Seal-Breaker

Beth Cope

“Bedlam. And in that place be found many men that be fallen out of their wit. And full honestly they be kept in that place; and some be restored onto their wit and health again. And some be abiding therein for ever, for they be fallen so much out of themselves that it is incurable unto man.” – William Gregory, Lord Mayor of London, 1450.

She nibbles her nails. She never bites them off, just crunches the ends so they grow rather crooked and thin. She often peels the skin from the edges of her thumbnails, drawing blood and sucking it all away. I watch, looking down my nose at her and making subtle notes.

It’s difficult to say what’s wrong with her. I search, seeing my hands sifting through the inner workings of her mind, pushing squiggly, pink flesh away from electric connections. In brain scans, the amygdalae light up in people like her. The amygdalae are pulsating, throbbing things in people like her. But it’s wrong to put them all in the same box; there are so many differences, so many anomalies.

“I don’t want to talk.” Her accent is Northern and dark.

She hasn’t spoken for our first few sessions. I had asked, first and foremost, if she was OK, and she had sniggered. After that I thought it was best to wait until she wanted to speak-after all, she isn’t refusing to come to the sessions.

“Well you won’t progress if not. Do you want to get better?” I smile.

Her teeth click against her fingernails.

“What does getting better matter?” Her eyes are deep, like tunnels. “Isn’t it too late?” She smiles. There’s something sinister about the revealing of her teeth.

I take my glasses off and set them down on the table between us. I cross my legs.

“I don’t believe so, otherwise I wouldn’t have a job.”

“Hm.” Vacant again, eyes grey. I let the silence fester, now the seal has been broken it will rot in the air. “I don’t think talking helps at all.”

“Yet again, if it didn’t I wouldn’t have a job.” I pause, shuffling myself forward. “But aside from that, talking is… well, it’s what we humans do best.”

She bites down on her index finger’s nail and pulls. She holds my eyes with hers and for a moment, I think she might rip the nail from her very own finger right there, but she stops, letting the nail be tainted with dark blood.

When I was eighteen I moved to Yorkshire to begin my degree. I learnt how to talk to people like Alex. I’ve been fascinated by the brain since I can remember, always pestering my father, poking him, asking ‘what does this bit do?’ pointing at my forehead on one occasion. The ‘front bit’ is ‘you’. I spent hours wondering how all of me, everything that is me, could fit in there. At eighteen, Alex’s ‘front bit’ comes up dull in the brain scan.

“Do you ever feel like you’re wasting time?” she asks.

“In what sense?”

“With me… here.” She sits forward in that old armchair, elbow rested on her knee, fingers in her mouth.

“Do you think we’re wasting time?”

“You are.” She rolls her eyes.

“Because you don’t like talking.”

“An hour of your life is wasted every other day.” She’s looking past me, through me.

“I don’t see it like that and neither should you.”

“You sit here, examining me, writing your notes.”

“I’m here to help you Alex. I pose no threat.” I look down at my notepad and blush.

“But talking doesn’t help at all.” 138

“What will help?” I blurt.

She looks down.

“I… I don’t know.” She scratches her head and the sound seems to fill the room.

“You could join a class,” I suggest.

“You think I’m broken, don’t you?” She looks up with bloodshot eyes. “You think I’m totally and utterly damaged. Well, here’s something for your notes: I wasn’t abused and my parents’ relationship was fine. I hadn’t committed before, I liked school and…” Her scabbed fingers twitch.

“Let me just write that down for you.” I begin to write out exactly what she’s said, taking my time with it as well.

“There’s your psychological evaluation,” she mutters.

“Sorry, what was that?” She has her head turned from me, so I continue. “Is there anything you want to add?”

“I had friends too,” she mumbles.

I write down her exact words.

Reading them back they feel mournful, emotional, yet from a dull cerebrum. Or are they ignited by alight amygdalae?

I can easily quit on Alex, but her eyes, her age, the incessant biting of her nails, it draws me in. I recognise her, see myself within her perhaps. I imagine myself at eighteen sitting in a psychiatrist’s office every other day for an hour. A woman who is, in reality, only slightly older, having her analysing me, knowing the secrets I keep, the crime I committed. Just the thought disturbs me.

