[Original Novel] Pressure 3: Beautiful Corpse, Part 10
Previous parts: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9
Olivia returned to her office, consumed by thoughts of Violet. In particular how she could explain her failure to reach her without mentioning what she’d done to Dr. Bizen. She wanted to go directly to her apartment to sleep, but an obstacle prevented it. In spite of everything going on in her life outside of work, she was still the Belusarius resident psychiatrist, and she had an appointment to keep.
The patient was a haggard little man with a scruffy grey beard and mustache but nothing on top to speak of save for a few wispy grey stragglers. As she approached her office she noticed something unusual about his body language. He was shifting slightly in his seat every few seconds, eyes darting around the room and when she got close enough to see him clearly it became apparent that he was quite sweaty.
“You’re the shrink? Funny joke. Is there a hidden camera or something?” She took a moment to parse it and figure out that he was put off by her beauty. Rather than get off to a bad start, she let it slide and invited him into her office.
He identified himself as Dietrich Feuerstein, until recently a transpo sub pilot. “I’d have put up more of a fight if this weren’t paid leave. Just sign something that says I’m sane so I can get back to work, it’ll save us both a great deal of time.” She didn’t respond, instead tidying up a little and getting herself settled. “It says here I’m to perform a psychiatric evaluation, so I will. How long it takes depends entirely on whether you cooperate.”
This seemed to take the fight out of him. He grimaced, then collapsed into the leather recliner intended for patients. “I thought you’d have one of those couch dealies so I could lay down.” She laughed. “I get that alot. My old office had one but it’s not like they’re regulation equipment. Why don’t you tell me why you think you were sent to me?”
The sentence was carefully qualified so as not to suggest he actually needed therapy. He struck her as inclined to defensiveness and she did not want to give that reflex any oxygen. “I’m here because I saw something out there I shouldn’t have, and was dumb enough to report it. I can’t even be as mad as I’d like because in their shoes I’d have done the same thing. Pilot comes in raving about a giant baby out there walking along the seabed, of course you’re gonna-”
Olivia cut in. “Pardon me, giant baby?” He frowned. “Don’t you start. I never said it was real or nothin’. I’m just tellin’ it like I saw it. Tall enough my lights only caught the head and chest. Easily a thousand feet, maybe more and white as porcelain. Proportions wasn’t right for a baby, but the face was.”
Olivia was stunned. The eye she’d seen peering in through the porthole was no hallucination. She’d feared as much but wasn’t willing to deal with it at the time. “What did you do when you saw it?” He looked contemplative. “Well, for a few seconds I thought what the boss man thinks. That I’d lost my fuckin’ mind. But I kept looking and it kept existing. Blinked, rubbed my eyes, I was sober too. It didn’t seem to notice me. Stood there a moment, then turned and ambled off into the darkness. If I’d taken some time to collect myself and really think hard about whether it was a good idea to tell the guys about it, I wouldn’t be here.”
It was a struggle not to betray to him that what he’d said was meaningful to her. The unexpected bombshell left her at a loss for words, so for the time being she furrowed her brow, nodded, and pretended to jot down notes on a pad of paper. All the while her mind raced. How could it leave the trench? The last she knew, it had been nuked to atoms by Frank Remer and his squadmates. Why now? If was up and moving, why stick around instead of heading for shore? What would happen when it did?
Dietrich snapped his fingers. “I ain’t paying for this time, but I don’t want to waste it all the same. Do you got anything to say about all this? Prescribe me something.” She took a small digital recorder from her desk drawer and asked him if he consented to being recorded. When he did, she hit the appropriate button, then replied.
“That would be premature at this point. To be candid, you seem perfectly cogent to me. Your hallucination could easily have been caused by environmental factors. Trace gases in your sub’s atmospheric mixture, excess CO2, anomalous pressure buildup and so on. In that case meds wouldn’t help you in a lasting way. Of course I can’t go poke at your sub looking for problems of that nature, I’m a psychiatrist not a mechanic. That’s no doubt being taken care of as we speak. Just relax, treat this as a casual get together and an opportunity to vent.”
