Intake
Freya McAfee
Erika sees her therapist, Dr. Freising, every Wednesday at 10:00am. She always arrives fifteen minutes early, seated in the lobby with its gently worn chairs and slightly stained carpet. Coffee, looks like. Beside her is always a white noise machine, gently humming out the thrum of her thoughts; a sea cucumber eating terror and leaving something cleaner in her mind’s wake.
Much unlike Dr. Harvey Alexander Freising.
She remembers her first day as if it was last week, rather than nine months ago. She had been having severe depression that made her feel like a dead girl walking. Getting out of bed felt like climbing a tree with no low branches. Eating food? Utterly disgusting, and frankly more trouble than it was worth. A shower felt like being hosed down for the sake of keeping her corpse from smelling. Her hair, long and matted, used to perch in a bun, but even that became too much work when she had to try and find her hair ties. So, when she stumbled into Bloom Therapy and checked in with the nice woman at the register, she nearly wept when the elder said “You are safe here, and you are not alone. Dr. Freising will take good care of you”. Erika took her intake form and sat in the lobby, shaking as she suppressed sobs.
That damn intake form. That’s when she should’ve known something was awry.
It started normal enough. A simple depression and anxiety questionnaire where you rate your relation to a statement between 1-5.
It feels hard to wake up or get out of bed. 5.
I either don’t sleep at all or oversleep too much. 5.
I have trouble making friends. 5.
I feel hopeless. 5.
While depressing, it was nothing out of the ordinary. Simple questions to help the therapist assist you in the best way that they can.
But then she got to the last page. It was one question, and it required a written response:
What do you fear more than anything else in this world?
Erika was shocked by this question. Yet she was even more surprised that she was writing a response. And not just one sentence. By the time she finished, the entire back page was filled. It wasn’t of free will, she knew this now. It felt like it was being pulled out of her, as if she was being unraveled.
That would only deepen in session.
And yet, despite it all, Erika keeps attending. Giving a testimony to the police was beyond ridiculous. No one would believe her claims. If anything, they would consider her psychotic.
She needed proof.
The first time, she tried an audio recording on her phone. When she reviewed it at home, it became compromised. She tried a video recording by placing her phone behind one of his houseplants while he stepped out to get her some water. The footage was just incomprehensible pixels and white noise. The third time, she managed to grab an old video camera on Facebook Marketplace for $35. She tested it the day prior recording her cat chasing his toy, Mr. Pickle. The footage was grainy, and the sound was tinny, but it was all solid. The camera worked. But once again, the footage of her therapy session came out unreadable. It seemed he, for some reason, could not be recorded.
So, could he be killed?
This was tricky, because she had to figure out a way for him to die without her ending up in jail. Is it murder if he’s not human? If it’s self-defense for her emotional well-being? It doesn’t matter; no court would believe her stories anyway. She’d likely be institutionalized, if not imprisoned.
After all, who would believe what she witnesses every session? Maybe she is just psychotic. Maybe this was all one big nightmare, and she was going to hurt a well-intentioned man.
No, she thinks, looking at the warped trail of burn marks on her wrist. This is real.
She closes her eyes, takes a deep breath, then opens them again. She hands her check-up form to the receptionist, which is now only a general mood questionnaire. Handing her clipboard every week always reminded her of her first day, when her most vulnerable secret was drained out of her and leaving her hazy and dry; as if she had violently vomited on the page.
My worst fear is a strange one, but after losing my mom, my worst fear is that my dad will die, and it will be all my fault.
And this bastard was making her live it every week.
And she wasn’t the only one.
There was a young woman who had the slot right before hers. At precisely 9:50, she’d walk out with the same expression Erika knew all too well. Sunken, traumatized blue eyes peeking out from her shaggy blonde hair. Soon she stopped attending sessions, and Erika saw her face on a missing poster a few days later.
So, today, at 9:56am, Erika sits in her stained chair, wearing her even more stained clothes, and nervously fidgets with a small knife in her pocket. Resolve coming and going like the tides, she runs through the plan over and over again, waiting for certainty, waiting for reassurance, waiting for-
“Erika?”