* * * * *

“Do you like music?” I ask.

“Why?”

“Well, it’s therapeutic, don’t you think?”

“I suppose.”

“Look… I think I’ve got some old records some place around here.” I get up and am thankful to see the record player. I begin to rifle through the pile of vinyl discs. I find the right one, yet again, thankfully, as I feel strangely alien to the room, although it is my office, my record player, and my vinyl collection. “I always preferred the sound of records. My dad gave me these before he-” I’m unsure whether information this personal is safe with her. “I know music always helps me when I’m… you know.” I place the needle on the disc and let the song play out, clear and crisp. I had learnt the triggering effects of music in college. I hesitate before going to sit back down, scanning her expression. “I don’t like this song.” Her eyes widen.

“Why’s that? It’s one of my favourites.” I sit down.

“I don’t like this song.” She starts picking the skin next to her thumb, digging with her nail like a shovel in dirt. She watches the skin flay, the blood begin to form, at first in tiny droplets and then into one large drop that she quickly licks away.

“That’s not answering my question,” I say, looking at Alex’s guard, Mason, out of the corner of my eye. He’s glaring at me. I can feel his judgement oozing out into the room.

“It’s overrated.”

“Is it now?” I chuckle.

I wonder if she can see it all happening behind her eyes like I can. As I think deeper, the scene grows clearer and bolder like watercolour to acrylic. Her standing there over him, his favourite song on the record player. I know she’s imagining it; her eyes are watering. Or perhaps she’s been staring at me too long because she quickly blinks and sits back in her seat.

I feel a sharp pain in my thumb and notice a droplet of blood growing bigger and redder with each second.

I had imagined convulsive sobs, the breaking of the seal. Or at least a smile… wouldn’t a criminal revel in their crime? I’m not sure anymore.

I found this job after Alex had been placed in confinement. It seemed… exciting.

I guess you could say this was shallow, but the whole thing is shallow. I get paid to make a criminal speak. Yet after weeks of ‘therapy’, Alex could merely be an idea in my mind. She is flat. She’s like a terrible actress in a terrible play. Her brain scan flashes behind my eyes, the green and red lights; the blank spaces. 140

“Do your parents ever visit you?” I ask.

“My dad visits once a week.” I notice the sharp bones of her wrist, how visible they are under her meagre layer of skin.

“You don’t see your mum?”

“No, otherwise I would have said.” She makes a ‘duh’ face, but keeps her eyes on her hands, her fingernails.

“So what do you and your dad talk about?”

“Just… he just asks how it is in here and I ask about how it is out there.”

“Do you miss them? Home?” These words ignite a deep yearning for home within myself, I ache for my own father.

“You’re being direct.” She laughs.

“I’m doing my job, Alex.” I like the way my voice sounds, the way it cuts neatly through the silence.

“So you go for the typical therapy question about parents? Are you hoping to discover some dark family secret?” She waves her hands sarcastically, but quickly places them back in her lap to continue picking the scabs on her fingers.

“You think that’s how the mind works.” I scoff. I sit up, somewhat desperately, glancing at the dark scab on my thumb.

“Well yeah, it gets damaged… as a child.”

“Not necessarily.”

“Go on?” She folds her arms, sitting back.

“Well for one it can be damaged later in life, by drugs, severe stress… there’s tonnes of things. But some people are just born, I guess you could say, damaged.”

“Tonnes of things… that’s professional.” She says the first part in my Southern accent. “Aren’t you meant to be a psychiatrist?” She bursts out laughing, baring her teeth. “What about you? Are you damaged? Was it stress, drugs… or were you just born like that?”

“I’m just trying to get to know you.” I look down.

“You think.” She laughs harder. “You think, that will make me talk. Isn’t psychology a little more complicated than that? You can do better. You must have gone to university, didn’t you?”

I look past her, trying to imagine my university building.

“It will help you Alex, I can promise you that,” I mumble.

“You just repeating the same old thing doesn’t really convince me. You know, it’s almost like you don’t even know what you’re doing.”

My cheeks are burning. How can I do my job with her prying questions in that dark accent of hers?

