Dr O Vs The Shieldmaiden – Part One

Since I am a polite man (when it is merited) it is of course necessary to effect some introduction to the second and third parts of the triangle. I am of course the first part and into my triangle have come Dr O and The Shieldmaiden. 

I will deal with the two ladies in a chronological fashion.

The Shieldmaiden is my Intimate Partner Primary Source, in common parlance, she is my girlfriend. I have known the Shieldmaiden for a number of years, but she has only become my IPPS recently. Like many appliances, The Shieldmaiden was a tertiary source when we first ´met´. We both knew about one another before we physically met. Indeed, it would be accurate to state that she was a secondary source before there was any physical interaction between us. She rose through the fuel matrix and now holds the most important position of IPPS. She loves and adores me.

Dr O is one half of the good doctors. I have known her also for a number of years, but not as long as I have known The Shieldmaiden. Dr O was not known to me before I met her and therefore we met in person as tertiary sources. I, naturally, made it my business so know much about her thereafter. Dr O is tasked by the perfidious traitors in the Tudor family with addressing my apparently aberrant and disordered behaviour with a view to bringing me to heel. Good luck with that. She loves and adores me.

Thus, there is a triangle, me, The Shieldmaiden and Dr O, but how does this triangle function, what is the nature of the interaction and why is there a “versus” included?

Time for you to find out.

It is a fresh and invigorating Autumnal day. Invigorating because as ever I am well-fuelled as I walk along the pavement to my appointment with Dr O at her consulting rooms. Fresh because the sky is clear of cloud and the sun glows brightly, the shafts of golden sunlight percolating through the trees of the nearby part, the leaves now turning as the year enters its final months. Shafts of sunlight illuminate the mist and as I walk, the backdrop of the city and its sounds all around me, I maintain my customary vigilance. It amuses me that MatriNarc still has her spy following me around, or rather trying to follow me around. He is not incompetent, but one would hardly afford him the label of master and he has now largely focussed on hovering with intent around the street which leads to Dr O and her consulting rooms so he can at least confirm to MatriNarc that I have attended.

Now, you might think, why doesn’t MatriNarc just ascertain from Dr O, or her receptionist, that I attended. She will not do that because MatriNarc wishes to pretend that she is not interested in my attendance, but she is obsessed with it. She also does not do so because she will not be told about it either. One of the benefits of the triangle.

I am well-fuelled courtesy of the ever-obliging goddess which is The Shieldmaiden and several telephone calls I made as I walked to my appointment. I prefer to walk. Naturally it is exercise but moreover it allows me freedom rather than being stuck in a traffic jam (they are a daily consequence of this city) and I remain fleet of foot so if the need arises I can evade into thin air or pounce from thin air, dependent upon the circumstances.

I bound up the steps into the impressive main entrance of the building where the consulting rooms of the good doctors are based. I flew in to the airport very early this morning having flown through the night, but the effect of a long-haul flight does not impact on me. This is a combination of regularly experiencing them and moreover the energising and empowering effects of the potent and plentiful fuel which has poured into me in the preceding hours. There have been no credible threats to my control, even the slight wrinkles which arose in two of my telephone calls came with fuel from the relevant appliances and I was readily able to assert my control through the spoken word.

I do however know that a challenge to my control is waiting on the other side of the door which I am now facing. It is a challenge that I relish and is just another part of the games. The games which must always be played. I feel a slight surge of power inside of me, to you, it would be akin to nervous apprehension or excited anticipation.

Not to me.

That was a dollop of Thought Fuel as a consequence of envisaging the forthcoming reactions of Dr O in the consultation ahead of me. As always, she will alternate between her forensic probing as the professional she loves projecting and her figurative skipping and dancing around me like a love-sick teenager. It is all fuel to me.

I never sit and wait for Dr O. That is thanks to Alastor

Sitting and waiting means that one has to be reactive to another. That means being subjected to control and that will never do.

I know much about Dr O. Far more than she realises. It is so entertaining to dangle the pieces of information, the tidbits of intelligence and the morsels of knowledge in front of her and watch as she tries to mask her surprise, her begrudging admiration and her fear that I know so such things. Not once however has she ever sought to admonish me or ask where this information has come from, but I know, thanks to Alastor that she repeatedly tries to find out.