She looks up, and the door is open. A kind face greets her, a gentle smile causing his soft grey eyes to crinkle slightly. Anyone else meeting his gaze would feel only relief and kindness, just like she had before her first session. Now she knows better, his smile merely a failed attempt to hold back sadistic joy, eyes glowing with mischief. She stands, meeting his gaze in silence.
He gestures inside his office. “Please, do come in.”
The office looks the same as it always does, though she could swear the stains are always just slightly larger than the last time she came. The pale blue couch she sat in every week lined the wall next to the door and was sparsely decorated with its usual throw blankets and a box of tissues. Instead of lamps for warmer lighting, Dr. Freising insisted on candles, and there were vast colors, shapes, and sizes of them lined along the windowsill, clumped together on a coffee table, and there were even a couple next to his desk, beside his writing pad and his statue of some woman Erika never could recognize. A saint, maybe? She didn’t really care. It was the candles that gripped her. The sheer amount of flame in this room should be a violation of some kind, but it was clear to Erika no one really cared what Dr. Freising did.
She takes a seat, still fidgeting, and looks at the generic motivational posters in the room to give her mind a place to wander that’s boring. Boring. She would give anything to be bored again.
After closing the door, Freising follows his usual routine of turning off the overhead light and striking a match, lighting every candle until the room glowed. Taking a seat at last. He clasps his hands together and offers a warm smile. “So, Erika, how are you today?”
“Can we just skip to the part where you torture me for an hour?”
His smile falls slightly. “It pains me to hear you view my work as torture, Erika. I do not mean to torture you. I only mean to expose you to your greatest fear until you become accustomed to it. I believe we’ve gone over what exposure therapy is?”
“I know what exposure therapy is, dammit.” She says through gritted teeth. “It’s going to a mall when you’re scared of people, or learning to drive again after a car accident. It’s not recreating a version of my dead dad, just to fuck with me! My fear has only gotten worse! I have nightmares every night! And worst of all, I can’t stop attending sessions. Every time I try, I end up right back in that waiting room. Like I’m compelled. And I know you have something to do with that.”
Freising scribbles something into his notepad, his curled hair obscuring his face for a brief moment. “Increase in paranoia, erratic behavior, agitation…” He sets the pen down and returns his gaze to Erika, speaking in his usual analytic tone. “Erika, you should know that my only goal is to treat you. It’s very, very important that you face this fear until it no longer scares you. And I have a skill that allows you to engage in psychodrama with a real replica of your fear, not just a construct in your mind. This compulsion to enter my office? It is simply your desire to get better. I believe you want to get better. I want you to get better. Do you?”
“One, that’s bullshit and you know it. Two, I didn’t even come here for my dad! I came here for my depression!”
“Depression that was onset after your mom hung herself in your bedroom, after reading your diary?”
Erika froze. She told Freising she lost her mom. She never told him how.
“You see?” he asked. “I have a gift. I know more about you than you think.” He takes a sip of his coffee, then frowns. “It must have been so sad, what happened with your mother. There is a lot of guilt that is transferring from that event. It’s causing you to predict the future. We’ve been over cognitive distortions- do you feel the need for another review? Fortune-telling can ruin your mind.”
Tears prick at her eyes. Dammit, his caring voice, his conviction, his… spell. As if he truly believed he was helping her. “Your treatment scares me. It feels wrong. Can I really get better?”
He gives an assuring smile, then writes something down. “Many people in Medieval Europe feared the medicinal treatments emerging. They referred to it as witchcraft. Many died from it. Alexander Fleming, the man who invented penicillin, was initially ridiculed. Even today, many fear vaccines and believe they cause physical and mental impairments. This is something similar. It’s a form of treatment that is… unorthodox, to be sure, but has been found very effective, moreso than typical talk therapy.”
A long pause. Her mind is racing. “I suppose that makes sense…” She says, lulling back into his words.
“You are a young woman facing grief. As you are in this fragile state, it is best if you allow me to take care of you, and to treat you as is best for your condition. You just have to take that courageous step to trust in me.”
The lull stops. “Stop talking like you’re some kind of savior,” she hissed. “You are sadistic at best. I’m no idiot. One of your clients just went missing. I see her posters on the way to work.”
