. Being here was I had considered the better of two evils, but I didn’t have to like it.
Without my bidding, his face swam into my consciousness and the breath caught in my throat and the emotion that came with it choked me for a moment. I fought to hold it at bay, but a couple of tears escaped before I angrily wiped them away. His beautiful face.
I became aware that Marian was watching me carefully and I quickly pulled myself together and waited for her obvious questioning.
“Who were you thinking about at that moment Emily?”
“No one of importance.”
“No one of importance? I see. So it wasn’t the security guard?”
“Security guard? Who the hell is that?”
I knew she was trying to read me and I kept my body as still as possible. I fought the urge to scratch my nose or look away. Eventually she gave a little nod and returned to her notes. “This will be the tenth session with me, how do you feel it is going?”
I shrugged, it didn’t matter how I felt, it would continue until they decreed otherwise. I was now watching Marian carefully as she seemed to be weighing up something. I couldn’t help my curiosity, “What is it?”
She seemed surprised for a moment that someone else should be asking a question in a therapy session. “Well, it’s just that, I was wondering how you’d feel about hypnotherapy?”
So there we were at last. The authorities were sick of waiting to see if I’d confess to murder, they’d given the go-ahead to try other techniques; Marian’s sessions weren’t working quickly enough.
I looked away, unable to continue seeing the expressions flash across her face. Expectancy, fear, hope, professional interest. I couldn’t let her hypnotise me. I had no idea what would come out and I didn’t know enough about it to know if I could fake it. If I spoke of what had happened to me, they’d lock me up and throw away the key for sure, but how could I not tell them under hypnotherapy? It would all come out about the so-called security guard and the tragic circumstances of his death. His wife and family were already baying for my blood, believing I was hiding behind the hospital; in that, they weren’t wrong.
I could feel Marian watching me suspiciously and I abruptly stood up, unable to bear it any longer. I walked to the bookshelf and glanced quickly through the variety of books, not really seeing any of them, but needing to go through the motions.
“Emily?” Marian’s voice penetrated the long silence and brought my vision into view. My sharp intake of breath was loud to both of us and Marian quickly came to my side, “What is it?”
I swallowed hard the rising bile and shook my head as I backed away from the books. “Nothing... nothing, I just, I mean, I have to go... can I go?” I felt sick, my head swam and I began to see black spots in front of my eyes. I reached out blindly clutching for anything stable and vaguely heard Marian shout for help. I staggered as my sub-conscious remembered the couch near-by and I aimed for it, but strong hands caught me before I fell into oblivion and for a moment, I felt ‘his’ hands and I wanted to weep.
Marian watched the two nurses lay Emily on a stretcher and wheel her out before returning to the bookshelf that ran along the length of the wall. She scanned the shelves looking for any clues to this latest development, but apart from her array of counselling and physiological books, her medical and self help books, she couldn’t see what had caused Emily to have an extreme episode. She tried to work out exactly where Emily stood and as they were both the same height, she looked through the books at eye level. She was surprised to find an old book which she’d forgotten she had lent to a friend. She must have placed it on the shelf without thinking, hoping to return later to take it home. She pulled it out and flicked through the pages. There was no reason that she could think of for Emily to behave in such a manner over any of her books, but this one least of all. She lay it flat to remind her to take it home and put it with the rest of her collection. She glanced down at it; the calligraphy was beautiful, making the title all the more enticing ‘Medieval Britain’. She walked back to her desk to write her notes, but something didn’t feel right, she felt it in her gut and somehow, the book was the clue.
Please remember this is my first draft and only giving you a rough idea - let me know your thoughts x
http://www.pjroscoe.co.uk
Chapter 1
“Emily? Come on you lazy thing, wake up and hear the birds sing!”
I heard the words drift into my dream, but I didn’t want to open my eyes. I was warm, safe and away from the nightmare that was my life if I kept my eyes tightly shut. However, the insistent rocking back and forth that then accompanied the unrelenting singing of my name, over and over, forced me to crack one eye and glare as best as I could at my room-mate.
“There you are sleepy head. Come on out of that bed, it’s time to eat and breakfast is ready, so come on Emily, ready and steady...”
I should probably point out at this stage that my roommate has a dependency to say sentences that rhyme – much to mine and everyone else’s annoyance, but it is her only coping mechanism apparently, though I have no concept of how rhyming words helps her cope with her trauma?
“Come on, come on, it’s a beautiful day, hip hip hurray!”
“Oh, fuck off!” I snarled at her and pulled the covers back over my head. Sadly for me, one of the nurses was passing the open doorway at the time.
