Psycho Therapy (33 page)

Craig’s eyes rolled into the back of his head. His vision failed to refocus. Katie’s cold dead breath played against his neck. She kissed behind his ear, leaving a slimy patch of skin and mucus. “I will see you in hell, and then we’ll finally be a family.”

His brain boiled with the need for oxygen. His lungs spastically tried to inhale and exhale to mimic the act of breathing. Each attempt issued the raw agony of broken ribs. Seconds from death, Craig let himself go limp.

He kept thinking, where had Dr. Krone disappeared to?

The Deal

The blink happened again. The umbilical cord disappeared. He could breathe again. He coughed and gagged to set his breathing back to normal, being on his knees. His eyes watered, and a line of spittle fell from his panting maw. The corpses were in their body bags. The enemies from his mind had also vacated the area. They were simply gone.

He waited and listened.

“Mr. Horsy,” Dr. Krone spoke, his throat trembling and giving way to his fear. Craig was proud to realize he’d terrified the man who’d delivered so much heartache and horror to him for the past three to four days—or God knows how long, he thought. “You made a smart play. You’re a special case. Mom was right. It wasn’t safe for you to roam freely. It’s not safe for anybody to be free in this mansion. Don’t you see why it’d be impossible to allow the world to enjoy this? It would simply spiral out of control.”

“Like it hasn’t already?”

“It’s ours and ours only to enjoy,” Dr. Krone said, staying hidden. “That could include you, Mr. Horsy. Would you like to experience only good memories? I could permit it.”

He’s trying to bargain with me. Why the fuck would I trust him after all of this? He’s crazy.

The hairs on his arms were raised. The electric impulses hadn’t ended. Blue arcs traveled up and down the walls and the glow encased each of the machines. He eyed one of the screens and noticed words were being typed out on it.

Craig cracked a smile.
Ah, I see his game for what it really is.

He posed himself over the machine. “Would you really allow me to relive only the good times? God, I miss Katie every day. Could you make it so our child was really born?”

“Yes,” Dr. Krone replied, happy to hear Craig was interested. “A burping, farting, healthy little girl, she can be anything you want and everything you ever wanted her to be.”

He searched between the machines. He caught Dr. Krone’s shadow. The man was hunched over the computer screen. His eyes never left the console.

“You can fuck Susan into oblivion.” Dr. Krone’s fidgeted and couldn’t shrug the nervous ticks and tremors in his head. “You want Alice too? She’ll do anything to pleasure you. You can have them both at the same time, and they’d like it. You want to relive your regrets and make a change, then let’s do it. You know how to run the machine. Once you’ve been hooked in so long, you don’t have to be hooked in anymore to travel the memories of your past. The machine has memorized them already…you simply type in the change.”

Craig closed in for the finalizing blow. He leveled a fist into Dr. Krone’s jaw, coldcocking him, swinging like a prize fighter. “I want my life back the way it was before you tried to take it away from me!”

Dr. Krone landed as a helpless pile onto the floor. He waved his hands, pleading, begging, desperate to bargain for his life. Tears glazed over his eyes and wet his cheeks. He blubbered and whimpered, “It’s my machine, and you’re under my control. You do as I say. You can’t be doing this. No, you just can’t!”

He anchored his foot over Dr. Krone’s chest. “We’re in real life now. We’re no longer in each other’s minds. I have free will. You’re helpless in your own skin. I bet that’s a new feeling for you.”

Dr. Krone refused to make eye contact. He was a child in full temper-tantrum mode. His chubby and waxen skin cringed and frowned. He pounded the floor with his fists. “It’s my machine, and you do as I say! I’m in charge. You’re the patient, and I’m the doctor.”

“I’ve heard that shit before.”

The human pile scavenged about the room, expecting his parents or one of Craig’s memories to materialize, but Dr. Krone had ordered them off via the computer, and they wouldn’t be coming back without being summoned first.

“It’s your machine,” Craig shot back, “but you’ll do as I say.”

