First chapter hello! I actually wrote this when I was in the seventh or eighth grade.. just now decided to finish writing it. :) Going to be posting the beginnings of my stories on here, look out for em if you like?
In all of my years at Danvers State, never before had I dealt with such an extreme case as Kat Harlow’s. Reading her profile, she was a brilliant student up until her high school career. Her parent’s reported that Kat had started to become delusional, visual and auditory hallucinations became frequent. As her grades began to slip, her parent’s tried everything to find out what was wrong. To no avail. The further I read on, the more I began to wish that I hadn’t. Kat’s past was incredibly bleak. She had underwent many sessions with other psychiatrists before- each time proving more and more futile. After countless tries to reconnect with their daughter, they became sick of trying. Giving up on their daughter and themselves, they abandoned Kat. A few months later a nighttime jogger had reported to police strange voices seemed to echo from inside of a long abandoned apartment complex in Boston Massachusetts. When police arrived, they were bewildered to find 19 year old Kat, sitting cross-legged on the floor, appearing to be talking with an imagined person. When confronted by the officers, Kat reportedly started growling demonically and proceeded to rip and tear at one of the officers with her hands and teeth until the man had a head laceration and several bruised ribs. A could-be fatal incident had the other officers not pulled her off of the unfortunate man. Being deemed demented, she was to be sent here, Danvers State for rehabilitation. She is to arrive today.
It was nearly twelve in the afternoon when Dr. Pier and a few of the more burly nurses came by my office with a girl in a straight jacket. Other than the restraint, she was wearing tattered and dirty garments. Donning running shoes that exposed her dirt caked toes and a hoodie obviously many sizes to large for her, she looked like a lost puppy. Short, messy mouse brown hair covered her eyes, as if shielding her from my stare. The girl stood in the doorway gripped tightly by all four of my coworkers. She could only be who I thought she was.
‘Dr. Sybil, this is Kat Harlow. Your newest patient.’
With that, Dr. Pier and the assistants nudged her into the crowded, asbestos smelling room that was my office, and left down the tunnels to elsewhere of the asylum.
Clearing my throat, I began the formal introductive.
‘Hello Kat., it’s good to finally meet you. My name is Sybil Sykes and I am to be your psychiatrist during your stay at Danvers. Please take a seat?’
She nodded and chose the chair furthest from me, still in the straight jacket. Kat was going to be difficult to read, I could already tell.
‘I’ve been told that you hear voices… correct? That’s what I thought. Can you hear them now?’
Kat meagerly nodded. I tried again.
‘What is the voice, or possibly voices saying Kat?’She paused, as if afraid to say aloud.
‘Kat?’
Kat whispered, ‘She- she’s telling me to hurt you.’
Shocked, I asked for a more detailed description on this person. After another long pause, Kat looked directly at me and whimpered,
‘Corra.’
It’s been a little over week since first meeting Ms. Harlow and her supposed split Corra. It amazed me that her delusions would be this realistic. To appear so aggressively at the first meeting was astounding. The more I analyzed Kat, the more frequent ‘Corra’ would emerge. Like today, during an electroshock therapy session Corra’s personality took control. It happened randomly, completely abrupt. Kat’s body began to twitch, but soon the twitching became twisting spasms. It seemed as if there were some deep internal conflict occurring. I watched, and waited. Almost as suddenly as it started, Kat lay on the floor completely rigid, still as stone. She sat up but something is seriously different though... something sinister. Kat’s eyes seemed darker, empty. The very picture of soullessness.
Kat’s mouth began to move, but a voice that did not belong to her spoke.
‘Hello Sybil, it’s nice to finally speak with you myself. Kat never sends the full message quite as clear as I prefer.’
I thought to myself, was this really Corra or was it just Kat, driven to insanity? If it was indeed the split, why was she in control?
‘Corra?’
Menacing laughter broke all possibility of this being a joke. The not Kat smiled cynically and as if reading my fearful thoughts, she spoke.
‘You're surprise aren’t you? To hear from me? Kat was too, at first. Don’t be so shocked hun, this isn’t the first time I’ve been in charge. I prefer normally to talk through Kat, but I decided to make an exception just for you.’
Every word dripped like venom, sickly sweet and dangerously fatal.
‘You can’t be real. You’re just a fragment of Kat's imagination. A mere delusion, nothing more. But seeing as how you’ve been troubling Kat, I’m going to find out a way to stop you. I’m here to save Kat from this insanity you’re bringing upon her.’
Strangely, this seemed to affect this personality. Corra changed drastically. Replacing her smug, overconfident crooked smile with a glare so full of hate I felt as if she were setting my mind aflame and mutilating it with rakes and spades. Corra growled in a low, almost animalistic tone,
‘She belongs to me. You will never take her, I won’t allow it. Just try and steal her from me. Just try. Kat will die without me; we share this soul, this body. You’ll kill us both if you separate the split.’
And with that, Kat's body passed out onto the bare floor; completely unconscious.
Within moments of this dreadfully twisted event, what I believed to be Kat sat up, and I gathered the remainder of my voice.
‘Kat, is that… is that you?’
I realised it must have been when she burst into hysterical sobs.
We sat on the floor of my office like that for hours. Kat shivering and sobbing to herself, and I were sitting blankly staring, completely dumbfounded. Too numb to talk or even think clearly. What had just happened? This wasn’t supposed to be possible. It should not have been this bad. Instead of schizophrenia, I was beginning to think that Kat was suffering from something far more severe. This appeared to be more like demonic possession instead of just the average split. How could the other personality, which normally lay dormant- passively aggressive, take complete control like that?
Little did I know this wasn’t going to be the worst experience with Corra I’d witness.
