vs. Ryan Singer

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Off Camera

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“So do you mind explaining to me one more time, slowly, what is wrong with your sister?”

Those are the words of my wife, Ashley O’Brian.  God she’s dead sexy…but that’s beside the point isn’t it?

Right now I’m in the dining room, a place that my sister might describe as being drab but my wife says is elegant.  Perhaps the dining room was elegant in a minimalist sort of way?  The room echoed the outside world.  The table dominated the space, an elongated ellipse of oak with the raw bark at the edges.  The chairs, each one beautiful in its simplicity, all clean straight lines and high backs, were placed around the table.  I sit at one of them, with a bottle of Scotch in front of me.

The aforementioned dead sexy wife of mine is sitting across from me, her legs crossed, looking oh so elegant.

Where the fuck did I learn these words?  I’ve been around Sophie too damn long.

“I already tried!”

“Try again.  Please?”

I can’t hardly resist that face she’s using on me.  I sigh and shrug my shoulders.  “Look, I was kinda confused myself about what all she told me.  What I gather is that there is a good Sophie and a bad Sophie.”

“So a split personality?”

“Yeah, we can go with that.” I take a swig of my scotch and place it back down on the table.

“It would explain how she so suddenly went from deeply devoted to that Quinn Murray person to being so sweet and happy all of a sudden….which I am shocked I didn’t take note of beforehand….and it would also explain her strange behavior in the mall, but what I don’t understand is how?”

“How?”

“Yeah, Sophie seemed to be such a relatively down to earth woman…relatively speaking considering she is a sociopath…that it leaves me to wonder how she would develop a split personality?”

“I dunno…” I take another swig of scotch.

“Normally it would take something traumatizing for someone to get to that point.  Any ideas what that might be, Mark?”

“Fuck if I know.” I shrug my shoulders. “Worst thing to happen to her was being abused by our old man.”

“That’s it!” Ashley snaps her fingers, which causes me to nearly jump out of my seat.

“Huh?!  What’s it?!”

“It was so obvious!” She smacks her forehead. “The bad Sophie, the one that we are most familiar with, she created that personality in order to cope with her father’s abuse.”

That does make sense.  I’m not quite sure I understand all of it.  Hell, that’s way beyond my abilities.  But then again, Sophie always said that elementary math was beyond my abilities.  But was that the real Sophie?  After what Ashley just said, and after all this nonsense with Quinn Murray, I’m not so sure anymore.

“So, what do we do about it?”

“I’m not sure yet.  But knowing the problem is half of the battle.” She smirks. “Didn’t Sun Tzu say something like that?”

“Don’t go quoting him again!”