“Emily, you not up yet? Feeling okay child?”
I heard her soft footsteps approach my bed and with a loud sigh I peeped out from under the cover. “Sorry, no, just getting up if Jane would leave me alone for a moment...”
Hearing my hint, Jane clutched her arms around herself and drifted off into the corridor, “Oh my, oh my, time to fly...”
I sighed again and caught the eye of Margaret. She was one of the nice ones and although I was twenty-five, she still called me ‘child’ as she did everyone else. I liked it. It made me feel loved and I’d told her once, not long after arriving.
“I’m glad child.” She’d said, “because to me, you are someone I will strive to protect and care for, as if you were my own... but don’t tell the other nurses, they don’t like us getting too close, know what I mean?”
She’d winked at me then and given me a friendly nudge. Now, Margaret was looking down at me with concern and just a little disgust at hearing my language.
“Sorry for my language Margaret, Jane was annoying me.”
“Oh yes, good dream was it?”
I nodded, but found I couldn’t form the words to describe my adventure. I could feel the dream drifting away and knew that soon, I’d have forgotten it.
“Well, you know the rules child, time to get up and have something to eat before the canteen closes in half an hour... they have that yogurt you like, I saw it this morning.”
I smiled and pushed myself into a sitting position and yawned, “Okay, I’m up. I’ll do anything for one of those yogurts, you know me so well Margaret!”
Smiling, she left the room and the happiness left with her. My smile dropped from my face and I gazed out at the empty corridor and felt the terror return as I faced another day in this hell-hole. I swallowed hard and licked my lips as I urged my body to get up, go to the ensuite bathroom, wash and brush my shoulder length hair and dress in jeans and an Alice Cooper T-shirt. My slippers finished my ensemble and off I went, the smell of bacon and eggs guiding my way.
After my small breakfast of yogurt and red berries, a large mug of stewed tea and a piece of Galaxy chocolate given to me by a fellow in-mate I wandered back down the corridor towards the common room. I knew today was my turn with the psychiatrist Dr Marian Griffiths and I had half an hour before my appointment. On entering the large room, I was surprised to find it empty. It was rare to find anywhere in this place empty, there was always someone drooling, wandering, or merely sitting and staring off into space, which wasn’t so bad, but still, it was another person invading my space.
I wandered to one of the large oval windows that lit the room with morning sunshine and closed my eyes against the warm glare. I didn’t need to see outside to know what lay before me. A perfectly mown lawn that stretched for about an acre. Waist high bushes of Rhododendrons lay along one side of the lawn while on the other a hedge of lavender and Rosemary. Along the bottom of the lawn stood the eight foot high wall made to look pretty with roses creeping up and over.
The old hall was built in the early nineteenth century for some rich person or other, who’d died without having children. His wife had suffered from depression and hallucinations or something and as he couldn’t bear her going to some institution, he’d turned his own home into one. On her death years later, apparently still screaming about the ‘visitors’, he’d handed the hall over to the local authorities before dying himself of cancer.
I’d read the brief history in some pamphlet and had asked if anyone knew who these ‘visitors’ were? No one had given my question the time of day, fobbing me off with some incoherent answer; I’d not asked again. I had my own theories anyway. I was convinced the hall was haunted. I mean, it was the perfect setting wasn’t it? Old hall, lots of tragic history and now a home for the insane? So much negative energy had to conjure some kind of spirit?
Besides which, I’d heard strange noises in the night. Footsteps were normal throughout the night, as were groans, moans, screams and profanities, but these footsteps echoed and were loud, as if a giant were roaming the hallway.
“Whatcha doin’?”
I sighed loudly, opened my eyes and looked down at the woman staring up at me with intense interest. “Mia, what does it look like I’m doing? I’m leaving this place in my head.”
She nodded her head and hugged her raggedy doll tighter to her small chest. “Oh, well come back soon...”
“I will, but first I have to go to see the doc. You okay?”
Mia chewed on her inner check for a moment and rocked herself before leaning forward as another inmate shuffled in. “Not really. My baby won’t wake up you see and they’re blaming me... again.”
“Ah, I see.” I did of course as Mia told me the same thing whenever we met, which was most days. Her doll clutched to her bosom and the sheer sadness and grief of what she did edged into her face.
“Well, I’ll see you tomorrow Mia, goodbye.”
Picking up her dolls hand, she made it ‘wave’ at me before shuffling off into her favourite corner of the room where she’d make a little den of the chairs to play house with her ‘baby’. The nurses would encourage her to put the chairs back but after a few minutes, she’d make another den and it would begin again.
