(A 2 part story of a possible short story collection I mght make, Hope you like it.)

Doctor Bing was lounging around his desk. He was a young man, just getting out of college a few years before. He was dressed in his usual outfit, a dark, wine-colored button down shirt and a pair of slacks that he was wearing for the week. The doctor's face matched his age, a little stubble peppered his cheeks, but his blue eyes held a childish twinkle in them. His hair was a lot younger then himself as well, blond and messy, like any self-respecting 10 year old would have it.

The office of Chalcis Tiresias Bing was not one of your usual psychology offices. First off, it was a mess, papers and books litter the place, signs of red carpet barely visible underneath the sea of white, orange, and pink. A long, Freudian-style couch laid against the wall opposite his desk, sticking out as an island in the sea of papers he called his office. His polished birch desk isn't much better, curios of all kinds (Mostly strange glass paperweights) leave almost no room for anything else but a survey for a new client coming in. A bay window was on the wall to the right of the desk, sunlight filtered through the thin yellow curtains as they drifted lazily.

The strangest thing about the room though were the oak shelves, there were three of them, and all of them were impeccably clean. Against the wall behind his desk (Next to his PhD.) was a shelf of neatly organized books, all of them dusted at a regular basis, none of the books have any titles on their leatherbound spines. The shelf near the couch held a bunch of stuffed animals, all of them sitting in little rows, their beady eyes looking down at the white sea. The top shelves held a small collection of beanie babies, kept in little plastic cubicles for safekeeping. The last shelf, the one next to the window held a huge amount Altoids mint tins, the large, original sized ones, none of that modern stuff you see today, stacked on top of one another. Each stack organized in some kind of system that only the doctor understood. The topmost shelf held a extensive collection of quartz, from gargantuan clusters of crystal to tiny, diamond like stones. That was his office, and he wouldn't have it any other way. For a psychologist, he seemed pretty messed up himself.

He was at his object-ridden desk playing around with a stuffed hamster doll. The little guy was a dark brown with a small pair of white wings on it's back. The doctor lightly gripped the toy.

It went squeak!

And he smiled.

There was a knock at the door. Chalcis threw the little doll across the room and against the wall (Squeak!) where it bounced onto the Freudian couch. Ah, that new client, angsty female teen, cutter, hallucinations... Favorite book is Catcher in the Rye... Well, it seemed that he was dealing with some kind of psycho killer.

Or a typical High school student, but who could tell the difference anyway?

“Come in.” The doctor said, resting his feet on top of the desk.

The door opened and the first thing Doctor Bing thought was bird. Actually, his first thought was nose which made him think that, but geez, she was like Pinocchio on a bad day! Okay, it wasn't gargantuan or anything, but that thing could be mistaken for a crow's beak or something (If you painted it black anyway). The girl's outfit wasn't helping out clear his thoughts of any avian appearance, the black turtleneck she wore seemed to be made out of small, wispy feathers. Her short hair was black as well, and her pants, and her eyeshadow... and lipstick too. Whoever was in the black dye business must have been making a fortune off of her.

Chalcis shivered.

“Soo...” The doctor got his feet off the desk and stood, taking the survey, “Sybil... Curio.”

He walked over to a large stack of books near the couch and took a seat. Sybil did the same on the more comfortable couch, having a little difficulty crossing the paper sea.

“Your parents say you've been having...” Bing looked at the survey closely, “Prob-”

“I don't want to be here.” Sybil said quickly, cutting off the doctor's words with precision.

“Eh?”

“I- I don't want to be here.” She said, her gaze going down to her feet.

Ah dammit, almost all first-timers are like this, they're ethier ashamed that they're here or they're angry because they're in denial. There was only one way to handle these people, and luckily for him, Sybil just did the first step.

“Then leave.” He said flatly.

Sybil's head jerked up, a few stray tears escaping from her eyes, “What?”

“You heard me.”

“But-”

“Leave, you want to go, you can go.”

The girl gave the doctor a funny look, and went got off the couch. She navigated her feet through the paperwork and got to the door. Her hand was about to touch the doorknob when she swung her head at the doctor, glaring at him.

“I get it... this is some sort of test to see if I'm crazy or crazy, isn't it?”

Doctor Bing smirked.

“Maybe...” He said in a childish voice.

“I knew it!” Sybil yelled, stomping through the papers again and sat back on the couch, her arms folded, “I'm not going to fall for it. So there.”

Bing scribbled a few notes down on the client survey, using his knee as a clipboard.

“What are you writing?” She asked.

“Notes” Bing said casually, still scribbling down a few lines.

“About what?”

“Oh nothing...”

“Tell me.” Sybil said calmly, apparently trying to keep her cool.

Doctor Bing looked up, “Do I have to?”

“YES!” Sybil screamed.

“I said that you're hesitant, paranoid, mistrusting and quite possibly type-A, and very mean.”

“What?”

“That's what I wrote, you wanted to know, right?”

“Aren't you supposed to be trying to make me feel better?”

“Why would I do something like that?” Bing asked innocently.

“BECAUSE YOU'RE A FUCKING PSYCHOLOGIST!” Sybil yelled, her face scrunched up in anger, which oddly made her seem like some kind harpie.

“P-H-D” Bing bragged, finishing the last sentence of his analysis. He thrusted his thumb to the degree in it's regal looking frame.

“DO YOUR JOB!”

Bing smiled and asked in a voice that made a child sound mature, “I thought you wanted to leave...”

“I DO!”

“Then go!” Bing said, egging her on with a wave of the hand.

Sybil got up once more and stomped to the door, crumpling pieces of paper everywhere. She paused in front of the door again.

“Well?” The doctor asked.

