Status: Short story (complete)
Folie a Trois
Folie a Quatre is the name of a psychotic disorder, translating to English as 'a madness shared by four' and was discovered by French psychiatrists in the late 19th century.
The madness is initiated by an impos￩e, who acts like a leader and begins to circulate their own delusions amongst three simultan￩e -normally family members or close associates. The simultan￩e then begin to share the delusions of the impos￩e. It has been observed this this form of psychosis is contagious.
The result of this disorder has frequently resulted in a complete detachment from reality by the affected. This detachment, with a combination of psychosis has often lead affected people to become extremely violent, or murderous to sate what the delusion is asking of them.ﾔ
-J. L. Monty
He clung to the sides of the alleyway, which cloaked him completely in shadow. His hands pressed against the walls, with his spidery thin fingers filling every grout-filled crevice the bricks provided.
As a bystander, one could could probably never guess that the man, Jasper Monty was a psychologist, who had spent nine years of his life earning his doctorate in the field. Though from a quick glance, it was easy to tell that this man was mentally insane. Or at least he had been at some point.
It was his skin, the way it seemed to cling over his flesh like a thin layer of frost. Despite his lanky frame which would normally be found bent over his desk, intimidating the young children who visited his office in the mental health clinic, Jasper had a boyish and not to mention, handsome face. His bright grey eyes were always wide open, set in a cheerful expression by his prominent cheekbones. This was perhaps what scared those young children more. But the important thing was that his heart was in the right place. All he wanted was to squeeze a laugh out of them.
Jasper got into his hiding place, where he'd been every Tuesday night for the past three weeks. He perched on the lid of a skip, and began to observe the scene through a curtain of flattened refridgerator boxes.
Their animated faces were well lit by the glow cast upon them from the lamp posts dotting the foot path. The trio sat cross legged in the centre of the cobblestone road, close enough so that their knees all touched. Each of them held a teacup in their hand and they surrounding a matching teapot filled with Turkish apple tea. A taxi driver swerved to miss them and they didn't even flinch. They just remained with the same happy expression, seemingly oblivious to the fact that they were almost demolished by one tonne of metal, almost as if they'd just stepped out of the cinema and watched a particularly brilliant film.
However, the three discussed something far more sinister than Jane Fonda's latest acting as a character sharing the same name as herself. Their line of work. Assassination. For clients that never existed, clients that their minds would generate from nothingness. The trouble was that they were really very good at what they did. And they had to be stopped because they would never be caught by anyone else but Jasper. The former leader of their team. He was the impose￩ to their folie.
ﾓSo the old knifey-wifey to the backy-wack?ﾔ said the only female of the group. Jasper had noted from the first five minutes of the first time he visited that she had become the imposee. Rare. But then so was somebody like her.
The polished shoes she wore click-clacked on the road with each word she spoke. Her name was Lunette. She was the youngest of the group and still spoke with the delightful little lilt Jasper had left her with. She'd also renamed herself, as Jasper had done with himself. The corners of her mouth rose, twisting her mouth until it resembled a crooked smile. Jasper felt his heartbeat accelerate a little, with memories of his adolescence flooding his mind. He looked away from the group for a moment, to let the nostalgia wash over himself.
This was difficult for him. To see his old friends again. And then to be able to see them from a professionals point of view. They were absolutely insane. As a professional, he was legally obliged to take them in, straight jacket them all. But he was their friend. This was Jasper only a little over a decade ago. He was their impos￩e. They had folie ￡ quatre. They all shared the same delusion. And now Jasper sat on the outside looking in on his old friends, wishing he could see the illusion of reality that they still saw so he'd stop feeling sick to his stomach with every gruesome recount they would make.
The three of them shared the same behaviour in relation to their killings. They could relax, and talk about it like it was your regular nine-to-five job, with just a little more animation.The thrill of the hunt, the blood spraying upon their grinning faces ﾖ it's what they lived for. Every ﾓclientﾔ that hired them had a reason that was more important than the last. And the psychosis they shared ensured that it was completely necessary to do the job they'd been asked to do.
After the tea was finished, they would retire to the Hawaiian tied man's house to smoke cigarillos imported from Syria and watch a documentary ﾖ this week about pre-teen obese children. They'd light a bergamot scented candle a soon as they got to the house and wouldn't dare fall asleep before it went out itself. Not that they could. To add to the list of problems they had, the group were all insomniacs and the only reasonable amount of sleep they ever got was when they had a little more to drink than expected.
During his surveillance, this is what had touched Jasper the most.
Bergamot was always his favourite scent. It almost bought a tear to his tired eyes thinking about it, to realise that his team had remembered.
He'd learnt how to set up action plans. In a rehabilitation centre. In university. In his little clinic. But nothing could quite prepare Jasper for what he had to do.
For the first time in his life, Jasper Laurent Monty, former underground assassin turned orderly psychologist was genuinely scared. The thought of how he would be welcomed back by his insane group d'amis, his long missed friends had been haunting him for weeks after he'd re-discovered them. After all, he was dead.
