text: “I’ve been having nightmares about my wife lately... I’m just... Well maybe I should tell you about them?” Alan said hesitantly. “Yes, that would probably be a good place to start. There is no wrong way to have a therapy session.” Collin replied. Collin was legally blind, he couldn’t see Alan but he could see shapes that were probably Alan. Clients had told him that it was off-putting that he couldn’t look at them or meet their gaze. Other clients had said that it felt reassuring. Collin couldn’t really control it so he didn’t let the criticism or critiques affect him. “Well, I mean, there are probably SOME wrong ways.” “Ok, that is fair, I just meant in the broad sense, I guess. Get back to these dreams though, don’t try to distract yourself.” “Oh, yeah... Let’s see... Alright, the first one then. My wife and were in the bedroom, not intimately but not whatever the opposite of that is either. It was just... Two married people, a couple living, you know? I don’t think we were really doing anything, dreams are weird like that sometimes. It isn’t always exactly clear what is happening until something big happens. She started itching her back, in a frenzy sort of. Really going at it. So I offered to help her. I told her to turn around and she did, she lifted up the back of her shirt for me to scratch against the skin. Get a better scratch, right? So she lifted up her shirt and I saw her back, it is covered in these little pimples, a serious outbreak. She doesn’t like to scratch my back because my back is kind of gross, in all fairness, she doesn’t like the feeling of stuff coming off under her nails. You know the stuff, little back pimples or blackheads or whatever and I have that stuff. She doesn’t so much, her back is normally smooth but I wasn’t going to, you know, I wasn’t going to complain about it. I started itching her back and I brushed over the first pimple and it burst under my fingers. I had scratched the head clean off, not on purpose but it happened and I kept going. I went over a few more, the same thing, but I started to notice something and I started to feel something. The stuff under my nails, like she said, but it was moving. I looked down and saw that her back was covered in these little worms with these little heads like the pimples, and they were crawling all over her back. I jumped back away from her and cried out, ‘Laura your back! Worms!’ and I was freaking out. I pushed her towards our bathroom across the hall and grabbed a towel to start wiping those things off her back. I started trying to catch them all under the towel and wipe them into the shower drain but then she started laughing. ‘Don’t be silly baby, those are just the glut-worms!’ She kind of giggled it out, even. One jumped from her back to try to get me and I caught it out of the air between two fingers, like plucking a grape. I smashed it between my fingers and my opposing hand’s palm, trying to work the strength of two arms at the same time. You know, an overwhelming display of force. So I pulled my fingers away from my hand to find that I had pressed too hard, cut myself. In my desperation to crush this thing I had sliced into my own palm. And I hadn’t even killed the dang thing! I could see it start burrowing into the cut in my palm, this little green worm with a white head like a pimple! I started digging into my palm to try to stop it, and it started hurting. I could hear her, Laura, telling me to not worry about it while I am trying to get a grip on this thing and pull it out of my hand. But yeah, I can’t get a grip and that was when I woke up. I woke up digging into my own palm with my finger nails for some imaginary worm that wasn’t there.” Alan and Collin sat there for a moment in silence. Collin staring at the far wall past Alan while Alan looked down at his own feet. “You mentioned that you’ve had multiple nightmares? What was the next one?” “You... Uh... You really want to know?” Alan asked cautiously. “Yeah, well, not if it has more bugs but yeah, maybe.” Collin replied. “Okay.... Well, this next one is shorter. So yeah, nightmare number two I guess. I don’t remember how this one started... I actually... the whole thing gets kind of shaky... Even the end is a little confusing maybe but it starts with me looking out my window and it is winter up to the gills outside. I know, y’know, we’re in the dead heat of July and I’m dreaming about snow so deep in my backyard that you could practically swim in it. But yeah. So I looked out my rear kitchen window that overlooks my back yard. And huddled at the far end of my fence was what looks like a big white dog, laying in the snow facing away from me. Shaggy as hell, fur longer than corn husks maybe. I looked back behind me to call my wife. ‘Laura!’ I called out to her, you know, ‘You have to check this out!’ So she got up out of the bed, I guess that we had been watching television in the bedroom before or something, and she came in to the kitchen. I turned around to point out of the kitchen window but the dog was gone. It had completely vanished. ‘I don’t see anything.’ She said before turning back around. ‘It’s gone now but I swear that the BIGGEST dog was just outside in the backyard!’ But she wasn’t listening, she had already started walking to the bedroom. After a couple of minutes I followed her back. The dream gets fuzzy again, I don’t know what happens until the next part but I know what happens next. I was standing at my bathroom window, I had opened it up, and I was looking out into my backyard again. Back in my backyard again, my eyes land on that dog. He was much closer this time though, maybe only ten feet away. I hissed Laura’s name, real low. “What?” she called back, annoyed but also low and I thought that she understood what was going on. She walked up behind me, quietly and she saw what I was looking at. I heard a sharp intake of breath and I’m still not entirely sure if it was her that gasped or me because it started to move. It slowly lumbered its great neck around, pointing its face at us, and the face that it had was not a dog’s face. It was the face of a man, pale and sick looking, eyes dead almost but it looked right at us. It snarled its face and snapped its teeth at the window in the blink of an eye. But me... I was already moving. I screamed and pulled Laura away from the window with me a bit but let go as I rushed into the bedroom to get my gun...” Alan trailed off for a moment. “You still have your gun?” Collin asked, leaning forward into the silence. He hadn’t realized how intense the story had been until just this moment. “Yeah... Should I... Should I not?” “We’ll get to that after, sorry, just a question, keep telling the story.” Collin waved his hand. “Ok... Yeah... So I was in the bedroom. And I keep my gun locked up, I know that isn’t great during emergencies but it feels safer that way. So I was fumbling with the locked cased, trying to get it open and I heard Laura call out to me. “Hurry!” She yelled, I guess that she had walked back to the window like some kind of maniac with a deathwish. “Its going around the house to the next window!” I got the gun and a handful of bullets and I was putting them into the cylinder while I was walking. I opened the door to the bedroom adjacent to the bathroom and I looked out through the windows but the thing was gone... It was already gone. And I guess that was when I woke up that time.” Alan said, letting out a long sigh at the end. “Geez, this kind of exhausting. Do I gotta tell you more of these? They are all like the last two.” “Like the last two? How?” “Well... So I told Laura about them and you know what she said? She said, ‘It sounds like I’m an oblivious idiot in all of these dreams, huh?’ you know? Like that... They’re all like that, where she doesn’t really get what's wrong until something bad is already happening and sometimes not even then. C’mon man, you’re the therapist, you should be noticing this stuff!” “Look, Alan, I’m not great at analyzing the themes of stories, I work with people, I’m good at people. But yeah, now that you point it out, I guess that those dreams do seem to be connected to that point... I guess my question for you is this, and I bet I already know the answer, has your wife still not talked to you about your attempted suicide? I mean, you’re even still keeping the gun?” “She... I think she blames herself... And so I haven’t brought it up and she has kind of ignored it too. Y’know, I’ve been out of the hospital for two months now and things are going... Well they’re going smoothly between us. I don’t know if I want to disrupt that just yet and she probably doesn’t either...” “Al, I’m just your therapist but I think you should talk to your wife.” “I’m afraid that she’s not going to see whats wrong.