Chapter 7 Nightmare Redemption
Later I woke up thrashing against my usual nightmare. Theo just put his arm round my shoulder and listened as I ranted … I’m stuck in the Book House with no escape. Sometimes upstairs my legs so heavy I can’t run, I can’t move. . Something hovers in the darkness above the door, breath on the skylight. Then I’m downstairs in the hall. The door lock rusted shut. I claw at the spongy frame of a courtyard window. It can hear me… sea gulls scream. I wake up sweat…fear and loathing, my throat cracked dry.
My therapist wanted to make suggestions. I could see her cogs whirring away behind her bi-focals eyes. She bit her Freudian tongue irritated at my recovery plan: find a companion to hold my hand through the black shingle house.
If the characters survived companionably, why should I stay there alone? We could watch bubbles in the air and laugh in the face of the folly. “How many gables does a man need?” The therapist advised a break-more for her than me I suspect...work from home. She refused to read The Book so I was forced to continue my frantic search for another human being out there who’s read it. So I can escape.
Theo levered himself up and wandered naked towards the gun cabinet. He returned with a battered copy of The House of Seven Gables. He wrapped me up in the quilt and began to read aloud until the sun was high in the sky and it made sense to get dressed and make like Other People, normal folk who don’t screw their relatives.
How does this fit the travelogue Orla? Would it win a Guardian travel award for a trip off the beaten track?
Some months later on a brief visit to New York I observed how excited my northern colleagues were to share an office with a possible murderer “how cool is that?” was heard on two occasions in the elevator. However rumours of incest - a Yankee concept I might suggest - went down less well. So I have been offered the opportunity to work from home.
I returned to Theo, the sin of his bare mouth against my skin a small price to pay for receding nightmares.
The oak rooms creak gently like ship’s timbers, we drift to the lee of the snowline. I sometimes I dream of writers shouting for help:
“Save me sirs and save yourselves from the abysmal prose of my contemporaries”,
Mark Twain.
YOU ARE READING
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RandomThis is a Southern Gothic tale about Waker's journey to herself. However, the author plans a rewrite to smooth out the edges for a novella or screen play. The controversial content may preclude a movie but it could make a nice radio play for a rainy...
