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A full twenty minutes passed before I felt secure enough to stand and leave the office.
Chapter Two
Talon
Dr. Carmichael was silent for a moment. Then, “I see. You weren’t kidding when you said you had come through something horrific.”
I cleared my throat. “No, I wasn’t.”
“Not that I thought you were. I figured it was something like this. Can you talk a little more about it?”
Oddly, now that I’d said the word—the word I’d kept so tightly bound within my mind for so many years—I wanted to speak. I wanted to tell her everything that had happened. And I wanted her to help me. My nerves were rattled, and my pulse raced, but I wanted—needed—to continue.
“Yes, I believe I can.”
“All right, go on.”
“They kept me locked up for over a month. Close to two, although I didn’t know that at the time. The days and nights blurred together, and I had no idea how long I’d been there or what day it was when I left.”
“So there were three of them?”
I nodded. “I don’t remember a whole lot about them. The one who took the lead had a phoenix tattoo on his left forearm. And he had dark-brown eyes. I only remembered that recently, during the guided hypnosis.”
“He seems to be the one that most of your rage is directed at.”
“I’ve no love lost for any of them, believe me.”
“Then why the focus on him? He’s the one you dreamed about killing.”
Why was it him? I hated all three of them to the depths of my soul. But the one with the tattoo—that mythical bird that had come to have such a contradictory meaning in my life—that one I abhorred.
I didn’t know until that very moment that degrees of hate existed. But yes, I hated him most of all.
“Like I said, he was kind of the leader. Or at least that’s how it seemed to me. And he had the biggest…”
God, did I really want to go there?
“Biggest what?”
I gulped. I was all in at this point. No more holding back. “He had the biggest dick. It hurt the worst when he went first.”
Dr.
Carmichael sat, unmoving, her lips thinning slightly. “I know this is very hard for you to talk about, Talon. So if you need to stop, just tell me. I don’t have a session after yours, so we can keep going if you’d like.”
What the hell? The orchard could wait. Axel was a good man. He’d take care of everything. “I don’t know how long I’ll be able to keep going, Doc, but I can try.”
“I understand. Just tell me if you need to stop.”
“All right.”
Dr. Carmichael cleared her throat. “Tell me about the other two.”
I closed my eyes, swallowing. “They were never as real to me as the tattoo man was. In fact, I began to think of him as Tattoo and one of the others as Low Voice. Not that his voice was abnormally low or anything. It probably wasn’t even as low as mine is now. Maybe he just talked louder, but at that time, when I was ten, it seemed to me like he had a low voice.”
“I see. And the third?”
“The third one was kind of in the background a lot. He was the one who always brought me food and changed the bucket where I did my business.”