He throttled Dr. Krone by the neck. The man was covered in so much stinking sweat Craig’s grip was slippery. He managed to lift him up by seizing his collar. Craig forced him onto the chair of one of the machines. “It’s your turn to be introspected to death.”

Dr. Krone was at a loss for breath. “It’s…not your…not your machine…you…you don’t know…you don’t know how to use it…”

He leveled another punch across the man’s temple. The man was stunned by the blow, and Craig was able to strap Dr. Krone onto the machine. The doctor came back to life when he walked to the other side of the machine to type in his command.

“I know the machine better than you. There are so many intricacies, secrets, and better ways to produce the greatest memories. You want that? I can give it to you.”

Craig scoffed. “No thanks.”

“Tina followed her dreams in your mind and killed your dad. Do you want to know how she did that?—and why? It’s not as simple as typing in a command. The words have to be special. Specific. You can only learn from experience. My experience. I can teach you. I will, Mr. Horsy. I swear it. Release me. I’ll let you be my assistant. The more souls we collect, the realer they become, and we’ll experience every soul out there, and they’ll be unique and new and extraordinary in their own special way. The possibilities are endless. We’ll have millions of souls, Craig. Why stop? Why ever stop?”

Dr. Krone’s skin glistened with panic. He was terrified, and the doctor couldn’t mask it. And then his fear changed into scorn. Accusations. The words throbbed so deep and vicious Craig stopped thinking about what commands he’d enter into the computer. “You’re naïve beyond comprehension. The machine can drum up a command, but it reads what’s in your mind. It creates what you’ve thought in your subconscious and the subconscious of others. Deep down, your best buddy Willis wanted to harm you for what you inflicted upon him. The souls can tweak that reaction and exaggerate the impulse, but there’s a seed of truth in the people of your past. The machine knows what they were thinking and what they thought. Are you willing to destroy this marvel for the sake of revenge? So you were scared, it’s over now. You’re not hooked up to the machine. You’ll be on the side that has control. Anything you pleasure, it’s yours.”

He watched him with unblinking eyes. His registry of sanity and insanity and murder and life was obscured. The man didn’t flinch at suffering. The machine had warped those natural emotions, and Craig wouldn’t have anything to do with promoting his cause. Craig stared out at the bodies strewn against the wall in clear body bags. This wasn’t science. It wouldn’t better society. Some things in the mind weren’t meant to be understood, and people’s innermost thoughts weren’t designed to be spelled out to an audience.

“You haven’t saved any lives with this device. You tell Edith and the others like her what they died for? You believe in your machine, so then relax. Enjoy your family’s work.”

Dr. Krone sputtered and begged to be released, but Craig ignored him. He was exhausted, craving a cigarette, hungry, and most of all, he felt the urge to shower and rid himself of this place.

He poised his hands on the console. Craig couldn’t figure out what to type. It would be too easy to type in
Die Dr. Krone
. He wanted more than his heart to stop. Dr. Krone hadn’t been on the receiving end of terror. He enjoyed the fruits of his memories and others’ suffering. Now it was his turn.

Craig typed in the command.

Die, Dr. Krone

The reaction was instant. Blink-instant like everything else had been. He typed in the command:
Dr. Krone will suffer the nightmares of everybody who’s ever been hooked up to the machine.
Craig felt the heat emanate from the device. The crown of needle prongs was inserted into the doctor’s head with a teeth-grinding
thack
. The circle of low-gauge needles was rammed into his eyes. The thrust shook the doctor in place. He was stunned. The man drooled and moaned, “
Uhhhhhhhnnnnnn
…”

Craig attempted to look away, but it was too mesmerizing.

Milky foam spittle launched from the man’s lips. His face scrunched with each seizure-spasmodic twitch. “
Whuuck
—
whuuck
—
whuuck!
”

Dr. Krone went stiff, his mouth quivering. His skin changed from white to raw-meat red to cut-circulation purple. His eyes gushed blood and so did the needles that penetrated his brain. The stink of singed hair and burning plastic followed.

WHUUUUUUUUUUUUUM!

