Page 36 of Beautiful Prey

He tilted his head, eyes half-closed. “If they tried to stop me from saving her, then are they truly innocent?”

That kind of thinking was twisted. But could I honestly be surprised?

I went to roll the dice and threw too far. One of the dice rolled off the table and onto Emery’s lap.

I didn’t get up to retrieve it; I studied him instead.

“Emery, do you…enjoy our talks?” I asked.

“Yes,” he said.

“Do you trust me?”

He turned his head to listen to someone or something whispering in his ear. It took him a moment to answer, but when he did, he said, “Yes.”

I took a deep breath. “I’d like to try a few things with you.”

His eyes lit up as he shifted in his seat. “Like what?”

“Just some therapy techniques…is that okay?”

He bent his head as if thinking. “You looking to try to cure me, after all?”

“Do you…think you need curing?”

“Probably. But I don’t know any other way to be. If you say I do though…then I believe you.”

I placed my hand on the table but didn’t reach out. “Maybe it’s not about curing or fixing. Just…wanting you to have a better experience in your life. At least having a little light in the darkness. Would you like that?”

He looked at me with those tired eyes, then turned his gaze down to his hand and lifted it. I straightened to look and saw the dice in his hand. “If it comes from you,” he said, “then...I’ll do whatever you like.”

Without thinking, I walked toward him and stood beside him. We watched each other for a moment, then I bent and covered his hand. Our fingers met as I took the dice from him. Skin to skin, no barriers this time. I ignored my body’s response to flinch or draw away and slid my hand across his. He didn’t grab me, and I knew now he wouldn’t. Trust needed to be both ways.

As I returned to my seat with the dice, I noticed his hand clenching and unclenching…only now, it trembled.

CHAPTER NINE

I started slow. As anyone should when trying to help someone like Emery. When we weren’t together, I assigned him some mental games and even brought him a few puzzles to get his brain working, to give him something else to think about other than the past.

“Every time you think about something negative, anything at all, try to observe it as an outsider looking in,” I explained. “Then replace the negative thought with something more positive, like when you think you're going to have a bad day and think ‘today is going to be awful,’ instead say, ‘today will be difficult, but I’m strong and I will get through it.’ Got it?”

“I’ll try,” he said.

“And when you have a nightmare, or bad thought, or see things, observe them and write how they make you feel in your journal,” I continued, earning myself a groan.

That week, I dedicated to fostering his dark thoughts, focusing on his mental state and using behavioral therapy exercises to give him the means to restructure his mind. I brought in my laptop and started to play music, finding what he liked and what calmed him—anything from ambient to noisyand hardcore. A little Ave Maria here and a little Mr. Bungle there. All depending on his mood.

We would meditate together just for a few minutes. And then, when that got boring, we’d watch funny videos; I’d let him pick as long as it wasn’t anything too obscene. He favored cat videos, laughing till he cried when they did something especially stupid or when they attacked their owner.

At the end of each session, he told me the thoughts that were bothering him, and together we would try to find ways to make them positive. He would tell me about some dreams and every so often he mentioned the smiling woman visiting him, crooked and bent in the corner of his room.

“Does she respond to you if you tell her to go away?” I asked.

“No, never. She just grins at me,” he said. “Although…sometimes she does whisper things to me in the dark.”

Hallucinations can fill the senses in many ways. “What does she say?”

“It’s inaudible. But when she gets loud, I hear mean things. Calling me names like a little cunt. A loser. Sometimes, she tells me to kill myself or to kill others. She’s a real bitch.”

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