37

All the shock of what had almost happened hit me hard on Friday of that same week. Maybe it was an answer from my subconscious to the questions that the wide-smile and distant-looking psychologist asked me. I didn't mind memorizing your name, since I was determined not to receive any other consultation after hearing your initial words. "You shouldn't feel guilty," she said, "Gary Swan shouldn't touch her even if you were naked. It's not your fault."

I didn't have the courage to say that I didn't feel guilty. I felt hate. This reached a level above all that clinical litany, and I knew that if I proclaimed aloud for the millionth time that Gary Swan should be dead, my own sanity would be put to the test.

The doctor wrote down in a little block when I lied about feeling nothing but physical discomfort, even so, she tried to convince me that I had no responsibility about having entered the path of a psychopath, saying that justice would be done "both to me, and to so many other victims st