The Knight, the Beauty, the Beast, the Fool. Eat a Heart – Gain Love. Stella Fracta

at his interlocutor with hope – to see if he was being disingenuous. It was odd … If at times Dr. Gasztold’s gaze was cold, piercing, now he looked softly, kindly.

      Will has been thinking a lot lately – and not just about serial killers. Dr. Gasztold hears a lot of stories every day, is aware of every nasty thought of the perverted rich, sees the garbage in other people’s heads – and yet remains calm. Neither dirt nor fear nor doubt sticks to him … Will soaks them up like a sponge, as soon as he passes another monster. Dr. Gasztold said it was a habit, a skill that is developed with experience.

      Will’s only way to defend his personal boundaries is still to be wary and sullen. And sometimes to use sarcasm … Now he had no time for sarcasm, he didn’t even find the strength to laugh at Serret’s jokes.

      “Thank you, Dr. Gasztold, I’ll think about it.”

      “If it’s not convenient for you to come to Baltimore today, I can visit you myself.”

      Will has three dogs, his house is located in the middle of nowhere, in northern Virginia, near a nature reserve, in his free time he fishes and repairs boat engines … It would be strange to force him to come back tonight – to have dinner with the psychotherapist.

      It’s not so easy to win him over, he’s not Serret, who only needs to be fed and told a few kind words … It was difficult with him – and Dr. Gasztold was attracted by Will’s inaccessibility, his multi-layeredness, his versatility, his reinforced concrete walls of defense.

      “Okay,” Will finally agreed. “But I’m not likely to be a good conversationalist, I’m too absent-minded.”

      “We don’t have to talk,” Gasztold said. “And you know perfectly well that I’m comfortable with you, in any form of yours.”

      For some reason, Will remembered Allex’s words about potatoes – that he loves them in any form: fried, stewed, baked, in chips … He doesn’t like them raw – but that’s because he hasn’t tried the kind that is well cooked.

      Will was that potato for Lukas Gasztold – at least, deep down he already knew it. He had begun to pick up on non-verbal signals a long time ago, but he hadn’t attached any importance to them, hiding from them as from unnecessary, distracting information … Now Dr. Gasztold spoke directly, with an poker mask-face, with a soft look in his dark eyes.

      Will has always explained the human race representatives’ desire for closeness as a need for security, the formation of alliances as an evolutionary mechanism of optimization, and has never seen himself in friendship, partnership, or relationship with anyone. He is too special, too unsociable, too incompatible, he does not need it, and it is not even worth trying.

      But he seems to be thinking about someone else for the first time, he felt a friendly shoulder for the first time, Serret’s support, Dr. Gasztold’s attentive gaze; he suddenly understood what he had been missing all this time … But at the same time he is rolling down, into the abyss, into the depths of these painful thoughts, and the longer he is near the Heartthrob’s creations – corpses, clues, any evidence of his presence – the more Will empathizes – and does not judge.