#haskell could do with just staying quiet honestly
One Point Five
Continues fromhere. A The Re-Education of Haskell Haveter story.
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Fennec observes his subject across the table more like an architect rather than anything else. Clinical, but an eye for the detail and the beauty. He has a bitten pencil beside him, taking notes in his heavy handwriting. Haskell looks over his face with a single dilated pupil, the normal, plastic eye painfully obvious, and a sheen of cold sweat all over his pale, almost wax coloured, skin. Fennec thinks he probably ought to get out in the sun more.
Mind you, he doesn’t really get outside beyond to smoke. Even though the fluorescent lights and the shine from the two way mirror and metal table make Fennec’s almost ever-present headache worse, it never crosses his mind to take a stroll outside. The open air is frighteningly expansive and the sky is bright and sterile and Fennec doesn’t like it.
He likes minutiae.
As part of his training as a Technician, Fennec spent thousands of hours analysing microexpressions and fluctuations in body language. He can read people like a book, but keeps that to himself. He fills in the observations checklist in silence from what he’s seen of Haskell so far. In neat rows next to the freshly inked fingerprints and a black and white photo from today.
Fennec deems him aggressive, neurotic, hysterical, all old fashioned words that Interventional Psychology clings on to. He doesn’t like the trait clusters. There is no box for frightened as a trait. Just negative faults of character. No regard for the fear that drives anger.
He chews his pencil. “How do you feel today?”
“Do you, d-do you have to ask?” stammers Haskell, shivering. He is still handcuffed, and chained to the table, but Fennec doesn’t think he could stand if he tried. The sedative they use in blue packs, as they’re called, is rather strong. And God knows what Major Iverson uses- he likes to play around with dosages and mixes, and Fennec disapproves. Not that he would dare to say anything.
He shrugs. “On a scale of one to five, would poor be appropriate? One or two?”
“One p-p-point five,” says Haskell, and sniffs. “I feel like shit.”
Fennec marks an arrow between one and two. Really, the questions themselves don’t mean a whole lot. It’s between the lines he has to read.
There’s a large bulk of filler questions before Fennec gets to the ones that are designed to find a person’s pressure points. The filler questions are mundane, boring, and each time Haskell refuses to answer them, Fennec calmly restates them. He asks Haskell to lie for a set of questions, then to tone down the truth. He notes down the tiny expressions, keeps track of the tells as Haskell lies. And then they get to the pressure point question set.
Fennec whets his lips and turns the page. He reads out the first question indicated for Haskell’s personality type. “I am quick to anger. Strongly agree, agree, no opinion, disagree or strongly disagree?”
“I don’t want to talk about this,” says Haskell. “I d-don’t.” He almost dribbles down his front. Fennec feels a little sorry for him, but doesn’t let it show.
“You must answer the question.” Pressure points are the integral part of Interventional Psychology. They’re things that make a person hurt enough to strip back their inhibitions and make them react rather than respond- and if a mental pressure point isn’t enough, a physical one is used. Fennec would rather not get to that point.
“N-no opinion,” says Haskell.
“I regret past decisions I have made. Strongly agree, agree, no opinion, disagree or strongly disagree?”
Haskell looks up at Fennec and bursts out laughing. Cackling, gripping onto the table with whitened knuckles as if it’s the funniest thing he’s ever heard. Shivering from the drugs all the while. “What do you fucking think?” he laughs, tugging at his Northwall shirt. “Do I look like I’m where I should be in life? Do I?
Fennec rubs his forehead with his free hand, brushing back his hair. He has a headache.
