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Mrs. Russell's lips moved vigorously, shaping words she couldn't quite hold onto, the motion almost exaggerated as the therapist leaned forward in her armchair, hands clasped tightly together as though she were trying to draw Eleanor back with posture alone. Her voice reached across the space, loud enough that it should have been impossible to miss, yet it dissolved the moment it touched the air, thinning into a soundless movement. Everything blurred except the ticking of the clock, steady and merciless, carving out seconds with a sharpness that cut through every other noise. It was the only anchor her mind would allow.
Her therapist's mouth kept moving even after the suggestion of hypnosis entered the conversation again, but the moment the word appeared, the meaning of every single thing afterward drifted away from her. Mrs. Russell had been recommending it for weeks, offering it as another approach after so many others had dissolved against the walls of Eleanor's mind without leaving so much as an imprint.
"Eleanor."
She blinked slowly, trying to bring the room into focus, trying to remember how long she'd been sitting here. Therapy had become easier only in the moments she wasn't in it, when she didn't have to pick apart events she couldn't assemble, when no one was waiting for her to shape a narrative out of gaps and distortions. She didn't understand why she had to keep returning to memories she couldn't trust. Why she had to spill them out again and again when they came in fragments, in false images, in pieces that felt stitched together by someone else's hands.
"Eleanor, have you been following through?"
The more she insisted, the more Mrs. Russell pushed her voice forward, and each repeated attempt pressed harder than the last, as though the room itself had decided to let the words through whether she wanted them or not. They seeped and clung to her while the sofa held her in place, its cushions pressing upward with an inevitable pull, sinking her deeper as if the fabric understood she was trying to slip away and refused to let her.
"I don't wanna do that," the words scrapped out of her throat in a strained rasp, her own voice betraying her by giving shape to what she refused to confront.
Get out.
Get out.
Get out.
Get out.
Get out.
GET OUT NOW.
The thought slammed through her in uneven bursts, faster, louder, until her breathing buckled beneath it. Her shoulders drew downward as if her lungs had been locked for minutes, the release sudden and unsteady, a tight gasp pushing through her lips as though she were surfacing from too far underwater.
