Therapist

by Jaden Wilkes

  All day I have caught wafts of her scent, cigarettes and something else underlying, a sickenly sweet cloying scent. Lilacs perhaps. Seated at an elegant dressing table she rubs expensive essence into her skin only finest for her. Yes, lilacs and lavender...that’s what it is.

  I looked for the cigarette butt, and it was gone. That is what she must have bent over to pick up from the floor, wanting to leave no trace of herself with me. Strange.

  I have a short break before Agnes arrives, and I spend it daydreaming instead of catching up on her case. I haven’t seen her for over a month, she had a break with reality and ended up spending some time away in a safe place. I hope she’s better. I really do like her.

  She breezes in at five minutes past, she’s always late but her beauty makes up for it. I hate to say it, but being beautiful means you get away with a lot more in our culture. Be beautiful or interesting, be something or the world will run you over as they riot to get closer to those better than you.

  She’s tall and elegant, a former runway model who, besides battling addictions, bulimia and sexual assault a few times over, has a bit of a chemical imbalance that can only be treated with medication. Life isn’t that glamorous for the girls chosen to showcase expensive shit that nobody will ever really wear.

  I haven’t brought her into my program yet, but I want to. I want to bend her elegant body in half and hammer her from above. I have so many plans to work her over and help her gain her confidence and poise...and they all pretty much involve my cock plunging into her somehow.

  “Doctor Dane, I’m so sorry I’m late...traffic….” her voice trails off and she doesn’t bother to finish with her excuse. Once again, she’s beautiful and knows I will let her get away with it.

  “It’s quite alright, I needed to catch up on a few things here anyways,” I reply and indicate for her to shut the door. I don’t get up from my desk. Between my daydreams and thinking of Agnes entering my treatment program, my cock is rock hard.

  She flops onto the couch, her long legs stretched out in front of her, a mere suggestion of a mini skirt barely covering her upper thighs. I can see a small patch of bright pink in the darkness under the skirt. A flash of pink between me and her cunt. That’s it, one small pink patch between this polite professional discourse and my cock plunging into her hot, waiting hole. I can see her long legs pushed up over her shoulders as I plough into her on my couch.

  I need to test the waters to see how willing she is to become my next volunteer. As long as she’s clean and sober and eating, she’s perfect. I can’t risk my career on a woman who isn’t able to keep her shit together, even when she’s as beautiful as Agnes.

  “You might have noticed I was gone for a while,” she says and flips her long, straight, black hair over her shoulder. She always plays with her hair, braiding and unbraiding it as she talks. It’s hypnotic and soothing on some weird level, so I’ve never mentioned it to her or tried to correct it.

  “I did indeed. Care to elaborate as to your absence?” I ask and watch her long fingers weave her hair in and out, back and forth.

  She shifts on the couch, tugs at her billowy blouse and lays her hands on her lap. “Well, I guess I should get straight to the point. I had a relapse. I stopped eating all together and ended up being hospitalized.”

  “What do you think triggered your relapse?” I ask her and feel my cock softening. This kind of misery does not turn me on. Skeletal girls killing themselves to look like a living coat rack on the runways of Milan is not something I want to fuck. I admire woman with the tenacity and willpower to maintain tight, fuckable bodies...but not those who allow themselves to become so messy they lose control.

  I mentally scratch her off my program. I don’t need messy.

  “I had to work with my rapist in Prague. I didn’t realize how much it bothered me until I got back to Canada and had time to think about it,” she replies and looks down, picking at something on her nail.

  “I thought we had discussed you taking a break from work for a while, for your mental health,” I say, trying not to scold her but her stupid decision does irritate me. I don’t know if she fucked up and I’m reacting to it, or if my encounter with Mistress has made me more susceptible to finding flaws in others. Mistress has gotten under my skin, and in the face of her perfection, even this beautiful creature is starting to look like a fucking pig.

  “I know we talked about it, but I couldn’t turn this down. I have never worked in Prague and it was kinda on my fashion bucket list. I didn't know the photographer on the shoot would be the one that hurt me so badly last time,” she says and tries to convince the both of us that it was a good idea. “He left me alone this time, thank god, but I saw him with some other girls...young girls like I was when he….you know. And I think that got to me, that he’s still doing it, that he’s still out there fucking girls and taking from them. That I’ve been unable to do a damn thing to stop him even after all this time.”

  Her lip starts to quiver and I nod towards the tissue box. She picks it up and dabs her eyes. The water works are starting and I lean back, ready for a full on breakdown. I hate this part of my job, the crying, the full on ugly crying. Unless I want it. Unless I’m balls deep inside of them and sucking at their tear stained skin. Otherwise it’s really fucking irritating to me…but part of the job. I work on affecting a caring face and make a noise of comfort.

  “I know you think you have your reasons,” I tell her, forcing my voice to be low and soothing, “but those aren’t good enough. You don’t need the money and you need to get better. You need to start putting your own needs ahead of anything else...even if it is a bucket list. Fill your bucket after you’ve been healed.”

