Psycho Therapy

by Alan Spencer

  He was stumped for a response, so he kept it simple. “No, she didn’t.”

  Bloody footprints stained the beige shag rug. The sink was also colored red. The white porcelain was stained in handprints, the floor stained in spatters and footprints.

  He broke the silence. “How do I apologize to you?”

  Alice scoffed. Her eyes were now locked on the toilet bowl. The lid was closed. “How do you apologize? You can’t truly apologize. But I can forgive you.”

  “Really?” His hopes were raised. He didn’t forget Dr. Krone was somewhere close by, and this wouldn’t pan out so easily. “Please tell me how.”

  After pausing for ten seconds, Alice said, “I want you to see it.”

  His stomach sank. “Excuse me?”

  He understood what she had requested, but refused to accept it. Alice made eye contact. She was ghostly white. Deadly serious. “I want you to look at my baby. See what you left me alone with. You were supposed to be my friend and be there for me through anything. So be there for me now. Look at my baby.”

  Craig eyed the toilet bowl. Blood trailed down two sides of the lid. He couldn’t decide what to do. “That’s the apology you want?”

  He was startled when Alice stood up. Water spilled from the sides in generous waves. He couldn’t trust his eyes. Was this Alice naked? How did Dr. Krone know how she looked naked? Craig had no memory of it. And how would Dr. Krone know Alice wanted to be his blood brother on Halloween night? It was impossible, yet there was a part of him that couldn’t deny it. Somehow, Dr. Krone discovered the truth, and the machine had everything to do with it.

  She touched his chin, caressing him. She barely spoke, Craig having to read her lips. “Look at my baby.”

  He shook his head, a surge of fear working up his spine and bursting into his brain. “What will that prove? You know I’m sorry. I am sorry.”

  Her words came off as a pouting child’s. “You won’t look at my baby?”

  Crash.

  The bathroom door exploded into four pieces, the unreal strength followed by an unreal attack. Katie seized hold of him, the rotten stink of dried-up meat swarmed him, crippling him. He was driven onto his knees, her form performing actions he couldn’t take in, she was so fast.

  On the ground, Alice clutched his hair and reared his head back. Spittle foamed at her lips and sprayed him with each syllable, “You will look at my baby!”

  She reached for the toilet lid, trying to lift it up. He broke one hand free and forced it back down. “No—you’re not yourselves! This is Dr. Krone. Don’t listen to him. Shut him out. You have your own personalities, even if you’re just in my head, I should be able to control you, not him!”

  Alice reared back his hair again. “This is what I want, Craig, nothing else.”

  Katie smothered his mouth with her hand to prevent him from speaking. “I won’t let go until you do. If you’re sorry, you know what I want you to do…”

  Alice wedged his hand from the toilet. She clutched the rim and raised it. He closed his eyes. Alice’s fingers poked at his eyelids, and she dug her fingernails to pry them back open. “Look inside, Craig. Say you’re sorry. Open those eyes. Open them!”

  The nails worked against his soft orbs. Craig shouted his horror. The toilet was open. He didn’t want to see what was inside. He couldn’t take it. He lost his own child. He refused to have the impression of Alice’s lost baby ingrained in his mind as well. This wasn’t the real Alice. This wasn’t the real Katie. And it wouldn’t be Alice’s real baby. What it would turn out to be was the scariest thing, and he collected every ounce of strength in his failing body to fight them.

  He needed air, but Katie’s hand blocked his nostrils and mouth. Alice wedged open one eye, but the toilet seat clapped shut, falling due to gravity.

  “Open your eyes!”

  Katie removed her hands and dug into the razor-blade slash Tina had delivered in his neck. “Aaaaaaaah!”

  Alice opened the toilet seat. He turned his head again to the side and avoided the sight. That’s when the blink happened. An electric flash. Static electricity played on his skin and raised his hairs. He smelled burnt skin. It was ten degrees hotter, his flesh stinging and burning.

  He was sitting upright now.

  The metallic ticking was a loud, piercing rhythm.

  Then as quickly as it began, there was silence.

