Dr. Frederick Chilton (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
slightlyoffchilt) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
maskormenacelogs2014-09-14 09:39 pm
slightlyoffchilt) wrote in maskormenacelogs2014-09-14 09:39 pm
and does he ask about your mama --
WHO: Doctor Chilton and Doctor Sofen.
WHERE: Chilton's secondary facility.
WHEN: September 15th, midmorning.
WHAT: Giving a tour.
WARNINGS: Will update when necessary.
They hadn't spared many words with each other, not since the last time Karla Sofen had been in his office, sitting upon his minty blue sedan. There was the suggestion of coffee, which Chilton intended to fulfill (he had already made the decision to purchase for them both), which would come on the heels of the afternoon haze. That was the breath of this September Monday, when Chilton knew what autumn should be crisping. The foliage wouldn't change in this pinpoint nearer the equator; Heropa had a disposition towards the status quo.
Or rather, the city and its government tried very, very hard to uphold the solid image of predictability. Chilton felt that anyway with working neurons would see past that mirage -- which, of course, left at least half of the imPort populace, didn't it?
He asked her to meet him today. Their prior engagement (which Chilton wouldn't recall in detail) was preempted with discussion about Connors, and Chilton yearned to finish that talk. This experiment, he had decided, was crucial. It was therefore prudent to expose his secret project to Karla, to show her how well the first testing went. Chilton anticipated her approval, yes, but even more was at stake: in the damp depth of his loneliness, he so very much wanted to express the cog-workings of human condition with someone who would understand.
And Hannibal Lecter was no longer an option. Should've never been an option.
So Chilton would show Karla Sofen, his psychiatric companion. His only peer.
"Karla," he said. "Are you ready?"
WHERE: Chilton's secondary facility.
WHEN: September 15th, midmorning.
WHAT: Giving a tour.
WARNINGS: Will update when necessary.
They hadn't spared many words with each other, not since the last time Karla Sofen had been in his office, sitting upon his minty blue sedan. There was the suggestion of coffee, which Chilton intended to fulfill (he had already made the decision to purchase for them both), which would come on the heels of the afternoon haze. That was the breath of this September Monday, when Chilton knew what autumn should be crisping. The foliage wouldn't change in this pinpoint nearer the equator; Heropa had a disposition towards the status quo.
Or rather, the city and its government tried very, very hard to uphold the solid image of predictability. Chilton felt that anyway with working neurons would see past that mirage -- which, of course, left at least half of the imPort populace, didn't it?
He asked her to meet him today. Their prior engagement (which Chilton wouldn't recall in detail) was preempted with discussion about Connors, and Chilton yearned to finish that talk. This experiment, he had decided, was crucial. It was therefore prudent to expose his secret project to Karla, to show her how well the first testing went. Chilton anticipated her approval, yes, but even more was at stake: in the damp depth of his loneliness, he so very much wanted to express the cog-workings of human condition with someone who would understand.
And Hannibal Lecter was no longer an option. Should've never been an option.
So Chilton would show Karla Sofen, his psychiatric companion. His only peer.
"Karla," he said. "Are you ready?"
no subject
Chilton’s form, outside his office (had he been waiting for her?), disrupted Karla’s trajectory to — well, his office door.
Karla hadn’t been avoiding the topic of their last meeting. She’d turned it over a few times, set it aside, come back to it. It could have been an easy edit, in her memory, only a step or two away from indignant resentment: she’d thrown herself at him. He’d frozen, rejected her, refused her an explanation.
Could have, except Chilton occupied a rare in-between space in her mental catalogue. That he’d worked out her own psychological underpinnings meant she could loosen her grip on her own veneer, if only a little; that she’d worked out his meant her expectations were (she thought) kept realistic. Their shared background did enhance their conversations (and there was some triumph in the notion that, see, she could get along with other psychiatrists — though he was much more perceptive than Len Samson, and what the hell kind of self-respecting professional goes by Len in the first place?). His friendship was graded on a curve: little expected, extensively enjoyed.
She rocked back into a half-turn, confining all eagerness on her part to that gesture. The look she gave him was one sideways, a slight drop to her lids — far closer to her approximation of playful than to anything scrutinizing.
“Oh, almost always.”
no subject
The man was sorely short on friends, and Karla Sofen could understand in a way his few other friends might not want to. Chilton valued that.
Her response he found to be so reassuring. Playful, energized, forward-thinking.
"Come, let's go," he said, smirking. An unsubtly thrown glance played prelude to his exit, as he ushered Karla to the stairway around his office door. There was little preamble besides that; theatrics aside, he didn't want to actually draw attention. The winding stairway downwards, clinically pale and only moderately lit, was a familiar trek for Chilton. He was nevertheless cautious for Karla, anticipating her emotions -- or, at least, her wariness -- and offered his hand at certain points. For the sake of guidance.
