Aurora Wolf

Future Tense

By

Rory Steves

     “No!” I screamed, “No! Must stop her! Must protect her!”

     The door opened, and in walked the blonde nightshift nurse with the needle. I could never quite see her face in the shadows. I pulled at the restraints that held me to the bed. Watching every move her hands made.

     “Is love the only answer,” I asked as the needle slid into my arm, “or is death the only truth?”

     “Go to sleep,” she said as the drug trickled into my bloodstream, “and be quiet. You had your chance.”

     As I drifted off, I realized how terribly afraid of her I was. Then despite the drug, the horrible dream that haunted me most returned.

#

     The next morning, I had another session with the Psychiatrist, Dr. Moron. “Do you remember,” the shrink asked, “when you came here?”

     “I didn’t come here willing to your lunatic assembly.”

     “You were sent here by the good doctors at the hospital. I had no choice over the matter.” My male pattern baldness shrink told me, “You were catatonic, and the state facilities were over crowded.”

     “Do you wear that stupid little goatee out of Freud envy?” I asked to irritate him.

     The two orderlies snickered, earning them a disapproving look from the shrink. I wondered if he practiced it in front of a mirror.

     I noticed then that he wore a wedding band. How could any women be that desperate?

     I imagined she must be about four foot tall, obese, and covered with warts.

     It made me smile.

     “Something funny?”

     “Your left eyebrow,” I answered, “it twitches like a caterpillar humping itself.”

     One of the guards snickered again, and the other slapped his arm.

     “That will be all for today.”

     The orderlies marched me back to my room.

#

     “No, no, no,” I muttered to myself, “don’t make me choose!”

     “Choose what?” the night orderly asked, peering into my room.

     “Is love the only answer,” I asked, “or is death the only truth?”

     “Were you a philosopher or something, before you arrived here?” he asked.

     “I… I knocked on doors.” But why?

     Was that part of the answer? The answer was the key; but what did it open?

     “Why’d you knock on doors?” he asked.

     “Important, maybe part of the answer,” I muttered.

     Before my mind drove me over the brink, the orderly steered our conversation to sports.

     Soon enough the nurse was back and my reoccuring dream.

#

     “Sleep well?” the sneering little twerp – my shrink – asked.

     “Are dreams memories,” dazed from the overdose I asked, “or are memories dreams?”

     “Tell me about your dreams,” he said.

     “Go hump yourself,” I calmly told him. I was that far gone.

     His eyebrow started twitching, much earlier than normal.

     “Does vision hold the future, or the past within its hand?”

     “Which seems more real to you,” my ice-pick-for-a-nose shrink asked, “the past or the future?”

     “Well,” I said, “in the present, you have a pimple on your nose, maybe you should lay off the soda pop for a while.”

     He was unable to resist touching the blemish, or hide his irritation. “Does something amuse you?” he demanded.

     “Your eyebrow is humping itself again. Hey! It makes me smile, sorry.”

     He tried to harrumph, but it sounded more like a mouse squeak.

     A knock sounded at the door, and Dr. Pencil-neck glanced up from his notes. “Come in.”

     The door opened, and in walked a nurse; tall, lithe, and bleached blond. The night nurse. I shrunk in within myself, remembering the shadowed nightmare and her promises. She placed a few papers on the doctor’s desk to be signed.

     But I couldn’t help getting a better look at her. I gasped for breath as another flash back of memory overwelmed me. Recognition perhaps. “Are we married?” I asked. My mind didn’t want to wrap around the thought of my nightmare. Unsure if I could believe that I wasn’t still dreaming I clammed up.

     Then a brief assuredness bloomed from inside, “No, not to you, wrong hair.”

     “And what’s wrong with my hair?” she demanded. There was something there hidden behind her eyes.

     “Too short,” I said, “should be long, black,” I paused, “and wavy. Your face, you look like her on the outside. But not on the inside.”

     Anger that’s what he saw in her eyes.

     “This woman with the long black hair, who is she?” his Geekness asked.

     “My wife,” I answered.

     “So, you’re married,” he sounded so happy with the progress.

     “No.”

      He gave another mouse grumble.

     “It sounds,” the blond suggested, “like he’s very confused. I would watch myself with this one doctor. Maybe even up his meds.”

     I watched as she left the office, the dream, my wife was in danger.

     “Must warn her,” I muttered, “must stop her, so beautiful.”

     “Warn who? Stop who?” his eyebrow was twitching even faster than normal.

     “My wife,” I said, as if to a remarkably stupid child.

     “You said you weren’t married.”

     “I’m not.”

     The orderlies led me back to my room before his eyebrow tied itself into a knot.

#

     “Why do you goad him so much?” the orderly who brought my pills and lunch asked.

