Late Night Viewer .... there’s someone I can’t get out of my head—and it isn’t my dead wife.

johnjgeddes (75)in #fiction • 8 years ago (edited)

Working as a prison psychiatrist is a lot like tending a garden—it’s a mystery of watering, pruning and planting seeds.

Despite my best efforts to document the process, the truth is best summed up in an old Spanish proverb—more grows in the garden than the gardener knows. The fact is I don’t always know what’s going on.

Take the case of Ariadne Vasilou, for example.

Ariadne grew up in Cyprus, attended college in France and came to New York in the late nineties. When I met her she was just thirty years old. All my colleagues touted her as a model inmate, but for some unknown reason, she repulsed me.

It may have been her name. Ariadne reminded me of the Greek word Arachne, or spider.

It may have been she kept a tarantula as a pet and it reminded me of her—a patient, noiseless stalker.

But I think most disturbing was her nickname, The Black Widow.

All of Ariadne’s male acquaintances were poisoned with clonidine and subjected to horrific torture—two of them died.

Psychiatrists are supposed to be accustomed to dealing with the unlovely—I thought I was.

The lady was breathtakingly beautiful, but the most monstrous woman I ever met.

“Tell me about yourself, Dr. Logan,” she purred, “or might I call you Brent?”

I shifted uncomfortably in my chair. Even though I knew her seductive games, constantly deflecting them was very off-putting.

“You know the rules, Ariadne—no personal disclosures on the therapist’s part.”

“Only on my part?” she smiled and my spine went icy.

“Were you abused as a child?”

“No.” she pouted. “Are you married?”

I wasn’t going to play quid pro quo with her, or engage in a glass bead game—she was quite brilliant.

She studied at the Sorbonne before immigrating to the USA.

“As I said, Ariadne, we must keep this on a professional basis.”

“Very well—I wouldn’t want to expose your vulnerabilities.”

I tried a different tack. “Why do you hate men?”

“What makes you think I hate men?”

“The fact you drugged and tortured twenty of them—not counting the two you killed.”

“That was unintended—they were weak—had I known, I would never have cultivated them. I despise weakness.”

“Nevertheless, they’re dead. How do you account for the facts?”

“I like men. I like testing their limits—pushing the boundaries, you might say.”

“You tortured your victims.”

"My acquaintances—they weren’t victims—they willingly accompanied me home.”

“Do you always hurt the ones you love?”

“Doesn’t everybody?”

I glanced at the clock—the session was up. I made little progress in getting her to accept responsibility for her actions, although she was superficially compliant.

As she got to her feet, she said casually, “Are you going to listen to Rachmoninov again tonight?”

I froze. I divulged nothing of my personal life, yet she knew my usual routine. I gave her a bland smile, but said nothing.

“You’re very good at that, you know.”

The guard waiting to accompany her back to her cell paused.

“Good at what?” I asked, curious.

“You’re very good at masking—one of the best, I’ve met.”

Her remark disturbed me. I brooded about it off and on the rest of the day.

I wracked my brain trying to recall a chance remark to a colleague or even a guard she might have overheard, but nothing.

If she were trying to rattle me, she certainly had my attention.

That night, in my condo, I deliberately altered my routine. I avoided the stereo and flipped through the TV channels in search of a film.

I found an obscure movie set on a university campus. A young professor found a way to return to the past and relive moments with his deceased wife.

The complication was, he was falling in love with his beautiful assistant who was also his deceased wife’s best friend.

The wife was a dead ringer for Ariadne—huge dark eyes and Jackie O looks.

The beautiful assistant was a clone of my deceased wife.

The improbability of this being a coincidence roared through my brain. I was totally taken aback and shaken.

I shut off the TV, drank one too many beers and fell into bed.

I always believed life demands something of you, whether you can do it or not.

I didn’t want to continue counselling Ariadne, but felt I had committed myself to the task. I couldn’t very well back out and my pride wouldn’t let me.

Still, she had managed somehow to cross that boundary between doctor and patient and wrestle control from my hands.

I was determined to take it back.

“You look a little worse for wear, Dr Logan—didn’t you sleep well last night?”

“I’m fine,” I parried.

“You know what Frank Lloyd Wright said—television is bubblegum for the eye—you just mindlessly watch it, and feel your brain shrivel. It can be disturbing, don’t you agree?”

“Yes, it can be a time waster,” I said off-handedly. “Do you get to watch TV in here?”

“Yes!” she brightened, “I watched a very romantic film last night about a poor professor who lost his wife—funny, he reminded me of you.”

Her voice rose on a singsong note and she stared at me with her huge dark eyes.

I felt my skin crawl.

“Jung talks about synchronicities,” she went on, her hand fluttering upwards to her throat, “seemingly impossible coincidences—I think he’s much more spiritual than Freud. What do you think, Dr Logan?”

“I think you’re playing games with me.”

“Really? I love games.”

I decided to pursue this tack with her.

“What games do you like to play?”

“All kinds of games. I especially love I spy. Do you like that game, Dr Logan?”

“I haven’t played that since I was a child.”

She giggled. “Ooh, not that game, silly! I mean the one where I lie on my cot and see what you’re up to. That’s much more interesting.”

I had to ask. “What types of things do you see?”

“I see you drink too much—you have a beautiful condo with floor-to-ceiling windows and you lie there sometimes watching the bright jumble of lights and wondering why…”

“Stop!” I shouted.

She smiled innocently at me, eyes dark and cavernous, mouth ravenous.

“You want me, just like that professor in the movie wanted his assistant. I don’t see why you don’t admit it.”

I called for the guard. She didn’t argue or protest. She just gave me a pitying smile.

I no longer counsel Ariadne, although I do see a colleague myself.

He calls what she does fake feedback—insists she’s expert at deciphering verbal nuance and minute body language clues. I have my doubts.

I see her in my mind’s eye—her spindly feelers scuttling over my brain, probing the private recesses of my cerebellum, invading my space.

Can I tell him I feel violated—all my secrets laid bare? Not bloody likely. My future would be sealed and I’d have a permanent spot reserved on his couch.

As it is, I don’t lie on my own couch at night any more—I don’t stare at the jumble of lights and wonder why.

I’m on a treadmill of my own now—a zombie like shuffle of eat, work and sleep.

And there’s someone I can’t get out of my head—and it isn’t my dead wife.