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chapter three 03| surprise
My fit at the precinct didn't convince Larry to send me back to work, he left me no choice but to force him. I put my career on the line, threatening to quit unless he sent me back to work.
What I truly needed was to stop thinking about myself. I couldn't keep dwelling on Theo Darling. He haunted my every movement ever since he made himself known.
He was a psycho abuser, using my DNA as a justification for him beating me.
"Let's try this again," my voice was softer as I restarted my talk with the 9 year old seated in front of me. "What's your name?"
"Timmy." His full name was Tim Drake but I couldn't correct the information he chose to give me. It was his sentences that hinted ways to psychoanalyse him.
Standard attire for me was a silk white shirt, although I had to constantly adjust it, it felt like I was a part of something. "Why are you here, Timmy?"
When his tiny bottom lip began to quiver I knew that he wasn't going to tell me, he was too frightened to speak out. Just like myself.
Without thinking, I offered him my hand. "How about you show me instead?"
I had no idea how it would play out. My mind simply chose to follow up on what had happened when detective Amy Rohrbach had made tactile contact.
Personal details of Tim's life were dumped into my brain, as I learned what was scaring him I wondered if I would ever rid myself of the things I now knew.
I hadn't forgotten about Amy, in fact it felt like a part of my mind was permanently imprinted with all the details that summed up to her life.
"Thank you for sharing with me," my smile wasn't too quick. I never wanted to make any of the children I treated feel as if they were being dismissed.
When speaking to Tim's mom, I explained that he was seeing faces in the wooden frame of his bed. Natural patterns were usually fine, but paired with the human instinct to search for faces and a child's imagination; Tim was evidently scaring himself.
Tim Drake was the last patient of my day, so I decided to leave straight after. Obviously I wanted to be left alone. Angela and Larry would just baby me, a lot had happened in the last couple of days that I wish hadn't.
My simplistic Detroit apartment was in a plainly decorated building. Licked over with a few coats of white paint, and minimalistic tall green plants sat idly in the corners of the halls, making it feel like a calm place.
A red scarf hung on my doorknob, teasing me to touch it. I had no idea whose it was or why it was tied so securely to my door. But, if the last couple of days had taught me anything, it was that I had to be cautious.
I ripped the scarf off, only to find myself being tranquillised with a high dosage of excruciating memories.
The whites of my eyes flashed themselves to the scarf before I collapsed onto the ground.
-
Cold air pricked at my skin, forcing the hair covering my arms to try and combat the unwelcome penetration.
A freezing liquid seeped into my clothing, all but the back of me was soaked. I must've been lying on my front.
Tearing my eyelids away from each other was more effort than expected. I felt groggy, like I was missing time.
An uneven grey road which harboured puddles was the first things my eyes focused on. Waking up outside was an extremely abnormal occurrence for me.
There were two green dumpsters and a pile of rotting trash clumped together in shiny black bin bags piled against the sides. I was definitely in some sort of alleyway, yet something inside of me knew that this wasn't Detroit.
"Hey, are you okay?" a young boy with vibrant green hair and a slim figure approached me, cautious.
With a deep exhausted breath, I rolled on my side, successfully fishing myself out of the puddle and onto my back. "We wouldn't happen to be in Detroit, would we?"
He was now the confused one, he reached down to pull me up off of the floor before dramatically shielding his eyes from me. "Ah- Try Ohio."
"Ohio?" I noticed that he was purposely not looking and folded my arms in frustration. Was I that horrifying to look at? I could only imagine I looked like a wrinkly toe that had spent too much time in a bubble bath. "What's the matter with you?"
"I don't want to be a creep and stare at your b-boobs." his reluctance to speak the word made sense, his appearance and vocabulary only meant one thing. He was a teenager. The kind I had to work with every once in a while, I presumed from his green hair.
The observation that my white shirt was now drenched leaving my nipples exposed didn't make me feel embarrassed, it would soon dry, and my breasts were tiny. They weren't the most eye catching things on the planet.
"Where are we right now?" I tried to study the side of the building, but unsurprisingly the simplistic bricks and fire exit door weren't very vital clues.
He beckoned me to follow him out of the alleyway. A car park which was pretty full, was situated a couple feet away from the building. He nudged my side and directed my gaze toward the roof where I could see for myself that we were at a roller skating rink.
Seriously? I had no idea why I had just woken up in a fairly deep puddle in a dirty alleyway of Ohio, if all of that wasn't enough, it was a skating rink.
"You seem annoyed?" the boy tried to figure out how I felt.
Truth be told, I didn't know. How did I feel? Relieved that I was out of Detroit where Theo couldn't touch me. Or maybe it was his grubby mits that had dumped me next to a dumpster in the first place.
"I'm okay, I'm just going to go inside and see if they have a phone I can use." I offered him a forced smile, "Thank you for helping me out of that puddle. It was really cold."
We chuckled together for a second, then he shook his head. "I'm going in too, I'll take you to the bar."
And so he kept his word, delivering me to the bar serving food from chilly fries to classic cheese burgers.
I couldn't help but watch him as he attempted to make small talk with another teenage girl. She was cute with short purple hair framing her face.
Then all smiles stopped on my part, watching those two took me back to the day I had met Theo as a teenager myself.
"What can I get you?" the bartender smacked her lips together as she chewed her gum, not bothering to close her mouth as it bounced from the bottom of her mouth to stick to her top teeth.
"Do you have a phone I could you, please?" my voice sounded desperate, not to get back home. Just to get out of the poignant skating joint.