Or so they thought.
The madness is initiated by an impos￩e, who acts like a leader and begins to circulate their own delusions amongst three simultan￩e -normally family members or close associates. The simultan￩e then begin to share the delusions of the impos￩e. It has been observed this this form of psychosis is contagious.
The result of this disorder has frequently resulted in a complete detachment from reality by the affected. This detachment, with a combination of psychosis has often lead affected people to become extremely violent, or murderous to sate what the delusion is asking of them.ﾔ
-J. L. Monty
He clung to the sides of the alleyway, which cloaked him completely in shadow. His hands pressed against the walls, with his spidery thin fingers filling every grout-filled crevice the bricks provided.
As a bystander, one could could probably never guess that the man, Jasper Monty was a psychologist, who had spent nine years of his life earning his doctorate in the field. Though from a quick glance, it was easy to tell that this man was mentally insane. Or at least he had been at some point.
It was his skin, the way it seemed to cling over his flesh like a thin layer of frost. Despite his lanky frame which would normally be found bent over his desk, intimidating the young children who visited his office in the mental health clinic, Jasper had a boyish and not to mention, handsome face. His bright grey eyes were always wide open, set in a cheerful expression by his prominent cheekbones. This was perhaps what scared those young children more. But the important thing was that his heart was in the right place. All he wanted was to squeeze a laugh out of them.
Jasper got into his hiding place, where he'd been every Tuesday night for the past three weeks. He perched on the lid of a skip, and began to observe the scene through a curtain of flattened refridgerator boxes.
Their animated faces were well lit by the glow cast upon them from the lamp posts dotting the foot path. The trio sat cross legged in the centre of the cobblestone road, close enough so that their knees all touched. Each of them held a teacup in their hand and they surrounding a matching teapot filled with Turkish apple tea. A taxi driver swerved to miss them and they didn't even flinch. They just remained with the same happy expression, seemingly oblivious to the fact that they were almost demolished by one tonne of metal, almost as if they'd just stepped out of the cinema and watched a particularly brilliant film.
However, the three discussed something far more sinister than Jane Fonda's latest acting as a character sharing the same name as herself. Their line of work. Assassination. For clients that never existed, clients that their minds would generate from nothingness. The trouble was that they were really very good at what they did. And they had to be stopped because they would never be caught by anyone else but Jasper. The former leader of their team. He was the impose￩ to their folie.
ﾓSo the old knifey-wifey to the backy-wack?ﾔ said the only female of the group. Jasper had noted from the first five minutes of the first time he visited that she had become the imposee. Rare. But then so was somebody like her.
The polished shoes she wore click-clacked on the road with each word she spoke. Her name was Lunette. She was the youngest of the group and still spoke with the delightful little lilt Jasper had left her with. She'd also renamed herself, as Jasper had done with himself. The corners of her mouth rose, twisting her mouth until it resembled a crooked smile. Jasper felt his heartbeat accelerate a little, with memories of his adolescence flooding his mind. He looked away from the group for a moment, to let the nostalgia wash over himself.
This was difficult for him. To see his old friends again. And then to be able to see them from a professionals point of view. They were absolutely insane. As a professional, he was legally obliged to take them in, straight jacket them all. But he was their friend. This was Jasper only a little over a decade ago. He was their impos￩e. They had folie ￡ quatre. They all shared the same delusion. And now Jasper sat on the outside looking in on his old friends, wishing he could see the illusion of reality that they still saw so he'd stop feeling sick to his stomach with every gruesome recount they would make.
The three of them shared the same behaviour in relation to their killings. They could relax, and talk about it like it was your regular nine-to-five job, with just a little more animation.The thrill of the hunt, the blood spraying upon their grinning faces ﾖ it's what they lived for. Every ﾓclientﾔ that hired them had a reason that was more important than the last. And the psychosis they shared ensured that it was completely necessary to do the job they'd been asked to do.
After the tea was finished, they would retire to the Hawaiian tied man's house to smoke cigarillos imported from Syria and watch a documentary ﾖ this week about pre-teen obese children. They'd light a bergamot scented candle a soon as they got to the house and wouldn't dare fall asleep before it went out itself. Not that they could. To add to the list of problems they had, the group were all insomniacs and the only reasonable amount of sleep they ever got was when they had a little more to drink than expected.
During his surveillance, this is what had touched Jasper the most.
Bergamot was always his favourite scent. It almost bought a tear to his tired eyes thinking about it, to realise that his team had remembered.
He'd learnt how to set up action plans. In a rehabilitation centre. In university. In his little clinic. But nothing could quite prepare Jasper for what he had to do.
For the first time in his life, Jasper Laurent Monty, former underground assassin turned orderly psychologist was genuinely scared. The thought of how he would be welcomed back by his insane group d'amis, his long missed friends had been haunting him for weeks after he'd re-discovered them. After all, he was dead.
Or so they thought.