Requiem of the Ivory Bride: An Ode to the Seven Deadly Sins

Interlude IV

I sat somewhere different, I could tell, yet I couldn't bring my eyes to open. They were wet and clenched tight. I knew they had to remain closed; it was safe. My fingernails were pressed into palms and though it should have been painful, the sensation seemed distant, off, but a reminder I was alive. My breathing came heavy, as though my diaphragm couldn't lift the weight that constrained my chest, and something pressed into the back of my head.

"Kyle?" a man's voice asked in a breathy voice, and I knew I should recognize it. Where was I? Could I open my eyes?

No, not yet. Something was off.

"Sarah?" he asked, quieter yet.

Something released in me, a connection broken as I visualized a rope finally snapping. With one question on my mind, I opened my eyes.

"Why did you call me Sarah?" I asked. Yet, it wasn't the answer that intrigued me now. I was in a completely different position in his office. I wasn't on the couch anymore - I now sat on the floor, leaning into his bookshelf with my head resting against all the books that make him an expert, with his stapler sitting next to my inner thigh.

I felt my jaw drop almost absently as I furrowed my brow. What happened??

"Do you know where you are, Sarah?" he asked, leaning intently forward, excited at whatever I had done.

I shook my head to clear it; something wasn't right. "Why do you keep calling me Sarah?"

"Am I speaking to Kyle right now?" the therapist calmly asked.

"Of course you are!" I adamantly declared, perturbed with his absurdity. "What is going on?!"

He leaned back in his chair, pleased about something as he jotted down a few scribbles on his judgement pad.

"You were just telling me about Sarah South," he said without looking up, a sneer spread across his face.

"Why am I sitting here? Why do I have your stapler?"

"You tell me," he said, peering at me. He was trying so hard not to be giddy with whatever I had revealed to him. My stomach felt queasy looking at him.

I looked down at my legs again, seeing the stapler next to where I always saw Sarah cut. "Sarah's cutting?" I guessed.

He nodded approvingly. Is this turning into a game for him? This wasn't so much fun for me. Jesus, when would my hour be up?

"Why do you care about Sarah's cutting?" I asked him.

"It helps me to understand you if I can grasp the effect her self-mutilation has on your psyche."

"What's there to understand, Doc?! She hates being the person that everyone leaves behind."

"Is that what you're afraid of? Being alone?" he asked me pointedly.

"It sucks, but that doesn't hurt as much as having people opt out. People that shouldn't opt out, but they do because I'm not as virtuous as they either wanted me to be or as they thought I was. Does that make sense?"

He nodded, and shook his hand urging me onward.

"It's like the rock in the middle of a stream. The waters come in greeting, but only stay for a moment. The water realizes I'm only a rock, not a fish, not even debris that can move in the same direction. They move on down the river toward better things, and I stay exactly where I am - neither moving forward nor moving backward. Just being. Just getting through the day. Just being me. And when they all opt out, it makes me hate being a rock. But I can't stop being me, I can't stop being this rock. If the water could just realize that I want to move down the stream but I can't, what does that mean? Would the water dry up? Would it become stagnant just to be with me?"

I looked down at the stapler, and realized why Sarah had to cut to get through the day. Sometimes it was too much, and who am I to judge how people try to get through the mess we're left with?

"Do you feel stagnant?"

"I feel that I can't judge people because each one has to carry their own weight of who they are. I feel whether you're water, a rock, or even the shitty debris that floats atop, we should all treat each other as fellow humans." I knew I was getting annoyed with the word "feel" but it was the only thing that this therapist knew. Nevermind the fact that emotions are a part of the primal brain. When was this fucking hour up, anyway?

"Are you human, Kyle? Really?" the doctor asked me as a smile lifted his face into what looked like a snarl of a vindictive old man.

My heart started racing, and my diaphragm couldn't keep up with suffocation that threatened to overcome me.

"Of course I am!" I felt myself screaming as the black dots crept across my vision.