I’d been horrified the first time I’d heard of the reason for her incarceration. Aged seventeen, she’d become pregnant after a gang rape of four boys aged between fifteen and nineteen, who’d done it as a dare. Mia had been considered a little ‘slow’ by the children and adults in her village and nobody believed her until the evidence of that night became clear.
Her father owned a farm and on seeing her swollen belly had taken a shot gun and found the boys one by one, blowing off their weapons and leaving them to bleed to death. One boy survived apparently, but he’s not in a good way. He then turned the gun on himself, leaving Mia and her mother to cope with the aftermath of his actions and the consequences of the attack.
Four months later Mia gave birth to a boy. Her mother only left the room for a few minutes to visit the bathroom. On returning, she found Mia alone, calmly sitting up in bed holding a raggedy doll to her breast. The hospital staff searched high and low for the child, eventually finding his remains in the bushes beneath Mia’s window, ten stories’ up; she’d flung him away like garbage.
I watched her for a moment as she began turning the chairs to make her little den that would help her feel safe for just a little while before movement near the doorway caught my eye and I turned to find one of the nurses watching me. She was one of the newer ones who still wasn’t sure if this was the job she really wanted and always became flustered if a patient caught her eye.
“You have an appointment this morning with Dr Griffiths in ten minutes...”
I continued to stare at her, “I know.” I couldn’t keep the contempt at being reminded out of my voice and I saw the flicker of fear on her face.
“Right, okay then...”
I watched as she quickly turned and left the room and let my shoulder drop. It felt like I had a permanent knot in them and my neck was sometimes so rigid from tension it hurt my head. I gently rolled them around and gazed out of the window once more. It was a few minutes walk to Dr Griffiths office; I wasn’t in any rush.
I didn’t move as more inmates tottered into the room in ones and twos, like Noah and his Ark to be saved, but for what, I had no idea. Eventually I sighed loudly and left. The corridor was no longer silent, but people filled it, coming and going, or merely standing looking lost. I hurried through the double doors and ran up the flight of stairs to the second level to the offices of the doctors. I moved to the side of the carpeted corridor as two orderlies escorted a women from another office. She looked fairly sedated; a newbie, you could tell them a mile off.
I knocked on Dr Griffiths door and opened it before she bade me enter. It was my one rebellion, my one tiny bit of control in this place, and she knew it.
As always Marian Griffiths was dressed impeccably in a loose black skirt, a white shirt with a maroon scarf hanging around her slim neck. I couldn’t see her feet, but guessed she would be wearing short heels to lift her five foot five stature just a couple of inches. Her chestnut hair was piled high on her head and somehow it always looked perfect, even though loose strands fell all around her head. I wondered if she spent hours in front of a mirror to make it look that way. She never wore much make-up, she didn’t need to. She was quite attractive and I guessed her age to be late forties. No wedding ring, possible lesbian; I’d ask her one day.
“You checking me out as usual Emily?” Marian smiled and I grinned back having been caught in the act.
“Of course Dr G, you always impress me with your wardrobe!”
Marian inclined her head in what I presumed to be a ‘thank you’ whilst indicating the armchair opposite her desk. I sank down into it, listening to the squeak of the leather and shuddered as the coldness of it penetrated my thin T-shirt. Marina noticed.
“If you prefer the couch...?”
I glanced at the beige two-seater that sat along the far wall and shrugged, “This’ll do, for now.”
“Okay then. Where would you like to start today Emily?”
I shrugged again, “No idea. I wish I could remember stuff to tell you, but, I can’t.”
Marian looked down at her notes on me. “Can you recall our last conversation?” At my nod she continued, “You became quite upset with me. How do you feel at this moment?”
“At this moment? Pissed off with my room-mate and sick of being here. I hate being dictated to and I hate being inside. I want to be outside in the fresh air.”
“I understand that Emily, but last time, you attempted to leave, do you remember that?”
“Of course I do. I punched that nurse pretty hard for grabbing me like he did, so you put me in confinement for my own good.”
“You still sound angry about that.”
“Wouldn’t you be? Put into a place for crazy people and your rights taken away and treated like a third class citizen... of course I’m angry.”
“You think you’re third class?”
“I don’t have any say in what happens to me do I? So yeah, I’m a slave to you and this place.”
Marina wrote a few notes and closed her file. “Alright Emily, I understand. You’ve been here five months and it’s been slow progress, which can be frustrating for you, but we have to try and get to the bottom of why you did what you did and help you remember it.”
