The waiting room.

It was three fifteen in the afternoon as the obnoxiously loud swinging pendulum of the clock tick tock tick tock'd away without a care or concern for those who have to hear it. Sitting in the waiting room of the Southern California Psychology Center, or at least, that's what the tatty cardboard sign in the front window told me, I could think of a million better things to do with my time.

You see for inside the room it was covered wall to wall in cement grey. But if you looked carefully in the uppermost right corner, you will be able to witness the presence of the paint peeling away from the wall. Maybe it wanted to escape or rid of its existence in this place. Maybe the paint itself was going mad. Or would that be the slightly scuffed, off-white tiles in the room? One can clearly see that the former once shone bright and proud but from years or neglect and un-proper care, it now sat sad, with black marks damaging its once flawless complexion. One can see how the staff at the establishment tried to hide that fact with the use of a large ratty brown carpet that I would hate to admit that I really do not want to touch. You know, it just looks like one of those carpets that once you mess something onto it, it becomes a permanent resident and no matter how hard you scrub, it will never come out again.

There's a faint hint of what your grandmothers home would smell like present in this room. For the longest time, I could never understand where it was coming from. But upon further inspection, I noticed that it was coming from the superior yellow couches. The yellow couches were so bright and out of place in this room that it merely hurt my eyes just looking at them. To be honest, they also irritated me a bit for they seemed to want to make you happier, or try to make you smile with their brightness. But who would want to be happy if they were forced to go to a psychologist by their adoptive parents?

But do you know who really gets on my nerves? Brenda. She's the receptionist at the centre and I honestly wanted to punch her upon first encountering her. Her outwards appearance seemed sweet enough with her slightly greying hair, purple bags underneath her eyes and yellow stained teeth. No doubt from years of smoking. But as I said before, it is not her outwards appearance that gets you, its the continuing sound of wet, mulching chewing of her gum with small intervals of popping. I understand if you were at least trying to be courteous about it by closing your mouth, but the blatant display of the open mouth chewing seemed to make the gum look like it was inside of a rusty old washing machine. If I was insane, and not saying that I am, I would definitely kill Brenda first.

A bell tinkled as the front door swept open and a new victim of utter boredom entered the practice. She was one of those anorexics you know, hunched over and swimming inside her coat that she wrapped tightly around her with her frail hands. Her black hair was oily and matted from neglect and her skin was an odd pale colour that made me wonder if she would go transparent. She swiftly spoke to Brenda before sitting down on the couch across mine.

Her grey eyes seemed to be scanning every inch of the room relentlessly, as her hands nervously kept wrapping around themselves. You see, for this woman she needed no introduction or name as I already knew it. So once her grey shark-like eyes made contact with mine I gave her a wicked grin and leant forward causing her to lean back in recognition.

"Hello, Mother."