Psycho Therapy

by Alan Spencer

  Unable to speak, forcing himself to act, his body weighing double what it used to, his limbs cooperating only because he demanded his nerves to respond, he launched across the basement to escape. Tina leapt over the pool table, posing like a crawling spider on all fours, and she landed onto his back, tackling him from behind. On the way down, the straight razor sliced across the back of his neck, and the skin parted audibly, punctuated by the heavy flow of warm blood.

  “I know what you did,” she accused, shrieking at alarming octaves. “Of the things you’d do in your mind, you slept with Susan. Wouldn’t you rather sleep with your wife?—or no, that’s right. You’re just like your father. Can’t keep his dick to himself. And soon you’ll be just like him.”

  Craig whipped around, turning from his side, and seizing the arm poised to slice him again, he shoved her backwards by the jaw, her body flopping onto the floor. “Dr. Krone’s putting you up to this. It’s not you, Mom!”

  “Your mind is the greatest place to venture,” she said, her words spittle-heavy, her eyes slanted and flickering with unreal emotion. “You want to throw this opportunity away on bullshit fantasies. You don’t really want to cure yourself of your anger.”

  “You’re the one who’s deciding the outcomes, not me. You put me in those situations.” Craig clenched his fists, bent to fight off his mother at the first indication of another attack. “I want out of my mind and back into my body. I’m done, you hear me, Doctor, I’m finished!”

  The Browning shotgun materialized in his hands. He gripped it tight so as not to drop it, the weapon heavy and real. He was an adult again too, all in a blink’s time. She admired him with distaste, her desire to cut him up realized once again. “All I see is your father in you. You’re not my child. Not if his blood is in your veins.”

  She raised the straight razor, posed to swipe it across his throat.

  He raised the gun, reminding himself this wasn’t his real mother. She was alive somewhere else and out of harm’s way. “Stay back or I’ll shoot!”

  Inching closer, her legs became springs, ejecting her forward, a wild shaleeeeeh escaping her lungs as her voice matched her animal mentality to maim.

  Ba-boom!

  Knowing he wasn’t harming a real person, pulling the trigger was easy, but the effect was too real. The impact rendered her face inside out, the bullet spray chewing away any familiarity of his mother.

  She wasn’t deterred from the attack. Tina had one eye she could view him through beneath a blackened and bleeding pulp for a face. The other eye was pink socket tissue and smashed retina and orb. Her lips had disintegrated, both rows of teeth shattered or fractured and bared. She swallowed the remains of her tongue in a thick gulp. Pointing the straight razor at him again, Craig picked up his feet and bounded up the stairs, knowing if the shotgun blast didn’t deter her, nothing could.

  Tina chased him down, her steps thundering behind him in pursuit. The words about Katie still burned him, and true or not, his mother had spoken them, and he’d taken them in. There wasn’t time to think about it, his neck bleeding down his shirt and turning cold. Afternoon sunlight poured through the windows of his childhood home. The beacon of safety, his haven, was demurred. His guts churned at the noises coming from outside. Screams and unrelenting rounds of torture played out in the front yard. He couldn’t stop now, despite his reservations. Tina charged behind him, forcing him to retreat into the living room, still at his heels, slashing the air, spilling blood onto the floor with each effort, Craig had no choice but to throw open the front door and flee outside.

  Sinner

  Craig unlocked the bolt and launched through the front door. He hopped over the three front steps and landed into the yard, but the sight ahead halted him. Parker Stevens wore a white ceremonial robe the likes of the Pope’s. A blood cross was painted on his forehead. It bled down his face to his chin, gelling at the apex. Life-sized crosses were erected as tall as nine feet, each carved out of an unknown wood. Brandon was impaled on one. He was stripped to only a loincloth. His hands and legs were nailed to the cross by four nails—nails the size of railroad spikes. Willis and Joey were hanging from the other two beside his father. Down the street, his neighbors were impaled on the crosses, even Margaret and Ray Highland, who were in their mid-eighties. The sun was baking them, turning them red. They’d die of exposure, but they’d surely bleed to death first. The persons on the cross chanted, “For I have sinned, for I have sinned, for I have sinned…”

  Parker closed his Bible at the sight of Craig. “Erect another cross. We have another sinner. He can be saved, if he’s willing. I tried to bless him, but, Lord, I failed. He needs divine intervention. Let him bear the weight of your sacrifices to mankind, and then we’ll see if he’s ready to live a life in your image.”

