Sarah-part 1

Sarah’s skin was red hot, a visible glow beneath it. Her fingers were tracing the flaking patterns on the page, strands of her auburn hair lining the edges of the cushioned armchair. He studied her with delicate care, trying to see every minor glance, every minute detail. She had chewed and gnawed her nails down into shiny white nubs, pristine and sparkling. The elliptical face that gazed back at him burned with contempt.

“Shall we start again?” he asked, making sure to smile.

“This time give me more paper. There wasn’t enough of it last time, and you forgot the ink”.

Her cheekbones strained against the pallid surface of her flesh, poking out in odd places. The nose was too thin for her oval face, her lips too pudgy. They were red creases, slick and glossy with saliva, the taut skin around them clammy. The eyes were tiny red marbles, flecks of luminous pink contaminating the colour. Overall, the expression was haunted, and along with the drained appearance, it served to unsettle Counsellor Jim. He motioned to the mountain of tattered pages in front of her with one of his stubby fingers.

“I gave you paper. Sarah, look at what you did to the paper I gave you”.

She simply stared blankly back, as if the pages didn’t exist. The eyes looked anywhere but at him, even acknowledging the flimsy remains of the sheets, before meeting his eyes. Suddenly, her marred hands reached for the stack, and without a moment’s hesitation, hurled them off the side of the archaic writing desk. Jim just smiled patiently, as two of the sheets floated down onto his lap. Massaging the pleats of his cream suit trousers, Jim found his best deadpan look, and focused all his attention on the scowling girl a few feet from him. Steadying his breathing as much as he possibly could, he prepared for his next move. Carefully, he smoothed out the two pages in his lap, and proceeded to place them before her, cushioned by fluffy padding, in the centre of an embellished cranny in the wooden surface of the desk. Unperturbed, Sarah, shifting herself in the armchair, ceased her scowling, and pressed one soft, skeletal hand on the pages. With one strong, swift movement, the two pages glided through the air, before slowly spiralling to the bleached floor.

The counsellor could already tell that Sarah would be a difficult case. The girl was beaming smugly, as the pages settled on the chalky floor. The crimson pupils followed him as he leaned down, and with a quick scooping motion, had the pages back where they had once been. The oily rims that were her lips began to fold backwards into her open mouth, the tongue obscured by pin-like incisors. A look of determination seemed to be forming on the youthful, yet weary face. For the first time, as he waited for her next move, he noticed that her chin was rather droopy, the pimpled flesh sagging under the weight of some strange, hideous growth. He was surprised at how he had not noticed before, but Jim rarely noticed deformities amongst his patients. It was a mental note he had made many years before.

To his complete lack of surprise, the sheets of paper found themselves on the floor again, this time in soggy wads, from when she had stuffed them in her mouth, one flaking sheet at a time.

“Are you having fun, Sarah?” he asked, careful to keep his tone composed, along with his body language.

“Why yes! Are you Jimmy?” she asked gleefully, cocking her eyebrows at him, the layered grey hairs springing up as she did, the soft, determined look, replaced with one showing vague vulnerability, with a suggestion of satisfaction. Her pale, bony fingers began to play with one of the loose strands of ginger lying loosely on her chest.

“You do know you are quite predictable, Sarah? Frankly, I’m rather disappointed”.

To his delight, the contented expression vanished with the mere mention of his concluding word, replaced with an expression of deep hurt, grieved by some inexplicable force in the word “disappointed”. However, Jim had known it would have that effect. Sarah may be difficult, but she wasn’t clever when it came to concealing her insecurities. Counsellor Jim’s talent was being able to discern what troubled his patients the most, what stayed with them when they lay down to sleep at night. Rubbing at a rather patterned and complex coffee stain on his violet necktie, he slowly edged his foot over to the pillowed corner by hers, nuzzled in between the rusted chair of the writing desk and the spruced up, sagging folds of the armchair. For a brief second, her bare toes made contact with the rugged, yet spotless edge of his right brogue. The faint touch startled her out of her pain, and she pushed herself back into the snug rucks of her chair, their fading brown thread pillowing her sides, the foot sliding away.