Magnify © Joshua Scribner
“I was supposed to tell you something, but I don't remember what it was,” said Kelly. She was blonde, had the energy of youth. Doctor Starnick Snaggle, clinical psychologist, usually considered her a decent receptionist.
He waited for a few seconds, as she stared off at nothing, and then suggested, “Perhaps, it was a message you recorded in your notebook.”
Kelly looked down. “Yes!” she exclaimed. “It's right here. Your first client of the day cancelled.”
“Very well, then,” Doctor Snaggle said, rushing away, before Kelly would have time to start in about her latest boyfriend, who would no doubt have the flaws of men her age, something neither she nor Doctor Snaggle could fix.
The voice of a colleague interrupted his escape back to his office.
“Hold up, Starn.”
He looked into the open office of Doctor Leonard Ford, who had hauled his exceptionally large posterior from the seat behind his desk and waddled toward Doctor Snaggle with a case file in hand. Doctor Ford stopped a few feet away, started to say something, and then an expression of befuddlement overtook his face.
Doctor Snaggle gave him a few seconds, and when he did not recover, said, “There was something you needed to say to me, Leonard.”
Doctor Ford looked at Doctor Snaggle as if surprised to see him. “I don't remember why I got up.”
Doctor Snaggle couldn't help but smirk. “If I may make a suggestion, maybe it has something to do with the file you are holding.”
Doctor Ford looked at the folder, opened it, and studied for a few seconds. “That's right. I wanted to show you this case file and get your thoughts on it.”
Doctor Ford closed the file, and handed it to Doctor Snaggle, who took it and said, “I'll be back to you within the hour.”
Doctor Snaggle made it a few steps before he caught a glimpse of another oddity. Doctor Jeffrey Sheppard, another colleague, sat behind his desk, with a frightened look on his face.
Doctor Snaggle walked into Doctor Sheppard's office. “Jeffrey, what's wrong?”
“Where am I?” Doctor Sheppard responded. “Who are you?”
For a few seconds, Doctor Snaggle was taken aback, but then logic set in, and he laughed. No patients had arrived yet, so he felt free to speak loudly.
“All right. Very funny, all of you. I get it, everybody loses a little more of their mind as they get closer to my office. Ha!”
He moved out of Doctor Sheppard's office and into his own, where he was stunned to find a young woman sitting in his chair. She spoke.
“Actually, it has nothing to do with their proximity to your office. It has to do with your proximity to me.”
She had short brown hair and a thin face. Her eyes spoke of great mischief. He remembered her.
“I saw you briefly at the hospital last week, on the psych ward.”
“Yes, Doctor, and I saw you too.”
“You spoke of auras. You said you didn't have one of your own, but that you saw other peoples' and could magnify them.”
“Yes, and I've been waiting a long time to find one like yours.”
At this point, he knew this wasn't a joke. His colleagues were pedestrian enough to play pranks on him, but they would never involve a patient.
“Do go on,” he said.
She nodded and then replied, “You have a very special knack for getting things out of peoples' minds. You erase fears, disable negative voices, stamp out neurosis.”
It was a dramatic way of describing what he did for a living, but he decided not to tell her how much her description annoyed him. He nodded, and she continued.
“What you don't know is that what you do becomes a part of your aura in such a way that your mere presence has an impact on people. Of course, this impact is small, unless someone like me comes around and magnifies it.”
He thought for a few seconds and then said, “So you took my ability to remove things from peoples' minds, and magnified it to make me erase parts of my colleagues' minds.”
“Yes,” she replied. “That about sums it up. Of course, now, with how close you are to me, your colleagues are basically mindless drones, which brings me to the second part of my plan.”
She hesitated.
“Do give,” he said in response.
She grinned. “Another part of what you do is place things in peoples' minds, positive thoughts, healthy defense mechanisms, feelings of happiness. I can magnify that ability too, and now that we've virtually erased your colleagues' minds, we can place whatever we want there. For instance, how would you like to be irresistible to the receptionist? Maybe you can have some fun with her, then we can go get some rich people to give us their money and run off to the Bahamas .”
Again, he had to stop and think, but she resumed talking before he could really get anywhere.
“Think about why you became a shrink and developed yourself into such a good one. You wanted to control minds. I'm offering the ultimate form of mind control.”
He finished what he had been thinking about. Then he moved closer to her. He held out a hand. She got up from behind his desk. She walked up to him and took his hand.
“Can you feel it?” she asked. “Can you feel our power?”
“No,” he replied. “And the reason I became a psychologist was not to control people; it was to help them.” He used his free hand to grab the stapler from his desk. He hit her across the jaw with that stapler, and she fell to the floor.
She appeared to be unconscious, but he spoke out loud anyway. “And I think the most helpful thing I can do for a lot of people is make sure you're not allowed to harm anyone ever again.”
***
The man stirred in his seat and then opened his eyes. “What the heck? What just happened?”
“Hello, Marcus. I'm Doctor Snaggle. We have just finished a therapeutic session.”
Marcus looked at him in disbelief. “What? I don't remember coming here.”
Doctor Snaggle nodded. “That's fine, Marcus. You don't need to, but if I might suggest something, maybe you should have a smoke to calm down. Your cigarettes are on the desk behind you. So are your lighter and an ashtray.”
Marcus turned to the desk and then turned back and said, “I don't really feel like one right now.”
“That's fine, but go ahead and light one up anyway. I promise it will be helpful to you.”
Marcus stared at him for a few seconds and then turned back to the items on the desk. He slid his chair over, got a cigarette from the pack, and lit up. He took a drag, and then a horrible expression of disgust came over his face. He quickly smashed the cigarette out. He looked at Doctor Snaggle, maintaining his look of repulsion. Then, after a few seconds, he smiled.
“I've smoked for twenty years and tried to quit many times.”
“And now you hate smoking,” Doctor Snaggle offered. “You will for the rest of your life, I suspect.”
Marcus looked around the room as he spoke. “How did you do it, and why don't I remember coming here today?”
Doctor Snaggle nodded at the apt questions. “Sometimes, to put something in your mind, we have to make a little room first.”
Doctor Snaggle explained a little more to the patient, who seemed to become more and more grateful with every passing second. The session ended with an annoyingly vigorous handshake, and then the man walked out.
Doctor Snaggle felt the slight tinge of guilt he got after his therapy sessions these days. Six months ago, the woman had come to him with the awful proposal. He had slit that woman's throat and dumped her corpse into a very deep well, very far into the woods. That wasn't what caused the guilt.
What the girl had done to his aura had changed him in fundamental ways. He could affect peoples' minds much easier than he could before he'd met her. He felt like he was cheating, and that caused the guilt.
Of course, the guilt was somewhat alleviated by how much more he was helping people now. It was also alleviated by the fact that he had been able to come back to the office and use his new ability to bring back the minds of his colleagues.
“Your next client called and said she would be about twenty minutes late,” Kelly said from the doorway.
He sighed. “No problem. What's my time worth anyway?”
She walked over and laid a big kiss on his mouth. “No one else is here. I can think of a fun way to spend twenty minutes.”
The guilt was not alleviated in the least by the little additive he'd placed in Kelly's mind. _________________________
Joshua Scribner is the author of the novels Mantis Nights, The Coma Lights and Nescata . His fiction won both second and fifth place in the 2008 Whispering Spirits Flash Fiction contest. Up to date information on his work can be found at joshuascribner.com. Joshua currently lives in Michigan with his wife and two daughters. |