Twisting Minds

by Tessonja Odette

  I try not to think about anything on my way home. Not the footage, not my memories of Darren, not the consequences of my psychosis. Nothing.

  When I sleep, I dream of the video footage playing before me, expanding on a massive screen as tall as my apartment building. Behind me, another enormous video begins to play, this one showing events the way I remember them. I stand between the two, suffocating as they press closer around me, squeezing the air from my lungs as they flatten me between them. I try to make it out, but they’ve merged at the edges, creating a cage. With a scream, I’m pulled into one video, then another. One leads me deeper, head underwater. The other leads out a door to fresh air. I know this, yet I can’t decide which one does which. I can only struggle.

  I wake to the alarm on my reader, gasping as if I’m coughing up water. Memories surge, and I can’t fight them this time. Darren’s words. His face. It’s so clear. So clear. How could he have been part of my imagination?

  I all but run out the door, my mind brimming with questions, teeming with evidence that I can’t correctly place. I’m biting my nails all the way to the city, down the streets, and in the elevator to Dr. Shelia’s clinic. Once inside, I see Dr. Shelia and Dr. Grand waiting for me, and I have the sudden urge to run away. My mind won’t clear, but I know I must get away from them. I turn toward the door.

  “Dr. Grand!” Dr. Shelia’s voice is a command. I’m in the hall, halfway toward the elevator, when I feel a prick in the back of one calf, then the other. I fall to my knees, legs numb, thrashing my arms as Dr. Grand sweeps me up and brings me to Dr. Shelia’s office. An injection in my forearms stops me from flailing, and he sets me on the couch. I alternate weeping and screaming as Dr. Grand places another injection in my shoulder.

  A few minutes later my head is clear. I look from Dr. Shelia to Dr. Grand. “What’s going on?”

  Dr. Shelia offers me an apologetic smile. “We are going to have to increase the dosage of your medication. It wore off much sooner than usual.”

  I try to sit but can do no more than shift side to side. “Why can’t I move my arms or legs?”

  “We had to sedate you,” Dr. Shelia says.

  “Then how am I awake?” I look at Dr. Grand, but he says nothing.

  “The sedative is usually administered in the back of the neck,” Dr. Shelia explains. “But when injected in quarter doses at the extremes of each limb, it keeps your body immobile. Your medication has helped clear your mind by stabilizing and balancing the neurotransmitters in your brain.”

  “How long am I going to be like this?”

  Dr. Grand finally speaks. “It will wear off in less than an hour. You should be able to go to work after this just fine.”

  “Are you comfortable starting our session?” Dr. Shelia asks.

  I nod. Dr. Grand steps back but doesn’t leave. Instead, he stands against the wall behind me. In his hands, there’s a tray holding four syringes. More sedatives?

  Dr. Shelia sees where my attention has gone. “It’s a precaution, nothing to worry about. Now that we’ve increased your dosage, we need to keep an eye on its effects. If it wears off again, we’ll need to sedate you and get you on an antipsychotic instead of an antidepressant.”

  Antipsychotic. I shudder.

  “Can you tell me what prompted you to get so upset this morning?”

  I squint, trying to remember the teeming thoughts that boiled over when I woke. Some rise to the surface. “There are things that don’t add up. Even after seeing proof, part of me can’t let my suspicions go.”

  “Don’t be so hard on yourself,” Dr. Shelia says. “It’s going to be a long time before you will be able to fully believe he wasn’t real. In the meantime, treat it like a game. Get curious. Explore. Ask. Now that we’ve upped your dosage, you shouldn’t spiral out of reality like you did this morning.

  Spiral out of reality. Looking back, that’s certainly what it felt like. I try to detach from my memories, instead examining them like they’re an interesting book. “The first thing that came to mind this morning was Mitchell. I never knew anything about him until Darren told me his name, where he worked. How is that possible?”

  Dr. Shelia doesn’t look surprised. “Mitchell works in a restaurant, as did you. It’s possible someone mentioned him in passing at work, and your subconscious picked up on it, filed it away to support your fabrication. Does that sound plausible?”