Sybil stood there for a few moments.

“Well...?” He asked once more.

“If I go, I'll just be manipulated by you, if I stay, I'll be forced to stay in your office for an hour, wasting my time.”

Chalcis smirked, “It's called a double negative my dear.” He said this in a British accent.

There was a second of silence.

“Pip pip, tally ho!” he said in the same voice. Sybil gave him another confused look. This guy was insane.

“Come on” The doctor said, taking Boo off the couch and giving him to her, “Take Boo, he squeaks”

Sybil hesitated, but she eventually came back to the couch, she took the plush toy from Bing and asked, “What sane person would give you a license to practice psychology?”

“I got my diploma at Columbia, sooo... just about anyone.”

“Wait, Columbia as in, Ivy-League school?”

“Yep.”

“I don't believe you.”

“Here.” Bing went to his desk and took out a piece of rolled up paper. He tossed it to her, “My diploma.”

“Chalcis Tiresias Bing.” She read, “What kind of name is that?”

“Oh, changed it when I was sixteen, had to actually.”

“Why?”

“Witnessed a murder, bloody stuff, couldn't get out of the house for weeks. Had to testify and everything.”

The doctor looked away, like he was holding back tears.

“That must have sucked.” Sybil said in a sympathetic tone.

“It was the happiest day of my life!”

Sybil jumped, caught off guard, “Excuse me?”

“I hated my old name, you know what my old name was?”

“Er-”

“Seymour, Seymour Boutz.”

“That sounds like 'See more but-'”

“You've read Salinger, right? Ever read 'Perfect day for bananafish?”

“No...”

“Main character's name's Seymour, idiot kills himself over some little girl he met.”

“What does that have to do wi-”

“Little shop of horrors, main guy's name is Seymour, he gets eaten by a plant!”

“Bu-”

Bing stood up and yelled, “They were all losers!” His arms going up like, “And-”

“HEY!” Sybil interrupted the doctor in mid-rant, “I'm the one supposed to be asked all the questions here.”

Sybil held Boo tightly (Squeeeeeak!) and released her grip.

“Sorry about that, I'm like that whenever someone asks about my name. Habit of mine.” Bing said, taking his seat on his throne of paper.

Sybil let out a deep breath and asked expectingly, “So what are you gonna do?”

“What any person with a Freudian couch would do, make you talk about your life.”

“'Make' me?”

“At least, get something out of you. It's what us psychologist people call, 'free association'”

“And...?”

“You can talk about anything in your life, childhood, now, whatever.”

“And you won't tell anyone, right?”

“You've been to a few shrinks already, huh?”

A little bit of red reached Sybil's cheeks, “Y- Yeah.”

“It's nothing to be ashamed of.”

“I hate it when those guys think I'm some self-destructive psycho bitch ready to shoot everyone at school.”

Bing took a seat next to her on the couch, that paper was starting to get uncomfortable.

“I don't think you're a self-destructive psycho bitch.”

“Thanks, but that's what they said too.”

“Why should I think like they do?”

“Because of these!” Sybil got up and pulled up one of her sleeves, revealing a menagerie of scars, some curved, others went straight as an arrow, they wrapped across her arm, vertical, horizontal. Some were small cuts, others were arm length. They were all kinds of them, normal ones, strange ones, thick ones, thin ones, it was like a circus of scar tissue playing around her limb. “These fucking things that come from nowhere and-”

“Whoa whoa whoa whoa...” Bing said, “Slow down, you didn't do any of these?”

“No!”

“So how did they get there?”

“If I knew I would tell you!”

“When did this start?”

“I don't know!”

“Then lay down and think!”

Sybil put her back to the couch and faced the ceiling, apparently in deep thought. Bing took his seat back on his stack of paper. Bing watched as she did, and thought himself. He knew cutters, and when cutters showed their scars, they showed them off, they made words, phrases, sometimes, if they were really hardcore, whole sentences and pictures. Bing, admittedly, thought they were pretty damn cool himself. Sybil's scars were different though, first of all, she seemed ashamed of the whole thing, which is pretty unusual behavior for someone who would seem to enjoy this kind of thing, at least the people he's worked with. The second part was, they were so many, and so random. He was surprised that he didn't see bone in his brief observations. No one could do this and-

“Got it, it started when I was six.” Sybil said, popping up from her prone position.

“Child abuse?” Bing asked, snapping out of it.

“What makes you say that?”

“First thing that came to mind, keep going.”

“I was teased a lot in elementary school, like, these kids would call me 'Birdface' and 'Beakgirl' and things like that, I never really got why though...”

I wonder why they called her that... Bing thought sarcasticly, still listening.

“Then it got worse, they started ignoring me and calling me dumb, even though I had the highest grades in the class, I cried a lot back then... Then I started noticing the scars.”

“You never fell or anything like that?”

“I was to scared to go on a swing or slide during recess, what do you think?”

“There's always the monkey bars.”

“Then I started to notice people that no one could see, I vaguely remember this one guy in a suit comforting me when I was sad...”

“So you're schizo?”

“Thats what the other guys said, I watched 'A beautiful mind' I'm not like that at all.”

“Okay, keep going.”

“The insults kept coming, especially after I started seeing things, it was always people and the kids would make fun of me for talking to myself.”

“And the teasing is still going on?” Bing said, taking a note,

“Not as much, I ignore it now, no point in holding on bad memories. ”

“Has the scars ever stopped?”

“No, I keep seeing new ones every week.”

“The people you saw?”

“Still there, I see different people, never the same guy, like the movie.”

“I see.”

Sybil finished, “So what's wrong with me?”

“Nothing is, but I think someone, or something, very close to you has something wrong with them.”