  “I know, Doctor,” she sighs and dabs her eyes again. “I don’t know why I did it, really. I had a feeling he might be there and I had this weird obsession that if I saw him again, confronted him, then I would be able to move past it. I know it sounds more like a death wish than anything, and it ended in disaster, obviously...but I feel like if I could just get past this then my life would be back to normal.”

  “Why this particular photographer?” I ask, “You’ve been assaulted by several men...or at least in compromising situations with them...so why did this one become the one that you felt would define your life? Your future?”

  She bites her lip and looks to the side, shrugs and looks back at me.

  “You can do better than that, surely you’ve thought about it. What about this man sent you into a spiral that landed you back in treatment for your eating disorder?” I ask, pressing her to figure this out on her own. It’s so much more meaningful when they have the revelation with prodding from me. I could tell her outright, that this man meant more to her than the others because of her hope. That he probably promised her something and she had a vision of their lives together in the future, that she placed her hope in what he told her. That, even though this wasn’t the most violent or terrible of her sexual assaults, it was the most emotionally damaging because she didn’t just feel like a victim with him...she felt like a fool.

  I won’t tell her this though; I will lay the bread crumb trail out for her and hope she can find the answer without too much effort. This is essentially what I do, what my job entails. Leading them to the clues and hoping they’ll bite. Every once in a while, I want to take it higher of course. These are the women who end up in my research.

  “I guess because I cared about him, maybe. I mean, I don’t even know if I did. I don’t know how I felt about him,” she replies and looks at me, eager anticipation on her face. She hopes she’s right because she really wants to please me.

  Any other time I would probably keep working on her to get into my program, especially since dropping Anna. But, Mistress. In my veins, threat, promise, endless ecstasy. After this morning I feel like I can’t make any future plans until I know what she has in store for me.

  “You might say you cared about him,” I tell her, “but what did he do for you? Why was he
special? How did you find yourself alone with him that night in his hotel room?”

  “Are you blaming me?” she responds, sitting up and pulling her legs together. “It’s not my fault, he’s the one who did it to me...I didn’t want to be drugged and forced and photographed doing...that.”

  I know I’ve gotten her attention, so the next few steps will be very delicate. I use my calmest voice and speak quietly, evenly. I say, “I would never suggest that this is your fault, Agnes. What I am suggesting is that perhaps you let your guard down around him because you wanted something from him. He offered you something.”

  She bites her lower lip again and looks up at the ceiling. I don’t know if somebody has her medicated, but she’s usually a little sharper than this. Could it be that my morning has left me much easier to anger than before? I don’t know.

  “I guess I get where you’re coming from,” she finally agrees and looks at me. “He did promise me exclusives and introductions and a real relationship. He told me about his apartment in Vienna. He said he wanted to take me there and make love to me as the rain fell on the tiled roof above us. He did...well, I thought we had a future together.”

  And there it is. The worst thing a man can do is give a woman hope, the hint or outright promise of a life together, then take it away. Like I did to Anna? I try my best to not engage in this behaviour, but sometimes lines are crossed. Anna knew what she was getting into though. In this case it seems that the photographer made outright promises to Agnes, then took advantage of her vulnerability. If I were being completely honest, why wouldn’t he? She’s a beautiful woman and just naive enough to fall for such lines.

  “What were you hoping for in Prague?” I ask, pressing her to make one more connection.

  She sniffles and blows her nose. She holds the crumpled tissue in her lap, so I point at the trash can. She leans over and tosses it in, giving me a lovely view of her breasts as the neckline of her shirt drops. She’s braless; they’re small but perfect. In that instant, I can see her little rosebud nipples. They’re hard.

  She sits back up, stretches her legs out again and crosses her ankles. “This is going to make me sound like an even bigger idiot,” she confesses and closes her eyes. “I went there hoping to rekindle something with him. I knew he was the project photographer and I wanted him to notice me. I haven’t stopped thinking about him for two years now and I felt like if he saw me then he would remember what he promised.”

  “And I take it things did not go well,” I say, prodding her to continue. I am enjoying this a little too much perhaps. Her humiliation is palpable; I wish I could drive myself into her as she recounted this story. I want to feel her crying from the inside. I shift in my seat, expecting my cock to harden as she tells me about this.

  “He barely noticed me,” she says, reaching for another tissue. “The first day he spent most of the day with three young models from Bucharest. He didn’t even look at me. That night I cornered him outside his trailer, but I don’t think he recognized me. It took a few minutes before he even seemed to remember who I was. It was awful, I’ve been thinking about him all this time, and he didn’t even know my name.”

  “That must have been awful,” I reply, “how did it make you feel?” I know how it makes me feel, like fucking her face. Her stupid little face, with the spatter of acne scars across her forehead and the upper lip that’s too thin to be perfect. Mistress is perfection. Until today, this moment actually, I had imagined Agnes was perfection. Not now, and that angers me.

  “It made me feel like a fucking freak. I can’t believe I fell for him, hook line and sinker. I can’t believe I even wanted to forget about the rape so I could have some sick little fantasy life with him. I think that’s what sent me back to puking and finally not eating...realizing how messed up my head really is.”

  “That’s the first step to recovery,” I reassure her although the distraction of red lips and perfect hair keeps me from being fully involved in the conversation. I feel my mind slipping a little, wanting to have some private time to replay the events of the morning.