He did, and over the next hour she learned a great deal about his family history, dissatisfaction in his work and estranged grandson. But he kept coming back to what he’d seen outside the Belusarius. He eagerly agreed when she characterized it as a hallucination, perhaps because he didn’t want her to think he was seriously entertaining any other possibilities.
She was sorely tempted to tell him about the trench, the body, and the Tartarus. But no, it was best for her if he could be convinced that he’d had some type of mental breakdown in the sub. She resolved to start subtly steering him towards that conclusion.
“Anything you say here is of course confidential, the law requires it. So if you take any sort of mind altering substances, now is the time to-” He waved it off angrily. “It ain’t drugs, alright? This is what I was afraid of. I...I mean, I’m not saying what it was, you understand? But it can’t be drugs as I don’t touch that stuff. I used to smoke before I transferred down here but they don’t abide by that in a recirculated environment. Don’t say drinking neither, I never took that up. Not in a way where I’d start seeing things.”
Olivia finished jotting down notes, something she knew caused patients some anxiety. She secretly relished feeling mysterious. “I’ll take you at your word. I’m sure they already tested your blood anyway, if anything turned up you’d be on the first sub headed topside. What does that leave? It might help if you tell me more about the kinds of things you see.”
He furrowed his brow. Several false starts followed, each time he stammered, then shut up and looked contemplative as if having difficulty finding words. “It weren’t just the baby. Something in my head felt like pins and needles when I was near it, you know? Like when you sit on your leg for too long, but in my head. Felt sick too, threw up my lunch once they pulled me out the sub. That’s when I saw my first one.”
He was now sweating bullets, the droplets collecting on his chin. “It was my buddy Reinhard. Works in the sub dispatch, knew something was wrong the minute I saw him. His face was messed up. Like it was a couple different peoples’ faces put together. The lines where they joined was like scar tissue. His arms was different from each other, he walked with a limp and didn’t smile at me or make none of his off color jokes.”
It was all sounding uncomfortably familiar to Olivia. She considered pre-emptively opening a shadow on the wall behind him. It would be so easy to make this problem disappear before it grew any worse. “I seen more of ‘em since. But it comes an’ goes. Like, when I look at Reinhard now his face looks like it always did. I dunno why but it fades in and out, maybe I really am losin’ it?”
She self consciously tucked her umbilical under the lining of her shirt. But no, if he could see her now, he would not be laying so comfortably. So vulnerably. She began to amass flecks of darkness behind him, swirling into the beginnings of a portal. Just then he stood up. “That was an hour. I don’t gotta stay longer, you don’t gotta listen longer. Paperwork says I need three more sessions. Guess I’ll see you next week.”
Olivia stood up and reached to stop him but he was out the door. She allowed the shadow to dissipate, sank into her chair and pondered what he’d said. For the time being he seemed to be the only one who periodically saw through the haze. If it remained just him, there was no real danger, was there? Nobody would believe his ravings. Anyway, there was a more pressing matter to attend to.
She tidied up the office somewhat, dimmed the lights, and slumped in her chair. With no windows in sight and the gentle hiss of air circulation drowning out distant creaks and groans of the hull, it was easy to forget she wasn’t in her old office topside. Dwelling on memories of her life before it turned to this mess proved comforting, and within the minute she was fast asleep.
Where before it disturbed her, the school was now becoming an increasingly comforting sight. However unsettlingly lucid and persistent, it was at least recognizably a product of her own subconscious. It came as something of a shock, then, to walk past an enormous rusty valve on the way to the lockers where she kept the crystal sphere.
Olivia paused a moment, studying it more closely. Where a brand name appeared to be stamped into the round steel mechanism, the lines comprising the text swam about maddeningly. “Probably something like “Company” or “Valves, inc.” Who makes these? Nobody, I bet.” She narrowed her eyes. Nothing else about it yielded any clues. But what was it doing in the middle of a school hallway?
Stay Tuned for Part 11!