AUDIO SESSION #4

07 - 16 - 11

JULY 16TH 2011

3:59 PM

INTERVIEWER:(quietly) This is audio session number four, patient name Ryan Kaminari, patient number twelve-ten, with Doctor Harold Lay. Patient’s current age is twenty three. (pause) Good afternoon, Ryan.

SUBJECT:Good afternoon, doctor.

INTERVIEWER:You’re being unusually civil today. Have they changed your medication, or was this a personal choice?

SUBJECT:Would you prefer I curse you out again?

INTERVIEWER:Of course not. (pause) How are you feeling?

SUBJECT:Miserable. Dejected. I want to die. What does that tell you, doctor?

INTERVIEWER:It tells me you’re trying to guilt me, like someone ten years your junior. I’ll ask you to please act your age.

SUBJECT:So should I only tell you I feel like merry sunshine, doc? Is that it? I mean, am I not allowed to bring up my constant, deep depression?

INTERVIEWER:Depression is the least of your problems, I think.

SUBJECT:It’s the most palpable, to me. (sigh) What’re we talking about today, doctor?

INTERVIEWER:Today I want to focus less on specific events and more on overall experiences and emotions.

SUBJECT:Shoot, Dr. Phil.

INTERVIEWER:Please, Ryan.

SUBJECT:No, please. Really, go on.

INTERVIEWER:(long sigh) I want you to tell me how you feel about your condition.

SUBJECT:That’s it?

INTERVIEWER:One question at a time.

SUBJECT:Well, alright... (pause) How I feel about my condition. Which part do you mean?

INTERVIEWER:The whole thing. The hallucinations, the inability to think coherently at times, the inexplicable anger, the depression... Wax poetic, if you must.

SUBJECT:How do I feel? Is this serious? (pause; no reply from INTERVIEWER) I spend a lot of time trying to be only half-conscious, to be honest. Because when I think about it, I get so furious at everything—at myself, at everybody around me, everyone in general, my surroundings, the entire world—that I just want to grab each side of myself and tear myself apart. Failing that, I want to tear the world apart, just to alleviate this intense pressure that the knowledge of what I am exerts on me. (pause) It fills me with a whole lot of self-loathing, but that at least I can be reassured is a ‘normal’ thing for a human being to do.

INTERVIEWER:Is it a major concern of yours, Ryan, to be ‘normal,’ or do you eschew humanity on the whole along with the self you’ve been given?

SUBJECT:I would appreciate it, Harold, if you stopped using five-dollar words with me. I’ll remind you I never even finished high school, and I’ll be damned if I ever paid attention in school.

INTERVIEWER:I apologize. A residual instinct of med school training, I’m afraid. Please answer the question.

SUBJECT:Do I want to be like the rest of you? In general, no. No, I don’t want to be like any of you. I don’t want to be like me, but I would rather be this hideous thing than be an ignorant fuck like most people are. I want to combust ninety-five percent of the time, but I know it’s a better existance than most have got. (pause) On the other hand... They do say ignorance is bliss. As much as I’m a complete misanthropist, it makes me bitter, jealous to watch everybody else go about their shitty lives in a daze, going through the same stupid motions with every job, every relationship, every birth and death and fuck knows what else.

INTERVIEWER:It interests me, Ryan, how you seem to be so verbose on the subject. Were it not for the setting, I could believe I was talking to a man with a normal, if tragic, life.

SUBJECT:(snort) Gee thanks, doc.

INTERVIEWER:My pleasure. (small pause) Do you think, Ryan, that your dual desire to be normal and to be apart from humanity fueled your crimes?

SUBJECT:...In English, please. Lemme remind you again—

INTERVIEWER:Was it a conflict of interest that made you kill all those kids? That you wanted to be like them and at the same time didn’t?

SUBJECT:That’s a safe assumption. I wasn’t, you know, philosophizing on the issue in the middle of smashing someone’s head like a good tomato—

INTERVIEWER:(quickly) Unnecesary!

SUBJECT:—but it’s fun to just mull it over now that time’s all I really got between your visits. Like, let’s take a typical example of my ‘work.’ I go down into the city to one of those clubs where there’s a lot of underaged kids with fake IDs—

INTERVIEWER:May I ask how it was you got into these clubs?

SUBJECT:(impatiently) Cash. Anybody’s a sucker for it.

INTERVIEWER:And where did you get this money?

SUBJECT:From the old lady whose house I was squatting in! Can I continue, for the love of Christ?!

INTERVIEWER:I’m sorry. Please do, Ryan.

SUBJECT:Right, so. I go to one of these places, and I meet a girl who’s too drunk to realize what a fucking troll I look.

INTERVIEWER:You—

SUBJECT:(overriding) Now, most guys are such assholes that they can only see this poor girl as a chance for some quick pussy.

INTERVIEWER:And you’re above that?

SUBJECT:Of course not, but I’m definitely not thinking about fucking her. On the one hand, I envy her because she looks like she’s having fun, and I kinda wanna cut loose, too.

