They say that every dream a single person perceives in their mind lasts at least twenty minutes. Of course my dreams seemed to always last longer. Not that they actually existed past their twenty minute time line, but that they lingered in my subconscious for days on end and then many of them returned every night to haunt me. I had been plagued with these dreams only after I finished my first year at Mains University, where I was taught in opening up the mind and understanding the tunnels and hidden passage ways it held inside itself; where I was able to understand the human reflexes in creating a new life and actually making those believe it. Here is where my new life began.
Darkness had been upon the earth for only a couple of hours, but it only took minutes to change the bright and somewhat cheery walls of Main Land’s Psychological Ward into a darkened prison that made the hallways look like the lone walk on death row. As I stood there staring down its main hall the eeriness caused shivers to travel down my spine. The silence was unbearable, and just like a silent prayer, a scream erupted from a cell two meters away.
“Ah, I’ll kill you!”
Two orderlies ran past me almost knowing she was going to scream in the first place, they unlock her cell and bravely entered.
“Don’t touch me…Alan, I’m so sorry.” Her piercing screams suddenly turned into whimpering sobs. I ran in and grabbed the needle of Librium from the orderly who was holding it out to me. She arched her back and screamed while both orderlies desperately held her down. After being injected it only took a couple minutes for her to become calm and they carried her back to bed where she turned over and started softly muttering to herself.
“Doctor,” they acknowledge me as I grabbed the paperwork outside of the cell 146; Kelly Robson, they didn’t stay to chit chat but locked Kelly back in her cage and lingered back to their regular routine of sitting on their asses and watching the baseball game. As I filled in the appropriate slots I looked at her and felt a fragment of sadness for her, about the life she may never be able to experience, but I forced it from my mind as I returned her paperwork and made my way back to my office. I slumped down on my new leather couch and rested my arm behind my head. The day’s events were playing around in my head and sleepiness was working its magic on me, and I knew I couldn’t resist it anymore. Darkness engulfed me and I accepted it willingly.
“Joseph, open your eyes and look at me…now!” a familiar voice yelled.
I opened my eyes to see a blinding light filling the whole room. I shut my eyes again and moved my head away.
“Where am I? Why can’t I see?” Realization sunk in. “Mommy, don’t tell me I’m here again.” As I reopened my eyes, the light became more focused and the outlines of myself stared back at me.
“Welcome back to reality…its not like it’s the worst place in the world…all you can eat buffets.” He chuckled at his own pathetic joke then composed himself. Suddenly the room rushed from underneath me and the whole appearance changed from a padded white session room to my old room from childhood. My racecar bed was made to perfection; while all my toys were lined up nicely on shelves that lined the rest of my room. Model airplanes hung from the ceiling and the outlines of the glow-in-the-dark stars reminded me of sleepless nights in that house.
“I have a present for you.” He produced a shiny red fire truck from behind his back; he moved forward slightly and placed in on my bed. Old memories flooded back and an evil grin produced on his face; as if knowing the anguish the truck reminded me of. “For every ache and pain it caused, a happy father resulted.” He laughed again and then there standing in front of me; was my father.
“Doctor Chernenkoff, line one, line one” the speaker spoke in an irritated voice. I opened my eyes to see the familiar sights of my office. I wiped the sweat from my forehead that seemed to have gathered there through the night then I grabbed the phone that was sitting neatly on my desk and answered the call.
“Hello, Joseph speaking”
Click; who ever was on hold had decided I took to long and hung up. If it was important they would call back and if they didn’t, that wasn’t my fault. I hung up and thought back to the night before for eminence of last nights dream were still fresh in my brain.
My father; more like a man who lived in the same house; he was always distant and never truly accepted the fact that my mother had gotten pregnant and had a child. From and early age he distance himself from me, and all his friends never knew of the inconvenient child he had at home. The only time my father showed his acknowledgement was on birthdays where he would play they loving parent in front of all my friends. On my 6th birthday he had gone out and bought me a bright shiny fire truck, it was my favorite present and for the rest of the night I played with it. Only I was too loud and my father came upstairs in a rage that meant I was in deep trouble. He grabbed my truck and as I tried to grab it back he hit me over the head with it. I blacked out and woke up an hour later at the hospital. My mother was told I fell and hit my head on my bed. I never told her the truth.
Memories always took so much of my time and undoubtedly I had wasted time again. When I looked at my Elvis Presley clock the time proved me right. I had wasted 20 good minutes on hurtful memories which only left me 15 minutes to prepare for my session with Lisa Cod, the only teenager here with Tricotillomania as well as a touch of paranoia. Because she relieves her stress by pulling out her hair strand by strand, she has a hair cut every two days which is then followed with her session with me. Last session didn’t go as well as planned. She was drugged and dragged off after a lethal attempt to grab as much of my hair that her little hands could get a hold of. When I went to see later she promised she would behave next time and that she was sorry; though it was probably just the drugs talking.
