Psychotherapy || HS

Three

HELLINGLY ASYLUM

Maximum Security Ward for the Criminally Insane

SESSION THREE

The third week of therapy with Harry Styles had drained my energy to nearly the point of no return. Like how alcoholics and drug addicts suffer from rock bottom, I was slowly scratching my way up the sides of the walls to refrain from falling into the deep abyss deemed rock bottom. My lack of sleep and overall fatigue was the effect of spending many nights lying awake and hoping, praying that Harry wasn't smart enough to escape the asylum. Even though I know for sure the brain that man possesses is filled with more knowledge than a serial killer should have, I hoped he couldn't figure out how to escape.

I didn't want to wake up with Harry Styles' green eyes staring into my soul and claiming my body as his. Sometimes, when I felt like I couldn't breathe, I would think of Harry and the sudden asthma attack I was seeming to have got worse. In the few years I'd worked at Hellingly and the years of college courses I'd taken, nothing prepared me for the nightmares I'd have about my patients. Listening to their problems made me feel less crazy, but Harry Styles only made me more crazy.

I couldn't stop myself from bouncing my leg with the coffee rushing through my veins and a high amount of anxiety sending signals to my brain to run. I didn't want to deal with Harry today, I didn't want to listen to his atrocities. Not that I had a choice, because it is my job, but I would rather bang my head against a wall-or rather have Harry bang my head against a wall than to listen to his many disgusting and heavily detailed performances.

We didn't begin our session talking about him. He didn't ask me a question, and I didn't dare look at him, afraid that my nightmares and the reasons for my uneasiness would come true. I know that Harry can snap any moment and take his anger out on me and not a painting, and I know, despite their training and strength, that unless they shot Harry, the guards couldn't do anything about it. I could hear his tongue swipe against his bottom lip before saying, "I'm impressed with your credentials."

He still had the same chilling voice that I spent my late nights listening to. Watching court videos, police interrogations, and listening to our conversations from sessions to write down notes. He acted differently around me. As if court and the police were causing something to hold back his tongue. But with me, as he should be, he was freer and a lot more vulgar and slightly intrusive. "You don't know anything about my credentials, Mr. Styles."

"Au contraire, Ms. Sophia, whom I told to not call me that." His long finger stuck up in the air and he leaned forward in his seat. "I have a complete dossier on you, Soph." Soph. The nickname since childhood sounded toxic on his lips. The flick of his bottom lip when he let the 'ph' hang in the air. It wasn't a drug I wanted to be addicted to.

Harry then proceeded to recite my complete vitae and the only thing I could wonder was how he knew all these things. The schools I'd attended, when I decided to drop out of high school (which lasted all of fifteen hours and a case of beer), when I went back to high school, the college I'd attended, the second college I'd attended, awards, and previous workplaces. He even knew my salary. "That's an insult to such a beautifully intelligent person, you know. You're worth a lot more than what they pay you."