Silent Screams - C. E. Lawrence [24]
Lee rolled his eyes. “Oh, please. That’s a little far-fetched, don’t you think?”
Dr. Williams smiled. “What do you think?”
Lee squirmed in his chair and looked at the door.
“Have you noticed that often when we encounter a difficult or painful subject, your first impulse is to leave?”
Lee looked back at her. “No shit, Sherlock.”
To his surprise, Dr. Williams laughed. Then she said, “That’s not how your mother would react to such vulgarity, is it?”
“No. When I was a kid, the bar of Ivory soap would be in my mouth so fast I wouldn’t know what hit me. So what?”
“So maybe you were testing me. I don’t have to tell you that often in therapy, as in our relationships, we’re ‘testing the waters,’ trying to evoke a different response from the one we grew up with.”
“Right. You don’t have to tell me. Classic transference, yadda yadda. So what?”
“So nothing. Either it’s useful to you or it isn’t. It’s not important whether I’m right or not—what matters is whether or not it helps you.”
Lee looked down at his hands. Nothing can help me, he thought. A silence widened between them, a chasm built of his unwillingness to wade into the murky depths of his mind, to grapple with the monsters lurking there.
“He carves them up,” he said abruptly, hoping to shock her, to punish her with his words. He hated her calm, her confident poise, and he wanted to shake her out of it.
“Who does?” she asked.
“The killer. He slashes words into their bodies.”
“What kind of words?”
“The Lord’s Prayer, for God’s sake!”
A thought sprouted in his head, a tiny seed that blossomed as he spoke.
“He’s searching too.” He spoke slowly, the idea still forming.
“Who is?”
“The killer. For him, it’s an eternal search for a better outcome. Only it never happens: The moment passes. Then the rage takes over, and the only thing left for him is to kill. But each time he goes in hoping it won’t come to that.”
“How do you know this?”
“I don’t know—I just have a feeling about it.”
“An instinct.”
“Right—an instinct. There’s something about him, his MO, his signature—he’s killing as a last resort.”
“So you feel you understand him.”
“Yes, I do.”
“And his rage? Do you understand that?”
Lee looked out the window. The pigeon was back again, strutting and pecking, his bright orange eye impersonal as Nature herself.
“Oh, yes,” he said, biting out each word. “I understand his rage.”
Chapter Nine
Samuel was drawn back to the campus again, hoping to catch another glance of the misty mermaids behind their translucent lace curtains. It was a Friday night, though, and the mermaids were gone—out having fun, no doubt. Girls like that are sluts, Samuel! Sluts! They will corrupt you!
He shook off the harsh echo of his mother’s voice in his head and walked toward the dormitory. A couple of lights shone on the second floor, and he could see bookish students seated at desks, heads bent over their studies. As he approached, he saw light in the windows of one room on the first floor. The first-floor room was different—the lighting was dim, with a warm orange glow to it.
It was the glimmer of intimacy.
He crept to the window and crouched down behind some bushes, listening. There were sounds coming from inside the room, unclean sounds that made his heart pound faster, as a sickly excitement filled his veins. His stomach felt like a vast cavern carved out of his flesh. His palms leaked sweat, and all the blood seemed to drain from his head, leaving it light and empty. He closed his eyes tightly and concentrated on breathing so he wouldn’t pass out.
“Oh, Roger, oh, oh…Roger.”
The girl’s voice was slurred and heavy with passion, and sliced into his consciousness as he crouched there in the darkness, knees digging into the damp ground, a patch of wetness creeping up his pants leg. He brushed a strand of hair from his eyes and clasped his knees, making himself invisible in the darkness. Ever since he was a child, the darkness had been his friend, hiding him from the intrusive glares of his mother and