  I feel the tightness in my chest loosen. Didn’t Molly say she knew Mitchell? What if she talked about him to me before when I wasn’t paying attention? “Yeah, I guess so.” Another question comes to mind. “But Mitchell said he knew Darren. He said he was told not to tell me anything.”

  “You did threaten him, Claire. Did he admit to anything you didn’t personally prompt him to?”

  “His last name, his places of employment.” I blush when I realize I all but gave him that information. I told him he worked janitorial at two places in the city. He only gave me names of two tech companies. Places I don’t have access to. And he knew I didn’t know Darren’s last name. He could have said anything, and I’d have believed it. “Oh,” I whisper.

  “Whoever you heard about Mitchell from, probably mentioned him giving food away. You were right about that when you confronted him. You played on a very real fear of his. Don’t you think he would have said anything to get you to leave him alone, including play up some sense of danger about speaking to him?”

  I nod. It all makes so much sense. How did I not see it before? The terror of my morning fades, and I return to a calm numb. We continue our conversation until the sedative wears off and I’m able to move again. Dr. Grand takes my vitals, then helps me to my feet. I test my footing. Steady.

  “You’re doing well, Claire,” Dr. Shelia says, rising to her feet. “It may not feel like it right now, but you are already making incredible progress. You can allow your Darren memories to remain without guilt for now, but I do want you to start digging for your true memories, if that feels comfortable.”

  “Okay.” It feels daunting. How do I find my true memories when my ones of Darren are so persistent?

  “It will take time,” Dr. Shelia says as if she can read my mind. Then she does the unexpected. She embraces me. “Be patient with yourself.”

  Her touch brings tears to my eyes.

  “I’ll see you tomorrow,” she says when she pulls away.

  I wipe my eyes and smile. “Tomorrow.”

  I leave the building and head to work. Outside, the world seems different. Clearer. I feel trampled, beaten down at the bottom of a dead-end alley. At least I can see my way out. It’s far. But I can see it.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  Now

  “Is your mind wandering, Claire?”

  Dr. Shelia’s voice brings me back from thoughts of Darren to the brightness of her office. “Sorry.”

  “Are you ready? We don’t have to do this now if you aren’t. You can keep your Darren memories as long as you need them.”

  I take a deep breath. “No. I’m ready.” This time, I think I mean it. I can’t count the number of appointments I’ve come to with this same goal in mind, only to leave trembling and gasping for air.

  “All right, then. Think about him from the beginning. Tell me what you remember.”

  I tell her. I watch the memories in my mind’s eye and explain them in every detail I can muster. His crooked smile. His warm hands. His kiss. His caress. I no longer feel pain when I recall these things. I feel nothing. It’s like I’m watching footage of a stranger’s mundane life. There’s nothing interesting to see here. It just is what it is.

  When I finish, Dr. Shelia asks, “Are these memories of Darren real or false?”

  I don’t hesitate, don’t cry out. I only feel a slight twinge in the back of my shoulder. “False,” I say with confidence.

  “Now let’s go back once again. Tell me what your real memories are.”

  I return to the dark street on the way home that fateful night. I rem
ember my terror, my racing pulse, how muddled my thoughts felt when I hallucinated seeing my mom. This is where my true memories deviate from the false ones. I remember seeing the lights of the bus and leaping out of the way. I can almost feel that flash of panic as I dove for the sidewalk, taste the tang of blood in my mouth from where I bit my lip upon impact. When I stood, my mind became muddled again. This is where I created Darren in my false memories. But in reality, I stood trembling, mumbling.

  I continue replaying my memories from there, explaining everything to Dr. Shelia in minute detail. Some things are still fuzzy around the edges, but not nearly as fuzzy as my Darren memories, which are more like an old, tattered cloth at best. For the most part, I remember what it was like to live in a constant state of shock, putting on my best brave face for the world, while inside I was struggling to reconcile the truth of my situation.

