Post by provocateur on Oct 23, 2019 23:17:48 GMT -5
The crystal clear “Ultra High Definition 4K technology” from our unnecessarily expensive camera gently initiated its transmission into what was a very modern looking office. Plaques supplied an impression of renown and reverence in absolute abundance, championing much of the wall to Dr. Longshiv’s immediate right. The name on said commemorations, however, had been pixelated to not give away the identity of our newly famed psychologist of one Arthur Pleasant.
Speaking of Dr. Longshiv… it was clear at this point that he had been up all night. Burning the midnight oil, or so it seemed. With it being nearly two o’clock in the AM, that means he had been churning out tedious yet highly important paperwork for about an hour. Give or take. Before that? With the flu season officially upon us, he dedicated two whole hours of his time to sweeping, dusting, scrubbing, and sanitizing the entire office – something that his office administrator surely should have been helping with but decided to do himself. Before that, he had been prioritizing patients and potential clients in alphabetical order in a seemingly endless supply of filing cabinets. Fun stuff. /sarcasm
Before THAT? Well, he could not even remember what he had been doing beyond the certain ennui of record keeping. All he knew was that it had been an absolute ocean of those unpleasant responsibilities that one finds themselves discovering after going into business for themselves and owning a psychologist’s practice.
His eyes felt heavy. For hours. Despite this, he had no desire to go home. He wanted to finish what he started. He needed to finish what he started. Besides, sleep always gave him a wide berth these days, so what was another couple of hours away from his wife and kids?
He thought about the 12 patients he saw on Friday. Each one of them with their own unique set of problems. This one woman, a single Mother, was coping with the loss of an unborn son who had an autistic son from a previous marriage. She had been a patient of his for some time now, and it was never an easy session. That’s not to say that any of his sessions were “easy”. It’s just… she was a special breed of “difficult” and he found it hard to stomach her at times.
Then he thought about the others. Like the man with endless phobias. Or the young woman with a borderline personality disorder. The young boy who had been referred to his office from a neighboring colleague due to his specialism in severe mental disorders like clinical depression or schizophrenia.
Without warning, whispers began to impart from the hallway outside of his office into the half-inch gap underneath his office door.
“Hello?”, called out Dr. Longshank with a clear nervous undertone.
The whispers had been collected in fragments. None of it discernable whatsoever.
“Is someone there?”
Suddenly, there was a large THUD.
A figure obscured by the opaque tempered glass pressed its unanticipated materialization against the office door window. Two dark silhouettes of eye sockets could barely be distinguished between the --[REDACTED]-- and --[REDACTED]-- of Dr. Longshiv’s actual name that had inscribed dead center onto the glass. “Doc”, as we affectionately knew him, flinched into a startled state. His trembling hand reached for the telephone but stopped short of picking up the receiver.
“I’m going to call the police!! Identify yourself!! NOW!! This is your one and ONLY warning!!”
Another THUD. Followed by another.
And another.
And ANOTHER.
One more and glass cracked in so many different directions that it began to resemble a spider.
Dr. Longshiv didn’t know what to do at this point. By the time the police arrived he could have been murdered. If murdering him was this person’s intention, of course. He honestly didn’t know what to think at this point.
“W-what do you want!?”, he pleaded.
“Ha…haha …ha.”, laughed out loud a familiar voice.
Dr. Longshiv stumbled as he got up from tanned leather, no doubt cutting-edge, crescent office chair. He was scared. BEYOND scared. In fact, scared truly didn’t even capture the feeling he was feeling at that precise moment. Not one word could aptly describe it. Not one.
He should have dialed 9-1-1, but something inside of him was stopping him from doing this. What exactly, he didn’t know. And before he even realized it, he was reaching… for the door.
THUD.
The spider-crack grew. As did the inexplicable emotion he was experiencing.
Finally, after taking a deep breath, he grabbed the golden knob of his office door and turned it. Taking a deep breath, he pulled it open.
“BOO!!!!!”, screamed Arthur Pleasant!
Doc fell backwards. Right onto his ass. More angry than embarrassed, he looked up at Arthur.
“WHY!? WHAT THE HELL!?”