  Awake

  The agony brewing at his eyes and skull touched nerves that forced his body to twitch. Spittle had dried on his lips and chin into a crusty film. The wounds on his neck, the jolt from the car wreck, and the strangulation attempts were no longer bothering him. Those sensations had passed. The wounds no longer existed.

  Wuuuuuuuuuuum.

  The soft mechanical hum lasted thirty seconds. He was burning hot. His clothes were glued to his body by sweat. He couldn’t speak, but the swatch of tape at his lips was puckering at the edges. The darkness was so thick he wouldn’t be able to see his hand in front of his face.

  The motor’s groan kicked up anew, though it was strained. Static electricity crackled up and down his arms, each jolt a pinch of flesh and a visible blue spark. Zzzzt—crick!

  A generator kicked on from another room with a muffled stomp. Da-dump. The overhead lights flickered on. The noises at his back increased. The steel prong laced with circuits and steel wires retracted from his face. Craig’s head was jerked back. The weight pressing on his skull was lifted, and he was free of the machine and the needles.

  He had a split second to react.

  Ca-clunk.

  The needles shot back down into place, the machine revving back up, but he pivoted his head to the side to avoid them.

  “Shit!”

  He couldn’t move from the seat, posed awkwardly. The leather bands around his chest and legs bound him in place. He couldn’t budge his neck or head or else he’d touch the prong attached with the needles. The needles themselves were wet and glazed with clear fluids. Drugs.

  Craig had escaped viewing what waited inside the toilet, Alice’s dead child. It couldn’t have been so simple. Nothing in Dr. Krone’s treatment was innocent. Would he be coming soon to tend after him? He assumed there were numerous machines. He still couldn’t visualize the contraption. He imagined a creation out of a Tim Burton film.

  And Edith was another victim. Where was she? Did she survive the attack at the mausoleum? The battle wounds vanished once he awoke. She had to be alive. But if one died in their mind, did their body cease to function as well? It was a question he couldn’t answer. Dr. Krone led him to believe he could die for real, but was that really the case?

  He shifted and attempted to worm from the leather belts, but there was no slack. If he didn’t escape now, he feared the opportunity would pass. The blaring white lights illuminated the blank wall-sized screen opposite him and the plain off-yellow walls.

  The stained cherry oak door remained closed. Any moment, the door would fly open and Dr. Krone would hook him back up to the machine. And Dr. Krone’s assistant, Rachael, what happened to her? Craig feared she was lurking around the place somewhere.

  His neck ached from the angle it was bent. He couldn’t move. He feared coming in contact with any part of the machine.

  He was burning up. Dehydrated. His stomach growled from days of going unfed. How long had he been hooked up to the machine?

  Craig had plenty of time to mull over the question.

  He wasn’t going anywhere.

  Behind the Wall

  Was there a term for the anxiety of being hooked up to experimental machines? If so, Craig suffered this malady. He couldn’t steady his breathing, hyperventilating. He eyed the door without flinching.

  Just breathe. One breath at a time.

  Soft steps tamped the carpet nearby, then the sharp crick of a floorboard resounded.

  “Who’s there?” he demanded.

  The movements abruptly halted. It was difficult to listen over the drone of the machine. Maybe he imagin
ed it?

  No, you heard it. Somebody’s out there.

  Dr. Krone wouldn’t sneak around. He was in charge and in control of the situation. Who would walk about quietly?

  He called out, “Is that you, Edith?”

  The immediate reply was, “Is that you, Craig?”

  Hearing it was her, he begged and pleaded to her, “You have to help me. I’m behind this door. I can’t move. I’m strapped down to the machine. I’m not hooked up to it. Please help me. Dr. Krone could be coming any second. Watch your back. Rachael’s around here too somewhere.”

  The knob rattled. “Damn, it’s locked. I can pick it. Let me run to the kitchen. Sit tight.”

  “God, hurry,” he mewled, though he didn’t mean to. He was desperate, run through and chased out of hell. “And be careful.”

  “I’m a tough bitch, Craig, don’t you worry about me.”

  On that note, she skulked back down the way she came from, and he waited. The burn in his neck continued to worsen. His spine was twisted at a bad angle and his legs tingled.

