Friends, family, and avid readers,
If you have the time, I'd love some feedback on this opening chapter. I.E. Would you read on, is the main character likeable, is the 'tone' too dark, etc. All helpful feedback is welcome. Here goes...

Sometimes people snap. It’s not something you plan. Just like you don’t plan a car accident. It simply happens. Then you have to assess the damage to see if there’s anything worth salvaging. Most of the time, though, you find yourself alone in a room saying, “What the fuck just happened?” And the corridor is either filled with blood, lawyers or mental health workers. -KATHERINE’S ELEVENTH PSYCHIC

“She predicted this you know?” Katherine said, clenching her hands in her lap.
“Who did, Katherine?” Dr. Marsha asked; her pen poised above the file she’d started on Katherine month’s prior.
“My psychic. She said I’d snap.” Katherine chewed her lip.
“With what you’ve been through, it could have been worse.”
“Worse?” Katherine stopped rocking. “I straddled him and smashed his head with my cell phone until it shattered.”
“He’d had a knife to your throat four times earlier in the day. Why didn’t you snap then?”
“That was different. He was just being playful.” Candles danced in the reflection of the window, reminding her of the last time they made love. Jasmine candles, lavender oil, champagne, hands, mouths, skin, kneading, writhing. God they were good together. “You know Mae West?”
Her therapist nodded and shifted in her chair.
“She used to say, ‘When I’m good I’m very, very good. And when I’m bad… I’m better’.”
“And you’re saying this because?”
“That was us… our love life. The sex was always very, very good. But when he was ‘bad’ it was…” Katherine smiled and felt the familiar ache of wanting him.
“And was he ‘bad’ that night?”
Katherine wondered where this was going. “Why do you ask?”
“Did you climax?”
Katherine made eye contact with Dr. Marsha. “I beg your pardon?”
“I’m wondering about your state of mind during aggressive sex. What were you thinking about and did it help you to achieve orgasm?”
Katherine crossed her legs and laced her fingers around her knee. “That feels way too personal.”
“You aren’t ashamed to talk about sex, but rather your thoughts during it?”
I’m ashamed of my past. “No, I…” Deflect, Katherine. Never talk about them. “He grabbed me by the wrists that night.”
“And how did that make you feel?”
“Trapped. Helpless.”
“Think back. Do you remember feeling that way before?”
“Not me.” Katherine thought about her mother, just before she died. Her mind had eaten itself teaspoon by teaspoon for twenty-four years before her body showed signs of aging. But then, she fell— at least that what her father said— and spent the next few months strapped to an in-home hospital bed, leg propped up in a sling, restraints on her wrists, being force-fed liquid meals. “I remember her mewing.”
“Sorry?” Dr. Marsha wrote something down.
Lightheaded, Katherine put both feet on the ground and breathed in to the count of four, out to the count of eight. “When my mother was dying.... I should be more specific— about a year before she died, she was strapped down. Even though she hadn’t spoken in years, she never sounded like that before. Her eyes were wild. Scared. And she sounded like an animal dying in a trap.”
“And your father; how did he seem at the end?”
“His ‘end’ or hers?”
“Either. Both.”
Katherine went back in time to consider her father’s expressions, or lack thereof. “Like an engineer.”
Dr. Marsha nearly smiled. “And your definition of engineers?”
“Robotic, humorless, lacking compassion.” Katherine knew how Dr. Marsha would respond: “Not all… “ Sometimes being intuitive sucked. Made seem people dull and life predictable.
“Not all engineers could be described that way.”
Yawn. “You get to decide what’s important here: defending the image of engineers around the world, or getting into my head. I have no patience for righteous P.C. corrections, especially from a person who gets paid as much by the minute as most people do by the hour.”
Dr. Marsha removed her reading glasses. “Do you feel as if I was defending your father by humanizing engineers?”
For fucks sake. “This has suddenly become the most tedious conversation of my life.”
“What would you rather talk about?”
Nothing. At all. Ever. “Going back in time. Fixing everything.”
“Where would you start, back in time?”
Katherine smiled. “Before we ever met. When my kids were home from college for winter break.”
“Would you want to meet him again?”
The question seemed ridiculous. If it weren’t for the kids she would have added heroin to her list of addictions when he left. “That’s like asking Willy Wonka if he’d tour the chocolate factory again. “
“So he was your fantasy man?”
Katherine huffed. “More than that. I couldn’t have made him up, and I certainly never believed that I deserved to feel that kind of love in this lifetime. ‘God’ would allow me: money, healthy children, and good friends, but I was… am… too fucked up for the gift of love.”
“Fucked up people deserve love too. Besides, you didn’t do it to yourself.” Dr. Marsha put her glasses back on and picked up her pen.
Katherine took a deep breath, knowing a doozie of a question was coming.
“Do you believe that your children deserve love?”
“Of course. Everyone does.”
“Everyone, except you.” Dr. Marsha looked over the top of her glasses.
“I…” Katherine was at a loss for words.
“Everyone thinks that love is this big beautiful thing and once you have it every day will be filled with sunshine and background music. In reality, it can be painful, confusing and, in your case, a gift and a curse. The very things that attracted you to him also trigger buried emotions and forgotten memories. Healing isn’t easy and it certainly isn’t tidy.”
Katherine remembered that night. “Yeah. But it shouldn’t involve bloodshed.”
