Wake to Dream(52)

Pulling the glasses from his face, he placed them on the table beside him and reached to rub at the bridge of his nose. His eyes were clenched shut, his foot tapping a frantic rhythm where it was crossed at his knee. Finally opening his eyes, he wrote a few more lines in his notepad before retrieving his glasses and resettling them over his eyes.

A breath of frustration rolled across his lips, his voice dropping back to the soothing tone he’d always used until this session.

“I’ve known you for a long time, Alice. I’ve been treating you since you were a small girl and I can’t sit idly by and allow you to continue lying to yourself. We’re running out of time. If you’re going to continue with the dreams, then fine. But tell me the ones that frighten you the most, and for the sake of yourself and the sake of your sister, look at them for what they really are. Look at who Max really is, and look at the truth for what it is. Who is Max, Alice? And how is he connected to you?”

A shaky breath rattled over her lips, her hand reaching up to knock the tears from her skin. “Fine, Doc. I’ll play your game. But don’t blame me when you discover that you’re wrong. These are just dreams. Dreams that have nothing to do with me, and everything to do with my sister.”

He shook his head, a subtle motion that Alice had barely seen.

“Start with the price, Alice. The price for the garden. Perhaps it’s the key to helping you remember.”





“I’m leaving the house for a few hours. You’re allowed outside in the garden during that time. Everything else will remained locked.”

Alice sat in the parlor room staring up at a man that was dressed in a gray suit, white shirt and a crimson tie. Everything about him spoke of money and elegance, refinement that she hadn’t known in her younger life. She was as attracted to him as she was scared of him, her hands trembling in her lap, but she couldn’t understand why.

“Don’t dawdle outside for too long, Alice. You need to remember the price, the tasks I’ve given you to complete. Don’t fuck them up and don’t forget them. You won’t like the result.”

With that, he stepped out of the room, the heels of his dress shoes a rhythmic clap against hard wood until the sound disappeared entirely. A door opened and closed in the distance, and for the first time since she’d been brought to live in the large house that had been Max’ childhood home, Alice breathed out a sigh of relief.

The price.

She wasn’t quite sure what all it entailed, but she hadn’t thought it so terrible when he first explained what she’d been brought here to do.

Be his wife.

Love him.

Care for him.

Ignore the demons that lurk inside him and cater to his need for a real family.

She glanced up at the screen to see the woman still sitting there quietly. Never moving. Never attempting to rip off the hood that covered her face. Just sitting. Shaking her head in disbelief, Alice spent an hour at least just watching the image, waiting to see any small mistake that could reveal the image as something other than what she assumed it to be. The screen never flickered, never jumped and never wavered. It wasn’t a loop, and it wasn’t an image on pause. But something wasn’t right about what she was seeing.

Standing up, she made her way into the kitchen to find a list written in neat script on the counter, the image of a small, perched crow, an emblem that sat at the top of the stationary. Laughter bubbled over her lips, the words so depressing and normal that they didn’t belong in this fantasy house, didn’t belong in the nightmare of this particular reality.

Clean the floors…

Wash the sheets…

Prepare dinner by six p.m. sharp…

All basic. All bullshit. A list that jogged something inside of her that was lifting hidden truth to the surface.

Placing the note down on the counter, she spun on her heel to look over the house. Familiarity was a nagging whisper in her head, secrets better left hidden if she wished to retain her sanity. But those whispers were endless, relentless. There was more beneath the surface of a beautiful home that trapped the nightmares behind mechanically locked doors and television screens that screamed for her to see the truth.

Unable to focus on any one thing, her eyes clenched shut and she reached down to smooth her palms over a light blue skirt she didn’t remember having put on. The dress had been yellow. The dress had been white. At what point had the color changed?

Her head wrenched to the side, the muscles in her neck locking in sharp pain. The woman on the screen sat motionless, her dress a light blue frock with a white lace collar, exactly as Alice was dressed now.

Unable to understand, or perhaps not wanting to, she ripped her eyes from the screen and walked the lonely steps from the kitchen out into a haven that had been created for her – by her.

A train of thought slammed into her, out of control and with a punch that knocked the breath from her lungs.

By her.

The garden had been created by her loving hands.

Tentatively, she stepped out, images filling her head of warm, sunlit days beneath the canopy of the stately oaks, their moss swinging in a subtle breeze, becoming shadows that played over her skin. There was nothing she didn’t recognize in that place. Not the roses that were planted in an array of colors: red, white, yellow and purple; they were the most difficult to cultivate, their beauty masking the pain of their thorns.