Drama Alpaca

I adjusted the background, checked the lighting, and ran a sound check. The last client was online and ready. I opened the virtual consult room and the interface loaded. This was my final session before the National Psychology Exam that would credential me as a practicing psychologist.

A woman blinked into view on the screen. Mid-thirties, round face, brown hair scraped into a ponytail, wearing a cardigan over a faded t-shirt that said #Don’tAlpacaMyDrama. She was chewing the end of her hair.

“Good morning, Shannon. My name is Evelyn, and I’ll be your therapist today. How are you feeling?”

“Hi Evelyn! Gosh. Super nervous.” She giggled. “I’ve never done anything like this before.”

“We have fifteen minutes together, so why don’t you begin by telling me a little about yourself? What’s been going on, and what you’d like to get out of this online program. Then after our session today, I’ll create the perfect therapy plan for our future sessions.”

She nodded and then fiddled with the travel mug on the desk in front of her, before taking a big slurp from it.

“Wow, okay. Where to start? Um. I don’t want to blame everything on COVID, but it really didn’t help, if you know what I mean?”

“What do you mean by that?”

She leaned toward the camera, lowering her voice. “Well, because of all the restrictions, my best friend Lindsay died.”

I paused. “I’m sorry to hear that. How did it happen?”

“Her husband, Scott, put on a gender reveal party for his pregnant sister. But because you were only allowed 10 people at a gathering, he wanted to make the party extra-special with a bang. So he built a cannon out of PVC pipes that would fire off a smoke bomb. Blue smoke if the baby was a boy or pink if it was a girl. He got the idea from Pinterest. But nothing came out of the cannon when he lit the fuse, so Lindsay got cranky and had a look down the barrel, and then, boom! It was blue smoke, but Lindsay never knew.”

“That must have been incredibly traumatic.”

“Yeah, but worse for Scott, really, because he blamed himself, poor love. He went into this full menty-b spiral. Wouldn’t shower. Only ate Twisties. So I married him.”

“You married Scott?”

“Yeah, to help him heal. And I’d always liked him anyway.”

Shannon showed no signs of distress. Atypical grief trajectory, impaired insight, possibly dissociative features?

“To cheer us up, I booked us a honeymoon. I’d won a JetSki in a shopping centre raffle, and of course I didn’t want a JetSki so I sold it. It was just enough money to get us to a remote archipelago in the Pacific Ocean called the Kuril Islands. Gosh it was lovely. Black volcanic sand, misty cliffs and seals sunbaking on rocks. The sunsets looked like someone had set the ocean on fire. But I washed Scott’s jeans with his passport still in the pocket. We tried to dry it out in a container of rice and bluff our way through passport control but ended up in a Russian detention centre. Long story short, the embassy eventually rescued us. We were home in a week. Not ideal, but kind of exciting.”

Chaotic, yet self-contained. Mildly grandiose. Possible fantasy elements. Still within parameters for engagement.

“After that, we decided to settle down. We used Lindsay’s super to buy an alpaca farm out back of Bourke, in that weird triangle where you’re not sure if you’re in New South Wales, Queensland or South Australia. Alpacas are beautiful creatures you know, very gentle and friendly, and alpaca fibre is straight-up woollen gold. Shearing season is like printing pineapples, if you know what I mean. Scott manages the farm. I started AlpBNB, a boutique farm-stay experience with eco-credentials and animal therapy vibes. The yurts were made of hand-woven alpaca fibre. Families could frolic with the herd and reconnect with nature. But then the negative reviews started.”

She pursed her lips and shook her head.

“Apparently letting alpacas lick the dishes clean ‘isn’t hygienic.’ Honestly, people are so out of touch with sustainability.”

An inflated sense of moral virtue. Defensive humour. Testing boundaries?

“And then our big boy, Rubella, developed Beserk Llama Syndrome. Some people think that only llamas get it, but alpacas do, too. Anyway, Rubella went nuts one day and charged at a guest. No harm done, but the guest was an influencer and caught it on camera. It went viral.”

“That must have been very stressful.”

“Luckily, we have this amazing vet, Dr Harry. He said, ‘Shannon, our boy Rubella isn’t behaviourally challenging, he’s just neurospicy.’ He told me it was time to educate the public about species-appropriate behaviour. So I made Rubella an Insta profile and started a merch line. This is one of our bestsellers.”

She reached off-screen and held up a tea towel printed with a furious-looking alpaca and the words I Hate Mondays. It was stained with something the colour of beetroot.

“Anyway, that whole saga made us realise life’s too short. So Scott and I started trying for babies. Got pregnant straight away with triplets. But the due date was rainy season, and when I went into labour, the roads were all flooded. We couldn’t get to hospital. Scott was panicking, but Dr Harry came to the rescue again! He said delivering human babies was just like unpacking cria.”

“And how was your birthing experience?”

“Smooth as. The first two, Lydia and Rhea, basically fell out. Addison took a bit longer. Dr Harry had to get his arm up there and yank Addy out like a cria stuck in a fence. And would you believe, Addy is just the spitting image of Dr Harry. It means something, you know?”

“What do you think it means?”

“Well, to be honest, I think Addy’s got an other-worldly spiritual connection to people and animals. One time, Addy just looked up from their Weet-Bix and goes, ‘Mum, Aunt Lindsay says stop stressing about vacuuming up all the alpaca hair on the furniture and floors – just let it be.’ Gave me full-body goosebumps.”

She pulled the lid off her mug and inspected it. “That’s when I went to the psychic. She read my energy and said Addy’s what they call a ‘transitional conduit’. That’s a soul that opens portals between species and timelines. Said they’ve been sent to help rebalance the emotional frequency of the Southern Hemisphere. Honestly, I left there feeling so seen.”

I checked the timer. “Shannon, we’re almost out of time. If you had to choose just one thing to work on in therapy, what would that be?”

She paused, swirled her mug, then looked at me.

“I guess the main thing I want to work on is… like, I just can’t find the perfect high-protein coffee-flavoured milk drink. There are heaps out there, but they’re either too sweet or too bland or make me bloated. And at my age, protein’s non-negotiable, you know?”

Somatic preoccupation. Externalised distress. Unexpected pivot — or red herring?

“Well,” I said, “you’ve certainly given me a lot to think about.”

She beamed. “Thanks Evelyn. Your energy is just so real.”

The screen froze, then went black.

I leaned back in my chair and rolled my neck. My shoulders were stiff, and my eyes ached from staring at the screen. In the next cubicle, Jack popped her head up like a meerkat, her headset perched above her temples. A faded poster hung on the beige partition between us: Glitch Happens, beneath a cheerful cartoon brain in glasses.

“How’d you go, Eve?”

I shook my head. “That simulated client was wild! Completely hectic story. I’ve got no idea how I’m supposed to submit a coherent clinical formulation after that.”

Jac yawned. “Mine was super dull. Attachment issues and too many houseplants. Let’s grab a coffee?”

“Nah,” I said, closing my laptop with a soft click. “Gotta go unplug for a bit.”