  Come on, Edith. I’m dying here.

  He refocused his thoughts. There was a few pleasing memories he’d relived in his head. The bastard started him easy, buttering him up, before turning his loved ones against him. He spooned Katie in bed, playing his hands around their baby. It was a moment he cherished. He couldn’t have been more comfortable with a person. And Susan was a strong fantasy he kept tucked in the back of his head. It was both shameful and pleasurable. He was a child again in Alice’s company. He missed her. If he survived this, he was determined to apologize to her. And how could he not appreciate telling off his dad for cheating on his mother? But that was strange. Tina was sleeping with Parker Stevens, but was it really true? He couldn’t be sure.

  Edith hadn’t returned.

  Forced not to think about her, he focused on what had happened again while hooked up to the machine. One memory stuck out among the rest under the machine’s control. He was kidnapped in his home and brought here by Rachael. His initial instinct after his consultation with Dr. Krone was foul play, but he distrusted himself. Now, he was certain, and he’d been a fool to consider otherwise. This was completely against his will.

  He had no idea where he’d been taken. The research itself was also troubling. If Dr. Krone’s goal was to allow the patient to relive the past and reconcile the issues that plagued them in the present, why did he turn the memories against him later on?

  Craig stiffened upon hearing new steps.

  Then the lock jangled.

  “Edith?”

  The mechanism shook. The knob jangled.

  The lock came undone, and the door swung open.

  Free of the Machine

  Edith unbuckled his straps, and one by one, they came loose. She worked at the restraints at his feet. Craig was so caught up in his escape that he forgot he was hooked up to a catheter and IV fluids. Urine filled half the plastic bag. Edith turned away and let him unhook himself. “Don’t be embarrassed. I was hooked up like that too.”

  After freeing himself, he tried to stand, and when he did, he unleashed an abbreviated shout. “Ah God!” His legs were assaulted by pins and needles. He rubbed at them to force circulation. He rotated his neck and twisted his back. He’d been sitting in the same position for essentially days. He grinded his teeth and cursed and cursed under his breath. Craig laid flat on his back, and then he returned to his feet and used the wall for support.

  Edith hugged him, clinging to him for relief.

  “It’s okay, you can cry,” he encouraged her. “This is worth crying over.”

  She wept. “I-I just want to see my children again. I want out of this damnable place. The windows are boarded up. Every door is locked. There’s no way out of here.”

  The news soured his excitement of being free of the machine. He turned to the device. Craig didn’t mean to laugh. The device was a metallic box the size of a refrigerator tilted to its side with a chair bolted to one end. Metal legs propped it four feet high. A computer screen and keyboard were crafted into the side, but the monitor was black. A trail of wires, thick as rope, exited one end and continued through a hole in the wall.

  Edith was confused. “What’s so funny?”

  “This machine, it’s so…so simple. I expected Dr. Frankenstein’s lab. This is all it takes to open up a person’s memory and play it on a movie screen and to place the person back into their memories?”

  He walked to the machine and dared to touch it. Maybe there was something inside the steel box. He traced the edges and the thin line where he thought the box would come open. The edge wouldn’t budge. It was locked by a series of three keyhole entries.

  More secrets, great.

  “Whatever’s in there,” he speculated, “is what’s fucking with our minds.”

  He touched the cords trailing out the back. He tugged, ripped, and yanked to unplug the machine. No luck. The wires held strong. The device was homemade. Soldering lines and different shades of metal lent it a rough prototype look. I’m sure this was independently funded. No university in their right mind would allow this to happen. The testing alone, and the trial research.

  It doesn’t matter.

  Just get the hell out of here.

  “Let’s find a way out of this place.”

  He was careful leaving the room. Edith was glued to his side. “Listen, I couldn’t find an exit. Like I said, everything’s sealed up. A mouse couldn’t get in or out.”

  Craig challenged the hallway. The wallpaper was a floral print and stained from water spots. Pieces of plaster showed through the wall and littered the floor in powdery circles.

  “The maid’s on strike,” Craig joked.

