Category: fiction

The doctor’s office seemed purposely deserted. Rose had not been gentle on the lock, but the door was open, and there was nothing between the walls. Raymond followed her like a wraith. He was passive, but he was here–that counted for something. Rose did not offer him
even a small part of her attention. That attention was busy burning through the papers littering the doctor’s desk as she rifled through them.

Raymond had come on some unspoken contract that they would find out, for better or worse, what the hell was going on, but it was Rose and her conviction that had brought them here. Raymond absentmindedly thumbed through a tattered and dog-eared copy of Blue Fire. By James Hilman. He had no idea who that was.

“What are you looking for, Rose?”Raymond asked, wraith-like. Rose bent over and growled deep in her throat.

“Something, anything.” Her impatience seemed directed at Raymond. The boy attempted to set things straight.

“I changed too, you know,” he said. Rose stood up. He had gained, for better or worse, her full attention.

“You?” her lip curled around the front edge of the word. “All you’ve become is more perfect. The girls fall over themselves when you walk through the door.” She raised the pitch of her voice and taunted Raymond with the tilt of her head. “Oh, Raymond, you’re so handsome. I don’t understand
this. You’re so smart, Raymond. Can you help me? Oh, Raymond, I’d die for you, Raymond.”

She edged closer to her target, their noses only inches apart, and dared him with her eyes to retaliate. “And what are you to deserve that?” Raymond’s response, more than anything,
was surprise. He did not speak before Rose herself registered the surprise and, realizing what she had done, turned away from her victim. Her searching became frantic.

“What did they do to me?” Raymond reached out to touch her shoulder. His intent was to pull her back, to restrain her from herself. She turned around at his touch. Tears threatened the corner of her eyes. The touch seemed precariously uncertain, like train wheels tipping on
the edge of the track. “What did I become?” she asked, her voice cracking. From the edge of her arm to the tips of his fingers spread an untamable warmth. Raymond grasped her other arm in an urge only to possess that warmth. Loud sounds and rough hands pulled him away from the dangerous heat.

He heard the doctor’s words ring impassively through the numbness spreading again through his chest.

“‘The most distressing images in teams and fantasies, those we shy from for their disgusting distortion and perversion, are precisely the ones that break the allegorical frame of what we think we know about this person or that, this trait of ourselves or that the ‘worst’ images are thus the best, for they are the ones that restore a figure to its pristine
power as a numinous person at work in the soul.’”

But you took her away, the numbness in his chest only dully responded.

Raymond knelt before his father’s throne.

“You may stand,” the king graciously allowed. Raymond disliked this formality, but played his grudging part because this was one of the many formalities on which the ruling Castells insisted.

“You called for me, your majesty?” the prince answered. The mocking edge of his voice persisted although he parents had long since begun to ignore it.

“The public memorial in honor of your uncle is approaching.”

“I am aware.”

“You must remember to publicly pledge to avenge his death.” Raymond’s jaw must have dropped, but he would not have known–his entire face had gone numb at the suggestion. He quickly regained his wits.

“What an honor. We all wish get back at God for the way he has treated us.”

“Please forget your jests,” the queen interceded.

“Your uncle was murdered,” the king chided. “Must you act like this?” Raymond’s defiance flared.

“All that murdered your uncle was old age and his love for wine.”

“You know who slaughtered him yet you refused to accept it. Do not turn your back on us. Do not refuse to face the traitor who walks between our walls.”

Cornered by responsibility, Raymond parroted his father’s orders reluctantly.

“I will avenge the death of Prince Henry Castell and kill the traitor who walks between our walls.”

Rose’s pulse had steadied. Johnson watched the monitors compulsively, like a father concerned for his daughter–except it was nothing like that.

“Were tranquilizers necessary, Doctor?”

“You tell me, Johnson.”

“Do you have any idea what you’ve created?”

“I believe I do.”

“Please enlighten me.”

“The soul is polytheistic in nature, meaning its divisions are original and natural. Psychoanalysts have attempted to identify these divisions since Freud named the ego, the id, and the superego, but his names were only the first. Jung, Hilman, Lacan – and many a lesser man have attempted to split the psyche. Are you familiar with any of these theorists?”

“Jung identified the animus, the shadow, and the self.”

“Impressive, Johnson. In all these iterations, despite their many differences, there is included the darker side of human nature, the shadow as Jung describes it. That untamed darkness, that animalistic passion exists beneath the surface of the unconscious mind, and we, I believe, have unearthed it.”

“We have created …a shadow?”

“No, no, not a shadow. ‘To call this unformed void of psychopathic darkness in one’s nature the shadow does it only partial justice, because shadow tends to mean moral evil as seen from ego. But chaos refers to a prima material, indicating a peculiar inherent
connection between the worst inert sludge of human nature.’ Do you understand the distinction, Johnson?”

“We’ve unearthed the sludge of human nature?”

“Exactly. The prima materia, what all else is made from.”

“But will you do?”

“Bring them together again.”

“And that will fix her?”

“We’re on the edge of discovery. I will not go back now.”

“Not even if you’ve permanently damaged one of your subjects?”

“They knew the risks.”

“With all due respect, Doctor, I don’t believe you knew the risks.”

“Science calls for sacrifice.” A pause.

“What is it, Johnson?”

“You know, I’m really beginning to dislike that blasted book of yours.”

Raymond passively acknowledged the rec room. A second pulse, tingling in his fingers, beat through his ears. He felt he should be there, closer to Rose in some way, but he felt less and less with each passing moment.

Johnson arrived expecting to observe a session, and he expected, as he and the doctor had discussed, one high school volunteer, eyes shut, attached to a complicated set of electrodes. But the full sleep-lab set-up, repurposed for the new cutting-edge research, was formed around two volunteers back to back in the saltwater tank.

“Doctor, would you care to explain?” Johnson brought an accusatory edge into his voice.

The doctor had said nothing of this.

“Ah, welcome, Johnson. Please, have a seat.”

“You still owe me an explanation, Doctor.” The doctor smiled wanly.

“We know what it is to inhabit the unconscious, but what if two were forced to inhabit the same unconscious, the same depths of the mind. Does one mind form to the other or do they grow together? A shared space or a violent takeover? How do they fit into each others’ psyches?”

“You’re telling me they’re dreaming the same dream?”

“Not the same dream, no, but in the same space with the same symbols.”

“What happens when they wake?”

“This is pure science. We are on the edge of discovery, Johnson. We can send them into the depths of their minds, but in all my research, I have been unable to bring the depths up to us.” The question for Johnson was quickly answered but given no explanation. The machine shut itself down with no prompting from the doctor.

Raymond woke up like a sleeping prince, rising gracefully to the surface, but Rose was not so lucky. She moved nimbly kicking to the surface, and ripping the electrodes away from her skin, jumping from the lip of the tank like an acrobat.

Her lip curled as her eyes locked on
the doctor.

“You.” She raised a stone paperweight, jagged and wickedly sharp, from his desk over his head. Her next word was spoken like a spell. “Dolor.” Johnson knocked her down with one blow before she could deliver her pain.