by Jacob Rayne
If I had the energy to leave my room I’d go and find her, demand an explanation, but an all-consuming darkness has drained my strength, strangled my motivation as surely as the woman in my nightmare choked the life out of that helpless child.
What the hell is she playing at?
The one good thing about the last week has been that the smug bitch hasn’t been in to see me.
I’ve been totally, utterly alone. Nothing but my own thoughts for company. It’s been a strange experience, but nice in some ways. I haven’t felt patronised or ashamed of anything. But the solitude does seem to be playing with my mind. I’ve lost track of time a little and I sleep less than I did this time last week.
The nightmare came back for only a snippet, this time I only got to the grinning face in the mirror before it cut off. It was a relief not to have to see the bodies of the second child and his father.
But still it’s unnerving that the dream has returned.
I worry that the tablets the doctor has given me to stop the dreams are messing with my mind, changing who I am.
I debate stopping taking them, if only to see if that lifts the shadow that seems to have settled upon my soul.
The doctor’s visit is short and sweet this week. I explain my concerns about the return of the dream, though it was just a trailer rather than the full feature this time. He explains that this is likely to happen, and that in time my mind will find other things to focus on.
I explain that I’m feeling a little pissed that no one has come to visit me in the week that has passed since his last visit.
He nods, tries to hide a little smile. ‘Sorry, I’m just pleased to see you’re looking a little better,’ he says by way of explanation.
‘Thank you. I don’t know how, cos I feel like crap.’
‘You’ll feel better soon, trust me,’ he says. ‘I’ll see you next week.’
In the hermit-like existence I’ve come to lead, I soon start to get sick of my thoughts and the sound of my own voice.
I miss my neighbour. I even sometimes miss the chubby, well-clothed bitch who looks down her nose at me the whole time she’s here.
The lack of the nightmare is life-affirming, but these new drugs have stolen my emotions. Instead of feeling highs and lows, I’ve begun to feel like a zombie. Disconnected. Numb.
I decide I’m going to miss tonight’s dose of tablets and see where that takes me.
All is right in my world again.
My neighbour calls in early the next morning.
She’s as pleased to see me as I am her.
We hug it out and she apologises for being in a bad mood, but she won’t explain when I ask her why she was so pissed.
She tells me I seem healthier than the last time she saw me and asks if I’ve been doing anything different.
I tell her I haven’t been taking the tablets the doctor prescribed.
She nods and suggests I stop taking them altogether as there’s a colour in my cheeks and a spring in my step that she hasn’t seen for a long time.
She tells me how good it is to see me, gives me another hug and leaves.
She calls in every day after that, bless her heart.
My smug relative calls in too. She tries to ask me if I remember her again. The answer to her identity gnaws at my mind, but I once more fail to get it.
She looks equal parts furious and distraught at this.
She storms towards me and for a second I think she’s going to slug me one, so intent is the grimace on her face and so furious is the, ‘It’s time we cleared this up once and for all,’ she bellows on her way towards me.
I prepare myself for a blow, clench my teeth, stiffen my neck muscles, but it’s for nothing, she passes me and pulls open a drawer on the bedside cabinet.
‘Hey, what are you—’ I begin, but pause as she turns and throws something in my lap.
I stare at the object in my lap for what seems like an eternity, the smug stranger’s last words to me echoing around in my mind: ‘This should help jog your memory.’
I struggle to piece together what is going on. My head feels like a vase that has just been dropped. The pieces will never go back together in the same way again.
What she is suggesting threatens to turn my whole world on its head.
I’m still staring at the object my last visitor flung into my lap when my neighbour comes to visit.
She looks happy to see me until she sees the look on my face.
‘What’s the matter, Terri?’ she asks.
I tell her about my visitor, ask if she knows her identity. ‘She’s called Laura,’ is all she knows.
I show her the object in my lap and she reacts as if slapped, then backs away, hands raised, as if I’ve just shown her a ticking bomb with mere seconds left on the clock.
She gulps, a truly fearful look on her face. Takes another step away, towards the door.
‘I’m sorry, but I’m not getting involved,’ she says, eyes wide, face pallid. ‘That’s between you and Laura. I suggest you ask her why she gave you that.’
‘I don’t think she’ll be back,’ I say. ‘We had a big argument.’