I arrived to the assigned session room just when Lisa was arriving herself. She was released from her restraints and sat down, her bald head didn’t really suit her cubby face, but her good features here not completely destroyed. Her eyes were blood red, and she looked extremely tired.
“Did you sleep last night, Lisa?”
“No!” She said as she looked past me, looking around making sure no one else could overhear her conversation.
“What were you doing then?” I asked; slightly intrigued to know what Lisa would make up this time.
She was reluctant to answer but decided it was best to do so. “Danny was going to leave me a message.”
“Message? I thought you told me last session that Danny was killed?”
“I lied.” She whispered while she tried to grab at hair that was no longer on her head.
“I thought we established a bond of trust, Lisa I can’t help you if you can’t trust me? I…” I wanted to go on but she cut me off.
“Bull shit, no one can help me, I’m what you call unhelpable you just spend your time here because you get paid to.” She was getting annoyed.
We sat in silence while I let her calm down she shuffled around in her chair and I knew she was ready to continue so I decided to take a different approach. “Lisa, I want you to write down what’s on your mind”. I handed her a piece of paper and pencil. “Write down whatever comes into your mind; don’t be afraid no one is going to read this but you and me.”
For a split second she hesitated; then began to write furiously anything she could think about. I sat there and watched her. She was a beautiful girl and I wondered what her life would be life if she wasn’t stuck in here. She finished writing and passed over the sheet of paper to me. I grabbed it and glanced at the words she had writing, some looked like a child writing were other matured into adults hand writing.
They tell my mother that I will get better; I know that they are lying; I know that my father’s anger caused me to be here. I see her cry as she looks at me not as her loving son, but as a sick child she is scared of. Every time I try to give her a hug she moves away. They keep saying the same thing; once I realize who I am or what I am trying to materialize I can leave here and return to my loving household. What loving household are they talking about? The one where I am scared to sleep at night? The one where I am left to be beaten to death by the only person you expect to be loved by.
I look up from the note and there was Lisa no longer a patient of mine, but dressed in a navy blue suit and her hair pulled back in a tight bun. She has the end of her pen in her mouth.
“Joey, are you finished writing?” She asked politely. She moved to grab the sheet of paper I out of my hand. I pushed her hand away and she seemed to be offended by my gesture.
“You told me you were finished.”
“I lied.” I retorted back.
“Well, when do you think you will be finished?” She looked at her wrist were it housed her watch. “We only have two more minutes before I have to go, you know that.” I looked once more at the paper in my hands and handed it to her.
“Thank-you.”
As I was being lead back to my room when things began to change; the walls became shorter and painted in a pale blue, nurses walked with little boys around the age of five to fifteen. Lisa left and walked into the room where it originally housed my office, where my name “Dr. Joseph Chernenkoff” in gold letters was replaced with “Dr. Lisa Cod.” I looked a head of me and there was my mother and father, tears ran down her cheek as she looked at me. Her eyes seemed to be looking past me, looking for something she could recognize. As I was lead back into my room; my bed was made with the racecar sheets my mother had bought when I was four. Airplanes hung from my ceiling but it couldn’t mask the room from looking like a hospital. I couldn’t hide my confusion as my mother stopped to talk to the reappearing Doctor.
“Have you made any progress?” My mother asked tearfully.
“It looks like, Joey has created a huge complex to cover the feelings he doesn’t want to deal with, and the hit on the head that he suffered two years ago has also contributed to his complex. We have just gotten through the first layer but I don’t know how many other layers there are.”
My mother looked over at me and more tears fell slowly down and landed on her baby pink shirt. My father looked at me with a sense of sadness; I didn’t know what sadness he felt, sadness for this only son being locked up in a mental hospital or the sadness that he had a mental ill child in the first place.
“He won’t be ready to go home anytime soon, I think it would be best to not come in for awhile. The sight of you always brings more layers.”
The doctor kept talking but I drowned the sound out; I grabbed my fire truck and played silently on the floor. A couple minutes later my mother gave me a hug and left. I knew I would never see her again.
I once heard that every dream a single person perceives in their mind lasts at least twenty minutes. Of course my dreams seemed to always last longer. Not that they actually existed past their twenty minute time line, but that they lingered in my subconscious for days on end and then many of them returned every night to haunt me.
I locked up my office and walked down the ward’s darkened hallways, the darkness of the night always made them look like a darkened prison that made the hallways look like the lone walk on death row; on my way out I past the nurse’s station, where they were watching the night’s baseball game. One looked up and said.
“Goodnight, Doctor.”
