Preface

"Callie, why did you do what you did?"

The smile that creeps up on her face is cold, malicious, full of pent up rage and the bleakest hint of despair. Callie Brewer is known for these sort of smiles; this is the look that the public recognizes first and foremost, this is the look that the police captured in her mug shot, this is the look that the poster girl for psychopathy holds.

Dr. Heather Weyn has conversed with many patients in her twenty-seven years of working in the South Community psychiatric hospital. There are, of course, those that stick out: the autistic boy who scared his family frequently with threats of harming himself and others, the man who believed he was a vampire, the woman who worshiped a serial killer...

But she has never had the opportunity to speak to a teenage girl as odd as Callie.

Before she was infamous, that smile was the only thing noteworthy about the seventeen year old. Otherwise, she was a nobody; five-foot-three, choppy black hair that looked like it was crafted by a blind barber, blue eyes that seemed jaded to the atrocities of the world. Every picture Dr. Weyn has seen of her before the massacre has Callie donning baggy sweatpants and jeans, the standard for slackers like her. Her grades were never above a mid-B. Her interests were fairly standard for angry young women; Marilyn Manson, Resident Evil, Catcher in the Rye.

Callie isn't the most comfortable person to interact with. Frequently, she shifts her gaze over to the slate gray wall behind Dr. Weyn; her tongue darts out to lick her lips like a predator who lays eyes upon her prey; she fiddles with the handcuffs that has made her wrists raw and pink. When she speaks, her voice is harsh and blunt and seems to be layered with years of memories. Not the normal memories a teen would have, either; ones that haunt her when she's at the frays of falling asleep, the sort that only the most disturbed of humanity would have to live with.

"It wasn't what everyone says. Not the music or the games. Mags and I never decided to start our revolution because of some subconscious messages or whatever the hell the cops are saying. That's a f*****g ignorant excuse, and anyone who thinks that is a f*****g idiot."

Dr. Weyn scribbles the gist of her words down on a pad of paper - not music, not video games. This is the first time her patient has bothered to mention one of the other perpetrators. Ms. McGuire was the only other female, and unfortunately is unable to be questioned alongside her best friend. The shot she took to the head was fatal.

She clears her throat, then glances over at Callie (who now seems rather bored with the interview). "Alright...if it isn't what you played in your free time, then what's the cause?"

Another smile reaches the teen's face. "It's a long story, doc." She giggles in an odd high-pitched tone.

"We've got time."

At that, Callie slumps a bit in her metal chair. She sighs deeply and glances up at the ceiling, watches the lone light bulb flicker now and again. "'Kay. It started...I guess that Mags and I first came up with it in our Freshman year."

Reviews

[Eileenws]

This seems like a beginning of a novel and less like a preface. You do a good job of describing the doctor. I'm not sure what is going on with Callie. You write well.