  The narrow corridor went on for a series of rooms. Edith’s room was three ahead of his. The same machine was positioned in an otherwise empty room. The electrical cords also trailed into the wall.

  “Where do those cords lead to?”

  Edith shook her head. “It beats me. You have to see the living room and kitchen. This is somebody’s home.”

  “Wait,” he said, making her stop. “How did we escape the machine?”

  Edith had the answer. “The power went out. It flickered back on five minutes later. The needles in my eyes and my skull were removed, and I slipped from the restraints.” She smiled, flexing her eyebrows. “I’m flexible.”

  “But if that’s true, how come nobody’s coming after us?”

  She pointed to the end of the hall. “Forget it. Help me find an escape before they do find us.”

  They rushed forward and stopped at a living room where they found cherry-finished wood floors, mauve drapes over the windows, a three-piece furniture set, and an Egyptian rug that covered the majority of the room’s surface area. She was correct, this was somebody’s home. Craig rushed to the windows. There were wrought iron bars preventing their escape. The front door had no doorknob.

  “Step back.”

  He rammed the door with his shoulder.

  Big mistake.

  “Shit, shit, shit.”

  Craig grasped his shoulder, which was covered in wild blinding pain. “It’s like a concrete wall.”

  He rapped on the door with his knuckle. “Yep, it’s concrete.”

  Edith was devastated, and she failed to reserve her emotions. She bounded into the kitchen, weeping. The room was well-furnished—pizza oven, overhead pots and pans rack, modern oven and stove, and a refrigerator with a television installed on the door. The room was perfectly clean. Edith had been in the room before. She quickly located a bottle of scotch in the cupboard and tilted her head back to enjoy a swig.

  “Easy,” he advised, checking the room over again. “I don’t need you drunk. They could be watching us. Dr. Krone or that nurse, whoever she is, might be skulking about.”

  He observed the stairwell that twisted up to the second floor. There was another set that led to the basement. “We should check upstairs and down next.”

 
Edith nursed the bottle in her hands, standing in the kitchen. Craig eyed the refrigerator. He was starving. He wrenched the doors open and scavenged for something. The insides were bare except for sandwich meat, wine, and cheese. He located a loaf of Wonder Bread on the counter and slapped a wad of turkey between the bread. Craig ate, watching every direction for anyone. He feared this was the bait inside a trap.

  He finished the sandwich, and with his belly satisfied, Craig thought about the stairwells. Where did they lead? Edith’s glassy eyes were in a trance. She was defeated, broken-hoped. Craig studied her arms, and legs, and body. “Dr. Krone’s a liar.”

  Her reply was delayed. “Huh?”

  “I was attacked numerous times when I was hooked up to that machine, but I don’t have a scratch on me now, except from those needles on that metal crown we wore on our heads."

  “No. I guess you’re right. It was all in our minds.”

  “I say we comb over this place. Those electrical cords channel somewhere. Perhaps there’s a power source we can knock out.” He pointed at the kitchen window armed with iron bars. The windows were tinted, and he couldn’t view outside. “We still don’t know where we are. It’s a mansion, sure, but where is it? They don’t have us contained in our minds anymore.” He sighed. “Those were horrible memories.”

  “But there were good memories too.” She enjoyed a short pull from the bottle. “It was beautiful, at first. The moment after giving birth to your first child, when the pain has finished, and there’s an endorphin kick, and then a slow release of tension, and you have this little child in your arms. It’s yours, and this person is the only thing you can really call yours. It came from you, you know what I mean? Trent was there with me. He still loved me then, my first husband. I had a decent job. I worked at a print shop, making copies for businesses. Trent was a truck driver. We both had money and what we needed to be happy.

  “But it quickly went to shit. Dr. Krone would manipulate the situation. Trent would steal my children. He’d hold them hostage. I would be at home, and I’d receive pieces of them in the mail. Fingers, toes, and locks of hair, and before I woke from Dr. Krone’s machine, he sent me a head. I couldn’t recognize it, it was so mutilated.” She winced, shutting her eyes, banishing the image from her mind and failing. “I can still feel the blood on my fingers.”