black?”
“No, thankfully.”
Delaney paused to write some notes. “Anyone else? Perhaps someone new that hadn’t been there before?”
Richard scanned his memory, found nothing of significance. No images, no conscience. Nothing. “No, there was no one else.”
The room fell in silence, not a tick nor a voice nor a creak interrupting the thirty seconds of motionlessness between them. Eventually Delaney scribbled something down, then placed the pen into the crook of the notebook and set it on the coffee table. He stood up, crossed the room and sat behind his desk. Opening the top left hand drawer, he pulled out another cassette tape. “It’s no mystery, Richard, that I’ve taken a good deal of interest in your case of late. The dreams, a likely side-effect of anxiety brought on by Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, have had me quite intrigued.”
Richard straightened himself on the couch, placed one foot on the floor as a million questions rippled through his mind. Would he finally obtain some answers from the doctor? Or at the very least, an admission of curiosity, and perhaps concern? Was he about to receive his ticket to normalcy? A cure-all magic potion to exorcise the demons in his mind?
“I say this,” Delaney continued, replacing the tape in the recorder, pressing ‘record’, then sitting back down, “because of the recurring characters. Two of whom you know, that being Julia Sparke , your mother, and Debra Sparke , your child. Both of whom are deceased. And then there’s this rather fierce ‘twin-nemesis’ as I like to say, whom you claim is actually yourself in guise.”
“Yes, that is correct.”
“Hmm. So, correct me if I’m wrong. Outside of the random appearance of an old boss, or your girlfriend, these three characters, so to speak, are the only ones that remain constants in, shall we say, the landscape of your dreams?”
Richard nodded, understanding. “Yes, they’ve all been there since the beginning. Not always are all three present at the same exact time. For the most part they arrive periodically, either in individual dreams, or all at once in the same dream.”
“When you say periodically, how often do you mean?”
“Well, maybe I should’ve said ‘often’. All three show up at least once a week, and sometimes they’re there every night for a stretch of time, even for as much as a week.”
“Do you ever go entire nights when they don’t come at all?”
“Sure, but not very often. Maybe once or twice a week I’ll have a night of dreamless sleep.”
“So you’re saying that when none of these three characters show up in your dreams, you don’t dream at all?”
“That’s right. And on these nights there is never any sleepwalking.”
“Why do you say that?”
“On the nights that I dream, there is always something disrupted in the condo. Last night I dreamed of my mother. In the morning I found the phone off the hook in the living room. Also, a table and lamp had been toppled over. Three nights ago, when I dreamed of the man in black, I found the kitchen in disarray, the table and chairs knocked over, all the plastic tumblers spilled on the floor.”
“Do you ever wake up in the middle of a ‘sleepwalking’ episode and find yourself performing the odd activities that would cause the minor disarray you speak of?”
“You’ve asked me that before, and the answer is still no. I’ve never woken up anyplace else but in my bed.”
“So what makes you think you are actually sleepwalking, then?”
“Well...because...haven’t we discussed this all before, doc?”
Delaney nodded, pointing to the tape recorder.
“Oh...” Richard ran a hand through his hair, came down with a palm full of sweat. He wiped it on his jeans. “I can’t come up with any other explanation for the circumstances, really. I go to sleep, I have these intense dreams, and when I wake up the next morning I find things moved around the house. What else could it be then, really, other
“No, thankfully.”
Delaney paused to write some notes. “Anyone else? Perhaps someone new that hadn’t been there before?”
Richard scanned his memory, found nothing of significance. No images, no conscience. Nothing. “No, there was no one else.”
The room fell in silence, not a tick nor a voice nor a creak interrupting the thirty seconds of motionlessness between them. Eventually Delaney scribbled something down, then placed the pen into the crook of the notebook and set it on the coffee table. He stood up, crossed the room and sat behind his desk. Opening the top left hand drawer, he pulled out another cassette tape. “It’s no mystery, Richard, that I’ve taken a good deal of interest in your case of late. The dreams, a likely side-effect of anxiety brought on by Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, have had me quite intrigued.”
Richard straightened himself on the couch, placed one foot on the floor as a million questions rippled through his mind. Would he finally obtain some answers from the doctor? Or at the very least, an admission of curiosity, and perhaps concern? Was he about to receive his ticket to normalcy? A cure-all magic potion to exorcise the demons in his mind?
“I say this,” Delaney continued, replacing the tape in the recorder, pressing ‘record’, then sitting back down, “because of the recurring characters. Two of whom you know, that being Julia Sparke , your mother, and Debra Sparke , your child. Both of whom are deceased. And then there’s this rather fierce ‘twin-nemesis’ as I like to say, whom you claim is actually yourself in guise.”
“Yes, that is correct.”
“Hmm. So, correct me if I’m wrong. Outside of the random appearance of an old boss, or your girlfriend, these three characters, so to speak, are the only ones that remain constants in, shall we say, the landscape of your dreams?”
Richard nodded, understanding. “Yes, they’ve all been there since the beginning. Not always are all three present at the same exact time. For the most part they arrive periodically, either in individual dreams, or all at once in the same dream.”
“When you say periodically, how often do you mean?”
“Well, maybe I should’ve said ‘often’. All three show up at least once a week, and sometimes they’re there every night for a stretch of time, even for as much as a week.”
“Do you ever go entire nights when they don’t come at all?”
“Sure, but not very often. Maybe once or twice a week I’ll have a night of dreamless sleep.”
“So you’re saying that when none of these three characters show up in your dreams, you don’t dream at all?”
“That’s right. And on these nights there is never any sleepwalking.”
“Why do you say that?”
“On the nights that I dream, there is always something disrupted in the condo. Last night I dreamed of my mother. In the morning I found the phone off the hook in the living room. Also, a table and lamp had been toppled over. Three nights ago, when I dreamed of the man in black, I found the kitchen in disarray, the table and chairs knocked over, all the plastic tumblers spilled on the floor.”
“Do you ever wake up in the middle of a ‘sleepwalking’ episode and find yourself performing the odd activities that would cause the minor disarray you speak of?”
“You’ve asked me that before, and the answer is still no. I’ve never woken up anyplace else but in my bed.”
“So what makes you think you are actually sleepwalking, then?”
“Well...because...haven’t we discussed this all before, doc?”
Delaney nodded, pointing to the tape recorder.
“Oh...” Richard ran a hand through his hair, came down with a palm full of sweat. He wiped it on his jeans. “I can’t come up with any other explanation for the circumstances, really. I go to sleep, I have these intense dreams, and when I wake up the next morning I find things moved around the house. What else could it be then, really, other
Similar Books
