Dr. Polance has an unusual patient and loses his head. (Well…his face, really…)

“So, Jenny, do you want to talk about why you do it?”

“Sure. But then you’d definitely think I was crazy.”

“Jenny, I don’t think you’re crazy…”

Dr. Polance smiled, genially, over his glasses and scribbled on the pad of paper that he had resting on his knees: Anti-depressants.

The girl sitting on the couch looked like most teenagers that had been sent to his office on the advice of school counselors and on the concern of parents who hadn’t been able to see the warning signs until they saw the scars. She was, on the whole, one of the more…mundane looking teenage girls who cut or burned or smashed their fingers with hammers. She had blond hair, cut short and tied back, and wore an eye-aching amount of pink. The only thing that really made her stand out was the fact that her hair was…ragged. Uneven.

The girl smirked. “Well, you should.”

“And why is that, Jenny?” Dr. Polance asked, tapping his pen against his chin.

“Because the sooner you get this over with, the less chance is that you’re going to die.”

Dr. Polance blinked.

Normally, he spotted aggressive tendencies sooner. Normally, they showed up in the reports – really, the oddest thing about Jenny Weather’s case was that she had refused to go to a hairdresser in six months. There had been no mention of aggression, and none of the symptoms he had heard had pointed to aggression.

“Why do you think I am going to die?” He asked, trying to remain calm, comforting.

Jenny breathed in, then blew out a slow sigh. “Do you want to know?”

“It…does seem prudent.”

“Really?”

“Yes.”

“Really?” She cocked her head.

“Yes.”

Jenny bit her lip. “Because Kendra Cormac killed my dog. And now she’s going to try and kill me.”

Slowly, Dr. Polance scribbled: Antipsychotics.

“Who is Kendra? Is she-“

“A student at school. Duh.” Jenny rolled her eyes. “We’ve been enemies for, like, ever.”

Dr. Polance nodded. “Is that why she killed your dog?”

She snorted. “No, she killed my dog because…” She trailed off.

Dr. Polance waited, tapping his pen against the pad of paper.

Jenny Weathers shifted up on her chair. “She did it because we’re too similar.”

“Oh?”

“We both cut.” Jenny paused. “And…” She paused, her eyes narrowing. “Do you hear that?”

Dr. Polance blinked. But his ears, older and more battered than Jenny’s, picked up the noise a moment later. It was the faint whirring noise of a moped. Dr. Polance smiled, about to tell Jenny that people drove their mopeds a lot. But Jenny was already hiding under the couch.

The moped crashed through the window of the small office, and Dr. Polance felt something hard and sharp slip along his shoulder. He had a moment of stupefied amazement, and then pain, as he watched blood grow along his plain white shirt, pouring from a deep, deep gash cut by the glass. The office around him was a scene of chaos and confusion – the Moped had hit the window first, riderless and out of control, but now someone stood in the window: A girl, skinny, with braided black hair, a ski-mask and a tank-top that showed off arms that were covered with long, thin scars.

“Come out, Jenny! It’s only going to hurt a LOT!” The girl said. Dr. Polance stood, grabbing his shoulder, and shouted.

“Security! Secur-“

The girl hopped off the window sill, looked at Dr. Polance, then scoffed. “Shut up.”

And then she ripped his face off.

It wasn’t the gory tearing that someone might expect: Her fingers sunk into his flesh, then dragged down, pulling flesh and skin around like it was silly putty, leaving no bleeding wounds, just distorting the normal into the horrifying, leaving flesh twisted like hot wax that had been stirred by some madman’s hand. When she slid her hand back, she held a pair of eyes, a nose, and a mouth, all limp and detached. She tilted her hand and teeth pattered on the ground, making tinkling noises against glass shards.

“You…witch!”

Jenny had stood, throwing the couch aside. She shifted to the side, keeping the bulk of the couch between her and the other girl. Dr. Polance writhed on the ground, his hand going to his face, feeling the twisted ruin that was left, muffled noises escaping from the smooth flesh where his lips had been. Jenny ducked, then slammed her fingers into the back of his neck. When her fingers drew back, two small holes opened there, and air whistled in and out.

“Awww, now he won’t suffocate and die before he realized the true horror of his fate! You really are evil…” The girl giggled, shifting to the left again. The door banged – but whoever was on the other side didn’t manage to get it open.

“Why did you have to kill Mr. Checkers?” Jenny scowled. “I f-ing loved him!”

“F-ing? What are we, in high school?”

“Yes, ac-“

The other girl sprang forward, her hands reaching out. Jenny kicked, as hard as she could, and managed to get the other girl in the jaw. She staggered back, her jaw twisted slightly to the side. “Ack…gah…” She grabbed her own jaw and cracked it back into place. “Ow!”

“You, like, deserved that, Kendra.”

“I’m still going to complain about it on twiter…” Kendra frowned behind the ski mask.

The door burst open and a security officer, a huge, burly looking woman who was more butch than most members of the high school football team, stepped in. She had a taser in one hand and a walki-talki in the other. The walki-talki dropped as she saw Dr. Polance on the ground, who was still wriggling and trying to grab at his face.

“I-I…” The officer whispered.

“Stay back!” Jenny snapped. “She’ll kill you if you get close.”

“That’s right, paper tiger. Now, come at me, Miss Perfect Jenny! I dare you!” Kendra lifted her hands, waving them in an aggressive gesture. Jenny frowned. Her gaze dropped from Kendra, to Polance, to the officer. The officer, who continued to stand in stupefied shock, didn’t even notice as Jenny grabbed the taser from her hands. She tossed it from hand to hand, and Kendra smirked.

“Don’t trust your mojo?” She asked, her voice scornful. “Let me guess, if you had a gun, you’d just shoot me?”

“I’m saving it…” Jenny said, frowning. “You know, you could be curing cancer. It is really easy!”

“Pff, they’d just get it again,” Kendra waved one hand. “Besides, do that too many time, and the Sleepers come after you. Blat.” She slapped her palms together.

“See, I always hated you.” Jenny lifted the taser, which crackled, popped, snapped. “Not just because you’re a short sighted cowardly witch who gets off on cheap dramatics, not just because you killed my dog, not just because your dating my ex-“

“We broke up, actually.”

“Aww, really?” Jenny asked, then shook her head. “Right, uh…last reason I hate you. You’re really unobservant. And dumb. And evil.”

She pressed a button and the taser clicked – disengaging the ranged safty.

“And you don’t know how tasers work.”

Jenny fired the taser into Kendra’s chest. The barbed needles passed through her flesh like it was a rippling pond – a sight that made the security guard faint in a heap – but that didn’t stop the electricity in the needles from surging through her like a billion bee stings.

By the time the police had arrived and the guard had woken up, Kendra was gone, Jenny was gone, and Dr. Polance had his face back.

In the end, he scratched out Antipsychotics and wrote in: Exorcist.