Revenge Is Sweet

Okay, I'm going to put this out there right now. Ankad is NOT an imaginary friend. I repeat, Is Not! No matter what anyone says, Ankad is my buddy and he's NOT IMAGINARY!

Man, it makes me so mad that no one believes me! Like my first psychiatrist, Doctor Karin Hoyle.

"I prefer it if you call me Ms. Hoyle," she told me somewhat haughtily during that first meeting. It was a long time ago. I was seven years old, and my foster mom thought I needed some "help" as she put it.

"You need to get along better with your foster brothers and sisters," she told me.

Later on, when I told Ankad what haughty Hoyle had said, he and I had a good laugh. "Why do I need help?" I wondered to him at the time.

He agreed. Why, exactly? he said to me.

So, anyway, Ms. Hoyle reviewed my file with me during that first visit.

She frowned. "It says here that you've got anger issues."

Well, duh! I couldn't help it if everyone I was forced to be around at home or school was a bunch of retards!

But I figured that statement wouldn't go over to well with the haughty Ms. Hoyle, so I played the game: I hung my head and expressed remorse, choosing to be passive and not wanting to get into it with her right then. "Yeah," I said. "I guess. Sorry about that."

She went on to remind me that I'd lost my older brother in an accident, and then lost both my parents in an accident, and that I'd almost lost my little sister in an accident.

She looked at me. "My. You come from a very accident-prone family."

I looked at Ankad. We both grinned with our secret knowledge but stayed quiet.

Ms. Hoyle must have seen me. "You think it's funny?" she asked.

"No, ma'am," I said. Geez. I was getting bored. Where was this going?

She looked hard at me. "You know what I think?" I glanced at Ankad. He was making a smiling face, goofing around. What did we care about what she thought? I sent a thought wave to him: Don't make me laugh out loud, I told him.

He gave me the thumbs up sign along with a big frowny face. He's pretty funny. I just about choked.

Remember, this was only my first visit with the bitch. Honestly, I didn't mind her. For some reason I thought I'd try to make a good impression.

"No, what do you think?" I asked. I was suddenly kind of curious.

"I think you're acting out losing so many of your loved ones. I think you've created an imaginary friend to compensate for your loss." She paused and looked at me. "What do you think about that?"

I didn't have to look at Ankad. We both knew the answer to that one. You know that 'make a good first impression' is just told you about? It went right out the window. "Well, Dr. Hoyle," I said, leaning forward and skipping her direction to call her Ms.to make my point, "to be perfectly honest and clear, I think that's a bunch of shit. A big bunch of BULLSHIT!"

She gasped. I was only seven years old at the time.

Needless to say, things never really recovered from that first day. She developed a dislike for me, and I never found a reason to like her. So, during the eighth session, when Ankad and I decided to use my patented sleeper move on her and put her to sleep, I did. She'd been giving me a hard time about the three fatal and one not so fatal accidents in my family when I'd had enough. My mind exploded in anger and I saw red. Like a rattlesnake striking, I reached across the desk lightning fast, grabbed the pressure point on her neck like Ankad had taught me and, shazam, just like that, she was out cold. Like a light. Like l the others in my family. How was I to know she'd smash her head on her desk on the way down? I didn't expect that. Or the blood. Man, there was a lot of it.

Just like with my family.

So, anyway, she was my first psychiatrist. All I can say is that getting Dr. or Ms. Hoyle or whatever out of my life way back then was a good thing. She treated me like I was nuts for having Ankad as a friend. Who was she to tell me who my friends could or couldn't be? So, I showed her. I'm glad I did. I have to say, that old saying is true: revenge is sweet.

I'm now fifteen and I've had a few shrinks since then. I'm in a new home. The Rolling Hills Care Facility is what it's called. It's out in the country, and it's a nice place. I'm in the psych unit. My shrink is Dr. Ben Layton. He's a good guy. He doesn't care if I call him Dr. or not. And he doesn't give me any shit about Ankad. He says, "Whatever works, Corey. Go for it."

It's kind of a benevolent statement if you ask me. Sometimes I wonder if Dr. Ben (which is what I call him) is real. Ankad says he is, so I'll go with that. Plus, he's done something none of the other four previous shrinks have done and that's suggest I write little stories about me and Ankad. I have to tell you. Honestly? At first, I thought it was a stupid idea. But then I talked to Ankad about it, and he said, Go for it, Bro.

So, I am. Going for it, that is. In fact, this is the first one. I hope you like it! If not, remember that I know where your secret pressure point is. And I'm not afraid to use it! Ha, ha. Just kidding.

Right Ankad?

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