  “When I got back to Canada, I couldn’t stop thinking about how completely out of control he made me feel,” she says, “but at least this time I just stopped eating...I didn’t start injecting anything. I feel like in a weird way I’ve made progress. I just wish I could do something to him, hurt him some way.”

  “Sometimes you have to accept that there will be no punishment for somebody in order for you to move on. Some of the biggest shit bags skate through life without ever seeming to suffer the consequences of their actions. Some men are just wicked,” I tell her and think about the way Mistress formed her lips when she said, “wicked”. Wicked little boy sharp fingernails and angry words in my ear hot breath. A shiver goes up my spine and I feel myself slipping away from this conversation even farther.

  “You’re right, Doctor Dane,” she replies and puts her second tissue in the waste basket. I barely notice this time, although on some level I comprehend that her tits are hanging out again. I remember the burning of Mistress’ skin against mine when she touched me. I stroke the place on my thigh where her nails dug in and I want to peel my pants off so I can check the progress of the wound. Earlier analysis in the employee’s washroom confirmed that she had broken the skin. It was still flowing blood at that time; it would probably be dried and crusted by now.

  “Let’s go over your tool box again, for helping you cope the next time you feel like straying from your plan and harming yourself in the end,” I say and smile at her. I pull out my notepad and we spend the rest of the hour working on methods for her to distract herself from any more self destructive impulses.

  After she’s gone, I feel really good about the session. I wanted to fuck, to release myself, but I think she’s better off not becoming one of my special patients. Agnes doesn’t know it, but she owes Mistress a word of thanks for helping me ramp up my game and helping her instead of helping myself.

  *****

  I leave the office early. I don’t have any patients after Agnes and I’m too distracted to finish up any paperwork. On the way home in the cab, I turn my phone back on and notice a few texts. Nothing of importance stands out until I find one from Derrick. Apparently he and Silvia would like to entertain me for the weekend. I suppose that could be fun, but I decide to not reply. I can’t focus on them at the moment.

  Inside my apartment something feels off. I am not usually home at this time, and I have the weirdest sensation that I’m not alone.

  “Hello?” I call out and drop my satchel at the front door. I walk slowly through the main entrance, it’s open concept so I can clearly see that there is nobody here.

  I start down the hallway to the guest rooms and master when Jane pops her head out a door. She’s in my room, blushes red and says, “Oh, Alexandre, you surprised me.”

  “I surprised you? What are you doing here?” I ask her and keep walking towards her. She backs into my bedroom and looks like she’s been caught, a fly in front of a spider. I remember I gave her a key to collect my mail the last time I was out of town but thought I had asked for it back.

  “I wanted to surprise you though,” she says and laughs. “I know this looks weird, but you seemed so down the other day that I decided to cook you dinner.”

  “Dinner? Here?” I ask. I could count on my hand the number of times dinner has actually been made in this apartment. I don’t eat in that often unless I’m seducing somebody.

  “Yes, but I didn’t know if you even had the things for cooking,” she answered, “I thought I’d better come in and see if you owned a single pot or pan.” She laughs and stands on one foot. She looks cute, not as plain as usual. Blushing looks good on her.

  “I actually do,” I reply, “I made sure to buy all the instruments to make me seem domestic to the right people.”

  “Ahhh, I could see that,” she says and screws up her face, “only Alexandre would have pots hanging around as a manipulation for the ladies.”


  “I didn’t mean it like that,” I reply. I don’t like her sarcastic side. Jane should play up her softer side and leave the sarcastic bitch out of the conversation if she wants to get anywhere with me.

  “I know,” she says, relaxing her face again and smiling shyly, “I’m sorry...this is all coming off as super weird, isn’t it? The thing is, I wanted to spend time with you and I didn’t know how to ask,” she continues and looks up at me with a question in her eyes.

  “What sort of time were you thinking?” I ask her and raise an eyebrow. This is interesting, I know Jane has been interested in me for months and months but I never imagined she would act upon it.

  She steps towards me and reaches for my hand, “I don’t know...I’m not that good at this sort of thing.”

  “Do you mean this?” I ask and cup her face in my hands and stare into her eyes. She gulps and nods, unable to speak. I lean in and kiss her softly, sucking her bottom lip with mine, sliding my tongue along hers. I start slowly, letting her get into it. She’s tense when we begin but I can feel her loosen up as I progress.

  I feel myself loosening up as well. The overarching thought of Mistress slips away as I kiss Jane with more passion. I don’t know why I think she’s so plain, and although I can't remember any details of our previous night together, I have a sense that she’s fucking wild when she lets go.

  Or is that a fantasy? It’s getting so hard to maintain this grasp on what has happened and what I want to happen. I’m fucking crazy. I live so deeply inside my own head and long to feel so intensely that at times I forget how to simply live, exist in the real world.

  Jane breaks away and looks up, her lips are dark red and her cheeks are flushed now with heat from arousal instead of embarrassment. “What about Blythe?” she asks me, her voice catching in her throat.

  I shake my head and reply, “What do you mean? Blythe? I haven’t seen her since the weekend.”