A car raced along the streets, narrowly avoiding collisions, all the while speeding faster and faster. The driver lost in his own thoughts, obsessing over a meeting he had earlier. A car in front of him suddenly decelerated. Immediately, the driver changed lanes, shifted gears and continued to increase his speed. Noticing a traffic accident ahead, the driver slammed the brakes, while turning the steering wheel a quarter to the right. The car’s back tires protested the sudden change in direction as the car drifted. Smoke rose and burnt rubber permeated the air. The driver shifted gears again and sped through one abandoned alleyway to another running over boxes and smashing them out of his way. He turned left and made it back to the main road. The driver continued on the main road for a mile before making a right turn onto a closed road. He crashed through road barriers and everything obstructing his path. The driver managed to avoid any incident and arrived at his destination: the pier. He slowed down, gathered his thoughts, changed gears, and sped, intending to drive off the pier.
100 yards!
75!
50!
25!
The driver came to his senses slammed the brakes and managed to do a 180-degree turn. He slowly drove his car back to safety.
He leaned back in his seat, a tortured expression on his face and thought back to what happened earlier in the day.
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Flashback
“Thank you for acting as my proxy, Dr. Ma. I am currently bedridden in Canada unable to consult on this case,” Dr. Fisher said through the phone.
“It is my utmost pleasure, Dr. Fisher.”
“Remember, my patient killed five girls in cold blood and doesn’t remember a thing. He also has anger problems and can explode at any point in time. The court found him guilty and sentenced him to life in prison without parole. I know you are also a psychiatrist, but I still must remind you that he is in a delicate state of mind, so try not to agitate him.”
“Understood.”
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Flash forward few hours later in the penitentiary
“Hello Adrian, my name is Dr. Ma. Let’s be friends. How are you doing?” Dr. Ma asked.
“Fine. Thanks for asking.”
“Have you made any friends so far?”
"No, I am a natural loner.”
“If you have no friends, what have you been spending your free time doing?”
“Reading.”
“Books?”
“No, I’m not a good reader. I have been reading magazines and newspapers.”
Stolen novel; please report.
“Oh, really? I have a newspaper here. Let’s look at it together”
He brought a newspaper out from his briefcase and laid it out in front of Adrian, slowly turning the pages. He stopped at a picture of a girl wearing a short skirt.
"Isn’t her skirt showing how long her legs are? Aren’t they pretty?”
"Yes.”
Dr. Ma took a magazine out and flipped to another image of a girl wearing a short skirt.
“Want to look at more pictures?” Dr. Ma asked.
He noticed that Adrian was slowly beginning to avoid looking at the pictures and said, “Don’t worry, there’s nothing to be ashamed of. We are all men here. Last time you looked at them.”
“No, I didn’t.”
“Don’t worry, I know it wasn’t your fault. Remember those twenty-year-old girls who were wearing short skirts and shorts. They wanted their legs to be admired, right? And when you peeked at them, they immediately got you arrested and fired for being a peeping tom. These people deserve to be taught a lesson right?”
“No, stop talking please.”
“No? The court found you guilty. Sometimes before bed, do you think about the feelings you had when you taught them a lesson?”
“No, please stop.”
“Did you like the feeling of stabbing one in the chest repeatedly? Or did you enjoy pulling a girl’s hair out and slitting her throat? Or did you –“
“STOP THIS!”
Adrian flipped the table and had to be forcefully restrained by the guards.
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Back to the Present
Dr. Ma gazed out at the ocean, his tortured eyes seeing but not seeing the beautiful night sky.
"Jessica, you were the one in charge of his case before you died. You repeatedly emphasized in your notes that he is clearly incapable of harming a fly; much less murdering five people in cold blood. No one, but me believes that diagnosis and I still do. My notes after the interview suggest the same. What factors influenced his way of thinking and led him to kill? Help me! I’m trying to prove that you were right.”
“You know you don’t have to do this, Kevin… Why can’t you just move on? I’m dead and always will be,” Jessica said.
She appeared out of nowhere when she heard her name, a shell of her former self, looking on sadly at Kevin. Ever since she died, a victim of a hit and run, Kevin had become obsessed with her last case, spending hours attempting to find clues to why Adrian snapped. She was part of his imagination, his conscious, and the reason he didn’t kill himself…
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Elsewhere, in an office building, an employee was being yelled at.
“Jeremy! All the computers in the building have gone down. No one is able to access them. FIX IT!”
“Mr. Stevens, I have never encountered a virus quite like this. It’s able to adapt itself to anything I try to throw at it.”
“How long will it take you to get everything up and running?”
“Maybe two weeks?”
“You, little piece of shit, I hired you to fix all the computer problems in my office and it seems you can’t. WHY THE FUCK AM I PAYING YOU AGAIN? FIX ALL THESE COMPUTERS BY THE END OF THE DAY OR YOU’RE FIRED!”
“…”
Two hours passed, Mr. Stevens came back to his office after his lunch break and saw all the computers were up and running again. He tried to run a couple of programs and discovered he was not able to use them.
“JEREMY, WHAT DID YOU DO?”
“I did what you told me to do, I fixed the computers by downgrading the OS.”
“GET OUT AND NEVER COME BACK!”
“Mr. Stevens, I’ll fix everything. Don’t fire me.”
“I’m going out for a meeting, now. I don’t want to see you or any of your things when I get back.”
In desperation, Jeremy followed Mr. Stevens out, begging for his job back. He followed Mr. Stevens down the stairs and accidently tripped him and knocked him out. Jeremy’s coworkers heard the noise and rushed out to the staircase where they saw him standing over a fallen and bleeding Mr. Stevens.
The cops were called and escorted Jeremy to the police station, where his worried sister berated him for being an idiot. As he waited to see if his employer was going to press charges against him, a psychologist was summoned to talk to Jeremy.
“Jeremy, considering your recent job history—6 jobs in the past year—it seems you have an inability to understand social and emotional reactions. Our psychologist concluded that you have Asperger’s Syndrome. Your ex-boss has agreed to drop the charges as long as you don’t come anywhere near him and see a court sanctioned psychologist for the next few months. We recommend a Dr. Ma since his office is near your apartment,” the police sergeant said.
“…”