“I had therapy… when I was younger my boyfriend died,” I blurt. “I didn’t want to talk either. My therapist was some woman, I hated her, despised her even… but she helped me to understand why I didn’t want to confront what had happened, why I…” I feel confused, like an elderly woman who suddenly feels she is in the wrong room.

Alex sits forward and our eyes meet. I realise she is studying me. “You’ll get out of here quicker if you talk about it. You won’t feel so angry,” I say, adjusting my jacket.

“I’m angry?” She is laughing again.

“Well you attacked another inmate because she cut in front of you in the canteen queue… got yourself into confinement,” I bite back. I want my home, my father, my dead boyfriend.

“Is that what you think?” Alex frowns.

“Look, stop trying to one-up me. This is about you, not me.”

“About me? You just told me you had therapy.” Her eyes could swallow me whole. “Why didn’t you want to confront what had happened?”

She is plunging her fists into my mind like a clumsy toddler, muddling my order of things. I feel like her brain scan.

“I’ve already asked you: don’t turn this on me… I would recommend relaxing yourself, reading or creating something.” I close my eyes, afraid of her expressions.

I hear her shuffling about on her leather seat.

“Perhaps.”

At the beginning of our next session she tells me she has started reading Jane Eyre. I wonder if she is doing this to humour me after the blip last time.

“It’s not very realistic though. She gets the man she wants in the end.” She looks at the ceiling.

“That’s not realistic?”

“You tell me.” Alex sits back in her chair like some all-knowing goddess. I’m not going to let her break me again, I’m not the seal of this bottle.

“Do you like it though?”

“I guess. It’s set around here.”

“Oh yes.” I push. “Now, I might be wrong, but if I remember rightly, Mr… Mr what’s his name?”

“Rochester.”

“Yes, he’s, um, he’s disabled in the end. Because of the fire.” Alex rolls her eyes.

“Yeah, but she still loves him.” Her accent emphasises ‘loves’, taints it and makes it worrisome, like when she nearly ripped her nail from her own finger. “I guess you could say that’s true love.” I sit forward, adjusting my glasses on the bridge of my nose.

“I suppose.” She holds my gaze for a minute perhaps, but like a submissive dog her eyes dart to the ground, watering. Mason peers over at us.

“So you’ve finished it then?” I persist.

“Nearly. I knew the story vaguely anyway.” She begins to pick her nails, making a little clicking sound.

“Ah, how’s that?”

“Him,” she snorts.

The seal has been well and truly broken now. There’s no turning back, and it is totally hers, as it always should have been. Alex’s brain is a malleable thing, resting calmly in my palm. Jane Eyre, the seal-breaker.

“He liked it?” I ask, crossing my legs and sitting forward.

“Yeah. He loved old books and stuff.”

“Loves.” My veins tingle with adrenaline.

“You reckon he reads still?” Her voice is but an echo.

“Why wouldn’t he?”

“I just… I can’t imagine it. Can you?”

I imagine my dead boyfriend reading Jane Eyre. It starts to rain outside, diagonal and fast, hitting the windows. It makes me jump.

“Alex.” I go to sit next to her. “This is a safe place. I know I can be… this is your time.”

She scans me, like Terminator, an unsettling thought. I suppose it’s because I’ve never been this close to her. She looks fuller, sunnier than I expected. “It’s the act of saying it. The actual reality of saying anything about it. His… his name, his… oh God, his voice.” Her hand covers her mouth.

“Do you want to write it?” My thoughts are whirring, solely concerned with her brain scan, how had it been so dull, so clearly wrong? I am in a trance.

I rip a page from my notebook and hand it to her; a strange offering. She takes it. I return to my seat, putting my pen on the coffee table and sliding it closer to her. I don’t acknowledge the trembling of her hands. I sit down. Mason appears startled, and as she picks up the pen he moves towards her armchair. She begins to scribble. It seems entirely random, and both Mason and I are hypnotized, watching the rapid motions of her hand.

She gets up, clearly finished, and leaves the room.

