Panther | Ghost x FemOC

2 ⋮ A Haunting

୧‿̩͙ ˖︵ ꕀ⠀ ♱⠀ ꕀ ︵˖ ‿̩͙୨

Present - Savannah, Georgia, USA - 7.22.2022

"Are you with me, Bea?"

...

"Beatrice?"

The sweet, calm voiced pulled me back from the grasp of my mind. I blinked and refocused my line of sight to the middle aged woman. A saccharine smile adorned her face. Too sweet for me.

"Yeah. 'M here." I replied hesitantly, trying to avoid eye contact with the woman. I brushed away a loose strand of hair and my eyes shifted away from her to scan the walls, most of them covered with self-help posters or calendars stocked to the brim with penned in appointments. A certificate on the wall behind the woman's desk.

A doctorate in psychology seems to go a long way. This woman had stacks of awards just sitting casually on her shelf. Probably for fixing a shit-ton of war-torn veterans and soldiers alike. With me, however, she's doing a rather questionable job.

Maybe it's me who's not willing to put the effort in.

"Beatrice?" Her voice breaking the silence I didn't realize I fell into.

I tore my gaze away from her shiny awards and back to her. A tight-lipped apology weaseling its way out of me.

"It's alright. Did you want to answer the question? Or we could move on if that makes you more comfortable." She said, lightly tapping her pen against her clip-board, the sound bouncing off the walls of the small, cozy room. She was either impatient, or anxious. Likely both.

"What was the question again?" I asked sheepishly, avoiding eye-contact. Staring at my boots against the white carpet was infinitely more appealing to me than mandatory-therapy.

She breathed a soft sigh.

"How much of you is still trapped back in the Russian taiga?"

My eyes flickered to her. Her frizzy auburn curls and the sickeningly green cardigan she wore, even the sight of her baby pink nails made my stomach churn with unfamiliarity. I stripped any form of normalcy from my life 11 years ago. I was hardly ever in the public as it is, aside from the occasional bar or my very empty apartment.

I shrugged in response. "'M all here."

She shot back without a thought. "You're lying. This won't work if you're not truthful."

I sighed indignantly. My head lulled back, counting the tiles in the ceiling as I pondered a response. My lips pursed.

"Not much. 'Have dreams 'bout it sometimes... Don't exceed much further than bein' in the trees."

She hummed appreciatively and wrote something down, seemingly content with the answer. I have no idea why I lied to her. She was a sweet woman but a part of me just didn't like her. Maybe I was jealous of her. Jealous of the cat hair on her ugly green cardigan, the wedding band on her ring finger, the scribbled drawing on the wall, likely from her kid. Sometimes I wish this wasn't the life I led, the little girl inside of me screaming for regularity.

But there's no other option. The thoughts are gone in an instant.

"Do you think you're still running? Running from what happened?" She asked, finishing her note on the clipboard.

My brain refused to answer that. The lamp on her desk cast a muted, pale orange glow across the wall—a strangely captivating shade. I focused on it, letting the silence settle, hoping she'd take it as an answer.

"Back then, when did it stop being about survival, and start being about something darker? Something primal?"

I wanted this stupid leather love seat to swallow me whole, to drag me down so deep I'd never have to claw my way up again. My thumb found its way to my mouth, teeth pressing into the raw skin beside my nail, scraping, biting. My leg bounced with an erratic, uncontrollable rhythm, and each thud of my heart crashed against my ribcage, desperate to break free, like some caged thing fighting for escape. The room felt too hot, the walls too close—too close to keep everything buried.