When he unlocked the basement facility, Chilton puffed up his chest. Pride was evident.
The obscured facility itself was minimalistic, with a plexiglass cylinder containment center in the middle of the room. It was cracked in certain places, and large iron restraints rested within the cage. Large syringes were lined neatly on a silver medical stand, and dated monitor equipment was shoved off into a corner -- where it would be less embarrassing.
Chilton hadn't much money from the administration for this, and what he did have was "funded" by opportunity -- or his own money.
"This," he said, spreading out his arms to showcase the whole o the well-lit, white, clinical room. "Is what I wanted to show you."
no subject
What was she doing here?
Not that.
“People don’t know about this.” Non-imPorts, she meant, breaking the silence herself. Our superiors.
She didn’t sound disapproving. Chilton had managed this — to move or construct this enormous plexiglass cage in the hospital’s basement, to bring someone in who subsequently metamorphosed into an enormous lizard-monster — and apparently avoided drawing any attention anywhere along the way. There was some comfort there, in the demonstration that their hosts’ watchful eyes might not be so watchful, but that wasn’t comfort coaxing an unintended half-smile onto her face. It wasn’t comfort drawing Karla further into the room.
It was all overt, between them — the hidden facility, the talk of poking at Connors’ psyche (academic interest, of course, but the glee surrounding the subject was difficult to ignore). No one was playing at hero here. No one expected it. How freeing.
She pressed a hand to the cage’s curved wall; the gesture felt almost affectionate.
“Tell me about it?”
no subject
"It's true that I've kept the extent of my project... Quiet." He spoke with a flick of his tongue, as if to accentuate the understatement. "But the clandestine approach will certainly produce better results. You know how... Bureaucracy can be."
Pressing his palms against the naked glass, Chilton rolled his eyes, acknowledging his own disdain for the social fetters that sometimes interfered with their breed of ambition. The searing bright luminescence bounced cleanly off the white floor tiles, evoking a sharper medical atmosphere -- an image only set off by the heavy iron shackles that Chilton gingerly tiptoed around.
"I had Connors step into this -- designed by me, of course, I had already discussed with him the statistics on his altered state, his prowess, and so forth. Locked it and, ah, provoked his Lizard persona," he said. His voice dropped to something more sultry, more breathless.
"The transformation, his transformation. It was agonizing."
Yet Chilton did not appear to suffer any agony from the recollection.
"The Lizard embodies such rage, such ferocity. He is aggressive in every way that Connors is civil. Don't you enjoy that? The sheer brutality of emotional capacity."
no subject
One leisurely but measured footstep in front of the other, she moved around the enclosure’s perimeter, following Chilton’s movements within (slightly distorted by the curve of the glass, as he approached the opposite side) as he spoke.
His question pulled her gaze from the shackles on the floor (Lizard size only, she’d been noting absently) and back to the question’s asker. They were close again, now, Karla having made her way around the plexiglass barrier to where Chilton had now paused.
She considered the question, whether it might have been intended as a dig. The sheer brutality of emotional capacity, after all — but the notion was quickly dismissed as unlikely. He seemed no more disposed to taunting her at present than he was to himself suffer emotionally on Connors’ behalf. If he’d made the connection between his comment and Karla’s own record in that arena, the question was a case of enthusiasm let off its leash — not underhanded taunts.
Not underhanded anything, really; she tilted her head, observing Chilton as he continued in his discourse. The openness they’d allowed, tacitly, coming in here — that had taken her to the edge of giddiness a few moments before — appeared likewise to have been his signal for discussing this so passionately, so… well, freely.
Several inches of plexiglass split their conversation in halves, and then it didn’t. Stepping through the glass as though no interruption in the air existed there, Karla found herself in the cage’s interior. It was a different feeling, on the inside — even imagining, for a moment, that she couldn’t walk out, that iron cuffs and chains could hold her down. What Connors might have felt walking in, knowing how the procedure would go.
“It’d be impossible not to appreciate the manifested duality there, I’m sure.” But that wasn’t really an answer. She angled her head down, eyes drawn up, locking with Chilton’s for a moment before settling on a stress fracture in the glass. Then, the clinical tone dropped from her own voice — softly:
“I’d like to see it.” See you reacting, in the moment, if all it takes is retelling it and you’re like this. “One of your follow-ups. If that’s acceptable to you, of course.”
no subject
His mouth poised into a tight circle, his expression otherwise restraint. While he enjoyed sharing his notes with Karla, to invite her to a session seemed... Well, intrusive wasn't the right turn of phrase, really, because that would imply that Chilton initially thought about his patients and their right to confidentiality. Involved, perhaps, simply too involved. To involve Karla would be to expose his secrets in full, and Chilton wanted Connors all to himself. He knew she would understand that sensation, the unique possession that a psychiatrist felt for their more special patients. That liquified control.