     “Dr. Pencil-neck?” I tongued the pill that made me stupid to the side of my cheek to the wall.  I offered to appease him. “Because he’s way too self-important, and self-centered. That wedding band; is he actually married?”

     “Yeah,” the orderly said, “and to a totally hot babe.”

     I stared at him; my earlier estimate of his intelligence seemed a bit off the mark.

     He offered sheepishly, “She has some serious digestive problems; everything gives her gas.”

     I nodded, maybe not that far off the mark after all.

#

     “You gotta shower,” the same orderly said as he unlocked my door, barely an hour after lunch. He carried a dress shirt and slacks, and hung them on the door.

     “Why?”

     “You have a visitor, a VIP,” he explained, “hurry up.”

     Showered, shaved, and dressed, he led me back to Dr. Pimple-face’s office.

#

     I sat in my accustomed seat, with my guards, and watched the other door.

     “Who are you?” The doctor asked me, stress driving his blood pressure to newfound heights. “Who are you to have friends like this?”

     I ignored him, waiting. Pretending to be in a drug haze.

     He picked up his phone, and spoke into it. “Send the Assemblywoman in.”

     The door opened, and I fell in love again, just as I did every time I saw her. Her beauty and presence caused my heart to momentarily freeze.

     I stood, spotting the small matching scar on her face that bound us as one. Molly?

     “Jonathan!” she exclaimed, throwing her arms around me. “I’ve been looking everywhere for you.”

     “His name is Jonathan?” Dr. Geek asked, his brilliance shining as dimly as ever. “We have him listed as John Doe 11806. He was catatonic when he arrived.”

     “That’s not likely. What have you done to him?” she demanded.

     “Just daily interviews,” he said.

     “Plus valium, and lots of other drugs.” I added, “And restraints, padded rooms and lots of needles.”

“Who authorized this? This isn’t a state run facility.”

“We’re privately funded.”

“Who?” She glared at the pip-squeak, her fury strong enough to scorch those twitching eyebrows.

Transfixed, caterpillar-face never noticed a monster of a man enter the office. Smugly, I recognized the man as Doug. I rolled my eyes at Caterpillar-face and grinned. He busied himself at the doctor’s small medicine cabinet.

“I don’t know. A relative I suppose.”

     “This ends now,” she told him, “you will release him to my custody immediately.”

     “Not possible,” he declared. “He may still pose a danger to himself or others. It will be at least six months before he will be eligible for release; we have a long way to go.”

     “Don’t try and brush me off.” My savior never let up, keeping him distracted. “You can’t keep him that long.”

     Dr. Delightful winced when Doug’s huge hand squeezed his shoulder. Then he looked in horror at the hypodermic needle in Doug’s other hand.

     The orderlies wisely refrained from interfering.

     “Please don’t upset my boss,” Doug said. “Now be a good little shrink and sign the release papers.”

     “I can’t,” he whimpered as Doug tightened his grip, “it’s against protocol.”

     Doug reached around and held the needle in front of his face. “This is full of random samples from your cabinet. Want to try some?”

     “My secretary,” my former shrink said, “will have to type up the papers.”

     In walked another man dressed in an immaculate suit. He had the lawyer look down pat. “She just finished,” Fred winked at me, sliding the forms onto the desk. He waved a medical file folder hidden behind his back at the assembly woman.

     Sir Geekness didn’t hesitate; he signed each page.

     The shrink rubbed his shoulder after Doug released his grip. “This is highly irregular,” he complained. “I’m going to file a complaint.”

     He had forgotten the needle.

     Doug hadn’t.

     “Noooo!” he moaned, and then passed out on his desk, his eyebrow finally able to rest.

     Doug threw the unconscious shrink over his shoulder, and looked at the orderlies.  “Just a little Haldol and Adivan, he’ll be napping for awhile.” He turned to the orderlies. “Which way to the padded rooms?”

     It would be a new experience for John Doe 11807.

#

     “Molly!” I said, as we climbed into the back seat of a black Blazer. “Your name is Molly; Molly from Poly.”

     She smiled. I was the one who had put ‘Molly from Poly’ into her campaign. It told her voters she was one of them, getting her degree, in economics, from the local Poly-tech college.

     Her opponent that first time had graduated from Harvard, and had never stood a chance.

     “Where to?” Doug asked.

     “Call my dad, and ask him to meet us at home. He’s the only one I can trust to help Jonathan.”

     “Jonathan,” she looked at me, “my father is a psychiatrist, but not like the one where you were. I want him to read this,” she tapped the file they had acquired. “I think he can help you. I don’t know what that idiot did to you, but if anyone can help you, dad can.”

