I'm Just Misunderstood: Or Checkmate!
Nov 10, 2022 13:09:56 GMT -5
Post by Radrook Admin on Nov 10, 2022 13:09:56 GMT -5
I'm Just Misunderstood: Or Checkmate!
By Radrook
"I always go into a daze when I drill, for some strange reason." Smilsburg, the dentist, a tall, husky Neanderthal-like fellow who had chosen dentistry as his profession, said as he reposed on his psychiatrist's Zeninsky’s couch in the semi darkness of Zeninsky’s office.
"Sort of like a day-dream where I watch things going on but can't totally control them.” he calmly continued.
“Never thought it strange before. After all, why would something that gives me so much pleasure be abnormal? Hell, you wanna talk about abnormal? Let me tell you about some of my patients.
Once when I was preparing a tooth for a root canal, a patient opened her eyes, stared at me wide eyed for about half a minute. Then she suddenly started shaking, let out a blood-curdling scream, and bolted from my office, her ugly face as pale as the bicuspid I'd been drilling. But hey, there are bound to be nut- cases. We don't screen em for that-you know? It’s just a dental office, for crying out loud! Who do they expect, Mother Capri?
“Another time there was the child's mother who had come in to check on how everything was going. Everything was OK until I turned and smiled at her to put her at ease. That's when she froze as if struck with a bolt of procane, stared at me, her face a mask of horror. Then she grabbed her son by the arm, yanked him from the seat and left without saying a word. Probably reconsidered the dental fee and changed her mind. Damned tightwad!
“Then there was Maria, my legal-immigrant dental assistant who one day suddenly cried out: "Madre de Dios!" made the sign of the cross in my direction, and fainted as she stared at my face. But hey, all nut-cases do things like that. Probably remembered some horrible nightmare, or maybe she was high on drugs and hallucinating. It takes all kinds.
"Why even trained dogs can be contaminated by their psychotic owners. I once had this blind fella sitting calmly under my drill and all of a sudden, his seeing-eye dog, this stupid, German Shepherd, starts growling and barking. It upset the poor fellow so much, that he had to leave . The damned dog literally made the poor devil run stumbling from out of my office. Crashed him against the side of the office door and bloodied his nose as it ran yelping with tail between its legs. Dogs are like that you know? They smell fear. If their master is afraid, then they pick it up and reflect it right back. Or maybe the soft musings of my ravenous drill irritated his sensitive canine ears?
"Me? Keh Heh! Heh! I totally enjoy my work, regardless. Why, there's nothing more majestic than a drill burrowing its way through perfectly good enamel, sinking its sharp edges into the dentine and-then finally, with no further need of my assistance, like some ravenously hungered little beast, plunging itself deeply into the soft bloodied pulp on its unmerciful way to a sensitive nerve.
"There is something indescribably mesmerizing, something poetic, beyond words, I would say. Something that intrigues and elevates the human soul into hitherto unreachable heights of euphoria. It's an art and I am the artist. The drill is my paintbrush and their mouths are the canvasses. The office is my studio. Don't they understand ? Can't they see? Are they blind?"
The psychiatrist, Doctor Zeninsky, a small, bald man in his late fifties, sat seeminly listening and grunting an occasional: "Uh huh!" or a reassuring, "Hmmm!" as Dr Smilsburg, the dentist, kept pouring out his soul. As usual, Zeninsky had dimmned the lights in order to calm his patient, and had Smilsburg the dentist reposing comfortably on the black-leather-covered couch.
At first glance, one would have assumed that the notes that Zeninsky was scribbling as he sat furiously writing with furrowed brow and a look of deep concern on his thin, ruddy, smooth, pudgy hairless face, were in reference to his patient. Unfortunately, the truth was far from it. You see, Zeninsky, the psychiatrist, was also an avid tournament-chess-player and was preparing against the Sicilian Defense that he knew his opponent might use against him.
In order to stay undetected, of course, Zeninsky would respond occasonallty with a mindless:
"Uh huh! Very Interesting! Tell me more." or a cunning, "And why do you suppose that is?" Then he'd cunningly let the patient ramble as he pleased, while furiously attending to what he considered a far more important matter, his chess.