That is one of Dr O´s weaknesses. She talks too much to people who are very good at listening. Being trained to be a good listener is a much under-rated skill. I rate it very highly indeed. I listen carefully to her, far more carefully than she listens to me in fact. For instance, I know that one of D O´s first sentences will be to enquire about my travels with The Shieldmaiden. She will mention it as a “frolic” or a “voyage” or an. “adventure”. Never acknowledging what it really it. She will ask under the pretence that she wants to understand how my prosocial behaviours, which Dr O believes she is the sole architect of, have been applied and if they are being maintained. She will ask under the guise of wanting to enable me to be more constructive, less destructive and “a good and healthy contributor to the lives of others.” Ha ha ha. I already am, you deluded woman. The real reason she will ask this, the true reason she will make this one of her first questions is because her jealousy of The Shieldmaiden has a firm hold on her.

As I intended.

And that jealousy generates blindness which I can exploit.

There is ante-room which leads to four consulting rooms which radiate away from this ante-chamber. The door to Dr O is second on the left and I stride towards her door. There is a lady sat on one of the expensive chairs waiting to see one of the other doctors. I look at her as she sits reading from a page which, judging by the others appended to it, will be some kind of legal document created by the ball-washing bastards in the legal profession.   I do not know the lady. She does not look up from her reading as she is suitably engrossed in its contents. There is the faintest flicker of annoyance but her failure to look up cannot impact with any substance and I dismiss her ignorance.

I place my hand upon the brass handle of the door which leads to the inner sanctum of Dr O. I do not knock. She knows who it will be and I know she will be ready. By that, I mean at least she will not be doing anything other than be expecting me, but I doubt she will be ready for what will unfold. That is because she is not me. Another small flame of Though Fuel ignites at the image of her face looking upon me as we spar with one another and with that, glance at her name and initials on the pomposity plate on her door and open the door.

“Good morning, good doctor,” I announce as I enter the room.

There she is.

Dr O.

“Good morning HG,” she replies, all traces of her accent almost removed. Almost. She likes to become someone else. Not as much as I do though. Being someone else is the very essence of what I am and what I do, both when I am hunting in the well-heeled boltholes or the down-at-heel foxholes.

“Isn’t it just?” I smile pleasantly towards the pristine Dr O, sat behind her desk.

I sit at one of the two chairs facing her desk but do not wait for her to provide me with any acknowledgement or agreement. Her unwavering gaze on me readily suffices. Accordingly, I continue to speak.

“O wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn’s being, thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves dead are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing, yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red, pestilence-stricken multitudes: o thou, who chariotest to their dark wintry bed.”  I recite channelling the spirit of autumn through me and bringing it into this stark chamber.

“Very good,” she says flatly which only serves to amuse me rather than irritate because I can see in her eyes she found it delightful. The eyes, you can forget about all that bollocks about being the windows of the soul, they are the pipeline to fuel.

I fall silent and look at her with expectation, tilting my head slightly to invite her to speak again.

“Coleridge?” she asks.

“Oh Dr O, what will we do with you? Shelley. Ode to the West Wind, a wind that I flew in on a mater of hours ago,” I comment and dangle the invitation for her.

“Ah yes, another trip, so, how was this latest adventure with The Shieldmaiden?” she asks and leans forward slightly as if she is assuming the role of inquisitor, when really she is in the role of confessor.

Adventure. There it is.

Dr O likes adventure. She lies to adventure and I could be moved to point that out to her, but I am not going to do so. I am going to give her what she wants but actually does not want.

I am going to talk about The Shieldmaiden and I and she will have to listen and do so as he jealousy rises and pushes her to comment, to question and remark.

But why is she jealous of The Shieldmaiden? Why would a successful, intelligent, attractive and interesting professional and weaver of webs be jealous? Why is she competing so readily with The Shieldmaiden and what is driving her to seek to win and to triumph of my angel?

For that, we have to go back to the beginning……..