She nods as if she thought this would be the case. ‘Then you’ll have to figure it out on your own, my friend. I’m sorry.’
I’m once more pissed with my best friend. It feels like she’s abandoned me just when I need her the most.
Luckily it’s only a few minutes before the doctor comes in. Maybe he can shed some light on the mysterious, potentially life-changing, object in my lap.
He takes a gulp even deeper than my friend when I show him the object given to me by my relative or friend or whoever she is.
‘Can you help me figure this out, doc?’ I say.
He gulps again, takes a slug of water from the glass of water on my nightstand, the origin of the ticking bomb in my white-knuckled hands.
‘I guess it’s time we told you,’ he says, his hands shaking a little as he lifts them to his knees.
‘There’s a reason no one comes to see you,’ he begins, after searching for the right words for a few minutes. ‘Do you have any idea what that is?’
It’s my turn to furrow my brow. ‘But I do get visitors,’ I insist. ‘There’s this smug, rich woman who I think is related to me somehow. There’s also my friend, who just left.’
He meets my eye, and I’m aware that he is as frightened by this conversation as I am.
Somewhere deep down I’m aware that it’s been on the cards from day one, as I’m sure he was too.
Still looking me in the eye, he repeats, ‘There’s a reason no one comes to see you.’
While I begin to protest, repeating my argument in a childishly similar way to that in which he has made his, he pulls out his phone.
‘No one comes to see you here, Laura,’ he says, his voice cracking a little, as though he knows there is no going back from here. We’re standing at the edge of an abyss and his words are about to send both of us flailing and screaming into the void below.
He has his mobile phone in his hand. With a few deft flicks of his fingers the image of us deep in conversation comes up. He’s facing the camera whereas I have my back to it.
‘This is a live image,’ he says, waving his arm to prove a point. The image waves its arm too.
I do the same. My onscreen doppelganger follows my lead.
‘Ok, I get it,’ I say, nodding.
‘When did you last have a visitor?’ he asks.
‘About five minutes before you came,’ I say, smiling.
The smile vanishes off my face when he rewinds the image back, using the timestamp in the bottom right corner as a guide. He winds it back well over an hour and there’s only me there, sitting talking to myself. Not even a blip on the screen to suggest someone else is there.
I still struggle to get what he’s talking about.
‘These people you talk to,’ he says, his voice once more faltering. ‘They aren’t real. They’re in here, Laura,’ he
says, tapping my temple.
I realise that this is the second time he has called me the wrong name, so pick him up on it, if only just to interrupt what I feel certain is about to be bad news.
‘Your name isn’t Terri, it’s Laura,’ he says, holding up my file.
‘But I’m not Laura, the smug bitch is,’ I say, my mouth starting to flounder for the right words.
He’s still looking me in the eye, and, despite his professional manner, I can see how shaken up this is all making him.
‘You’re Laura,’ he says. ‘That smug bitch, as you call her, is – sorry was – you.’
I hold my hands to my ears. It feels like my brain is melting and on the verge of pouring out of my ears.
‘No, that’s not right. I hate her.’
‘I know. You have to, to distance yourself from what happened.’
My hands are tight over my ears now, I flat-out don’t want to hear the rest of this, but the words come through anyway. They hit me like speeding locomotives.
‘You had it all, loving husband, two beautiful sons,’ he begins, and my mouth fills with vomit as I realise where the object in my lap is leading me. ‘You were successful, content. But it all went wrong when you brought your new baby home. We’re still trying to piece together why that is. You’re in here to help you heal and to help us to find out how best to treat you.’
‘No,’ I scream at the top of my lungs. ‘No. No. NOOOO!’ I clear the objects off my bedside cabinet, the glass of water making the most impact as it shatters on the floor.
‘I’m sorry, Laura, but it’s time you knew. The best way to deal with this is to accept it and make your peace with it.’
‘No no no,’ I say, shaking my head hard enough to make my brain rattle against the wall of my skull. ‘I’m not Laura, I’m Terri.’
He shakes his head sadly. ‘Terri doesn’t exist. She’s all in your head. You invented her because it was too traumatic for you to accept your true identity and what that meant.’
‘This is you,’ he says, pointing to the photo that ‘Laura’ flung into my lap. Tears roll down my cheeks and patter onto the surface of the print.
