Wake to Dream(51)
At the mention of Delilah, Alice’s eyes crept out from behind the curtain of her hair, her head spinning slowly over her shoulders and neck to lock eyes with the man that was guiding her forward. “You finally believe me?”
Her body trembled beneath the weight of a question she asked despite her fear that the answer would be his typical response.
“I’m not saying that,” he breathed out, his aggravation transitioning into a pitiful cadence to his words. “Would you like me to talk? To bring up the symptoms and facts about your dreams that you have yet to acknowledge?”
A single nod of her head was all she could give him, the movement sharp and spastic.
Leaning back in his chair he tapped his pen to a beat of three before scribbling out some note. Like a surgeon’s scalpel, that pen sliced her open, dissected her so that the doctor could look down inside to see all her ugly and weak parts.
“Fine. You’re out of sorts today, so I’ll play along.”
Flipping through the pages, he ran his finger along some line of thought that was a wash of blue against white paper. “Several times now, you’ve mentioned to me that Max seems to know a lot about you. Why do you think that is?”
She shrugged, the movement so subtle and weak, she wasn’t sure she’d actually done it. Bringing her hands into her lap, she stared down on the tendons that pushed up beneath the skin, at the calluses that marred the tips of her fingers, dirt a brown line beneath her fingernails. When had her hands become so ugly, so aged? And would the stains that had come from someplace unknown ever be washed away completely?
“After our session, I had another dream –“
“I’m not interested in the next dream, Alice.” He paused, regaining control of a voice that had become far too impatient. “At this point, all I’m interested in is the answer to the question I just asked you.”
Barely able to swallow past the thickness of her throat, she closed her eyes and let go of every bit of air trapped in her lungs. Another breath brought her more into focus, the filth washed out of her as she exhaled to be replaced by the clean air of the doctor’s office.
“I don’t know. The only reason I can imagine is that Max isn’t real. He’s a part of myself, perhaps.”
“That’s bullshit and you know it.”
Her eyes shot open at the harsh words, the muscles in her neck wrenched by the effort it took to face him fully. “How would you know? They’re dreams, Doc. Dreams! Images and actions that take place entirely inside my head. Every person, every face, every word and every horrible thing is made up by my mind, my recollection, and my brain’s fucked up inability to record memories the way it’s meant to. Of course he knows everything about me because he is me. He’s the vision of somebody in my head so he has access to every memory I hold. That’s the only explanation that makes sense –“
“Or…” he interrupted, his voice booming through the room loud enough to drown out every tick of the clock and every drip from the sink that was slowly driving Alice mad. “…it’s the only explanation you’ll accept as making sense because you are too far gone to acknowledge what it could actually mean. You’re a scared little girl, Alice. One who has sunk so far into herself that you refuse to look closely at the images these dreams are showing you.”
Her jaw fell open in shock, her eyes searching his face with disbelief that the normally patient and kind doctor she’d known was yelling and treating her like an errant child.
His body leaning forward in his chair, the notepad dangled from his lap from the speed with which he’d moved to close the distance between them. He glared at her, every ounce of frustration inside him a red mask over his skin. With his pen gripped in the fist of his hand, he shook his head when she said nothing, when she failed to respond to the angry and volatile words of a person she believed had no clue as to the thoughts and emotions crippling every part of her body.
“You are running out of time. With every second that ticks forward you are losing ground. And those seconds are ticking, Alice. They’re adding up, moving forward and leading you somewhere I’m not sure you want to be. I’m done playing around with you. Either open your eyes or let it go entirely.”
Tears streamed over her cheeks, her lips trembling where those tears slid along the crease to drip over her chin and down her neck. Fierce sobs shook every part of her and she couldn’t gain control of the fear that blossomed out from deep within her.
Before settling back against his chair, he reached for a tissue to hand to her. Alice didn’t accept it, so he tossed it to land on her lap. Retaking his normal position, he drummed a furious beat with the pen against paper, one final tap louder than the others before he said, “You’re missing every important aspect of these dreams and focusing only on the things that don’t scare you.”
Shock tore across her skin. “How can you even say that? Everything I’ve told you has been frightening. He raped my sister, he forced me to have sex with him, he hurt me and hit me, and threatened to end my life if –“
“You said you loved him already, Alice. Don’t continue lying to me, and more importantly, yourself, about how you really feel about him. He rescued you from your nightmares. He gave you a pretty garden to play in while he was away. If you’re going to rely on dreams to tell you what really happened to your sister, than look at the parts you’re too scared to see. The parts that are, actually, frightening. The parts you have buried deep down inside because you don’t want to admit you were part of them. Those are the dreams I want to know. Those are the dreams you need to discuss. Not the ones that paint a dismal picture of a man who did everything to harm you while also committing abuse against some faceless woman on a television screen.”