  I remember Molly telling me about Mitchell when we waited for the rail together. It was the night I was imagining meeting up with Darren, so I was too distracted to pay much attention to what she was saying, but I remember the conversation now.

  I remember sitting for hours at a time, weaving beautiful fantasies of love and passion. I remember eating my stolen meals—meals I’d taken from my own place of work—alone on the rooftop. That’s where I’d talk to myself, laugh to myself, as if I were my best friend in the world. I was.

  I remember trying to let Darren—who I knew was false—go. It was the night I imagined us sleeping together. That night on the rooftop, I stared at the sky while living a glorious fantasy in my head. It was meant to be a goodbye. I thought I was ready, but I wasn’t. Letting him go shattered my hold on reality even more, and part of me clung harder and harder. I remember what I did after. What it was like to weave a conspiracy between me and everyone who tried to help me see the truth. I didn’t want to see the truth.

  I remember watching my footage, feeling like my entire being had been hewn in two. I remember Dr. Shelia spending the last few months putting me back together. Now I’m whole. Healthy. Turns out, numb is healthy after all.

  When I finish, I smile and turn my head toward Dr. Shelia.

  “Which memories feel more real to you?” she asks. “The Darren memories or the other ones?”

  “My real memories are far clearer. The Darren memories are almost laughable.” It’s true. How could any of that have happened? How could some random stranger leap in front of a bus at the perfect moment? How could he have fallen in love with me so quickly? How could I have done the same with him? I made my life into a fairy tale so I didn’t have to come to terms with my reality.

  Dr. Shelia clasps her hands and brings them to her heart. She’s beaming at me like I’m the cleverest girl in the world, and she’s my proud mother. In a way, she’s become like a mom to me. She’ll never replace my real mom, of course, but I feel like she’s healed a part of me I never thought would mend. She swivels toward her desk and presses the touch sensor, then taps a button on her keyboard. She calls in Dr. Grand.

  For the first week after Dr. Shelia upped the dosage of my medication, Dr. Grand would wait behind me with a tray of sedatives, just in case. He never needed to use them. The new dosage worked. Whenever I needed to work through some line of thought that triggered suspicion, I would talk to Dr. Shelia about it instead of freaking out. You’d think by now he’d be as proud of me as Dr. Shelia is, but as he walks into the office, he wears nothing but that blank expression. Same as always.

  He opens his case, goes through the routine motions of placing the familiar disks on my face and scalp, then picks up his reader. The hologram of my brain and vitals illuminates behind me, but I don’t bother looking. I’ve never learned to decipher anything about it, even after all these months of daily visits. It seems to take longer than usual for him to come to his conclusions as he types furiously on his reader.

  “She’s done it,” he finally says. I can’t help but hear the disappointment in his tone.

  I meet his eyes, cock my head. “What did I do?”

  Dr. Shelia stands, looks over his shoulder at the reader. “She has. She’s replaced her memories.”

  I shake my head. Shouldn’t she say recovered, not replaced?

  Dr. Shelia locks eyes with Dr. Grand, gives him a subtle nod. He clenches his jaw before setting the reader in the case and removing the disks from me.

  There’s a tension in the room I can’t ignore. “What’s going on?”

  Dr. Shelia’s smile is so wide, it’s almost terrifying. I’ve never seen anything this close to excitement coming from her. She rushes to her chair as Dr. Grand sweeps from the room. She taps her computer screen hologram, moves two fingers from the center, and brings up the search. She types something too fast for me to see, then the screen shows what looks like a video.

  My breath catches. Is it more footage? Was I caught doing something I shouldn’t? My mind races to make sense of what it could be, but I’m more confused when the video begins to play. It isn’t my lifestream footage. It seems more like footage from a curated show.

  The title fills the screen, Twisting Minds, followed by a rapid succession of images that look like the one I just saw of my brain. I barely register when Dr. Grand returns and stands at my side. I can’t tear my eyes from the video.

  A voiceover says, “Can a healthy mind be twisted?”

