Nightmare

One

"Tell me about the dreams again, James."

A blank white slate of mind glared back up at him, ink blots from the waiting pen melding into wriggling black masses that seemed to squirm across the page.

Jamie shook his head.

This whole exercise was hopeless. He had dreamed so long of saying it during all the tedious sessions that he'd been there, so many times..... but whenever he thought about it for as long as he could, it evaporated.

He sighed. "I've told you- he's there. Always there- a big, angry mass. Always watching. Always waiting."

Notes were hastily scribbled on an out of sight clipboard.

"I see."

Pencil-thin eyebrows furred expectantly.

"Is this the form that Stephen usually takes in your dreams?" Dr Robbins asked.

Not just in his dreams.

Jamie knew better.

His gaze drifted to the wooden cat clock that oddly adorned the whitewashed wall. With its tail and beady eyes swishing along with its clockwork innards, it seemed to be viewing Jamie with the same distaste.

Assured Guilt. That's what the doctor has taken to calling it. That, out of guilt, he viewed Stephen as something monstrous, out of what him and the others had done to him. Essentially, a neverending guilt trip.

Jamie had heard better from the countless others before him. But in a way, this was a pretty good one too.

All just words. No matter how comforting they tried to be, he could see it in their eyes.

The insipidly bearded man had taken to idly tapping the top of his pen against the metal clip as he listened. Jamie winced quietly. He knew that he just couldn't spend a complete hour in silence.

"Maybe it was because of what we did," he said, entertaining him along, "you think I don't feel guilt? But I do. I feel it everyday. God, sometimes I can't believe what we did to him........"

"And what about Caitlin?"

Caitlin.

The word scorched into the cold plane of his mind, almost stinging.

Robbins realised that he'd gone too far, glasses glinting about from Jamie to the floor, and then back again.

"Jamie, if this is too difficult a subject to talk about......."

Jamie half-waved a hand. "No."

But the sudden emptiness in his tone betrayed him.

"It''ll take some time," he admitted with the first ounce of honesty that he'd felt in a long time, "I hurt her as much as I hurt him."

"Right now, I've just gotta live with that."

Adamant as it was, this answer seemed to only pique the interest in the man's eyes through his horned spectacles. He reminded Jamie of an owl- taciturn and still, content to watch all around it before it struck.

After he was finished, Robbins placed down his clipboard and tented his fingers.

"This has been a good talk, Jamie. You're getting better in these sessions."

He could have laughed right there.

That is, if he hadn't been so focused on the overly-optimistic motivational poster beside the taunting cat-clock. Motivation, it said, outlooking a picturesque lake with the sun setting overhead,just a skipping stone away from sucess.