Not a Bestseller

Timber Tantrum

There are three different levels of the mind. Up top, there's the conscious level, thoughts we are aware of. They suck. Right below it, the subconscious floor, like the crust layers of a mountain. That's useless. Finally, you've got the unconscious part of your mind. It's invisible, unnavigated by your tiny person because it's so dark down there.

Speaking of which, I made a very conscious decision the next morning: I wasn't going.

That night itself proved to be a cliché of tossing and turning. I felt the covers bunched at my feet. I heard my hand thwack against my forehead. The details of my hurricaned bedroom drew clear lines. My insides churned and...

Look, I don't want to talk about myself. Even if I did, I can't explain what I felt. It was different, unfamiliar. I wasn't just being stubborn this time. I wasn't simply tired of people controlling my life. No, I've taken that stab plenty of times. I would've recognized that wound in a second.

This was a different feeling. Like any psychologist at work, I decided to pick Tiny Person apart.

Dreams are supposed to reveal the unconscious mind. I started there. Like I said, I was awake for hours after Doctor White left. I didn't remember falling asleep, but I must have drifted off at some point.

My dreams, like a never-ending circle of cloud fluff. There was, however, one scene that remained vivid. I was in a classroom. Dr. White patted me on the head. Then he yelled at me, and his demented daughter screamed her head off too. Then I was at home and my room had been demolished. Then I took the bus. Then the bus turned into an airplane. Then I was in China being held by Natives at the top of the Eiffel Tower. They told me to admit I stole the money or they would blow up the universe.

My sleeping movies didn't work well as a compass.

Vinegar tasted in my mouth, but it disintegrated. What I felt was cold. Distant and isolated as it sculpted my stomach into a ball of Playdough. I recognized it from countless novel descriptions. The unpleasant emotion that arises when someone believes something or someone is dangerous.

This was fear.

Pause for emphasis.

Fear.

Of who? Doctor White presented himself as the alien of psychologists, yet he jumped into the norm. My hair scurried for the ceiling at the thought of his cult. But, no, I wasn't afraid of him. He was just another miracle-cure. For all anyone knows, I could've been frightened that those Natives from my sleep might jump to life.

Nevertheless, I was scared.

And determined not to go.

Sunlight cracked over my window. I grabbed my watch and I tiptoed down our flight of stairs. I knew my parents. I'd educated myself on how to butter them up until their freewill snapped under pressure. It wouldn't be easy, but I was up to the challenge.

All I had to do was be...nice to them.

Gulp.

When I slipped into the kitchen, I set to work with the microwave and frozen leftovers. Each napkin folded over every plate, I lined the silverware around the edge of the table, easier to grab. Three pancakes, each small and symmetrical, plopped onto each plate.

Thumps sounded around the corner. I fell into my chair, dotted my own pancake in syrup, and speckled it into my mouth.

Bitterness enveloped my tongue. I should've made waffles. Chocolate chip waffles.

"Ben, you're...up..." My mother froze beneath an archway, hair ratted with pins. "And you made... us... breakfast?"

"Of course I did. It's breakfast time," I speculated. At least, I think that's what I did. I don't know what speculated means.

She shrugged. The roses on her nightgown flowed together. "You've hardly shown your face down here since we started interviewing therapists. And before noon too..." Her lips curled up, up, up, until a twinkle joined them in her eyes. She could've been a clown at the circus.

"I guess someone's excited about therapy."

Crap. What? WHAT? Didn't my own creator recognize an attempt to butter her up right under her nose? Of course not. Why would she? She only saw what she wanted to see.

I opened my mouth to retaliate when Dad walked in. He swept Mom off her feet in a big, wet kiss.

I cringed. The romance didn't bother me. It was the fact that Mom still had her morning facemask on, and Dad was in a suit for a meeting later that day. The idea of two things being together that proved so very, very wrong tossed Tiny Person off-kilter. More on that and how it relates to me later.

"Ahem."

Dad looked like a robber caught under a spotlight in the U.S. treasury. I watched the crease over his eyes melt towards his ears.

"Ben!" He spoke in his Sunday school teacher voice. "Someone must be excited, huh?"

You are freaking kidding me.

"Um..."

Both of my guardians turned to me with wide eyes, and my chest fell to the floor. At this point, you'd think I would like to please my parents. Ben will change the subject, use some clever tactics to rationalize his case. He could be like the hero in some wacked-up dystopian-novel-world-thing.

"I don't want to go," I stated, shoving a bigger bite into my mouth.

My parents exchanged a glance.

Dad shook me off. "You're just nervous about your first day."

"Am not." I lied right through my teeth. They stung. "I just don't want to. Not today. Not tomorrow. Never. This is not something I have an ounce of desire to do and nothing good can come from it and you must know that or-"

"You sound like a two-year-old," Dad said.

I returned to my meal. "Thank you"

"Ben. I want you to look at me right in the eyes. Right now."

I did.

"You can call a complaint to the President of the United States or run a fever of one-hundred-and-six for all I care. You're going to go to therapy today. Now, we can do this the easy way or the hard way. It's your choice."

I chose the hard way.

After rushing through a day of calculator math, I cornered Dad during a telephone meeting. I didn't know why he was home. It seemed odd that he hadn't had an emergency work call due to Mr. Peterson saying something stupid. Maybe I made him look less stupid than usual. People stopped noticing one bizarre thing when their attention could climb up the ladder to odd-ball.

We had a conversation that I feel would harm the eardrums of younger audiences.

I stomped around the house and checked the mail. Nothing. I assumed it would take a while for the letter I wrote Kyle to get to his college, and he wasn't exactly prolific, but still, waiting for things was not my strong suit.

Mom insisted on driving me to therapy, seeing it fit to take off of work to ensure my inevitable doom. She kept badgering that Ed deserved a vacation day. (This could also explain the plot hole as to why my parents were home all day. I figured you could fill that in with your own shovel. Don't make me do all the gardening for you.)

Here we were, in the car. Five hours after our first social engagement:

"I still have until three o'clock to change your mind," I said.

"I'd really like to know what you could say in the next ten seconds to undo a life's work of convincing me you need this." Dad closed the car door, trapping me inside with my mother behind the wheel. He trudged back to the house with his phone pressed to his ear.

I paused to buckle.

When I rolled down the window and grappled for words to insult him with, we had already driven away. Not one clever comeback came until it was too late.

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~TBHughes