  Then it’s Dr. Shelia’s smiling face on the screen. “Hello. I’m Doctor Geraldine Shelia, top psychiatrist and Reality star. And I’m here to prove that the answer is yes.”

  My stomach churns as I look from the screen to Dr. Shelia, then back again. The voiceover returns. “A controversial new Reality program is coming to you. These probationary Reality candidates—”

  Several images of faces flash by, including my own. Another face sparks recognition. The man I’d seen leaving her office in distress all those months ago?

  “—are unknowing participants in this twisted series that exposes the strengths and weaknesses of the human mind. Tune in daily to watch the progress of Twisting Minds.” The title returns, then fades away.

  Dr. Shelia presses the sensor on her desk, and the screen and keyboard disappear.

  I stare dumbly at the empty space where the screen was, trying to collect my bearings. Before I can stop it, my body begins trembling from head to toe. I squeeze my fingers into fists to find some sense of control. “What was that?”

  “You’ve made it, Claire.” Dr. Shelia is still smiling. “We’ve finally completed your story arc. You were a tough one. The last to hold out, in fact. I was starting to worry nothing would convince you Darren wasn’t real. But everyone has their weakness. Yours was physical proof.”

  My chest is heaving, throat tightening. Tears spring to my eyes. “I don’t understand. What have you done to me?”

  “What you mean is, what have we done together? The answer? Something great. We’ve come to a conclusion about my hypothesis. Can convincing someone they are crazy actually make them crazy? The answer? Yes.” She sounds nothing like the woman I’ve gotten to know over the last several months. She speaks faster, louder. Her eyes are wide and glittering with excitement.

  There’s only one thing I need to know. “Was Darren real?”

  Dr. Shelia’s mouth falls open. “That’s still your main concern? Even after all this time?”

  “Answer me,” I say through my teeth.

  “Well, yes, but you never would have met him if it weren’t for me and my team working together with Santoro Corp. They’re the corporate sponsors for his probationary sentence, the ones providing experimental drug testing.”

  “He wasn’t testing antidepressants?”

  “Yes, and then some. Together, we tested an antidepressant that releases certain hormones under remote command. We constructed your schedules, your proximity of living arrangements. We planted the hologram of your mom, the timing of the bus rounding the corner, the trigger of adrenaline when Darren saw what was about to happen to you. When he saw you the first
time, we triggered a rush of dopamine, serotonin, and oxytocin, and continued to trigger that same hormone cocktail every time you were together.”

  He knew. I remember the night he was acting strange, how he didn’t want to take his pills because he felt like they were doing something to him. He was right, and I didn’t believe him. I swallow hard. “Did you do the same to me? With my medication?”

  “No.” She laughs as if it’s funny. “You were dosed with real antidepressants and sedatives. I needed your vitals as close to normal as possible to prove my hypothesis. Besides, we knew you wouldn’t need help falling in love with him. Not with your history.”

  It dawns on me, and I feel like I might pass out. “You really were responsible for him going missing. Why? Why did you take him? What did he do wrong?”

  She looks at me like I’m daft. “He didn’t do anything wrong. It was the next step in the experiment. I needed you to stop trusting yourself, to question your sanity. To have the truth of your reality contrast with logic. His time in the experiment ended when you saw him in the alley.”

  I’m choking on the question, but I need to know the answer. “Is he...dead?”

  “My goodness, Claire! It’s like you think we’re monsters!”

  “Where is he?”

  “He’s safe. That’s all you need to know.”

  Safe. But what does that mean? How does that word fit into this situation at all? “I was never crazy,” I whisper under my breath.

  “Well, you are now.”

  “What do you mean?”

  She points behind me, and I turn to find the hologram of my brain has remained illuminated. “Once you accepted the Darren lie, your brain began to experience negative neuroplasticity, resulting in significant reduction of gray matter, white matter abnormalities, overactive dopamine and cortisol, and severe changes in the hippocampus. Through believing the lie that you suffered from psychosis and consequently changing your memories to serve that belief, you became exactly what I was convincing you that you were.”