( If she scares you, it's 'cause she's meant to. )

Something's going on today. She's in the familiar pose; long legs tucked underneath her, blazing blue eyes staring at him. Something calculating. He's noticing as time goes on she grows more like a caged animal, more dangerous.

"So Doc," she says, leaning across the arm of the sofa as he shuts the door, succubus grin curling full lips, "You've got a wife, right?"

She watches him stop and stare at her, running her hands back and forth across the material of the sofa. Every movement brings her fingertips closer to her collarbones, closer to the low v shape of her black shirt until they're brushing her breastbone.

"Maddie," he says, rather weakly, "Stop it."

"Answer the question, Doc. It's easy. Yes or no. Do you have a wife?"

"Stop it.." He's nearly shaking because he knows she's inevitable, like death with baby blue eyes come to call. She slides off her perch so she's kneeling by him as he sits, no, falls into his chair that creaks and groans with the weight.

She rests her chin on his knee and he sits up, bolt upright, alarmed.

Her arms and back and eyes are glittering with an energy that skitters and runs across her smooth skin and onto him because she's touching him, fingertips brushing across his jaw. She laughs and it's beautiful and hateful at the same time.

"You know that boy I fucked? In the showers?"

He has half a mind to reprimand her language, but seeing the predicament he's in, thinks better of it. He nods, minutely.

"I hate him soooo much. And you know why I fucked him, Doc?"

"Why?" He asks, weakly, and he's not just asking about the boy.

"So I could see him cry."

He stares at her, horror dawning in his eyes. She's in the wrong kind of hospital. She stretches, tan velour shorts taut against her legs and tiny, too. He watches in the sick fascinated way you watch a wound bleed, except with something else, because he is only a man.

She is not a man.

"I wanted to know that he loved me .. maybe not truly, but in the way boys love their toys. And they do - love their toys, that is."

This is the most he's ever heard he say, and he wishes she weren't sprawled across his lap like a callgirl gone bad. Part - or parts - of him don't mind, but he wants to write this down.

"And then," snapping manicured fingertips and leaning over the arm of the chair so her dark hair spilled down and across his arm, silky-soft, "I wanted to snap his heart in half.

"I would have liked to do it physically, but I'm not strong enough for that yet. So I settled for knowing I added on to his pain as much as I could."

The "yet" worries him.

"Why did you hate him?" He rasps, feeling his already-thumping heart speeding up more. She switches positions, legs on either side of him, facing him. Her face is very close to his.

"Because he was ignorant and handsome and a man and because, well, Doc .. "

She slides off him easily and shoves him, the chair and his body tumbling to the floor. There's a sickening crack and she looks a little surprised, a first, but not too much.

"'Cause I could, Doc."

She glances around absently, kohl-lined eyes calculating. She positions herself nearby the couch as if she'd just gotten up and bites her bottom lip until her eyes tear up and something sparks crimson on her mouth.

Maddie licks the blood away and with an eerie air of calm, screams at the top of her lungs.

As the aides rush in, frantic, one of them accidentally knocks over a photo of the doctor with his wife and two children.