The Tens, Vanessa Jones [i like reading books .TXT] 📗

back door, shouted at her so she flung the door back, stepped out underneath it and looked at it in the eye.

'Why don't you just shut the hell up?' she said maliciously. It looked at her with disdain, its chocolate eye rolling over her. And then it lazily flew off, as if shrugging her away.

Back in her bedroom, she rearranged the pillows around her in bed so that when the nightmare came, she would be safely cocooned from herself.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

A few days later, Sophie sat across from her therapist, for what seemed like both the second and the hundredth time. She surprised herself by not giving up on therapy. There was a pull in Sophie that was greater than her pain.

Waiting for Carla's prompts, she pulled away her light scarf. Although too hot in the room, especially with the warm herbal tea Carla offered, it was a source of comfort and made Sophie feel like she was being held. How much she wanted to demand that a window be opened for once, the stench of a thousand people's breath stuck on the walls and furnishings. But Sophie was determined to be a good, polite girl.

Carla positioned herself neatly in a grey linen chair, in a professional outfit that was neither fashionable nor comfortable. The ensemble was deliberately chosen to incite approachability and assuredness. But that did not stop Sophie from spending a lot of time looking at her therapist's feet; beige stockinged feet in a square-toed heel underneath navy pants. She reminded Sophie of a more serious version of Elaine from Seinfeld.

Sophie was desperate to keep building trust with and please Carla, not only for her own progress but because she couldn't escape the fear that Carla would get bored of her soon enough and palm her off to a colleague. Especially once she realised she was beyond being helped. Like most, Sophie grabbled with the notion that there was something fundamentally wrong with her and no one in this lifetime could fix her. Alex leaving her had done nothing but confirmed this truth.

Carla watched Sophie with umber coloured eyes behind her wireframe glasses. ‘What are you thinking about right now, Sophie?'

'This morning, there was another dead bird outside my window. Although I didn't kill it, I feel responsible.'

Carla seemed pleased by this answer and scribbled at her notes, tapping the top of her pen on the notepad resting on her lap in approval. There was a small pile of birds waiting for Sophie at home. It looked like a pile in a toy shop. They kept flying to their death against the window, despite Sophie stringing up some unused Christmas bunting.

'In what way?'

'I don't know really. Shouldn't I be able to save it?'

'It's not uncommon to feel the burden of a saviour complex when we are unable to essentially save ourselves,' she said sensibly.

Sophie didn't know why she said what she said next. Perhaps she was desperate to shock Carla out of their power dynamics. Perhaps it was she who was bored. 'Birds say things to me.'

Carla twitched almost unnoticeably. 'Do you often think that birds can talk to you?’

Sophie could feel her goading her but decided to press on anyway. 'The birds communicate with me. In a way. Which is exactly what a crazy person would say, I know. Anthropomorphism is one of the most prominent delusions.' Sophie didn't give Carla time to confirm or interject. 'It's not like a bird will come to me and start speaking in English but more that their behaviour is noticeable. Hard to ignore. There are cascades of warbles at irregular times in the night. Often, I wake up believing it's morning but it's still the same day that I fell asleep. They trill at my window and I have no idea what they are really saying but I do trust that they are talking to me. I absorb their sounds and wait for translation that often appears as my own thought-forms or epiphanies within the proceeding days,' Sophie let the words tumble out. Only after they had left her mouth did she feel the indignity of revealing too much.

Carla sensed her hesitation. 'Go on,' she prompted by rolling her hand and pen.

'Sometimes, like when my mind is a bit clearer, I try to concentrate really hard to translate what they're telling me. I can barely explain but I just know they have deliberately chosen me to talk to. I just don't know why.'

Sophie stopped looking at Carla's shoes and watched her face and waited. But Carla surprised her by encouraging her.

'You know Sophie, I can see why you would say that birds are communicating with you.'

Sophie let out a big breath of air. Carla showed no trace that she was terrified of Sophie or that she was going to have her sanctioned.

Carla pointedly looked at the clock and nodded at her. 'I'd like to hear more about this. I'm afraid our time is up for today. If it's alright with you, let’s continue this conversation in our next session? We can schedule it earlier if you'd like.'

Sophie was perplexed, unsure where the time had gone but shook her head in agreement. Sure, she thought to herself, the damage has already been done. As she gathered up her things to leave, she glimpsed Carla's scrawled handwritten notes and noticed "birds" had been underlined three times and was ticked.

Surprising herself and Carla, Sophie eagerly came back to therapy the next day, at Carla's insistence. Carla wiggled her bottom into her chair after placing fresh, steaming cups of tea in front of them both.

With a sense of smugness, Sophie felt she had already endured life's tragedies and that the rest of her lifetime was her own. Naively falling into the knowing that all her life's atrocities had already occurred, she expected the rest of her life to be a comfortable and healthy experience with