The Provocateur himself was hanging down between the panels of the doorway. His gangling arms pushing against them to keep himself from falling as he put no pressure onto his long legs. He looked like a demented string-puppet without its master to give him a direction to swing his extremities in.
“Hahaha… oh Doc. Relax. It’s almost Halloween. Isn’t everyone entitled to one good scare!?”
Doc, looking none too pleased, helped himself up from the office carpet. Shaking his head, he yelled at his patient.
“This is NOT acceptable, Arthur! Not only is it early Wednesday morning, when my office is supposed to be CLOSED, but you have vandalized my office door! EXPLAIN yourself right this instant!!”
Arthur’s crooked grin let loose some chuckles. Each one deeper and more disturbed than the last.
“Well, I was in the neighborhood, Doc. I just thought I-"
“ENOUGH!!”, said Doc authoritatively, cutting off Arthur to the surprise of them both.
“Enough with the GAMES… enough with the missed APPOINTMENTS… enough with the overall aberrant behavior you have been exhibiting on your new endeavor with this wrestling promotion!! I am this close to sending you back to-”
Arthur held up a finger and waved it back and forth.
“You don’t want to finish that sentence, Doc. I promise you that.”
Arthur closed his eyes. Doc was taken aback by Arthur’s sudden and monumental shift in tone.
“Because if you do? Ohhhh boy. I can’t even begin to TELL you how much you’ll regret it.”
Doc’s entire façade paled instantly.
“Actually? I can. So allow me the pleasure. I will not only do YOU harm... but I will do your KIDS harm. Yeah, I’ve seen those brats playing outside with their basketball hoop you drilled above to the garage. I was in that “DISH Network” van across the street, keeping a close eye on you. On top of that, I will do your oh-so scrumptious wife harm. What would you say she is? A C-Cup? Very, very nice rack you claimed, Doc.”
Doc looked like he could vomit at any second. He choked back the bile and chunks though and just listened.
“I will do everyone you love…”, he paused, moving forward while extending his hand so that it gently grazed Doc’s cheek, “… great, GREAT… harm.”
Doc went to speak, but Arthur put a finger up to his lips. From a side pocket to the orange suit he had been seen wearing before at a certain carnival, he brandished a knife. It, too, had been seen before at a certain carnival.
“I got your message. Bitchin’ about me missing appointments. Feigning concern for me.”, he said with a fury behind his eyes not yet seen before on Alpha TV.
“To tell you the truth, I’m not so sure I can be seen by you anymore. This… relationship? This thing of ours here? It’s… it’s just not working.”
He closed in on Doc so that he could communicate with mere whispers. Every syllable enunciated with such impeccable articulation.
“For years I’ve been going to you. Talking. Crying. Laughing. And it’s been the same shit every session. Purging me of harmful contemplations. Expunging the evil from within. Or at least attempting to do so in your textbook ways. And, at long last, I can honestly say that I don’t like what it has made me become. That... husk. A fucking husk of the monster that I was born to be.”
Arthur shook his head with absolute disgust.
“I need that monster, Doc. I need him to come out and fucking destroy all. Because that husk? It was fragile. That husk was easily crushed when the Teutonic-like pressure had been on. That husk… is a loser fucking piece of shit.”
He took the switchblade and ran it along the end of his own tongue, carefully slicing it open with surgical precision. Blood immediately began pouring out of his mouth at an astonishing rate. Arthur could feel the pain… oh yes. Instinctually, it made him wince at first. But as the blood trickled down his sharp, bare jawbones, it made him excited him to immeasurable degrees.
“I know what you’re thinking. That, regardless of whether or not I want to, you simply cannot proceed any further with me as your patient. I get it. I just threatened you and your family out there at –[REDACTED]--.”
The look of horror on Doc’s face was very real at that point. It was no longer a bluff. It was no longer a silly game of empty threats born out of frustration. Arthur’s threats were very real, indeed.
“Ooooh, you thought I was just kidding, right? Well, sorry to disappoint, Doc. Now… why don’t we have a seat? Hm?”
He placed his black-gloved hand on Doc’s shoulder and ushered him violently across the room towards his desk. Flinging him forward, Doc braced himself for impact against his desk.
