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Dayton stared at the creased paper. The seemingly insignificant list that was the center of his perverse universe.
Acquiring his last subject came at the price of an inordinately long recovery period and laying low for more than a year had him thirsting for the chase. Fruitless months without insights or satiation.
January was in its infancy. A new semester with new possibilities. His chest swelled as he regarded the stark white walls of his office. He too had hit a wall.
He couldn’t delay his research any longer.
Sliding open a narrow drawer on his desk, he returned the paper to the otherwise empty space where it had taken up residence the last six years. He kept it there, hidden in plain sight, without a lock—waiting until someone, or no one, came to know of its existence. Perhaps a part of him wanted the world to stumble across his dirty little secret.
Waiting for someone to save him from himself.
Drumming his fingers on the cool metal desk, his attention wandered to the trio of windows, fixating with the disquieting earnestness of a marksman on the snow-covered campus below. Students and faculty crossed paths as they navigated the wintry terrain in search of their respective destinations. Dayton had watched the exact scene play out countless times.
Of all the places he could have ended up—a hospital, an outpatient clinic—he’d landed amid the landscape of postsecondary education.
The years he’d spent at Ponderosa University all blurred together, carrying little meaning with them. He deemed the esteemed private liberal arts school as the closest semblance of Hell on Earth. Everything was constant, from the bumbling freshmen to the quarter-life crisis graduate students. The same types of people with the same pitiful range of—what were almost a joke to call—problems milled about the forest-enshrouded campus, no matter the season.
Only, after a finite period of time, the students graduated and moved on with their lives.
Dayton’s sentence within the institution was infinite, and he did not dare orchestrate an escape. A particular comfort had grown in the unruly garden of his dissatisfaction; his decaying roots had taken up residence at Ponderosa, and he saw no reason to remove them.
For two hours, Dayton had been locked in his office, failing to do much more than watch the minute hand make the agonizing journey around its dial. That slender black hand mocked him, inanimately making light of his solitary confinement. The first day of a new semester always inched along at an unbearable pace. Drilling a hole in his skull held greater appeal than sitting through another visitless first week of term. He would’ve been content with a few status checks for his regular patients, anything to get out of his own head, away from the swirling ghosts of faces and memories.
The mental phantoms dispelled as a weak knock echoed against the frosted panel on his door. One backed by the weak essence of timidity; the shy urgency of none other than a female student. The knocker held such profound hesitance in her hands that Dayton swore he smelled her uncertainty pervading below the doorjamb. Like a shark detecting blood in the water, he understood whoever was beyond that door could be his next subject.
An emptiness fluttered low in his stomach as he rose from his desk and stalked toward the shadow in the frosted glass.
The monotonous speech spilling out of Professor Henrick’s mouth barely registered with Kenna. He was a walking relic, donned in a faded suit which had seen its heyday decades earlier. Did the garment not beg for mercy each time he slipped it over his wrinkled limbs? His spiel about the parameters for their internship was less than engrossing and many of her classmates had resorted to snickering about his tacky wardrobe.
She maintained perfect posture and concentrated on the lectern in a feigned display of undivided concentration though she felt weightless, rearing to float out of the class and drift toward her destiny. It was her final semester as an undergraduate.
One semester separating her from graduate school. Kenna’s veins hummed with anticipation. She had made it.
The rustling of paper filled the room, mimicking the swoosh of scattering leaves as everyone flipped to the next page of the thick packet that detailed the criteria for the task that lay ahead. She couldn’t help but feel triumphant as she stole glances at her fear-stricken peers and sucked in her bottom lip to keep a smile at bay. Giddiness chimed within her like a bell, silent glee ringing throughout her body. She had laid out the course for her internship junior year. Perhaps her triumph was premature. The green light had yet to be lit.
An uncontrolled variable stood in the way.
The approval rested on the shoulders of the university’s psychiatrist, Dr. Merino, a man whom she had never met and of whom had heard very little.
Her mouth possessed the aridness of cracked summer soil as the gravity of the situation sank in. Kenna crossed her legs, assaulted by an onslaught of restlessness but bound to her seat. What if Dr. Merino had no interest in working with a student, someone who had zero experience in a clinical environment? Worse, what if someone had taken up the position? It was a possibility she couldn’t stomach. Everything was riding on his approval and availability.
There was no alternative.
With each pace toward the door, a vile delight blossomed in Dayton’s sternum. To say he was anxious to meet the woman idling in the hall would have been an understatement. As he twisted the lock, the cogs of a machine long out of commission began their slow, reluctant churn, in anticipation that somehow, she was the one. The girl who would resuscitate his madness.
Dayton turned the knob, letting the door creep inward on its hinges.
“Enter,” he urged while returning to his desk. With a sidelong glance, he eyed the fire-headed woman hovering in the doorway. “Would you like to have a seat or shall we conduct our business from the hall?”
She mumbled something akin to ‘sorry, sir’ and rushed to populate the seat across from him. The student hugged an armful of notebooks flush to her torso, as if they were a lifejacket.
Dayton found the sight humorous, clinging to something for comfort in the most uncomfortable place. His office emanated an aura of doom.
The ninth circle of Hell.
But most were unaware of this when setting foot in his office. This woman, however, had something to fear. She shook like a twig in the lightest of storms.
“If you have sensitive matters to discuss, give me some forewarning so I can shut the door,” he advised, looking up from his bullshit heap of paperwork.