He pauses at this, façade cracking ever so slightly. “Ah, Charlotte.” He says it almost in passing, as if he didn’t care what happened to the girl. “In order for her to heal, she had to find something that represented her heart and bring it to me. She was not to return until she did. I suppose she took it very seriously, to wander off and go missing. She’ll turn up.”
“But that’s your fault! You’re the reason she went missing! You should turn yourself in, it’s sick.”
The façade cracks further now, and he scowls at her. “She’s a grown woman, and she can do as she pleases. It’s not my fault she went and got herself lost! Nowhere did I tell her to do that. Honestly, Erika, your rage is so unfounded I have half a mind to suggest we spend our session with you sitting with it, see what the real source is.” He stands up. “But since you brought up fault, I think it’s time we start your weekly exercise.” He bends down, looming with his height, and stares at her. “Look at me.”
She resists.
“Look at me.”
She closes her eyes, straining to keep them that way.
“LOOK AT ME.”
Her eyes snap open, and she meets his piercing gaze, locked in a trance. As they stare into each other’s eyes, the wax in the candles begin to move, bob, and slide off the candles, coagulating into a large blob on the floor. It wriggles, writhes, and bubbles, slowly transforming from blob, to man like, to sculpture, to father. But not the father she knew. His whole body was burned and melted, his eyes stark white, a chunk gone from his shoulder, and skin still actively burning and bubbling. Wax hair is in patches on his burned head, and the slick imitation of clothing is melded with char marks. Decay fills her nostrils as he begins to moan and groan in pain, notably missing teeth. It seemed he hated being summoned just as much as she hated seeing him.
“Now Erika,” Dr. Freising says, boring holes into her head. “Say hello to your father.”
Erika slowly turns her head. It never got easier to look at. Against her will, she stands and says “Hello, father.”
The figure lurches and spasms in heated agony, pointing at Erika. “Look at me!” It warbles with waxy lungs pushing air through vocal cords made from the desk candle. “Look at me! I’m dead, I’m dead, I’m dead, and it’s all your fault! HELP MEEEEEEE!” He screams at her, and if this wasn’t the millionth time they’ve done this, she would have screamed back. He’s positively boiling, and his gaze boils through her; eyes so hot bubbles swell and burst around the cornea, like a blister being squeezed and popped, juices leaking into his pupils.
“Whatever happened to you is not my fault.” She said.
He grabs her, hot wax burning her own skin. “YOU DID THIS TO ME. YOU KILLED YOUR MOTHER, AND NOW ME. YOU FUCKING MONSTER.”
Erika glances at Dr. Freising and she can see he’s smiling. He’s enraptured in her own terror. Perfect. “Dad, I would never hurt you.”
“Ah ah, the fear is if you did hurt him, and it is your fault. You have to act from that place. I know it’s scary, but sitting with the scary is important.” He smiles widely.
She adjusts accordingly, not sure how much of that is her own will. “I’m sorry, dad. It’s all my fault.”
“YOUR FAULT YOUR FAULT YOUR FAULT.”
“Yes…” Erika starts to cry. “I killed you like I killed mom. It’s all my fault.” She falls to her knees and weeps at the feet of her dead father. It always ends like this. She cries, Freising says she hasn’t fully overcome her fear yet, and they repeat.
But then she feels the knife in her pocket, and like an anchor, it reminds her of where she is, reminding her why she’s here. How she’s going to break the cycle. She wipes the tears from her eyes and stands up. She looks at her father, and the bulbous, beating heart that palpitated in his almost translucent chest. It seemed to have a face. It almost looked like… “Dr. Freising,” she says, shaking. “How many of your clients have become candles?”
For once, he’s the speechless one. After a great pause, he returns her father into the candles from which he came, and then speaks, admiring the twenty-two flickering flames. “I suppose there’s no point in denying it. A select few of my clients have had the joy of becoming light. They burn bright for me, and their devotion, their wrath, their fear… It exhilarates me. Though, It seems a bit odd you would tell me you know this.” He stands from his chair. “There is still so little you know. It’s a privilege, really. To become a vessel for Our Healing Mother. Every session, every day I am in this office, their souls have the chance to engage in real treatment, tending to the heart in ways our primitive methods cannot fathom.” He looks back at her. “Does that scare you?”