Sometimes, of course, he'd run into the horrifying:
"What do you think doctor?"
But in that case, he'd simply explain that the session was more of a patient-catharsis. Then he'd briefly wax melodic about the benefits of expressing pent-up or repressed emotions. He would then confidently promise that it would eventually lead to a sudden epiphany, where the patient would realize the source of his troubles, and that they would then miraculously vanish.
That was usually enough to send the patient into another fifteen or twenty minutes of self-revelations and confessions until the hour was up. Then the patient was courteously hustled to the office door, and handed over to his morbidly obese, candy-munching, secretary who would smilingly slap him with a huge bill and schedule another money-guzzling appointment. All just routine and part of the day for Dr. Zeninsky.
Then once alone in his office, he'd lie on the couch that his patient had just been occupying, and resume his furious preparation for the upcoming chess tournament.
"Are they blind?" Dr. Smilsburg repeated and waited for the answer to his desperate question that he was sure his psychiatrist could answer.
"Well, that depends of what we mean by blindness" Zeninsky responded in a self-assured way although he didn't have the slightest idea what Smilsburg was talking about. You see, Zeninsky would make sure he'd get the general drift of a patient's story so that if required to respond, he'd at least have a general notion. But in cases such as Smilsburg’s, whom he considered fit to be forcefully interned, he usually let the patient rant and rave as he pleased and used the time for what he considered more important matters. He only did this, of course, after becoming familiar with a patient's style.
You see, some patients were full of questions, while others, simply liked to spill their guts. Dr. Smilsburg was of the latter kind. He'd ramble on for an hour and then leave after having thanked the doctor for being a good listener. So it was with utter dismay that Zeninsky heard Dr. Smilsburg break the expected pattern and uncharacteristically ask him a very specific question.
"What do you mean, it depends on what I mean by blindness?" Smilsburg had suddenly shot back.
"Well, there is literal and metaphorical blindness." Zeninsky immediately responded.
There was a prolonged silence as Smilsburg's mind shifted into overdrive. He had been honestly spilling out his guts to the trusted doctor, but now a suspicion that the doctor had not been listening began to gnaw at his already partially-corroded brain.
"That should be obvious by the context of what I said!" Smilsburg the dentist said smugly while feeling in himself the same sensation that he felt when drilling teeth-his drilling-hand twitching spasmodically
"Well not always!" Zeninsky responded nervously. As a consequence, Smilsburg felt his lips tremble in an involuntary and imminent sadistic smile.
"Give me an example!" he proposed cunningly and inexorably began reeling the psychiatrist in.
"Well, when the context is vague, then the meaning of "blind" can go either way." Zeninsky responded.
For a moment, Zeninsky honestly thought he’d found a way out as he often did in chess when his king was almost trapped, and for a moment relaxed. But Smillsburg had caught the scent of a terrified prey, and when he did, he was instinctively relentless.
“What was so extremely vague about what I was saying, doctor, please, indulge me!" Smilsburg responded as he suddenly and energetically hoisted himself into a sitting position on the couch.
"About what you were saying?" Zeninslkky asked. But now he felt as if he's been checked again.
"Yes, about what I was saying for the last hour as you sat in that seat writing." Smilsburg grunted.
"Well, perhaps it's the way that you express it"
"Give me an example!" Smilsburg had risen from the couch recliner and was now standing in front of
Zeninsky.
"You can't can you?" Smillsburg whispered maliciously at Zeninski in the semi-dark room.
"And you know why you can’t?" He leaned over and placed both huge hands on the arm-rests of Zeninski's plush leather black chair.
"Because you weren't listening!" He was now hunched over the frail psychiatrist's quavering form.
"Well see if you can listen now!"
Unfortunately, Zeninsky had made certain that his office was veritably sound-proof so that those in the waiting room could never hear any of the private conversations nor any psychotic patient’s verbal outbursts. So now his half- muffled screams, groans went unheard as Smillsburg repeatedly plunged his portable battery-powered, dentist-drill deep into the quivering bloody pulp of Zeninsky's teeth while growling:
"Checkmate!"