Let Me Open Your Eyes

Chapter 1- Four Years of Silence

{"You were so afraid of my voice

                                                     so I decided to be afraid of it too."}

My shrink and I are great friends. But instead of showing our affection for one another like every other pair of friends, our special friendship is based mainly on cold, distant stares at each other and the persistent tapping off her foot on the floor. The only time I tore my challenging gaze away from hers was to check the time, the minutes dragging by slower with each session.

"So Paisley, how has your week been so far?" she finally tried.

I blinked at her.

"What have you been up to?" she persisted as she played with the frayed end of her green swing skirt.

I raised a singular eyebrow at her.

Not for expecting a mute to reply to her, but for her weird clothing yet again. It was beyond me why she always wore the brightest clothing that looked like it belonged on a thin mannequin in a cheap vintage store inspired by the 60's. Not a middle aged therapist that shoved her soft stomach into tight figure hugging outfits as she pretended to know what to do with me. I think she gave up on me a long time ago but convinced my parents that she was getting through to me, probably more to do with her thick wage packet rather than her caring nature.

"How about we play the picture game again? That's always a great ice breaker" she grinned at me sickly sweet and I simply picked more mud off my converse onto her white carpet, daring her to mention anything.

After rooting around her beach bag for the same black and white ink splotches she showed me every week, she simply frowned at the mud crumbs. The drawing themselves were a common technique that therapists tried to use on their patients. You would have thought they would have realised by now that the patients simply chose the answer to please the shrink, not what they actually thought or felt. All I saw was ink spilled on cheap paper that was just another waste of time.

My parents hired Cold Colleen a month ago, a week after my last shrink quit. Poor Janet, she simply gave up after me glaring at her for a straight ten minutes. Cold Colleen glares back at me, still getting paid despite her lack of progress with me. Over the past four years I had been gifted seven wonderful shrinks to analyse my facial expressions and prod at my personal life.

My parents should know by now that nothing is ever going to get their daughter back, no matter how many shrinks or doctors they hire.

...

I self consciously tugged my school skirt down as I walked through the brass iron gates of the prison. The session had left me late for school so the rest of the inmates were already learning trigonometry.

"Hey boys! Look who it is..." a chilling voice called out.

I froze and turned around to see the devil himself standing by the teacher smoking area. Ellis Montgomery's dark brown almost black eyes were enough to make me shiver inside. With an unnecessary vendetta against me, Ellis settled on tormenting me at every given opportunity instead of ignoring me like everybody else.

The boys around him started laughing and whispering, taking long drags out of their cigarettes. He blew out a cloud of smoke as he said "Say whatever you want guys, she can't say anything back."

The feeling of anger started bubbling up inside of me and I snapped my jaw shut just in time before the words tumbled out that I longed to be able to say. He kept his gaze settled on me like he was almost waiting for me to respond, like all of this torment was to get me to speak again. But when he realized that I wasn't going to grace him with the satisfaction of crying or speaking, he nodded to his monkeys and they all put out their cigarettes, walking into the school.