"I'll consider it," he said. It was more than what he would grant to anyone else, more than what he would give to anyone who wasn't Karla Sofen. Consideration. The interior of the glass capsule felt humid, now, with the energy of two bodies. Chilton subconsciously reached for his tie, to loosen it. The Floridian heat took a little to get used to, especially when one was prone to wearing suits and blazers daily -- if only it weren't summer, perhaps, if only the warmth wasn't so woven into this wetland atmosphere.
"Do those cases interest you, specifically?" Chilton asked, as his eyes flickered along her hair, and back to her face. "The duality of personality. The hidden, the repressed..."
no subject
Karla pulled up her chin. It was a gesture actively executed, in the opposite direction from the cringing realization of her error.
"A concealed observer scenario. Only if the need arises." She waved a hand and looked away, briefly -- at nothing, in the direction of the next topic. She wouldn't press this.
Karla made a sound somewhere between sigh and contemplative hum. She'd given a non-answer before; Chilton seemed to keep pushing for her investment. Brushing past him, she crossed to the cage's far side. Cases in their own right didn't interest her, she mused, so much as did opportunities. The breath she drew in was heavier than she'd expected, weighed with sticky air.
"Someone who is... hidden from themselves, to that degree--" Her steps returning were more decisive. "--there's a case to be made that more can be done in the dark." A hint of a smile played on her face; together with her choice of words, it was tantamount to an admission that what could be done need not necessarily be in a healing direction.
no subject
"My, Karla, how provocative," he teased. Chilton kept his back to the glass, his eyes following his company's movement. Noting her respectful retreat from his territory -- his patient, of course -- put Chilton at ease; perhaps he wouldn't have felt threatened by another psychiatrist, but a certain caliber was to be watched, in case. Karla, much like Hannibal Lecter, had won Chilton's respect and admiration. That made Hannibal's inevitable betrayal all the more tetanus in its raw agony of course, and the equation allowed for a doubled emphasis on Karla's meaning to Chilton. If the Baltimore psychiatrist felt so readily attacked by his friends, it was because those few cases of friendship that he had perceived quite quickly soured.
But Karla was different, Chilton was convinced. And that conviction (perhaps unfairly) weighed her companionship more than usual.
"I think we both can accomplish quite a lot, in the dark."
no subject
She breathed deeply, once, savoring the lack of pretense anew. A pleasant haze glazed her vision.
"I'm sure." The lack of conspiracy in her tone was almost glaring; she continued, an almost-formed laugh intoning those first words.
"Of course, the question of duality, substantial repressed facets of the psyche -- to some useful extent it's nearly a given back home. Not the same thing as what you're working with here, but in terms of, hm. Shadows." Standing in the three-inch heels she'd worn to work, Karla practically towered. She stepped out of them, now, stocking feet on tiles, leaving her eyes and Chilton's close to level.
"No one's the same person once you, ah--" If the impending sentiment was unfairly cynical, that wasn't how she saw it. A hand she smoothed over his lapel closed the narrow space between the two; her line of sight dropped, following the brush of her hand, then raised back up. "--get them out of the costume."
no subject
Chilton swallowed.
"And do you have a treatment? Once the -- costume. Is removed."
He almost winced at his own delivery, but the question was sincere. He wanted to know if they were going to do this, and if they were going to do it in Connors's own cage. If they were going to touch and expose under these bright, bold lights, against this hardened glass. In this line of logic, he had already surrendered.
no subject
Few things.
"When the costume's removed?" Her shoulders dropped, an almost-sigh. Part of the game. "Oh, some barely recognize themselves." With the sort of casual air she'd have if this were routine, she reached up and began to slip his tie out of its knot.
"I find it can be helpful in these cases to do a little... provoking," she continued as her fingers continued, languid, unraveling. "Notice the reactions that rise to the surface."
She paused, the unknotted tie around the back of his neck still resting in her hands. Given the ego and probable insecurity in this equation, it seemed likely that he'd need to be given space to advance the encounter himself.
"I'm interested in what approaches you'd use, in a case like that. You have perspective. Being --" She unbuttoned his shirt's top button, punctuating her words, then leaned back.
"--Removed."
no subject
"This isn't about Connors any more," he said. It was hardly an observation that skewered truth from obscurity, but it cut into the warming air between them. It was as if Chilton was offering a more naked approach; he was laying bare their mutual intent. Removal of self, of clothing, of artifice.
He had noted her posture, her movements. How she took without seizing, how she acquired without pointed notice. Was Karla's control of their setting not dominating? But there was no trace of cruelty invoked, simply coy curiosity. It wasn't just about removal -- it was revelation.
Tentatively, Chilton touched his hands to her hips, once more glancing downwards.