The doctor’s office seemed purposely deserted. Rose had not been gentle on the lock, but the door was open, and there was nothing between the walls. Raymond followed her like a wraith. He was passive, but he was here–that counted for something. Rose did not offer him
even a small part of her attention. That attention was busy burning through the papers littering the doctor’s desk as she rifled through them.
Raymond had come on some unspoken contract that they would find out, for better or worse, what the hell was going on, but it was Rose and her conviction that had brought them here. Raymond absentmindedly thumbed through a tattered and dog-eared copy of Blue Fire. By James Hilman. He had no idea who that was.
“What are you looking for, Rose?”Raymond asked, wraith-like. Rose bent over and growled deep in her throat.
“Something, anything.” Her impatience seemed directed at Raymond. The boy attempted to set things straight.
“I changed too, you know,” he said. Rose stood up. He had gained, for better or worse, her full attention.
“You?” her lip curled around the front edge of the word. “All you’ve become is more perfect. The girls fall over themselves when you walk through the door.” She raised the pitch of her voice and taunted Raymond with the tilt of her head. “Oh, Raymond, you’re so handsome. I don’t understand
this. You’re so smart, Raymond. Can you help me? Oh, Raymond, I’d die for you, Raymond.”
She edged closer to her target, their noses only inches apart, and dared him with her eyes to retaliate. “And what are you to deserve that?” Raymond’s response, more than anything,
was surprise. He did not speak before Rose herself registered the surprise and, realizing what she had done, turned away from her victim. Her searching became frantic.
“What did they do to me?” Raymond reached out to touch her shoulder. His intent was to pull her back, to restrain her from herself. She turned around at his touch. Tears threatened the corner of her eyes. The touch seemed precariously uncertain, like train wheels tipping on
the edge of the track. “What did I become?” she asked, her voice cracking. From the edge of her arm to the tips of his fingers spread an untamable warmth. Raymond grasped her other arm in an urge only to possess that warmth. Loud sounds and rough hands pulled him away from the dangerous heat.
He heard the doctor’s words ring impassively through the numbness spreading again through his chest.
“‘The most distressing images in teams and fantasies, those we shy from for their disgusting distortion and perversion, are precisely the ones that break the allegorical frame of what we think we know about this person or that, this trait of ourselves or that the ‘worst’ images are thus the best, for they are the ones that restore a figure to its pristine
power as a numinous person at work in the soul.’”
But you took her away, the numbness in his chest only dully responded.