The machine smoked and static electricity branched out from all directions and cracked in lightning-sharp crackles. Craig fled from the scene, but not before catching Dr. Krone’s final moment. The machine was clearly overloaded by Craig’s command. The needles in the doctor’s brain were wrenched out so quickly, his skull cap was removed and the boiling soup-mush-for-brains billowed down his face in steaming clotted lines. Dr. Krone’s mouth was locked in agony, his tongue rigid and extended.

Craig couldn’t dote on the man’s death when blue-white branches and webs of high voltage electricity—unnaturally bright and near-blinding with each crackle and surge—randomly spat out across the room. He dodged the machines and anything metal. He was near the double-door exit. The walls were blanketed by flames. The electric jolts ended once he crossed the door and threshold. He pounded down the rubber-matted floors and doubled up the stairs. He stopped and looked about the living room with relief. The bars over the windows and doors were missing.

It was the machine the whole time. Dr. Krone wanted to protect his investment. The machine was his security system.

He lunged out the door in case the electricity decided to shoot out at him without warning. Escaping through the front door, the night was thick and starless. He viewed the treetops of woods. The mansion was unassuming, he thought. The air was still. Absolutely calm. The din of fire eating the walls, the foundation expressing its distaste of its slow disintegration, Craig looked on down the long gravel driveway and snow-covered lawn. He shivered in the freezing cold. There were lights on in the far distance, perhaps a quarter of a mile from his standing point. He could knock on a door for help.

He watched the smoke pour from each window and the fire climb to the upstairs quarters. The electricity branches were gone. The machines had been damaged enough by the fires to be rendered useless, he believed. Craig prayed the secrets Dr. Krone uncovered about the human mind and their connections to the machine remained un-recovered.

Take your time getting help.

Let the house burn some more.

Q&A

Craig changed out of his hospital gown into the clothing his mother brought him yesterday—a pair of blue jeans, a button-up orange-and-white-checkered shirt, and new Sketchers shoes. Three days, he stayed at St. Luke’s Mercy Hospital. He wasn’t critically injured, he learned, after the doctor ran his tests. The CAT scans proved he had no brain damage. Dr. Robyn Chambers, a physical therapist, tested his joints and their reaction to stimulus, and garnered positive results. His main doctor, Dr. Hank Herman, was adamantly concerned about the wounds to the eyes and skull he received. Dr. Herman claimed he’d never come across such strange and accurate insertions. They didn’t harm any critical junctures in the brain.

“It’s amazing how precise these insertions were made,” Dr. Herman repeated during the checkup. “Most people with this deep of brain trauma would suffer memory loss, nerve damage, or lose basic motor function—or brain function would terminate altogether. Whoever created these knew what they were doing.”

He kept his comments to a minimum. The long walk to reach the house of Dr. Krone’s neighbor allowed him time to think. Nobody would believe his amazing story. How would he explain the events? “Dr. Krone stuck me in the head and eyes with needles and my memories projected onto a screen. Oh, and then I was hooked up to this machine, and I got to travel back in time and replay my memories. And if that’s not interesting enough, Dr. Krone typed in commands on this machine, and my memories became flesh and blood too. They were monsters, some of them. My wife was a rotting corpse. My best friend, Alice, her miscarried baby was a…well, never mind. Can you imagine it, though?”

He also feared who could learn the truth. He wasn’t sure how much of the mansion burned down. He’d drive down to the property today and check it over. He prayed the VHS tapes and the machines were destroyed. What if he did tell the truth? Somebody would be interested. There were enough psychiatrists and doctors who’d love to enter people’s brains and tinker with their processes and live their patients’ memories as their own. The souls of the insane had ruined what could’ve been an honest scientific breakthrough. It could’ve cured a lot of unsound minds.

Some things are too crazy to be true.

He walked past the emergency waiting room and out of the rotating doors when he was blindsided by a detective. He wasn’t dressed as the atypical detective. The wardrobe was simple—brown leather coat, Chicago Bulls ball cap, and black khakis pants. The man was in his early thirties, clean shaven, and his face beaded with a healthy zeal. He smiled at Craig. The detective flashed his identification.