INTERVIEWER:Do you?

SUBJECT:No. After that I start to get mad, at myself for envying her such a stupid thing, and then at her for being such a stupid whore that she got herself drunk when she’s like fifteen and she’s dressed like a goddamn skank with her tits halfway out and it’s so fucking desperate, the whole thing... And then everything she does only irritates me. The only thing to do from there is to tell her we can ‘go back to my place,’ and she says sure, she digs dwarves. I take her back upstate to the old lady’s house, and at the top of the basement stairs I just push her down, because after we go through the front door there’s really no need for fronts. If she’s really stupid, she says something about how she must have missed the top step, but if she’s of at least average intelligence she realizes I’m not there to love her up, and I sincerely mean to hurt her.

INTERVIEWER:Did you ever have trouble subduing your victims?

SUBJECT:Oh, loads of times. Sometimes I would overestimate myself and mark a guy twice my size, and I would get a good black eye before I could shut the fucker down with a couple hits to the back of the head. And women fight dirty, which is why I started with the push down the stairs bit. Takes the fight out of them.

INTERVIEWER:So you had a general process?

SUBJECT:Yeah. For guys I had a standard line about knowing a better party, and if that line didn’t look like it would work on a particular chick, I’d offer to fuck her. Ditto some stupid faggots. Failing all that, I’d come up real close and taser them, like right in the crotch just to give it that extra zing, and then on the bus I’d tell the driver that my ‘friend’ had gotten real drunk and I was taking them home.

INTERVIEWER:The element of emotion seems to be missing in all this...

SUBJECT:I only wish. I was always so furious when I found my mark of the night, sometimes not even at them but usually at them, yeah. And once I got them back to the house, if they could still talk coherently once I had them down, it would just get worse... Sometimes I’d get real emotional, start crying, and that would upset them more. At the time I was having a lot of trouble remembering anything past a month ago, and sometimes even my own name was one of those things I would just draw a blank on.

INTERVIEWER:Now, I’m assuming that if they did talk, they would plead with you, ask you, ‘Why me?’

SUBJECT:Correctly assumed, doctor, excellent job.

INTERVIEWER:Did their pleas ever reach you, Ryan? I don’t recall hearing about you ever releasing a victim, but did those words ever break through the anger, maybe even make you think twice?

SUBJECT:...I would like…would like to end this session.

INTERVIEWER:Please answer the question.

SUBJECT:No. End the session.

INTERVIEWER:Are you sure?

SUBJECT:I feel very uncomfortable answering that particular question, doctor.

INTERVIEWER:Your entire existance here is generally uncomfortable. Please, Ryan, humor me.

SUBJECT:W-when I did hear them, it upset me. My head would start to hurt, so much—

INTERVIEWER:(under breath) …Psychosomatic symptoms…

SUBJECT:—and I’d just react that much more violently. As soon as I saw they were—were trying to guilt me—I’d start breaking every major bone, from the ankles on up, or maybe I would skin their face, or… It was just an emotional overload when they got to me, their whys and pleases. That is the answer, Dr. Lay. It didn’t appeal to my humane side, it didn’t make me think twice, it didn’t do anything good. (pause) I don’t understand the point of all this questioning. The be-all and end-all of my case is I’m no good.

INTERVIEWER:There is always something rewarding in finding the human side of a criminal patient.

SUBJECT:(snort) Good luck.

INTERVIEWER:You’d be surprised at how much I’ve already found in you, Ryan.

SUBJECT:Ask the last questions.

INTERVIEWER: Have you been taking your medication?

SUBJECT: Would it upset you if I told you I’ve been tonguing the more important ones?

INTERVIEWER:I would have to be, yes. You would be punished, as well.

SUBJECT:Yes, I’ve been taking my stupid medication.

INTERVIEWER:Has anyone else been in this room with you besides me?

SUBJECT: Yeah, but they don’t stay too long.

INTERVIEWER:Have you had any feelings of depression since our last session?

SUBJECT:It comes and goes. It’s fucking lonely in here, doc.

INTERVIEWER:Do you have any physical pains?

SUBJECT:My head. And my shins.

INTERVIEWER:Any complaints at all?

SUBJECT:Is there some kind of double I can be put into? I just want to talk to somebody…

INTERVIEWER:I thought you were a misanthope, Ryan.

SUBJECT:I’m still human. Even misanthropes can miss human contact sometimes.

INTERVIEWER:Then you’re not a misanthrope, Ryan, if you can admit something like that. (pause; sounds of chair moving slightly) I will see you next week. This has been an informative session.

SUBJECT:You didn’t answer my question about the double!

INTERVIEWER:Given the circumstances, you’re quite lucky to receive a room of this size. It is very rare, if not preposterous, that over a hundred murders at the hands of one man is taken lightly.

SUBJECT:I could be a soldier.

END AUDIO SESSION #4

07 - 16 - 11

JULY 16TH 2011

4:21 PM