  Blood spilled from so many bodies, it trickled in a stream into the streets and gutters. Robed individuals paraded up and down the block, each from Parker’s congregation. Tina threatened to take him down again, and angling after him, she was bent on her haunches and about to jump onto his back, but he turned, aimed, prayed to God—the real God, not who Parker Stevens’ congregation was praying to—and unloaded another barrage of shells. Blasting through her stomach, the pieces firing out between her shoulder blades, she kept resisting her damage, and then he blew out her legs beneath her with another shot, the dismantled body finally collapsing onto the lawn.

  His mother was alive, but immobilized. He aimed the gun at Parker next, anticipating a new round of pursuit. “You stay away from me. Nobody else gets hurt. You’re not hanging me on a cross.” He cocked the shotgun. “You can shove your fire-and-brimstone bullshit up your ass.”

  The pulpit self-righteousness tone resonated in Parker’s words. “You’ve gunned down your own mother. She created you. Now two of God’s creations are ruined…mother and son.”

  His mother coughed up more blood and looked on at Parker in admiration, disturbing because she had only a fraction of her face.

  “Did you see what she did to my father? She was shaving his skin.”

  He peered up at Brandon writhing on the cross. “How, how did he get up there?” Craig studied the lawns and the twitching bodies on the crosses. “Where are you, Dr. Krone? Show yourself. You coward, where are you?”

  Parker paid no attention to what he said and focused on his mission. “Come willingly to God, Craig.”

  Brandon’s hands slipped through the spikes, splitting two fingers apart. The spikes through his ankles did the same, and he flopped onto the ground. Willis and Joey slithered free next. The entire block, one by one, was released from the crosses, breaking their flesh and breaking bone to do so. They teetered in place, difficult to walk with torn ankles.

  “Come willingly to God,” they chanted. “Come to Him.”

  Craig was cornered, and from every angle, they approached. He dashed forward to the Corolla parked in Mr. Davidson’s lawn. The car door was unlocked, but he didn’t have the keys.

  “Come willingly to God…come to Him.”

  He locked the doors once he hunkered in. Parker Stevens leapt on top of the Corolla’s hood with an aluminum pop. “Bring him to the cross. Salvation is his if we can bring him to the cross!”

  They chanted, “Come willingly to God…come to Him.”

  The back window was smashed. Fists pounded the driver and passenger side windows in unison. Sweat smears turned to blood as faces pressed up against glass and fists continued to mash the breakable barrier. Tina worked up to the hood as a torso with arms. The skin on her face slipped down and stuck to the hood, the slick muscle-tissue face speaking nonsense without a tongue.

  “Come willingly to God…come to Him.”

  The passenger side window was shattered next. Tina and the others turned the front windshield into a spider web of fractures with their blows. Brian Gwinn, a neighbor, crawled through the broken window and reached for his neck. “Come willing to God—come to Him!”

  Craig slammed Brian’s face
into the dashboard. The man wasn’t fazed, reaching up, hands squeezing his neck, fingers bending in deep. He couldn’t breathe. He had no leverage to batter the man aside, the space too small to fight back. He closed his eyes, taking desperate measures.

  Picture the keys.

  This is your mind.

  Make it happen.

  The driver’s side window shattered, the shards raining upon him as several fists performed the job at once.

  “Come willing to God…come to Him.”

  Picture it!

  White blotches ruined his vision. He was growing dizzy. He’d been without air for nearly two minutes. Bodies worked their way into the backseat through the windshield. New hands would serve to snuff him dead in moments. The stomping above him was rekindled. Brian’s fingers squeezed tighter. “Gaack!” He thought the man’s grip would collapse his trachea.

  Picture it.

  His hair was tugged backwards. Two different hands spread blood into his eyes, and he was blinded.

  “Come willing to God…come to Him.”

