Falling Falling Stars

29 - Normal

'You know, you can just call me Ef,' he said, after Mack tried and failed to say his name a second time. Mack's cheeks flushed, she nodded, and Efnisien nodded and looked down at his phone and worked on trying to ignore the wave of intrusive thoughts that came from that exchange alone. Now he was remembering why he didn't interact with most women. He hated it. And ignoring the thoughts wasn't working. Was this something he was meant to talk to Dr Gary about? Goddamn it.

The stupid thing was, after kind of hating her, and then being indifferent to her, he thought maybe he didn't actually mind Mack at all. Like, sure, she was slower than he was when she typed – so far everyone was – but she was pretty much never rude, even though she probably heard Efnisien shouting and screaming and throwing things in his sessions with Dr Gary for the last two years. Also, she worked in an office with other sex offenders, which...

Now that Efnisien thought about it, was kind of weird.

'Hey,' Efnisien said to Dr Gary, five minutes later, settled in his chair in Dr Gary's office. 'Is it safe for Mack to work here? Like, with...people like us? Like me?'

Dr Gary was in the middle of putting his pen on the desk, and he paused halfway through, looking over to Efnisien. And then he put the pen down without even looking at it. It was half off the desk.

'Why do you ask?'

'Just, she's like...young. And she's kind of pretty. Isn't she a target? Shouldn't you have someone else doing that job?'

Dr Gary considered him for a minute, and Efnisien didn't think it was such a big deal that he was asking. Probably, Dr Gary was assuming that Efnisien wanted to hurt her or some shit, and now he was getting worried.

'It is a more vulnerable job than the average job,' Dr Gary said finally. 'But Mack has clear instructions on how to behave – whether to engage or not with each individual client – and to always talk to me if someone's behaviour changes, or if anyone ever threatens her. She also has a panic button beneath the desk that activates an alarm. What made you think about this today?'

Efnisien felt a little appeased that Dr Gary had at least considered that her job was dangerous – but of course he had, that's what he was like – and then knotted his hands together and wished, not for the first time, that he'd bought the stupid fidget cube with him. He needed a bag or something. Why did he keep forgetting to look for one online? Probably because he only needed one when he was outside, and forgot to search for one when he was inside.

'I talked to her last week,' Efnisien said, staring down at his knuckles. 'I've never really thought about doing it before, except to tell her that her typing sucks. Not that I'm going to tell her that. But this week it occurred to me that like, maybe I shouldn't be doing that. Talking to her. I'm having...'

He gestured towards his head. His universal symbol for intrusive thoughts or relative insanity.

'I mean I was. They've stopped now. Sort of. There's like after-images, like ghost effects.'

'May I ask what the content of the intrusive thoughts are?'

Efnisien took a breath, then nodded. They used to spend most of their sessions talking about the content of Efnisien's intrusive thoughts. It was a form of desensitisation or some shit, but Dr Gary also used it to constantly reiterate that Efnisien wasn't actually doing any of those things. In many cases, he'd never done any of the things he thought about.

'Hurting her,' he said. 'Like, the things I actually used to do. Pushing her up against a wall and groping her and stuff. It's not going much further than that. But I don't want them at all. I don't want to think about it. I didn't have them last time when I said bye to her.'