Dr. Marsha leaned forward. “I know you don’t have many conscious memories of your childhood, but I believe he set off a survival trigger— which are nearly impossible to eradicate— and you reacted the same way you did, or wanted to, when the original trauma took place. That’s why it’s important to analyze exactly how you felt right as you…”
“Snapped.“ Katherine closed her eyes and tried to remember. “It was dark and we were in bed, about to go to sleep, then he started looking through my phone.”
“Why?”
“We both have trust issues. I think he was looking for some sort of evidence that I was cheating.”
“How did that make you feel?”
“I didn’t mind at first, because I had nothing to hide, but then he wouldn’t give it back.”
“He pursued his needs despite your request to stop?”
“He just held tighter to the phone. I tried to grab it and he jerked it back. Next thing I know we’re fighting, he grabbed me by the wrists and I couldn’t move.”
“He didn’t respect your boundaries, then overpowered you.”
His needs, no boundaries, overpowered. The image of a dim room with a medical table entered Katherine’s consciousness. Her heart began to race. “Is it hot in here? It feels really hot in here.”
“Are you remembering something, Katherine?”
Katherine pulled at the collar of her shirt. “There’s no air in the air.”
“It’s okay, Katherine. You’re safe here. What you’re experiencing is in the past. It can’t hurt you now.”
Katherine tucked her feet under herself. “He’s going to strap her down.”
“Tell me what you’re seeing, Katherine.”
“Nobody calls me that.” Katherine’s voice was high and tight, nearly childlike. “It’s Katie. Everybody calls me Katie. Except him.” Katherine nearly snarled. “He won’t say my name in here.”
“In where?”
“The room with the Plexiglas window.”
“Can you describe the man?”
Katherine closed her eyes. “I can’t see anything.”
“Is something covering your face?”
Katherine started to shake. “He’ll cut out my eyes if I open them.”
“You’re safe here. He can’t hurt you now.”
“He’ll always hurt me, even in death.” Katherine remembered the night she snapped. She opened her eyes and looked at Dr. Marsha. “They did this. They don’t want me to be happy with anyone else.”
“They?”
Dr. Marsha looked at Katherine with a compassion she’d never seen before. It rattled her. “Jesus, what the hell is happening?”
“Remembering your past is going to be hard, but it’s the only way to heal.”
“Heal? I just want to stop the nightmares. ” Katherine stood to leave.
Staying seated Dr. Marsha said, “He… they, can’t control you anymore. You have the freedom and the strength to understand your past. Only then will you truly be able to leave it there.”
“How do I even know it’s even my history?”
Dr. Marsha stood to face her. “What do you mean?”
This is going to be dicey. “As if you didn’t think I was crazy enough already…”
“I don’t think you’re crazy, I think you’re complicated.”
“Sometimes this ‘gift’ makes it hard to separate my reality—and my past— from other people’s. ”
“I’ve read about some psychic protect techniques that may help. ”
“Yeah, I know: the Bubble, the Mummy, the Burning Flame. None of it works.” Katherine looked at the clock. “Time’s up.” Opening her wallet, she removed a twenty-dollar bill. “I’m pressed for time. Mail me a co-pay receipt?”
Dr. Marsha looked over her glasses and weighed each word. “I’ll prepare it for your next session. Same time next week?”
Katherine turned toward the door. “I’ll only come back, if you promise to fix us.” She realized the statement could be taken two ways and turned around. “By ‘us’ I meant my love life, not some sort of personality integration.”
There was a light in Dr. Marsha’s eyes. “I knew what you meant. But, I’m open to integration too… should that arise.”
“If you could just pull time travel out of your…” Katherine walked through the door.
“If I could, I’d be happy to beam you back to winter break.”
The door snapped closed behind her and Katherine walked toward the elevator. An older man caught site of her and said, “Going down?”
“Actually,” Katherine removed lip-gloss from her purse. “I’m going back.”
He cocked his head.
“Sorry. Therapy joke gone bad.” She dabbed her middle finger to the pot and mindlessly traced the shape of her lips.
No response.
Katherine looked up at the man. He seemed transfixed by her mouth— and thoughts of how he’d use it. She stopped mid lower lip and screwed the lid back on. I could break your neck, leave you in the parking lot and still have time to pick up Chinese.
The elevator dinged. “Ladies first,” the man said, holding the door.
“Actually, I’ll take the stairs. I hear they’re better for your health.”
“Are you sure?” He smiled and made the mistake of glancing at Katherine’s breasts.
“Trust me. It’s better for both of us.”
He stepped into the elevator, turned around and caught the door. “Will I see you around here again? “
The small diamonds of his wedding band shimmered under florescence. “Not if I see you first.”
His eyes went flat. “Maybe you should up the therapy.”
“Maybe you should stop fucking around on your wife.” Life was so much easier before she was psychic.
“I, I, don’t…”
The names of the women he’d cheated with played across Katherine’s mind like screen credits. “Then she wouldn’t mind knowing about Barbara, Marta, Gail…”
He turned ashen. “Who are you?”
If I knew, I wouldn’t be in therapy. “Just someone you shouldn’t fuck with.”
He glanced back at the door Katherine came from. “Then I’ll be sure not to be here at this time next week.”
“That’s an excellent idea.”
He let go of the door.
Once closed, Katherine removed her heels, descended eleven flights of stairs, thought about the only man she ever loved and muttered, “Just take me back, God. I promise not to screw it up this time.”