  His lungs tightened and convulsed, the organ trying to force him to breathe, but it was impossible.

  Picture it before you die!

  Then the keys materialized. He shoved the key into the ignition. Stomping on the gas, screeching and spinning his tires, a cloud of smoke surrounded them, burying his adversaries in a palpable fog. The Corolla gained sped, and those on the outside began faltering, the car racing from thirty to sixty miles an hour.

  The hand in his mouth and the hands around his throat had somehow stayed in place. Not much longer, he’d be dead. Would he become a vegetable in the real world? Was he already one in his physical body?

  “Come willingly to God…come to Him.”

  His eyelids were stuck together with drying blood.

  He stomped on the gas pedal. He sharply turned right, the wheel wobbling from the force, the shocks grinding, the brakes failing, and the car turned over when it hit the curb. The vehicle flipped and kept spinning across the street in wild circles. The car absorbed each crash and jolt as steel crunched. The car had stopped and the hands over his throat were absent.

  Final Haven

  Craig crawled through the broken driver’s side window, cutting his palms of the glittering fragments of glass. Getting up to his feet and forcing himself onwards, he completed three blocks in a desperate sprint. He soon spotted the congregation of naked bodies with Parker in the lead three yards behind him and fast approaching.

  He shouted, “Can’t you people leave me be?”

  He knew the answer to that. They would stalk him to the very end of his sanity. Dr. Krone was here somewhere, orchestrating this masquerade. He looked in every direction for the man and came up empty.

  How much farther could he run to avoid them? He wasn’t up for the task. He’d slammed his head against the steering wheel earlier. He suffered a wicked migraine from the near strangulation. His wounds bogging him down, knowing he had little endurance left, he stumbled onto the lawn of a nearby house to seek refuge.

  Craig thought about the car keys he produced with his mind. He’d pictured them and screamed for his life. Extreme emotion. The only times he’d conjured things up was when he was on the brink of death.

  “End this treatment, Dr. Krone,” he whimpered, feeling the extent of his injuries creep up on him again. “I can’t take any more. This isn’t a cure. This is murder.”

  The house loomed before him, an easy beacon. He had no choice but to enter the unknown haven, an unassuming two-story colonial house. He closed the door behind him. He dead bolted it. Craig prayed what he thought would happen did. He parted the curtain. Outside, the street was empty. But he wasn’t in a house anymore. He overlooked a parking lot. It was dark enough to be late evening. The room was familiar, but vaguely. A black leather couch and cherry oak table took up most of the living room. A pale face hovered in the shadows of the unlit hallway to his left. The face looked at him. Studied him. The person couldn’t decide how to approach him.

  “No more,” he begged, recognizing her. “I can’t take any more punishment. You stay where you are. Please, leave me alone.”

  She seethed, “I’m not the one you need to apologize to this time.”

  Katie stepped out of the darkness. She was corpse blue. Her body suffered further deterioration. The skeleton was visible underneath the thin, translucent skin. The bones could tear free of their flesh packaging any moment, he thought. Black and green patches of fungus played at the sides of her neck and her clavicle. She stank of putrefying organs. The eyes were saturated in fluids. They weren’t round anymore, but instead sagged in the center and lent the orbs a wrinkled look. Her belly was round, but it too had caved in. Blood had caked the insides of her thighs in so many layers.

  She spoke with a delay, the deep lull of collapsed vocal cords. “There’s somebody else you should say sorry to, and she’s here.”

  “Oh God,” he wept, feeling a part of him collapse. “I-I was scared. Alice, I’m so sorry. You have to understand I didn’t know what to do. It’s not an excuse or a validation for my actions. I got scared, and I acted like a coward.”

  Katie shook her head, ligaments and bones popping. She opened her mouth and revealed her purple-white tongue. “Ah-ah-ah. I’m not Alice. She’s waiting for you down the hallway, Craig. Don’t talk to me. Talk to her.”

  “What if I refuse?” Not waiting for a reply, he rushed for the front door. It wouldn’t open, the door not having real function. It was only an image. He tried the windows, and they were painted shut. Katie sauntered over to him, confident he couldn’t evade her. “You can’t leave. He won’t let you.”

