Psychotherapy || HS

Five

HELLINGLY ASYLUM

Maximum Security Ward for the Criminally Insane

SESSION FOUR

Incorrigible. The single word that could decide how I felt about Harry Styles. I'd heard he's worse than that. A master manipulator. According to Bing, he made it incredibly difficult, near impossible, to allow you control over the therapy session. But for whatever reason, Harry slightly stuck to me like an animal and its prey. He observed me almost as much as I observed him. Sometimes it felt like I was the patient and he, the psychologist.

"He'll make you question your values, your works, your life. He'll make you believe... everything. If you're not careful, he'll reverse the therapy process. You'll be the bug under his little microscope." Although his snotty attempts at stealing my job were disgusting, I knew James was right.

He's worse than I could imagine, according to James. Or maybe it's his way of intimidating me out of my job. I don't know that what James was saying might be true. All I know is that I won't allow the manipulation to go farther than it already has. James's voice trailed off and a far away looked settled into his eyes. For once, he seemed speechless. "He's a patient. I need to know how he found out all the things about me when he's supposed to be on lockdown."

"I know. But the world is his playground. He can get what he wants when he wants it. I'm not the smartest tool in the shed, but that doesn't make him dumb, too."

"You speak about him like he's some devil manifestation..."

He gave me a weak smile. "Well, that's certainly putting lightly, Ms. Sophia." Bing was told to sit in on a session with Harry and I, but I didn't expect for it to go well. My agitation with Harry as a person, a human being, was growing daily. I'd had a patient deranged, but not one so aware of his fuckedupness, yet continues it as if it means nothing. Definitely psychotic. All there was to do was wait for the patient we'd both become used to.

Harry walked in manacled and his biceps seemed to have been getting larger as the weeks progressed. With our time together nearing a month, I'd learned more in a few sittings than I thought I would in a single year. Harry, for his part, was quieter today. He cooperated when the guards pulled him through the door and forced him to sit. He didn't say a word, he didn't acknowledge that James was in the room, he only stared at me. Not into my eyes, but all over me. And in that moment, I'd become the bug under his microscope.

After nearly ten minutes of sitting in painful silence, I turned off the tape recorder and almost declared the session to be over. Then, he spoke. "Do you like your new picture?" I didn't know who he was speaking to, so I began to look around. Was he having hallucinations too? "You, Soph." I could see James' eyebrows raise at the use of the nickname; the utterly toxic nickname that was starting to sound less life-threatening from his mouth. "The painting. Do you like it?"

He nodded his head over to the wall where a new painting with a golden frame took over the place of the painting he'd ripped to shreds two weeks ago. I didn't have the spare money to replace it nor the time. What, with spending so many late nights listening to the gravely rasp of his voice explaining over and over again how he murdered a total of fourteen girls and four boys, but stopped because fourteen and four were his favorite numbers, and he liked even numbers.

The painting was a portrait of my family. My brother, sister, mother, and even my father all smiled like they had in another group picture. My knees buckled and one cracked slightly when I pushed myself up from my eyes, breaking eye contact with Harry. The painting, I felt, was slightly damp and it was just recently painted and delivered. There was an envelope attached and I reached for it with shaky fingers. My heart didn't feel like it was remotely close to the middle of my chest, but more my ears, because this incessant ringing and thumping was in my brain.

The white envelope taped to the bottom right corner of the frame had a single note in it. The animal it was made into was flattened and when folded out, it was a swan. A swan. The signature animal for the killings of Harry Styles. I swallowed and James asked what it was, but I brushed him off. I unfolded the note to reveal Harry's handwriting. It read: I would've killed you already if I truly wanted to. Remember that, Soph. The note was in my favorite color, seafoam green. But the pen was in my least, red, blood red.

I wasn't sure how to word my response, so I placed the note in a drawer on the inside of my desk and went back to my seat beside James and across from Harry. His eyebrows raised and his quietness worried me. "It's lovely, Harry. Thank you." Curls slightly bounced in a nod and it wasn't until Harry formally looked up at me did I notice his different features.

Bags resided under his eyes and they seemed to have many relatives, because dark circles accompanied. His arms and legs were stiff and he barely moved without flinching in slight pain. His hair was greasy, probably from lack of washing it. What had happened in the two weeks since I'd seen him? I asked James to step out of the room for a minute while I talked with Harry. He hesitantly nodded and decided to leave his things behind, besides his phone to keep him company. "Harry, are you alright?"

Harry blinked a few times before answering. "That's the first time you've called me that." It really wasn't. It was the first time I'd called him Harry to his face, though. He'd avoided my question. Successfully avoided my question with an unrelated subject. "Do you really like it?" His head nodded over to the painting again.

"Yes, I do. How did you get the picture?"

"I stole it. Here," he pulled a picture from the inside of his jumpsuit. It was the same picture the painting was inspired from. "I took it that day I was walking around the room. I'm good at taking things, I guess."

It didn't sink in what was going on with Harry until I remembered James Bing. "Excuse me for a moment. Don't touch anything else, please." I'm sure it's against the law, or at least my contract, to leave the room with the patient all alone. But Harry would kill anyone but himself, so I didn't exactly worry. James stood outside the door and smirked when I got out. "What did you do?"

"I don't know what you mean, Soph."

I slapped him. "You put him on Loxitane, didn't you?" James was still in shock from the slap that I hit him again. "Didn't you?!" He nodded. "That's not your fucking job, Bing. He isn't your patient, he's mine. Do you not understand that two days of that medication can fuck you up? He's been on it for a week! What progress can I make? Look at him!" James looked through the small opening in the door and nodded. "Stay away from Harry Styles, or I'll make sure your medical license will never see the light of day again, do you understand me?"

He nodded. I ended session for that week.

--

lol bing fucked up

sorry for the short chapter, but the chapters aren't really supposed to be long soo... yeah

go read my other story, Burgundy, you'll really like it if you're into writers and stuff like that.. i'm bad at explaining things, but yeah

i love you and have a good day ♥