Kent Sees A Shrink

By William Kitcher

At one o’clock on Thursday, the door to my office slammed to the ground, and in the doorway stood my next patient.

“Sorry,” he said. “I guess I don’t know my own strength.”

“Apparently not, Mr. Kent,” I said.

He looked around my office. “I really have no idea why I’m here.”

“Well, your temper, for one thing. Look at my door. The HR Department from your work suggested you talk to me.”

“I don’t need a psychiatrist. I just need someone to believe me.”

“That’s why I’m here. Please come in. I’d ask you to close the door, but... Anyway, take a chair, or would you prefer to lie down?”

“Lying down would be preferable,” he said. “I’m tired from flying all day.”

“Flying?”

“Yes, flying. Isn’t that in my file?”

“Yes, it is. How do you, uh, fly?”

“I’ll show you. It’s a little cramped in here though.” He seemed to concentrate, then lifted off the ground until his head crashed through the ceiling.

I calculated the price of a new ceiling tile. “That would be levitation, not flying, and I’ve seen that done a hundred times, at magic shows, séances, Wolf Cub jamborees.” I made a note on Kent’s file to charge the cost of a new tile to the Daily Planet, then pulled on his legs until he landed, and I ushered him to the sofa. As I sat behind my desk again, I said, “So tell me your story, from the beginning.”

He sighed, and the paintings on my wall seemed to shudder. “I was born on a distant planet called Krypton.”

“Krypton.”

“Yes.”

“Krypton. Just like the inert gas we have on Earth?”

“Yes.”

“Interesting, uh, coincidence,” I said, and made a note on my pad. “And then what?”

“My planet was about to explode, so my parents put me in a space capsule and sent me to Earth.”

“OK,” I said, “a lot to unpack there. Your planet ‘exploded’. How did that happen?”

“I don’t know! I was a baby!”

“No advance warning so they could build a bigger space capsule so you could all escape?”

“Obviously not.”

“And your people, who, coincidentally, were from the other side of the universe and yet also humanoid, figured out how to land your space capsule right here on Earth?”

He looked at me as if I were an idiot. “I didn’t say Krypton was on the other side of the universe.”

I waited for more, but he had nothing. “Moving on,” I said. “Do you have any worries about being here on Earth?”

“Well,” he said, “my biggest concern is kryptonite.”

“Ah, kryptonite. And what is that?”

“It’s the remnants of my planet that landed on Earth. It’s a major problem for me.”

“Interesting that it followed you across the universe. Tell me more.”

“It comes in different forms. Red kryptonite has very strange properties: it makes things very confused and bizarre and hallucinatory for me. Gold kryptonite could strip me of all my powers. Green kryptonite could kill me.”

“Interesting,” I said, thinking that these sounded suspiciously like different strains of weed: Panama Red, Colombian Gold, Mean Green. I decided to change tack. “How did you get your, uh, ‘superpowers’?”

“It’s because of Earth’s yellow sun.”

I began to nervously pull on my earlobes, something I do when I’m confused and bored. Rather than asking ‘why’, a question that would undoubtedly lead to further brain spasms, I asked, “What happens when you fly out into the universe and you fly around red or white stars?”

“That’s an idiotic question. It’s because I grew up under a yellow sun. In this case, environmental concerns are far more important than genetics.”

Thoughts rattled around my brain about nature vs. nurture, genetic mutations, and what colour Krypton’s sun was, and decided to ignore them; I was feeling an aneurysm coming on. Instead, I asked, “What other powers do you have besides levitation, uh, I mean flying?”

“I have X-ray vision.”

“Go on.”

“For instance,” he said, looking at the wall behind my desk, “the office next to yours is a dental office.”

Ignoring the fact Kent probably just saw the sign on their office door, I asked, “What else?”

“I can cool things with my breath.”

Unsure why that would be useful unless you forgot how to make ice, I said, “Anything else?”

“I have heat vision. I can heat up anything with just my eyes.”

“The same eyes that have X-ray vision.”

“That’s right.”

“How can you tell the difference when you’re doing one or the other?”

“I just concentrate differently.”

Of course. How silly of me. In an attempt to end this, I said, “When you were called into your HR Department, you said you could fly so fast you could reverse the spin of Earth so you could go back in time.”

“That’s correct.”

“So why don’t you do that regularly to fix all the problems caused by humans over the past hundred thousand years? Or do something that would make you happy.”

“That’s definitely something for me to consider in the future, pardon the pun, Dr. Hackenbush. I think our time is up.”

I looked at my watch — two o’clock — and when I raised my aching head, my office window was open, and I thought I saw the soles of a pair of disappearing shoes. I went to the window. There was the usual collection of cars, buses, pedestrians, and swirling garbage. No squashed client on the sidewalk below, only a whooshing flying sound, a tactile shimmering of the air, and the feeling that everything was spinning in reverse.

I sat at my desk. It was one o’clock on Thursday. My office door opened. Mr. Kent stood there. He removed his glasses and rubbed his eyes. I had an inkling of something I couldn’t define.

He ushered forward an old man and an old woman, and smiled broadly. “These are my parents!” he said. “Not my Earth parents, my real parents. From Krypton.”

I could feel a headache coming on.

About the Author

Bill has had over 150 stories published, a couple of which are good.

His comic noir novel, “Farewell And Goodbye, My Maltese Sleep”, the second funniest novel ever written, was published in October 2023 by Close To The Bone Publishing, and is available on Amazon.