My parents soothe me from either side, hushing gently as I collapse into their arms.
3
TRUTH
I wait patiently in a small wooden chair, trying my best not to eavesdrop but latching on to fragments of the muffled conversation anyway.
“Yes, I know … well, it’s not an exact science…” the familiar voice explains, anxious but assured. “There’s variation in every breed … yes, I know. Understood.”
The talking abruptly halts as a landline phone slams back down onto its wooden desk. There’s a brief moment of silence, then footsteps marching toward the office door that flies open moments later.
“Hi, Rose, come on in,” Dr. Smith offers, smiling warmly to greet me.
My therapist is a bespectacled, bearded man with soft features and kind eyes that always seem to bear a look of deep concern, whether I’m telling him something important or not. He’s relatively short and his hair is stark white, still sitting thick atop the man’s head despite his age.
Our sessions typically occur on a set monthly schedule, but today he’s fitting me in.
“I used to love days off from school,” Dr. Smith reveals as we step into his office, motioning toward my usual leather chair as he takes a seat in his own. “Dentist appointments. Doctor visits. I know it can be scary but I always looked forward to missing some class.”
Dr. Smith chuckles to himself as he says this, thrilled by the rebellious nature of his childhood. He settles into his chair even more, allowing this blue-and-white piece of furniture to envelop him. The striped colors pop against the leathery tones of this otherwise academic basement office.
“My parents thought I should come in first thing,” I reply.
“And what do you think?” Dr. Smith continues.
I mull this question over. “I think they’re right,” I finally offer. “I’ve been under a lot of stress.”
Dr. Smith nods, but doesn’t say anything. He stares quietly, waiting for me to continue.
“Who were you talking to just now?” I ask.
“Dog breeder,” he replies, “but we’re not here to talk about my Newfoundland puppy.”
More silence, the pressure of this reticent moment hanging over us like a sword above John the Baptist’s neck.
“I saw something strange yesterday,” I finally inform him. “Really strange. I was at the falls with some friends, and I could’ve sworn I saw a lady in the woods. She was odd-looking, but you know, I didn’t think much of it. She disappeared pretty quickly.”
“Odd-looking? What was so odd-looking?” Dr. Smith asks, jotting down a few notes.
I close my eyes a moment, picturing the woman’s bizarre face. I breathe in and out slowly, settling into the darkness and then allowing this aberrant figure to emerge from the wings of my subconscious brain. In my mind’s eye, this stranger is even paler than I’d thought, her skin wrinkled and saggy but not with age. It’s as though she’s waterlogged, bones and membrane with nothing but putrid liquid hanging between them.
“She’s … frightening,” I offer. “Her hair is long and black, and it’s patchy. Looks like it’s falling out. She’s got crooked, dirty teeth and her eyes are white.”
My brain is taking brief, fragmented glimpses and sewing them together, completing a picture that felt quite abstract up until this point. In this dark room I’ve manifested, my gaze drifts down to her hands, coming to rest on something I hadn’t considered much until now.
“I think her fingers are very long,” I continue. “They stretch out like sharp white sticks.”
“Sounds like you got a pretty good look at her,” my therapist offers, prompting me to open my eyes again.
“Not really,” I reply, shaking my head.
“Sure seems like it, though,” Dr. Smith continues, gently adjusting his perfectly round glasses. “Unless your imagination is doing some heavy lifting.”
A defensive surge pulses through me.
“What are you saying?” I counter.
“Just observing,” Dr. Smith replies, deftly maintaining his open and warm demeanor.
We sit in silence for another long moment, allowing our conversation to settle. I can’t help letting my eyes wander to the assortment of plaques mounted on his wall, the metallic rectangles hanging around him in an authoritative halo.
“Do you think she’s real?” my therapist finally asks, cutting to the chase.
My immediate instinct is to defend myself, but in the name of objectivity I somehow manage to pull back on the reins.
“I don’t know,” I finally reply.
“When your parents called, they mentioned something about you seeing this woman walk into the closet? Your father followed her in, correct?”
I nod.
“And what happened?”
“She wasn’t there,” I admit.
Dr. Smith takes a deep breath and lets it out, shifting his weight a bit. “I’m disappointed in you,” he finally announces. “I speak with plenty of young children who see monsters in their closets, but you’re not a child anymore, Rose.”
“I know,” I reply, shaking my head, “but what about the flies? Something strange is going on.”
“Swallowing that much insect larva is a medical emergency. It could cause someone a lot of stress, and stress is no good,” Dr. Smith continues. “Stress can make even perfectly rational people see things that aren’t really there.”
I lower my head a bit, shaking it from side to side as I struggle to sort through everything. Something feels very wrong, as if the whole wide world is in on some joke that I’m completely oblivious to. Things aren’t quite adding up, but I can’t for the life of me figure out how the pieces actually fit.
Everyone is telling me to chill out and destress, that this feeling of being pulled apart like a baby before King Solomon is perfectly normal as I take the leap into adulthood.
Right now, however, it certainly doesn’t feel normal. I want to trust my elders and my community, yearn for that familiar blanket of security, but the proposed retelling of these events is simply refusing to fall in line.
“What if it’s a demon?” I question.
Dr. Smith hesitates. I can tell he’s forcing himself to shift gears, to approach this particular topic from a calculated angle.
“Demons are real,” he bluntly replies, his eyes now burning into mine, “you and I both know that. But they’re also not little guys running around with pitchforks and horns, and they’re certainly not scary ladies in red polo-shirt uniforms. Demons manifest abstractly, through addiction and sin and moral decay. They manifest through temptation. So I guess my question back to you is … have you felt any temptation lately?”
I shake my head confidently. “No.”
“Sometimes when we’re feeling something we know is wrong, it’s hard for us to accept responsibility,” Dr. Smith explains. “We create someone or something, like a monster in the closet or an imaginary friend, and we place the blame on them. When that happens, there’s only one way to stop it: we must turn away from the feelings that create the monster. We must reject the temptation.”