[tos-kah]

Chapter 3: Rick

Nobody - Mitski
01:43 ━━━━●───── 03:50
⇆ㅤ ㅤ◁ㅤ ❚❚ ㅤ▷ ㅤㅤ↻
Venus,
planet of love was destroyed by global warming.
Did its people want too much too?

ﮩ٨ـﮩﮩ٨ـ♡ﮩ٨ـﮩﮩ٨ـ

"So you're saying you're feeling alright?"

The crooked clock behind him, hanging a few inches askew, was a monstrous aberration in the otherwise pristine room. It was a constant irritant, a thorn in my side, a splinter in my mind.

I just wanted to reach out and straighten it, to restore order to the chaos it represented.

"Naya?"

My head tilted, my gaze fixated on the offending timepiece. The doctor's voice faded into a distant hum as my attention was consumed by the clock's skewed alignment.

I needed to fix it now. To rectify the anomaly.

Sweat run down my neck, as it stared back at me, the pointers forming a V-shape as if resembling eyebrows and mocking me.

Unable to tolerate the visual discord any longer, I stood abruptly, dragging my chair with me, behind his desk.

The doctor sighed and rolled his chair away to give me space, to move behind his desk. I climbed onto the chair and carefully adjusted the clock until it was perfectly symmetrical and only then relief washed over me.

Perfect.

Dr. Kovalenko waited patiently for me to return to my seat, his fingers tapping a rhythmic melody on his desk.

"Sorry," I mumbled, feeling a pang of guilt for disrupting the session like that. He after all just wanted to get his work done and go home.

"You said you're feeling alright. Can you describe what that feels like?" he continued as if nothing had happened, his pen scratching across the page in a messy scrawl.

"I got into crafting," I said instead, unsure how to answer his question.

Emotions were as elusive as mist, as intangible as dreams. They were a labyrinth within my mind, a complex tapestry woven from countless threads of experience, memory, and perception.

I wondered if even the most skilled physiologist could truly unravel the intricacies of the human heart.

I wondered what he would answer to that stupid question.

"On a scale from one to ten how 'alright' would you say you're?"

It was clear that neither of us was interested in continuing this conversation. He was forced to ask questions, I was forced to comply. It was always the same repetitive cycle. Every single day for the past month, I'd been here.