     “I remember your dad. I like him,” I told her. “Can I have a beer?”

     “Now that sounds like our Jonathan,” Fred said, and handed me a light beer from the front passenger seat.

     “Thanks,” I said, and drained the bottle.

     “Just one for now,” Molly said, stopping Fred from passing me a second bottle. He smiled weakly at me, and passed me a water canister instead.

     “Ma’am,” Doug driving, put his cell phone down. “Your father will meet us at home.”

     Molly leaned against my shoulder, before answering. “Thank you, Doug.”

#

     “Jonathan!” Molly’s dad, Dr. Xavier, greeted me as her mom ushered us into the den, where he and his partner, Dr. Tomlinson, waited. “I am so glad you’re back.”

     “Only partway back, Dr. Dad,” I said, shaking his hand. “The memories, dreams, they don’t stop; they fill me with terror.”

     “Let’s see what treatment they were using,” he said, reaching for the file.

     “Doug, Fred,” he looked up. “Please bring us a few cold beers from the kitchen, plus some sport drinks. Then fire up the sauna.”

     Cold beer, is it any wonder I like this psychiatrist? Besides fathering the most beautiful woman to ever grace our world.

     “One beer,” he cautioned eyeballing me, “then sport drinks.”

     “Dad?” Molly asked, ever the worry wart.

     “Don’t worry, kid,” he said. “I’m going to sweat it out of him after I read his file.”

     That meant the sauna.

     The beer was cold, and excellent. I watched him read my file that bore the label John Doe 11806.

     I imagined that John Doe 11807 was going to have a bad day tomorrow.

     “Damn him!” Dr. Dad shouted. “Of all the stupid, idiotic, incompetent stunts!”

     “What is it?” Molly asked.

     “Not only did they pump practically the entire pharmacy into Jonathan,” he explained, “but he combined it with ECT; electroconvulsive therapy. What was this man up to?”

     “Electroconvulsive?” Molly asked.

     “Commonly known as electric shock therapy,” he said. “For a while it was believed to be useful as a treatment for schizophrenia, including catatonia, it was the standard treatment back in those days. Not used now.”

     “Except,” Dr. Dad pointed at a notation. “I don’t think Jonathon was ever schizophrenic. Reading this file makes me think of a major depressive disorder, which can have catatonic features, plus delusional guilt, hopelessness, extreme anxiety, even memory deficit. But…”

     “Dad,” Molly interrupted, “in English?”

     “Intentional misdiagnosis,” he said, “this way he could experiment. Or something even more underhanded. Plus there is no proper admission paperwork.”

     “Can you fix me?” I asked feeling the beer.

     “First we need to flush all that garbage out of your system,” Dr. Tomlinson spoke up. “Two ways we do that.”

     “More beer and the sauna?” I asked hopefully, waving the top of the frosted long neck at him.

     “Partially correct,” he said. “Lots of  fluids to sweat out as much as possible.  This helps to flush out the chemicals from your system. Then a little helper to trigger the memory.”

     “Agreed,” Dr. Dad said. “But it’s Jonathan’s call.”

     “When can we start?” I asked.

     “This is an intravenous treatment,” Tomlinson warned me.

      To his surprise I rolled up my sleeve. “Dr. Dad trusts you, “that means I do, too.” I held out my arm.

     “I wish that all our patients trusted us like this.” Tomlinson confided opening a steril packet to clean the injection site.

     “Not all of our patients plan on marrying my daughter.”

     “You said yes?” My gaze fixed on her beautiful face.

     “Of course I said yes, silly,” Molly said, “I love you more than life, besides,” she touched her cheek, “we match.”

     Down her right cheek, and my left cheek, ran our matching brands.

     “And before you start to worry,” she informed me. “I said yes before the cathedral.”

     The cathedral, memories of pain and fear, as fire and death rained down upon us and so many others.

     I just listened to the others for a moment thinking. While Mrs. Xavier began passing bottles of sports water, the kind with electrolytes, to everyone in preparation for the sauna.

     “Doug, Fred,” Dr. Dad said. “I know you don’t like the sauna, but we may need your strength if he has a reaction.”

     Both men took a container from the tray. Doug shrugged and spoke, ”Doc, there isn’t anything that we wouldn’t do for him.”

     “We’d be dead,” Fred added, “if Jonathan hadn’t run back into that hell, and pulled both of us out.”

     When the terrorists had set off their fire bombs inside the cathedral, all I could do was to cover Molly with my body. Then I had carried her out to safety. A red hot shard had given us our matching brands. Doug and Fred weren’t in sight, so I had pushed past the police, and gone back in.

     They were my friends.

     “Keep some pressure there a moment,” Dr. Tomlinson told me, then applied a band-aid to where he had withdrawn the needle.

