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Inspiration zapped me on the butt today. :) It was lovely. Read this and tell me if it's at all an intriguing beginning. :)

"I used to be afraid of our vacuum cleaner," she said, bopping her toes to inaudible music as they dangled over the arm of the chair.

He rested his chin on his hand, surprised. Her parents told him she never spoke. "To the point of catatonia," her mother had said, her eyes filled with frustrated tears. "It's like she's in a box and we can't reach her."

Her cherubic blue eyes were looking at him, seeming cartoonish and vicious rimmed in layers of liner and mascara. Waiting for an answer.

He settled for one of his favorite psychologist words. "Really?"

"It made this noise... growled. Kinda distant. Like a tiger behind a waterfall. It scared me when I was little."

"How little?"

"Like 7. Before that it was the curtains in my parents' bedroom. I had a dream one night that shadow people lived behind them and if I wasn't careful they'd carry me away. When I had bad dreams my dad would put me in bed with him and Mom but I'd sneak out again once they fell asleep. Couldn't risk it."

"Uh-huh. You ever wonder why you were scared of your parents' curtains, Sarah?"

"Mouse."

"A what?"

"No. My name. Is Mouse."

"Why?" He checked his papers. Sarah Michelle Anderson. A good hearty American name. No mention of a nickname.

"'Cause it is."

"It's what your friends call you?"

"Yeah."

"Do you consider me a friend?"

Blue eyes rolled in his direction again. "You've existed to me for like, ten seconds."

"But you speak to me."

"And?"

"Your mother told me you never spoke."

"You're a shrink."

"So?"

"Looking at a clock for an hour is boring."

"I see."

"Even though I like this chair." She bounced her ankles on the black leather. Her feet, hanging off the arm as she half-lay sideways, could have dribbled a basketball with their rhythm. She looked jittery, constantly twisting her hair around her finger, but her eyes were languid.

"I'm glad. I thought sofas were clich�, since most people only need a chair. Though your posture is... interesting."

She didn't spare him a glance, currently sliding around so that her feet hung over the back of the chair and her spine lay along the seat. Her blonde hair, cut in a chunky pixie style except for one strand behind her ear, hung upside down like a dandelion off the edge. The long behind-the-ear strand was the one she played with. Twirling around and around.

"Are you nervous?" he asked her.

"Yeah."

"Why?"

"'Cause I'm worried what I'll tell you. If I say too much, you'll know what's wrong with me and I'll be so scared. Then you'll tell my parents and I'll be in big bad trouble." Her exaggerated little-girl pout looked odd upside down, but he could plainly tell by the scorn in her eyes that she was lying through her teeth.

"So you're not nervous."

"You're smarter than you look."

"Thank you."

"Well actually, nobody looks too bright when you can see up their nose, so it's not saying much."

He put a hand over his mouth, both to hide a smile and cover his nostrils. "You're different from my other patients."

A smile. Gravity pulled her cheeks a little too high, so what should have been a smirk was a fearful grimace. "Aww, gee, thanks."

"I get a lot of kids like you in here. Parents don't know what to do with 'em, think they're too angry or too closed off. They either never speak or they say stuff trying to shock me."

"I don't do that."

"I know."

"I figure... if I wanted to shock you I could. So what's the point?"

"That's how I always felt. But you'd be surprised- not much shocks me anymore."

She slid around again, sitting upright for the first time. "I would."

"Try me."

"Nah."

He waited. She was silent, and apparently content to be so.

So he started writing on his notepad, hoping to elicit a comment from her. But she wasn't even looking at him. Fifteen minutes passed as he pretended to be jotting down notes, and he began to appreciate her parents' conviction that she was catatonic. It was hard to believe she'd been conversing normally just moments before, the way her eyes were almost glassy now as she stared beyond him out the large picture window.

"Last weekend at Georgie's house this guy David brought some acid." She spoke so naturally, it was as if the silence never happened.

"Mm-hm." He looked at her face, wondering if this was some response to his challenge.

"Good trip, too... David tried peeing out the window and we were eating this spinach pizza, looked like the Gobi desert, laughing our asses off because we kept expecting a camel to walk across it."

"Camels are African desert."

"Tell that to a sixteen year old on acid."

"I'm already surprised you thought of the Gobi desert."

"We were laughing about the way you say it. Goh-beeeeee." She smiled. "David wanted to screw me. I held my hand over his crotch and told him I was jerking him off and he actually came. Dumbass."

"Did you not want to sleep with David?"

"Didn't feel like it."

"Why not?"

"Just didn't. I mean, I've done a guy on a coffee table before. My friend Lauren won ten bucks betting the guy he wouldn't last two minutes. I'm not shy. But his teeth were all gappy."

"David's?"

"Yeah."

"And this was a significant turn-off?"

"No, I just looked at those teeth and decided he wouldn't be a good kisser."

"Ah." He glanced at the wall clock, and realized they were five minutes over. "Time's up, I'm sorry."

She stood up without a word, her face completely blank, and walked out the door. He followed her, saying his usual "I think this was a really good session. I'll see you next week."

But there was no answer. She left the office as if she'd spent the entire hour in silence, her mother meeting her with a line between her brows, her eyes flying to his briefly before the door closed behind Sarah- or Mouse. He walked back to his desk and knew that this was either going to be extremely easy... or extremely hard.

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