His finger lands on the face I recognise from the mirror in the nightmare. Laura’s face. If what this so-called doctor is telling me is true, my face. I see this is true when the same face appears on the live camera image on his phone.
I follow his finger from the screen to the face of the baby boy in my lap. The happy smile on my face is enough to crack my heart clean in two. ‘This is Toby, your newborn son. This is William, your other son. This is John, your husband. This photograph was taken two weeks before you murdered them, Laura.’
Tears still stream down my face. My whole body shakes uncontrollably. My jaw aches from clamping down so tightly.
‘What about my friend?’ I say.
‘She’s in your mind, I assume to help you cope with the day to day stresses of being in this ward on your own for the vast majority of the time.’
I nod. That does kind of make sense. My friend was too good to be true.
‘How does all of this make you feel, Laura?’ he asks.
I glare at him by turning my head to the side without looking up.
‘Sorry, silly question,’ he says.
I sob again, the thought of the nightmare hitting me with renewed vigour now that I know it is a memory instead of a dream.
‘If you need any more proof,’ he says, rolling up my t-shirt to the bottom of my ribs. ‘Here’s the scar that your husband left when he stabbed you in self-defence.’
My mouth falls open so much my jaw is in danger of breaking off. I swear I’ve never seen this huge, eye-shaped scar in all of my life.
‘There’s also a scar on your hand,’ he says, pointing to a shallow wound on the outer edge of my right palm. ‘From where—’
I nod. I’ve heard enough. I could recite this nightmare verbatim a thousand times straight and not lose one word. He doesn’t need to quote it to me.
My head hangs low.
I’ve never felt so bad in all of my life.
‘Why didn’t you tell me this before?’ I ask, wiping the gushing tears from my eyes.
‘We tried but you didn’t accept it. You buried yourself in your new identity. The only sign that it still remained were your flashbacks. It just wasn’t the right time. You’ve made great leaps in the last few weeks. It was time to tell you, especially since your mind was seeking answers.’
I nod, speechless now. It feels like the world has been pulled out from under me.
‘You might find the end of the flashback from that night comes to you now that we’ve addressed it,’ he says. ‘I’m so sorry to be the one to have had to tell you this, Laura.’
I nod. I still have no idea what to do or say.
He apologises again for leaving me with this bombshell and leaves me alone in my despair.
He’s right.
After I fall asleep, the rest of the nightmare which I now know to be a flashback of the night I murdered my family comes, as vivid and terrifying as any movie.
Instead of fading to black as my hand slams the knife over and over into my forlorn husband’s stomach, I feel, see, and hear every knife blow. The blood is running thick over my hands, dripping down to the floor.
With a force of emotion that hits me hard enough to make me drop the knife, I stand up, trying not to look at John’s body as it shakes at my feet.
It’s too late for him. I’ve seen enough movies to know that the amount of blood pooling beneath him is too much for him to lose and make it through the night.
His brown eyes catch the light as they stare up into mine. Then they’re gone as I bow my head in a fit of tears. I sink to my knees, suddenly as weak as a dying kitten. I count the blows.
Fifteen.
Fifteen eye-shaped wounds staring balefully at me, crying scarlet tears for my plight.
I hold his twitching body, whisper to him that I’m sorry, that I don’t know what came over me, that I love him, that I would take it all back if I could.
He says nothing cos he’s already dead.
I cry for him and for our boys.
But mostly I cry for myself.
As flashing lights surround the house I realise I’m done for.
I dart into the living room, leaving a thick trail of bloody footprints behind me on the beige carpet.
I pause to wipe them up for a second, then realise how crazy this is.
As the armed police kick in my door, my eyes cast around the room for something to remember my doomed family, and fall upon the photo of us taken a few weeks ago.
We’re all smiling, a million miles away from the bloody tear-streaked ruin we are today.
When the police find me, I’m rocking back and forth, staring at the only reminder I have of my once-perfect life.
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Repeated viewings of The Shining as a child have left Jacob with a love of the dark and the disturbing that really comes to life in his writing.
He works to a soundtrack of blisteringly heavy music, and, like his beloved metal, his writing is brutal, uncompromising and intense.
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Thanks for reading!