I snatch the paper, waiting for Mason to follow after, but he stares at me for a while, scanning me like Alex does. I frown as he leaves, feeling the dents on the other side of the sheet of paper that Alex has drawn on. I hear, out in the corridor, someone pressing the button to release the fire door. But I’m too absorbed in this moment to care. She’s drawn a man, a scribbly, slightly terrifying man. His eyes are large in his face, like a baby’s.

I rush to my side room, and rummage through Alex’s files which are still left in their boxes. I realise I don’t really know where to look for what file. I pick the largest one, sliding my finger across the sheets of paper and slice the tip of my index finger. I wince and suck the blood away, dropping the file. Out falls a photo of Mr Bulmer.

For a moment, it feels like time is suspended. I can see his age drawn on his face, but I’m drawn to his eyes, those delicate, gentle, baby’s eyes. He looks hurt, terribly hurt and alone, knowing he will never feel his legs again, never stand or walk again, I can see it all in his darling eyes. I shake my head and grab the photo, screwing it up a little and smearing blood on his face. I bring it through to compare it to Alex’s drawing.

I notice that a different guard is standing in my office, but before I can say anything Alex and Mason arrive, both soaking wet.

“I want to talk about it,” she says, her voice breaking off at the end.

I put the pictures down on the coffee table and sit down.

“Of course, of course.” I move my hair out of my face.

“You’ve just rubbed blood on your forehead.” She points whilst taking a seat. I wipe my temple with my thumb.

“Yeah, it’s gone.”

“Did you go outside?” I ask, rather dazed, confused. This is a moment I have anticipated, almost dreamt about and now it feels so surreal, like watching a film in colour after only seeing black and white.

She nods.

“I haven’t felt the rain since that night.” Her hair is dripping onto the leather seat. The sound is aggravating and I begin to anticipate each drop. It makes me twitch.

The new guard stands behind me, looking stern with his stiff lip and scarred cheek. 145

“Is this necessary? Alex needs privacy.”

He doesn’t answer.

“Are you OK?” Alex asks, frowning. I feel like I’m at therapy again. The three frowning faces of my parents and my therapist… a frayed memory now, barely recognisable.

“What? Why?” I shudder, noticing how upright she’s sitting, how the scabs on her fingers have healed so very quickly. “Tell me… tell me what happened that night Alex.”

“I went to his house, I wanted to… I wanted to…”

“Hurt his wife,” I say.

She is going to confess. I can feel the satisfaction already, on the tips of my fingers, the ends of my toes.

“Yeah… I wanted to get rid of her. I hated her.” She sniffs.

“She was ugly, wasn’t she?” I bite the dry skin on my lips.

She shrugs. Mason stands forward, his eyes stuck on me. I begin to blush, uncomfortably aware of my inexperience.

“She found out about me and Craig and she wasn’t letting him leave the house. So I thought I’d build up some muscle, it was like… this fantasy. I started going to gym almost every night. I was obsessed with the idea of me and Craig, just me and Craig, starting our new life together.” I keep nodding at her, the photo of Craig Bulmer staring at me from the table. “I walked through the woods between his house and mine. It was raining; I was drenched by the time I got there. I went to his shed at the bottom of the garden. I didn’t even knock, I just let myself in. I knew he wouldn’t mind. He had his back to me, he was making something. He had a saw in his hand, I remember… he was making a table. He was making a table for her.” She puts her head in her hands.

“Your clothes.” I point at her. “Your hair. You were soaking, it was dripping on the floor.”

“Yes.” Her hair is still dripping on the sofa, drip drop drip drop. I am twitching again. “He turned round to me, he said, ‘What are you doing here? I thought

I made it clear.’ I loved him, I loved him so much it hurt me to see his face. I said something like, ‘You can still see me, Craig. She doesn’t love you like I do. She doesn’t need to know a thing.’ He just said, ‘I have children, Alex.’” 146

“It got heated?” I am sitting, literally, on the edge of my chair.

“A bit. I don’t remember much of the conversation; it’s kind of a blur. I remember he said something that hurt me. It felt like he had sliced me with that saw in his hand, he was swinging it about, he said… he loved her. She was so beautiful, you know?” Her voice cracks.