“Smitty… Zombie… Zombie… Smitty. No, Doc. I cannot continue like this. Weakened. Vulnerable. Helpless. I made Irina a promise when I was given an opportunity to implement my brand with Alpha Pro. And I’ll be damned to the fires of hell if I let the husk obstruct that task from being achieved. Fuck that, Doc. Fuck that horse shit right in its fucking eardrum.”
He spit the blood out into Doc’s eyes, blinding him. With his free hand, he inserted a couple fingers into his own mouth, swashed it around, and then stuck them inside of Doc’s. Fish-hooking him slightly, he continued to torture him until Doc cried out. Only then did he continue.
“Taste that copper, Doc. Mmmmmm… taste it good. Because there’s going to be so much more of it where I’m going.”
Arthur swish-swashed the blade mockingly across Doc’s throat. The look of terror on Doc’s face distended by the second. This transcended the wishy-washy throes of usual mental illness induced madness and intimidation into full-on assault of the first degree.
This was it, he thought to himself. Arthur Pleasant was going to kill him. Right in his office. He knew he should have gone home when he had the chance. He was about to be another bloody piece of data in the macabre history of this evil psychopath.
“P-preparing for what, Arthur?”, he said with his best effort to remain calm in front of the shimmering switchblade. He knew, based on his history, as well as the way he sliced open his tongue with sublime exactitude that Arthur was well educated in human anatomy. Forget body modification… Arthur could slice through him in a way that would cause minimal to no arterial spray. But, was he there to kill him?
“I’m going to the Ukraine. Chernobyl, to be more specific. Five-thousand amoeba-brained trolls witnessing the moment where everything begins anew. Where my brand of… violence… my brand of evil… my brand of sheer fucking terror, can not only be unleashed, but showcased. Like it should have been all along.”
“What are you talking about!? Arthur, listen, you need to take your m-”
“YOU… LISTEN… TO… ME.”
Arthur grabbed Doc’s face with both gloved hands and held the switchblade mere centimeters from his cornea. A loud, empty laugh escaped his mouth while a lone tear fell from his right eye, mirroring a tear falling in Doc’s left one.
“The husk is dead. Long live the monster.”
He folded the knife back into itself and sheathed the switchblade back into his suit jacket’s left pocket.
Doc’s eyes filled with horror.
The last time he heard those words uttered was when…
… was when…
… when…
… he…
Static.
Fade to black.
Speaking of Dr. Longshiv… it was clear at this point that he had been up all night. Burning the midnight oil, or so it seemed. With it being nearly two o’clock in the AM, that means he had been churning out tedious yet highly important paperwork for about an hour. Give or take. Before that? With the flu season officially upon us, he dedicated two whole hours of his time to sweeping, dusting, scrubbing, and sanitizing the entire office – something that his office administrator surely should have been helping with but decided to do himself. Before that, he had been prioritizing patients and potential clients in alphabetical order in a seemingly endless supply of filing cabinets. Fun stuff. /sarcasm
Before THAT? Well, he could not even remember what he had been doing beyond the certain ennui of record keeping. All he knew was that it had been an absolute ocean of those unpleasant responsibilities that one finds themselves discovering after going into business for themselves and owning a psychologist’s practice.
His eyes felt heavy. For hours. Despite this, he had no desire to go home. He wanted to finish what he started. He needed to finish what he started. Besides, sleep always gave him a wide berth these days, so what was another couple of hours away from his wife and kids?
He thought about the 12 patients he saw on Friday. Each one of them with their own unique set of problems. This one woman, a single Mother, was coping with the loss of an unborn son who had an autistic son from a previous marriage. She had been a patient of his for some time now, and it was never an easy session. That’s not to say that any of his sessions were “easy”. It’s just… she was a special breed of “difficult” and he found it hard to stomach her at times.
Then he thought about the others. Like the man with endless phobias. Or the young woman with a borderline personality disorder. The young boy who had been referred to his office from a neighboring colleague due to his specialism in severe mental disorders like clinical depression or schizophrenia.
Without warning, whispers began to impart from the hallway outside of his office into the half-inch gap underneath his office door.
“Hello?”, called out Dr. Longshank with a clear nervous undertone.
The whispers had been collected in fragments. None of it discernable whatsoever.
“Is someone there?”
Suddenly, there was a large THUD.
