A Year of Novembers

Chapter Six

        I’ve always been astounded by how invincible humans sometimes think they are. I’ve especially begun to gain an interest in why others will question the sanity of that one invincible individual, and I’ve arrived at the following conclusion:

            Sanity is relative. My sanity is not your sanity, and if I happened to call you insane, my own sanity would be brought into question. The issue is that we don’t know what sane is. We see something different and we raise our hands in alarm, shrieking, “This is different! This is not okay!” and we label it as insane or eccentric or bad. What is bad? Sanity?

            What is the point of being human, and being so tragically finite, if we don’t at least experience invincibility once? To be able to taste life in a wine glass, to make music from the crystal mouth, to feel free and wild and immortal- those moments make life worth living.

            The compactness of Janeston makes everything so small and squashed up together, and I am irresistibly in love with it. All of this newness, this strange masterpiece of art and oddities, all pressed into a tiny city that barely makes it onto a map; I cannot resist the cosmic pull towards invincibility.

            After three years of experience in the career, I find counselling to be an interesting- when not trying- pastime. I had worked myself up in my building, and now had a larger room. My apartment was small and shabby, but being that I spent most of my time at work, I never found myself minding much. I was drowning in love with life, and I was full of naivety and wonder. What a world I lived in; what eyes I saw it through!

            I receive word that I will be receiving a new patient, that this one is being required to come and have sessions, and I let an excited curiosity take control of me and make me giddy.

            At approximately three P.M- fifteen minutes late- a man enters and begins taking off his coat and hat by the coat rack, wearing a deep grey vest over a blue sweater.

            “Miss Alcaster, I presume?” he asks, shrugging off his outer coat.

            “Yes, that’s me,” I smile. “And you are?”

            He clears his throat, and, his voice remaining clear of malice, says, “Shouldn’t that be on your little clipboard there? My information?”

            I embarrassedly set the clipboard down beside me, my face reddening. “Yes, yes, that’s true, but I like to have my patients introduce themselves.”

            “And what if they don’t want to?” He hangs the coat on a hook and sits on the sofa. “Do you make them do it then?”

            Never before has the patient turned the spotlight on me so directly, and I end up rushing to give a reply. “I…  I generally ask them to do it still. It makes them feel less like…a- a patient, I suppose.”

            “Interesting,” the man replies coolly, stroking his chin with his forefinger and thumb. “Quite interesting.”

            “Sir, can you please tell me your name?”

            He raises his eyebrows. “So you actually do make your patients go through with this?”

            “Yes, sir.”

            He shifts on the sofa, leaning forward and folding his hands in his lap. A smirk plays at his face, and he places his arm on the back of the sofa, leaning back lackadaisically. “James Augustus Rush.”