No, she was so ugly, so fat and ugly, and she treated him like a child.

“He did swing it at you though, didn’t he? He was threatening you.”

The guard behind me puts his hand on my shoulder and thrusts me back into my seat.

“Stay calm,” he says.

“What?” I turn around. I pull from his grip and stand up. His hands fall limp by his sides.

I go to sit next to Alex again, but she looks at me like I’m an insect.

He deserved better, he deserved more. But he wouldn’t stop, he was swinging that saw, pointing it...

I decide to persist.

“So when he threatened you-”

“He didn’t.”

“But he did! You had no choice, Alex! He swung at you with the saw; he wanted you out of his life.” I stand over her, making her shrink into her seat.

“That never happened.”

“But it did, Alex. That’s why you took the golf club. You held it strong in your hands.” I close my eyes, feeling a golf club in my grip. “He’d turned away from you, he’d said ‘I’m done with your shit’ and had turned away. So you took the golf club from behind the door, and you swung, and you hit him and hit him until the anger went away.” I swing an imaginary golf club.

I open my eyes and see that Alex is smiling.

“That’s the confession,” she says. I begin to pace.

“Yes, go on, say what happened, I can help you get out of here. Confession is the first step.” I start to scratch the back of my hand. “Those files we gave you.” Her smile grows. “They don’t contain Mr Bulmer’s statement.”

“What is this? Some game of yours?” I laugh. “I’m your psychiatrist, I’m trying to help you.”

I stop pacing and begin to nibble the ends of my nails, crunching the ends so they appear rather crooked and thin.

Mason and the unknown guard approach me.

“Come on Payne, it’s over,” Mason says as they stretch their hands out to me. Alex stands by the window, watching the rain that’s falling harder and harder. “There’s no way you could have known all that, don’t you see?” Alex turns back round to me.

“Look, I know I was harsh, I’m inexperienced… this is my first job. You don’t need to do this. We’ve been working so hard to get you better.” I am on the brink of weeping.

I try to cower, but the guards seize my shoulders, lock their grip onto my arms.

“We’ve been working on a confession for a month,” she corrects me, as smug as she’s always been. I shake my head, closing my eyes. My thoughts swirl into a deep red mess. “You attacked Mr Bulmer because he claimed to no longer love you, at eighteen years old you paralysed him. You hit him on the small of his back repeatedly. The evidence gave the police everything they needed, they found your hair at the crime scene, your fingerprints on the golf club, your blood even, from that picking habit of yours, but they could only bring you here due to your… insistence that you were a psychiatrist trying to help this ‘Alex’… yourself.”

I can see the scene behind the lids of my eyes, vivid and bold. I am stepping over him, my hair wet and soaking and dripping on the floor. I can hear the rain, the thunder, the cracking of his spine.

I try to shake off their giant’s hands, but my eyes become distracted by the gleam from the tip of the biro pen. I am trembling. I want to take it in my hands and rip each one of them apart.

“Do you see now? We’ve had to go along with your reality.” Alex comes close to me. “You know there’s something missing, don’t you? Your mind… it flits from reality to fantasy. 148

Last time we pushed you too far you were violent, Payne.” She exchanges a glance with the unknown guard. His cheeks redden so his scar stands out from his face, stark and white.

“I want to sit down,” I say.

Alex nods at Mason and the scarred guard. They go on holding me until I’ve sat down. I look at the pen on the table for a while. Alex picks it up and puts it in her pocket. I watch the shining tip disappear.

The rain stops. I look out of the windows and see the trees off into the distance, behind the fence. The lack of sound is claustrophobic. I feel like the walls are closing in on me, the ceiling is growing closer and closer to my head. The light seems to turn grey and fall out of the floor like it’s a sieve. Their eyes are watching me.

I see Mason’s blurred hand in front of my eyes as he clicks his fingers.

“I think we’ve broken her, boss,” he says, sounding like he’s underwater.

I am watching myself in Craig’s shed. I’m biting my nails and looking at the droplets of blood and water on the floor. One droplet looks like yin and yang: half blood, half water. I am whispering, muttering, scratching my hands.

“They tricked you, they tricked you, they tricked you,” I say.