Terribly. Her mouth was too dry to speak.
He stares at her, boring an enigmatic energy and heat into her eyes, trying to unravel her from the inside out. A stare that only a killer could own, frosty, frigid, and unflinching.
But nothing happened.
He chuckles lightly. “Did you think I was going to turn you into one? Oh, no, no, no. You are worthy of its love, but not its form. Perhaps, in time.”
“That’s a lot of information to give someone so unworthy.” She says, voice hoarse.
“I meant no offense. It is a rare honor, and it takes a great deal of time and honing to be ready for Mother. But, you have always been a curious client. Very inquisitive.” He takes a step towards her and eyes her down. “I trust you to keep this to yourself. Not everyone is as open-minded as you. Perhaps one day, this treatment could be made public, but for now, it’s between you and me.”
She looks up at him. “Cross my heart and hope to die?”
He chuckles lowly. “Exactly.”
Her eyes turn steely, mustering up the courage to do what she must. “Then I suppose you’ll have to die,” she says, pulling out her knife.
She whips her body around and stabs Dr. Freising in the stomach. It goes in much smoother than she imagined it would. He gasps hoarsely and falls to the floor. “Relax,” she said. “It’s not enough to kill you.” She turns to the candles. “I want them to do that.” And piece by piece, she knocks over every candle and uses the ones by his desk to light his notepad ablaze.
The couch is drier than it looked, and it immediately becomes a whirling inferno in the office. Smoke detectors begin to go off, and Erika props an old coat hanger against the door to give herself some time to walk over to Freising, who is anxiously reaching for his inhaler. “Now why don’t you sit with this?” She spits and knocks him out with the heel of her boot.
The receptionist pounds on the door. “Dr. Freising? Open the door! I can’t get it!”
Erika puts on her best distressed voice, which wasn’t that hard considering the literal blaze quickly surrounding them. “He’s unconscious! What do I do?” She coughs, though this was not exaggerated. The smoke was already suffocating. But she had to wait. She needed his wound burned up before she could let anyone in.
“Just get to the door so we can help you!”
“I can’t! There’s fire everywhere!”
“Find a path! I know you can!”
Erika can see a path, though admittedly it is dangerous. But that’ll just make the story more believable. She’s got to have a few scars, after all. The old coatrack had fallen further and had caused the couch to burn even brighter. She could make it through there, probably, and there was simply no more time to waste- unless she wanted to die with her corrupt therapist. Holding her breath, Erika worked her way into a crawl, her clothes burning and skin sweltering along the way. “I’m coming!” she called out. Slowly, deliberately, she approached the door, unlocked it, and barreled out with burns on her face, singed hair, and tattered clothes. The perfect face of a victim.
“Thank god!” The receptionist said, hurriedly closing the office door behind her.
“But what about Dr. Freising?” Erika asked, voice hoarse from the sheer amount of smoke inhaled. “He’s still in there!”
“Here, just come with me, sweetness.” The woman shushed Erika gently and started to usher her out. She turned to the door. “Someone’s coming for you, Harv! Hang in there!” And with that, as the heat swelled outside the door, the two of them ran out of the quaint little office.
The police, along with Erika’s account, determined that Dr. Freising had knocked over one of his candles while working, leading to a large fire that only spread to the other candles and compounded the issue. His unconsciousness was claimed to be from an asthma attack according to Erika, and it checked out, given the sheer amount of smoke. By the time the Fire Department arrived, almost everything in the office had been reduced to ash, including Freising himself. “We’ve never seen a fire burn as hot and as quickly as that one,” one officer said. “It’s almost like it was angry.”
Erika returned home to her father on Thursday afternoon, after some evaluations and an overnight stay in the hospital. Aside from some minor burns, she was alright. Her father decided to make her favorite TV dinner, microwave some popcorn, and watch the news together; just like they did when she was a little girl. As she happily indulged in the saltiness of her Salisbury steak and took in the warmth of the blanket fort they had made together, she started to feel human again for the first time in months. The television blares and she notices a Breaking News headline about twenty-two missing children suddenly returning to their families, all on Wednesday night. She hopes this is enough to atone for her mother as her ragged fingertips reach for another handful of buttered popcorn.