"To start, Simon, I'd like you to tell me - in your own words - why you're here."

"Well, Angela..."

"Doctor Sullivan."

"Pardon me, Doctor Sullivan. I have no choice but to tell you in my own words - I have no one else's words at my disposal."

"Semantics, Simon. Focus on my questions and commit to using this session constructively."

"As to the existential question you raise, I'm afraid I am unable to answer. Nor, in the end, could old Jean-Paul - for all his queasiness."

"Who's John Paul? A fellow inmate?"

"Au contraire. A - some say the - French philosopher, J.P Sartre. His masterwork, entitled Nausea, is widely regarded as..."

 

"Simon." Her brittle tone was accentuated by a crisp re-crossing of her legs.

"Doctor Sullivan, forgive me. Opportunities to converse with an intellectual equal are so few and far between these days that seeing you has quite...gone to my head. We have come together so that you can formally assess whether - after fourteen years incarceration - I am fit to rejoin human society."

"The ability to quote the parole board's objectives word-for-word is not a recognized marker of rehabilitation."

 

She made an emphatic, meaningless stroke of her fountain pen in the margin of his file, underlining her own authority.

 

"I'm familiar with your court reports, Simon, so we needn't revisit the specifics. Instead, I'd like some insight into why you killed your family."

"I could give you some psychobabble about my father abusing me, my mother denying it, my brother's scape-goating me and my sister toying with me, etcetera, et pathetic cetera. I'm sure it's what you're used to hearing, Doctor Sullivan. It's what you expect to hear."

"My only expectation is that you will be honest with me."

"Well, honestly... because I enjoyed killing. I got off on the rush, the surge of dark power that gushes from the slaughter. Committing the ultimate theft - stealing life - made me feel more powerful than God. What He had made I could destroy."

"Go on."

"I was elevated by their fear, their torment, their doomed pleading for forgiveness. Triumphant, bathed in their blood, I felt more alive than ever before. And I became addicted to that charge."

"And now, Simon? How do you feel about murder now?" She flicked briskly through his file. "Your pre-sentencing report mentions - I quote His Honour directly - 'a pathological absence of remorse'."

"I feel remorse."

"Can you elaborate?"

"Untold remorse."

"I'm afraid your penitence lacks conviction."

"From where I'm sitting, Doctor Sullivan, I've been amply convicted. Fourteen years is a long time."

"Enough!" Angela snapped. "While you lounge here, Simon, complacently cataloguing your infamy and playing word games, what about your victims? Do you ever think about those lives you stole? The terrible grief of those left behind to mourn?"

"Gods do not concern themselves with the weak and transient emotions of mortals."

"But you're not a God, Simon!" In her agitation Angela sprang up from her chair and paced up and down. "You're a sociopath with a second-class honours arts degree - from the Open so-called University, mind you - and an unjustifiably grandiose self-esteem."

 

"Doctor Sullivan! A little decorum, if you please."

"If God were here on earth he would hardly have been sentenced to four concurrent life sentences, would he?" Flushed and breathing rapidly, she gestured emphatically as she strode.

"I don't know what to..." He paused, lost for words, his oleaginous poise melted under the force of her tirade.

"God would have been acquitted, Simon, with costs awarded against the Crown. And Jesus' charges as accessory after the fact would have been dismissed due to insufficient evidence." The psychiatrist subsided into her seat. She struggled to get her breathing back under control as she adjusted both her glasses and her professional aplomb.

Resting both palms on the table, she leant towards the prisoner.

"You described a sense of compulsion, an 'addiction', to murder. What assurance can you make that, if released into the community, you won't re-offend?"

"My diligence in rehabilitation is a matter of record. I now channel my more...outre impulses into my writing."

"And if released, how do you plan to support yourself?"

"My royalties are accruing in an investment trust. Two big-name producers are circling my literary agent like sharks scenting burley, fighting to option my second novel for a miniseries. I expect to live very comfortably indeed."

"So notoriety is not without its advantages?"

"Indeed, Doctor Sullivan. I'm much better off than most professionals - forensic psychiatrists, for example." Simon bowed his head in mock deference, not troubling to hide his toothy grin.

"Except for one thing, Simon - I'm at liberty and you're..." The fountain pen in Angela's hand flashed, steely as her determination. She drove the nib fast and sure through the back of his neck, up into his brainstem. His breathing and circulation ceased instantaneously. He twitched once and then was still, head twisted to the left.

 

The entry wound had left a small smear of blood on her thumb. She wiped it onto the brown collar of his prison shirt. Moving in close, she stared intently into his eyes as they started to dry out and cloud over.

"...dead, now, I think. Yes, a surge of dark power." Angela made a note on the open file - with a biro.

 

"Mmm. I see what you mean."

 

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