A figure obscured by the opaque tempered glass pressed its unanticipated materialization against the office door window. Two dark silhouettes of eye sockets could barely be distinguished between the --[REDACTED]-- and --[REDACTED]-- of Dr. Longshiv’s actual name that had inscribed dead center onto the glass. “Doc”, as we affectionately knew him, flinched into a startled state. His trembling hand reached for the telephone but stopped short of picking up the receiver.
“I’m going to call the police!! Identify yourself!! NOW!! This is your one and ONLY warning!!”
Another THUD. Followed by another.
And another.
And ANOTHER.
One more and glass cracked in so many different directions that it began to resemble a spider.
Dr. Longshiv didn’t know what to do at this point. By the time the police arrived he could have been murdered. If murdering him was this person’s intention, of course. He honestly didn’t know what to think at this point.
“W-what do you want!?”, he pleaded.
“Ha…haha …ha.”, laughed out loud a familiar voice.
Dr. Longshiv stumbled as he got up from tanned leather, no doubt cutting-edge, crescent office chair. He was scared. BEYOND scared. In fact, scared truly didn’t even capture the feeling he was feeling at that precise moment. Not one word could aptly describe it. Not one.
He should have dialed 9-1-1, but something inside of him was stopping him from doing this. What exactly, he didn’t know. And before he even realized it, he was reaching… for the door.
THUD.
The spider-crack grew. As did the inexplicable emotion he was experiencing.
What are you doing, --[REDACTED]-- !? Call the police already.
Finally, after taking a deep breath, he grabbed the golden knob of his office door and turned it. Taking a deep breath, he pulled it open.
“BOO!!!!!”, screamed Arthur Pleasant!
Doc fell backwards. Right onto his ass. More angry than embarrassed, he looked up at Arthur.
“WHY!? WHAT THE HELL!?”
The Provocateur himself was hanging down between the panels of the doorway. His gangling arms pushing against them to keep himself from falling as he put no pressure onto his long legs. He looked like a demented string-puppet without its master to give him a direction to swing his extremities in.
“Hahaha… oh Doc. Relax. It’s almost Halloween. Isn’t everyone entitled to one good scare!?”
Doc, looking none too pleased, helped himself up from the office carpet. Shaking his head, he yelled at his patient.
“This is NOT acceptable, Arthur! Not only is it early Wednesday morning, when my office is supposed to be CLOSED, but you have vandalized my office door! EXPLAIN yourself right this instant!!”
Arthur’s crooked grin let loose some chuckles. Each one deeper and more disturbed than the last.
“Well, I was in the neighborhood, Doc. I just thought I-"
“ENOUGH!!”, said Doc authoritatively, cutting off Arthur to the surprise of them both.
“Enough with the GAMES… enough with the missed APPOINTMENTS… enough with the overall aberrant behavior you have been exhibiting on your new endeavor with this wrestling promotion!! I am this close to sending you back to-”
Arthur held up a finger and waved it back and forth.
“You don’t want to finish that sentence, Doc. I promise you that.”
Arthur closed his eyes. Doc was taken aback by Arthur’s sudden and monumental shift in tone.
“Because if you do? Ohhhh boy. I can’t even begin to TELL you how much you’ll regret it.”
Doc’s entire façade paled instantly.
“Actually? I can. So allow me the pleasure. I will not only do YOU harm... but I will do your KIDS harm. Yeah, I’ve seen those brats playing outside with their basketball hoop you drilled above to the garage. I was in that “DISH Network” van across the street, keeping a close eye on you. On top of that, I will do your oh-so scrumptious wife harm. What would you say she is? A C-Cup? Very, very nice rack you claimed, Doc.”
Doc looked like he could vomit at any second. He choked back the bile and chunks though and just listened.
“I will do everyone you love…”, he paused, moving forward while extending his hand so that it gently grazed Doc’s cheek, “… great, GREAT… harm.”
Doc went to speak, but Arthur put a finger up to his lips. From a side pocket to the orange suit he had been seen wearing before at a certain carnival, he brandished a knife. It, too, had been seen before at a certain carnival.
“I got your message. Bitchin’ about me missing appointments. Feigning concern for me.”, he said with a fury behind his eyes not yet seen before on Alpha TV.
