Chapter 2

The thought races through my mind and I have to stifle a chuckle. I look down at Jarrett with a half-lidded smile, I’m so excited I practically feel high on coke which is bad because there’s so much work to do. Jarrett, for his part, sits nervously back down on the couch while I move over towards the cabinet where I pull out two teacups and two saucers. Two packets of powder go into Jarrett’s teacup while mine is filled with just straight Earl Grey piping hot. On top of the powder goes a bag of Chamomile tea, boiling water and an extra dose of honey; that’s there just to make sure he’ll drink it but also to mask the taste of the drug. This one isn’t just an excitotoxin, although there is some of that in there, it’s really my own special blend of hallucinogen, stimulant and narcotic, just what I need to take over the mind of a fourteen year old boy. He drinks it without being asked, obviously his mom’s influence on his manners and in a few minutes he sitting slumped backwards, his eyes open wide and his breath rapidly panting.

“Jarrett,” I now say in my most calm and hypnotic voice and there’s no need to make him stare at a swinging gold watch; the drugs in his tea have the fourteen year old boy very well hypnotized.

“Come over here and sit in this other chair, we’re going to spend the afternoon watching movies.”

He stands up and walks over calmly while I pull out the other white chair; after he’s seated in it I pull out four straps and secure his arms and legs to that of the chair. For a moment I consider doing him like in the movie A Clockwork Orange where Malcolm McDowell has his head trapped facing forward while his eyelids are taped open so that he can’t look away but I realize I’m getting carried away with myself. After all, I get the feeling he’ll love what I’m showing him. Once Jarrett is securely fastened to the chair, I stick my head out of my office and tell my assistant Renfield he’s taking the rest of the day off. The slender, well groomed man knows me well enough to not ask any questions; instead, he just gathers his things before walking out the door. Before he leaves, he puts up the “Closed” sign, which says, at the bottom, “Doctor out on assignment” and, as the door shuts I panic, he’s almost gotten away without me giving him one final instruction.

“The woman in there, I need you to get her home number off the paperwork she filled out. Get it and call it at exactly 8:15, no 8:20 tonight. Can you do that for me?”

“Sure doc,” he says and he doesn’t bother to ask why I want him to do this. Renfield has his own thing going on and, as to why I would ask him to do something out of the ordinary, well, the young man just doesn’t care.

“Say ... say something about selling magazine subscriptions or something,” I now tell Renfield.

“And disguise your voice. I don’t want her to know it’s you.”

We both go back in the office together and, while he copies down Debbie’s home phone number, I walk back to my office, stepping through the door way before firmly shutting and locking the door behind me. Jarrett is still sitting in the chair; his breath comes in rapid, shallow pants and his eyes are staring straight forward. I busy myself with setting up my projector and then finding the movies that I want to show him. It will all be stuff made after 1936; after all, that’s when the Technicolor three strip process came into being and the quality of the images is just so much better. The old joke is if you wonder if you are a sociopath than you aren’t one because sociopaths never bother to ask themselves that question. It’s kind of funny, I admit it, but I think it can’t possibly be true. I’m a sociopath and I’ve known it for years, it’s the reason I became a psychiatrist. I mean, if I want to revel in the most depraved behavior, what better way is there for me to go about it? The problem is I was born black in the early 1900’s and it’s a miracle I didn’t end up in jail or, if not that, in one of the menial jobs that most black men of that era were destined to have. Luckily, I met all the necessary people and I knew who to befriend, who to blackmail and who to strong arm. In the end, it was this natural instinct thatt allowed me to break through the color barrier and become the first black man to earn a medical degree from the prestigious Columbia School of Medicine. Still, my life was anything but easy. I mean, there wasn’t a prison in the U.S. that would hire me much less any opportunities to get my hands on the most explicit material available under the guise of researching the psychology of criminals. In the end, like everything else, where there’s a will there’s a way and I make sure to attend every Psych conference I can. You’d be amazed what other doctors will send you in the mail without bothering to check if you’re actually doing research. It’s how I came about my extensive movie collection; sick freaks just have a compulsion to film everything they do and when they’re caught it’s all there to convict them. After the trial, it then goes to doctors specializing in criminal psych. The first reel is a farm boy and his teacher. I don’t know what excuse he used to get her into his barn but, once she was there, he quickly tied her hands. With all the manual labor that farm boys do, this one didn’t seem to have to put forth any effort towards ripping her clothes off once her hands were securely tied. The movies don’t have any sound, which is what I want, because I need Jarrett to hear me. As the farm boy goes about his business, I whisper strongly in Jarrett’s left ear.

“Jarrett, you want to fuck your mom. You need to fuck your mom. You have to fuck your mom. You’re going to fuck your mom every night from now on. Everything you see these men doing to women in these movies, you will do to your very own mom. Boys your age don’t need to listen to their moms, their moms need to listen to them. It’s the natural order of things for males to be in charge, a woman’s only purpose is to serve and satisfy a man.”

I repeat these phrases over and over again for the rest of the afternoon only pausing occassionaly to load the next violent rape movie onto the projector. They’re still playing when 5 o’clock rolls around and I almost miss the knock on the door. I’m betting it’s not Debbie’s first knock; even from the back office with the door closed it sounds impudently impatient. I jump up from my position crouched next to the fourteen year old boy, so starteld I feel like I almost leap high enough to hit my head on the office’s 8 foot ceiling. Then I’m scrambling to put away the projector, untie Jarrett and give him an injection that will counteract the earlier drug. Finally, I answer the door. It didn’t even occur to me that he might have ligature marks on his arms and legs and, for a moment, I’m in a full panic. Then I shrug it off and regain control of my emotions, there’s nothing I can do about it now. I move swiftly and open the front door and, when I see her, Debra’s face is a mask of concern. She seems frightened that the office said closed as if I might have abducted her son.

“What’s going on, where’s Jarrett?” she says her eyes nervously darting back and forth as she tries to look past me and into the office.

“Jarrett’s relaxing comfortably on the couch in my office.” I say without a hint of stress in my voice. Still I wonder if she can see my face is flushed and my skin sweaty, cold and clammy. I must’ve looked better on the outside than I felt on the inside because she paid me no mind, just pushed past me and into the reception area, crossing swiftly across the carpet in a beeline for my office door.