The Fallen

It all started when the psychiatrist asked what I had done with the cat. In reality, I hadn't done much with the cat, I sort of hit it a few times, kicked it around, but mostly, just played a bit too rough with it. The way he was looking at me, I knew exactly what he wanted to hear. Looking at the ground with my hands falsely shaking I regaled him with a tremor in my lip on how I had butchered my neighbors cat.

Truthfully, I thought he would leave it at that. From my previous experiences with pseudo-psychologists, whenever they felt they had gone too far, a backing off would be in order. However, as I finished my story and raised my eyes, the look on his face told me otherwise. He had relished in my story; his eyes demanding more. I knew that I would be found out for my lie if I stopped there, so I continued.

Beginning with the stories that floated in my head at night, I began to tell him fanciful tales of how I had watched my neighbor die. The look in his eyes as he overdosed with methamphetamine was something I explained that I'll never forget. Stories of how I had seen the gangs kill a member at the end of my block came forth as he pressed me on in earnest. I began to realize that this was a hole that I could not dig myself out of. He demanded me to proceed in the same gentle voice he had greeted me with.

As the stories progressed, I found myself running out of false ideas. Somehow, the time had slipped by me and we had been together in his small room for hours talking. While I searched the far corners of my brain for more lies to tell him, I realized that I was beginning to throw truths into the falsehoods of the stories. The sight of my friends younger brother laying beaten on the ground had slipped in there, as had when the gang killed my brother's friend. The sight of the closed casket and his mother crying were told with such veracity, I almost feared that he could tell a truth from the lies I had given.

The day surged into night, and I began telling the stories that I had reserved for no one but the far reaches of my mind. With detail, I explained the rape, how I had been forced to do ungodly acts. I showed him the scars that the burns had left on my skin, the wounds that had been hidden by years of regrowth. My mind felt like a sponge as I told him each passing story. No longer was I telling him lies but truths that I had hidden even from myself. The torture, the pain, everything was given to him on a platter. There he sat in his chair, taking them from me with the same soft spoken manner that he had used all along.

As I rose to leave his room, I realized that all this time he knew what my stories were about. The dead cat was merely my frustration, the murdered friends were my abandonment. In his own way, he had earned my trust by allowing me to believe him to be a man who couldn't see my lies. I felt secure in the fact that I could still retain my sense of self without his prying mind scouring it. He had gotten exactly what he wanted, and so had I.

To this day I do not believe I would have ever answered a single question of his truthfully. Yet, he never had to ask a single question to elicit the truth from me. It was inside of me all along, waiting to be told. All he had to do was listen.