I shrugged refusing to agree and looked away towards the window. My thoughts flew through my head and I tried to keep my face blank as the memories flew past like a film. I remembered everything. How could I ever forget, but how could I ever tell them? It was impossible and the irony was that if I told them the truth, they’d lock me up!
“Emily? Where did you go just then?” Marian’s voice filtered into my awareness and I quickly blinked away the burning tears.
“Nowhere, just fazed out.”
“I see. And during this ‘fazing out’ did you recall any details of why you were here?”
I began to bite my nail nervously under Marian’s gaze. I knew what she wanted me to say. That I killed a man, then we’d talk about blame and guilt and repercussions and forgiveness and then they would do one of two things, keep me here indefinitely or send me to jail for murder for a very long time. I doubt that if I told them the truth they would forgive me and release me. Being here was I had considered the better of two evils, but I didn’t have to like it.
Without my bidding, his face swam into my consciousness and the breath caught in my throat and the emotion that came with it choked me for a moment. I fought to hold it at bay, but a couple of tears escaped before I angrily wiped them away. His beautiful face.
I became aware that Marian was watching me carefully and I quickly pulled myself together and waited for her obvious questioning.
“Who were you thinking about at that moment Emily?”
“No one of importance.”
“No one of importance? I see. So it wasn’t the security guard?”
“Security guard? Who the hell is that?”
I knew she was trying to read me and I kept my body as still as possible. I fought the urge to scratch my nose or look away. Eventually she gave a little nod and returned to her notes. “This will be the tenth session with me, how do you feel it is going?”
I shrugged, it didn’t matter how I felt, it would continue until they decreed otherwise. I was now watching Marian carefully as she seemed to be weighing up something. I couldn’t help my curiosity, “What is it?”
She seemed surprised for a moment that someone else should be asking a question in a therapy session. “Well, it’s just that, I was wondering how you’d feel about hypnotherapy?”
So there we were at last. The authorities were sick of waiting to see if I’d confess to murder, they’d given the go-ahead to try other techniques; Marian’s sessions weren’t working quickly enough.
I looked away, unable to continue seeing the expressions flash across her face. Expectancy, fear, hope, professional interest. I couldn’t let her hypnotise me. I had no idea what would come out and I didn’t know enough about it to know if I could fake it. If I spoke of what had happened to me, they’d lock me up and throw away the key for sure, but how could I not tell them under hypnotherapy? It would all come out about the so-called security guard and the tragic circumstances of his death. His wife and family were already baying for my blood, believing I was hiding behind the hospital; in that, they weren’t wrong.
I could feel Marian watching me suspiciously and I abruptly stood up, unable to bear it any longer. I walked to the bookshelf and glanced quickly through the variety of books, not really seeing any of them, but needing to go through the motions.
“Emily?” Marian’s voice penetrated the long silence and brought my vision into view. My sharp intake of breath was loud to both of us and Marian quickly came to my side, “What is it?”
I swallowed hard the rising bile and shook my head as I backed away from the books. “Nothing... nothing, I just, I mean, I have to go... can I go?” I felt sick, my head swam and I began to see black spots in front of my eyes. I reached out blindly clutching for anything stable and vaguely heard Marian shout for help. I staggered as my sub-conscious remembered the couch near-by and I aimed for it, but strong hands caught me before I fell into oblivion and for a moment, I felt ‘his’ hands and I wanted to weep.
Marian watched the two nurses lay Emily on a stretcher and wheel her out before returning to the bookshelf that ran along the length of the wall. She scanned the shelves looking for any clues to this latest development, but apart from her array of counselling and physiological books, her medical and self help books, she couldn’t see what had caused Emily to have an extreme episode. She tried to work out exactly where Emily stood and as they were both the same height, she looked through the books at eye level. She was surprised to find an old book which she’d forgotten she had lent to a friend. She must have placed it on the shelf without thinking, hoping to return later to take it home. She pulled it out and flicked through the pages. There was no reason that she could think of for Emily to behave in such a manner over any of her books, but this one least of all. She lay it flat to remind her to take it home and put it with the rest of her collection. She glanced down at it; the calligraphy was beautiful, making the title all the more enticing ‘Medieval Britain’. She walked back to her desk to write her notes, but something didn’t feel right, she felt it in her gut and somehow, the book was the clue.
Please remember this is my first draft and only giving you a rough idea - let me know your thoughts x
http://www.pjroscoe.co.uk
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