Fear the Unreal

As I sit in the waiting room of my headshrinker’s office I question, as I have every week, why I still need to be seeing this guy. I’ve been talking to, or enduring rather, Dr. Mills for over a year now and quite frankly, I feel I have nothing else to say. I’ve come to terms with my flaws as a human being. I’ve accepted my fears and phobias and have been taking the necessary action to make these fears bearable on the day to day. I’ve accepted that I’m an anti-social person, that I have some agoraphobic tendencies that keep me from participating in the world outside the walls of my apartment. I do not go outside after dark because I simply choose not to. I’ve accepted that vampires will not feed on or attack me if I take the necessary safety precautions.
I’m confident that I will not get attacked by a vampire. Look at the turtle neck I’m wearing for instance. Besides the obvious covering of a vital artery, the neck of it has been dotted with holy water, like everything else I own has been and will be for the rest of my life. This is assuming, obviously, I will not get bitten or turned into a vampire before my time on this planet is through. These preemptive measures are time-consuming though, especially now that it is winter. The amount of sunlight in a day is steadily decreasing, which is making me a bit anxious I suppose. My apartment is filled with mock sunlamps and UV light bulbs so, like always, being in my apartment isn’t the problem. I’m finding it hard to complete everything I need to do outside my apartment before night fall. Maybe I’ll talk to Mills about that this week; how to get outside tasks completed without risking attack. I always have had problems with time management.
Then again, Mills doesn’t really like talking about anything other than the vampires. Whenever I mention them, or don’t mention them for a certain amount of time, he stops me mid-sentence and says the exact same thing every week.
“Now Claire, tell me more about these…vampires,” he’ll say with his plump sausage fingers interlaced around his corduroy-clad knee cap. His eyebrow will be raised in that speculative psychiatrist look, but it won’t be present in his pseudo-comforting tone. Jesus Christ I’m so sick of having the same conversation with this man. For over a year he’s asked me to tell him more about the vampires and I always reply the same way. I’ll tell him there’s nothing more to talk about when it comes to those life-ruining blood suckers. That I’ve done everything I can to avoid being attacked by them. That I would really like to talk about something else for a change; a girl has other things to worry about for fuck’s sake. Then he’ll ask, without fail, how I know vampires exist. This always makes me laugh. For being a psychologist, the man sure is ignorant.
“Open your eyes Dr. Mills,” I’ll say in a borderline insulting tone. “Read a newspaper or a book or something. Vampires are everywhere! Think about how many people you seem to only see at night. Think about all of the unsolved murders and disappearances this world has seen since the dawn of time! These people are killed by vampires. Or they’re turned into one of them which is why people sometimes just disappear. Duh.”
I’ll go off on a tangent like that for a while until I finally lose momentum and just sit frustrated and out of breath on the squeaky leather sofa in the stuffy little room. It’s always quite dark in the wine colored room which used to make me nervous, but now that I’m always prepared for and expecting attack, it doesn’t bother me much. What does bother me is the fact that I’m paying this asshole to waste my time on something I don’t care to talk about. I like to think I’m a fairly level-headed person. If you ask me, Dr. Mills is the one who’s a danger to himself or others, or whatever the phrase was they used to admit me to the hospital last year. I think Dr. Mills is the one who needs to see a therapist. He’s the one who thinks vampires don’t exist. He’s the one telling me not to do these “unnecessary” things I do to keep myself safe every day. It’s like he wants me to get hurt. If you ask me, he’s the crazy one… right?