Episode 9: Voices- Dreams and a Sexless Afternoon

Episode 9: Voices

Get up now.

The Voices shook Grant from restless dreams.

Go tell Dr. Jill your dream. She’s in the nurse’s station.

Grant didn’t want to tell the Doc about dreams involving his soon-to-be-ex-wife. He didn’t want to make her jealous. He desperately longed to keep their relationship clean, and knew to avoid asking advice on your past fuck with your current. Girls get touchy in those situations; they tend toward anger and slapping.

This is not a debate, Grant. You don’t get to choose. She won’t slap you.

Grant had rules, but his demolished pride scattered around his bare feet in broken rubble and shards. He would have to mix the dust with piss and shit and spit before pounding the wooden forms and pouring himself into the sun to dehydrate. Grant’s house would never withstand an earthquake.

“I’m supposed to tell you my dream.” Grant gruffly touched her arm startling Dr. Jill into spilling coffee on her white blouse, soaking the thin material. He tried to yank his eyes away and forced his mind off the spreading stain of wetness.

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

“It was iced. No big deal. Nice to see you, Grant. My office? I have a change of clothes in there.” She winked and motioned him to follow. Clicking the blinds closed, she luxuriously removed her shirt. She was getting bolder. “That was a good trick, Grant. Did the voices tell you how to get me naked?” She slithered up to him rubbing breasts against his gown drawing fingers on his smooth back. He tilted his head down to kiss her and pulled her thigh above his hip. It had been too long for both of them.

Tell her now.

Grant tried to breathe. “Fuck you.”

“Yes, yes. Fuck me.” She nodded quickly, unzipping her skirt with fumbling fingers.

“I’m supposed to tell you my dream.”

Her face dropped defeated with her hands. “Now?”

He backed away as she sadly applied her shirt with disappointed pout, closing off exposed skin, “Really, it can’t wait 7 minutes?”

“They said now.”

She grabbed the hated red book, donned her glasses and pulled her curls back tightly securing them with a pencil. She was ready to work.

“I was outside Carol’s house in a VW van. This white van. I never had a white van, but that and the beard marked me some twisted hippie stalker; I brought my bitten bleeding finger stubs dangerously close to my mouth. I have to stop doing that. It makes me look crazy.”

Dr. Jill nodded.

“I couldn’t stop scratching behind my right ear. The cancer was spreading, and I could see it all over my fingers transferred like thick orange dye.

The lawyer came out of the house. I couldn’t see his face because he shook and moved too fast for me to get a specific image. He blurred like ripples on a puddle of leeches and handed me a manila envelope. I was afraid to open it because blood dripped from the bottom corner and it was labeled “Sally” in bold unfriendly black Sharpie across the top. I knew her fingers were in there.

His voice was mechanic, tinny, decidedly un-human, ‘Just go in there and tell Carol you love her. That's what you want to do isn't it?’ ‘No, no that's not it at all.’

‘Get the fuck out of here, Man. If you’re not going to tell her. Go. Leave.’

I see her through the fishbowl windows of the house with all these men and they're painting Carol’s walls greenish aqua, like a Mexican house, and someone rolls paint all over her back and she laughs and laughs and leaves the house. She doesn’t even care that I’m holding Sally’s bloody fingers; she doesn’t even know.I tried to duck in the car, but she sees me and comes over to the open VW door and stands there. She's taller and thinner and better looking in the dream, and I can barely remember what she looks like anyway, and she says, "Hi" and looks at me. And I have nothing to say. Absolutely nothing. And she shakes her head and walks back into the house, and I feel stupid because I should have told her about the envelope.”

“Are you still in love with your wife?”

That’s not what the dream is about.

“No, that’s not what the dream is about.”

Someone’s going to hurt your daughter. You’re going to escape and stop them.

“Someone’s going to hurt my daughter. I’m going to escape and stop them.”