“To tell you the truth, I’m not so sure I can be seen by you anymore. This… relationship? This thing of ours here? It’s… it’s just not working.”
He closed in on Doc so that he could communicate with mere whispers. Every syllable enunciated with such impeccable articulation.
“For years I’ve been going to you. Talking. Crying. Laughing. And it’s been the same shit every session. Purging me of harmful contemplations. Expunging the evil from within. Or at least attempting to do so in your textbook ways. And, at long last, I can honestly say that I don’t like what it has made me become. That... husk. A fucking husk of the monster that I was born to be.”
Arthur shook his head with absolute disgust.
“I need that monster, Doc. I need him to come out and fucking destroy all. Because that husk? It was fragile. That husk was easily crushed when the Teutonic-like pressure had been on. That husk… is a loser fucking piece of shit.”
He took the switchblade and ran it along the end of his own tongue, carefully slicing it open with surgical precision. Blood immediately began pouring out of his mouth at an astonishing rate. Arthur could feel the pain… oh yes. Instinctually, it made him wince at first. But as the blood trickled down his sharp, bare jawbones, it made him excited him to immeasurable degrees.
“I know what you’re thinking. That, regardless of whether or not I want to, you simply cannot proceed any further with me as your patient. I get it. I just threatened you and your family out there at –[REDACTED]--.”
The look of horror on Doc’s face was very real at that point. It was no longer a bluff. It was no longer a silly game of empty threats born out of frustration. Arthur’s threats were very real, indeed.
“Ooooh, you thought I was just kidding, right? Well, sorry to disappoint, Doc. Now… why don’t we have a seat? Hm?”
He placed his black-gloved hand on Doc’s shoulder and ushered him violently across the room towards his desk. Flinging him forward, Doc braced himself for impact against his desk.
“Smitty… Zombie… Zombie… Smitty. No, Doc. I cannot continue like this. Weakened. Vulnerable. Helpless. I made Irina a promise when I was given an opportunity to implement my brand with Alpha Pro. And I’ll be damned to the fires of hell if I let the husk obstruct that task from being achieved. Fuck that, Doc. Fuck that horse shit right in its fucking eardrum.”
He spit the blood out into Doc’s eyes, blinding him. With his free hand, he inserted a couple fingers into his own mouth, swashed it around, and then stuck them inside of Doc’s. Fish-hooking him slightly, he continued to torture him until Doc cried out. Only then did he continue.
“Taste that copper, Doc. Mmmmmm… taste it good. Because there’s going to be so much more of it where I’m going.”
Arthur swish-swashed the blade mockingly across Doc’s throat. The look of terror on Doc’s face distended by the second. This transcended the wishy-washy throes of usual mental illness induced madness and intimidation into full-on assault of the first degree.
My God, I can’t believe I’m gonna die like this.
This was it, he thought to himself. Arthur Pleasant was going to kill him. Right in his office. He knew he should have gone home when he had the chance. He was about to be another bloody piece of data in the macabre history of this evil psychopath.
“P-preparing for what, Arthur?”, he said with his best effort to remain calm in front of the shimmering switchblade. He knew, based on his history, as well as the way he sliced open his tongue with sublime exactitude that Arthur was well educated in human anatomy. Forget body modification… Arthur could slice through him in a way that would cause minimal to no arterial spray. But, was he there to kill him?
“I’m going to the Ukraine. Chernobyl, to be more specific. Five-thousand amoeba-brained trolls witnessing the moment where everything begins anew. Where my brand of… violence… my brand of evil… my brand of sheer fucking terror, can not only be unleashed, but showcased. Like it should have been all along.”
“What are you talking about!? Arthur, listen, you need to take your m-”
“YOU… LISTEN… TO… ME.”
Arthur grabbed Doc’s face with both gloved hands and held the switchblade mere centimeters from his cornea. A loud, empty laugh escaped his mouth while a lone tear fell from his right eye, mirroring a tear falling in Doc’s left one.
“The husk is dead. Long live the monster.”
He folded the knife back into itself and sheathed the switchblade back into his suit jacket’s left pocket.
“Vivat Cretaeam Belua.”
Doc’s eyes filled with horror.
The last time he heard those words uttered was when…
… was when…
… when…
… he…
Static.
Fade to black.