  He whispered the name as a curse. “Dr. Krone.” He surveyed the kitchen and the hallway, searching for him. “Is he here?”

  The dead earthworm lips created a hideous smile. “He’s always been here.”

  Craig wedged himself into the farthest corner away from the hallway. “I can’t do this. Terminate the session. The treatment is over, Dr. Krone. You’ve made your fucking point. Yes, I get it. My mother cheated on my father with Parker. She was the one abused, not me. My dad fucked around behind her back, and she knew about it and she didn’t quit the marriage for me. But she cheated too. She empowered herself, didn’t she? I should’ve done something to help her. I could’ve talked her up. And I screwed up royally with Katie. I should’ve ordered a cab or called the ambulance to our house. I’m responsible for her death. I can deny it and attempt to live it down, but it’s true. It’s my mistake. It’s my biggest regret.

  “What else do you want me to say? Okay, I shouldn’t have bashed a barstool over Willis. I was drunk and pissed off. Hey, it’s no excuse. I’ll do the time. I’ll perform community service. I’ll give blood to those people when they call every time. I’ll donate to charity. Take your pick, The Salvation Army, Goodwill, whatever, I can change my life. The treatment has scared the shit out of me.” He pointed at the shadowy corner. “You don’t have to send me down that hallway. I—am—begging—you.”

  Katie’s purple and dehydrated face attempted an amused expression, but it was mostly wet shifting without anything taking shape. “You still owe her an apology. You didn’t stay. She needed you. You abandoned her.”

  “Alice,” he pleaded to her, though she wasn’t in the room. “Forgive me. I can’t handle my emotions. I’m a scared wreck. We’ve established that, Dr. Krone. Is this what you wanted to see? I’m falling apart, you happy? You want me dead. I know because I’ve been in your head too, Dr. Krone. I’ve watched your father remove the brains of those infirm victims you nabbed from the sanitarium. You’re not so innocent. The blood is on your hands, and you don’t even bother to wash it away. This is your sick show. What’s the point in treating somebody if you can’t accept it when the patient’s cured?”

  “You’re not better,” Katie advised. “And the treatment is far from over.”

  Katie throttled him by the throat with both hands, closing i
n with ghostly speed, the putrescence causing him to stagger in shock. She shoved him into the hallway, utilizing surprising strength. She stomped on his back and pinned him down outside the bathroom door. “Squirm all you want, Craig. Alice’s ready for your apology. And I’m taking you right to her.”

  He couldn’t apologize to her in words. Dr. Krone wouldn’t allow that. That would be too easy. And Craig already anticipated where Katie would deliver him. The crack of light under the door, it was just like the door at Alice’s apartment. And tonight was that horrible night he fled from years ago.

  Katie’s breath reeked of expired internal organs, and with every word, her tongue flicked cold turpentine fluid onto him. “You can’t avoid this. Submit to his treatment.”

  Rage overwhelmed him, and he channeled fear, desperation, and regret into sweeping her under her legs. Katie’s leg unhinged from the knee socket joint with a jarring pop. She tumbled to the floor, losing balance.

  Craig spoke desperately, “I’m trapped in my mind without a way out. Dr. Krone, you’re in control—okay? I absolutely have no choice to do what you want me to do.”

  He prayed he could bargain with Alice. Craig was genuinely sorry for what he did to her. He left her alone at the apartment in her moment of crisis. He was terrified, and he could only guess to understand how she felt then.

  Craig challenged the dark, walking to the door with his head up. This was his moment to receive forgiveness. He sucked in a final breath before entering. He didn’t knock. Alice knew he was coming.

  He closed the door behind him, locking it. Katie could enter, and he couldn’t handle the two at once. He stopped shortly after entering. Alice was bathing. She was naked, and the bath water was pink. He wasn’t embarrassed at her nakedness. He was too busy reading her glazed eyes. The stare was affixed on the wall ahead of her. She was in a trance. Alice had confined herself to her own mind.

  Alice noticed him moments later. Her lips were stuck together, and the adhesive skin broke when she spoke. “Katie didn’t have to drag you in here.”