     “Got a bathing suit I can use?” He turned and asked Dr. Dad. “I’d like to be able to monitor him in the sauna.”

     “Here you go,” Mrs. Xavier said, as she passed out swim trunks to the guys. She handed a modest one-piece bathing suit to Molly.

Moms will be moms.

#

     “Slow, deep breaths,” Molly said when the heat stopped me partway into the sauna. She led me to a bench, and sat next to me.

     It was a large sauna, and held all of us, and our sweat.

     Just about the time we had gotten used to the heat, Dr. Dad picked up a ladle and added some water to the rocks.

     Sweat changed from mere trickles to rivers. Molly must love me I thought, because my sweat stank of chemicals and steel mills.

#

     Barely a half hour passed before slipped off to sleep. I fought the dreams as the memories returned.

     “No, no, no,” I cried, “I can’t! Must stop her, must warn her. So beautiful.”

     I awoke to Molly on her knees in front of me holding my head gripped her hands.

     “Look at me Jonathan,” she ordered. “Look at me.”

     My eyes locked on hers, I barely noticed Doug and Fred slip to either side of me. I tried to concentrate my world only on her.

     “What do you have to warn me about?” Molly asked.

     “Kill, no, no, no!”

     “Who is going to kill me?” she asked, far more calm than I could imagine.

     “Me!” I wailed as tears flowed down my face, “I can’t stop the dreams.”

     “Aaaahhhh,” I sputtered. Dr. Dad’s aim was precise a half bucket of water was thrown in my face.

     “Shower time for everyone,” he said, “then my office.”

#

     We were gathered again in the study.

“Jonathan,” Dr. Dad said, “we need to examine these dreams in detail. But without the terror they give you. I’d like to use hypnosis. Normally, I would wait a few days, but I don’t think we can.”

     “Can we do it tonight?” I asked. “Only one dream gives me terror,” I said, “the other is quite pleasant.” 

     He motioned for everyone to be quite as I lay down on the couch.

     His voice was soft and soothing while he talked me under, asking me easy questions to build the rapport.

     “Jonathan,” he asked, “how much weight can you bench press for ten reps?”

     “Three hundred ninety five pounds,” I told him.

     “How many marathons have you run in?”

     “Thirty-eight.”

     “How many times have you finished the Iron Man Triathlon?”

     “Thirteen.”

     “Do you love Molly?”

     “Yes.”

     “Could you ever hurt her?”

     “Never.”

     “These two dreams,” his soothing voice asked, “can you describe the bad one to us?”

     “Molly is speaking into a microphone,” I said, “in a crowded auditorium. Doug and Fred are behind her, protecting her.” 

     “In an upper hallway I see her, I see Molly,” I continued. “She’s lying on the floor behind a window. She’s sighting in a rifle; she’s going to kill Molly!”

     “Relax, Jonathan,” her father’s calm voice reassured me.

     “I grab a fire axe,” I continued, the words coming faster now. “I must stop her, I must protect her. I come up behind her and swing the axe. It hits her head,” I’m crying now, “I’ve killed Molly.”

     “You said earlier,” Dr. Dad’s calm voice asked, “that Molly was speaking into a microphone, and then sighting in a rifle. Are these two separate time periods?”

     “Same time – same event – same memory.”

     “The other memory, can you tell us about it?” Dad asked.

     “Molly and I are in a meadow, filled with flowers and butterflies.”

     “What are you doing in the meadow?”

     “Making love,” I said.

     “Is this a day before or after the other dream?”

     “The same day.”

     “That’s enough for one day, time to wake up Jonathan,” Dad said, and began counting backwards from ten to one.

     When he reached one, I sat up instantly.

     “I for one,” Molly’s Mom said, “vote for the second dream.”

     Molly laughed, “Me too.”

     “No easy answers,” Dad said to me, “your dreams form an interesting paradox.”

     “I didn’t know,” I looked at Molly. “If they were dreams or memories.”

#

     The next couple of weeks were more of the same. Molly took to going on long walks with me. Fred and Doug always a couple paces behind.

     As the pharmaceuticals were flushed out of my body, my memory improved. I continued my sessions with Dr. Dad. I even remembered why I knocked on doors.

#

     I had originally volunteered to work on her first campaign as a door to door canvasser, asking people to vote for “Molly from Poly”.

Her cousin, who I was dating at the time, was thoroughly pissed. She had some competition complex going on. I began avoiding her because she made me uncomfortable with her negative nagging and sometimes venomous tirades about Molly.

“You’ll regret your chose,” were her last words to me on the phone.

Those first days, I didn’t even know where my new idol stood on any issues. When a sweet little old lady asked me why she should vote for Molly, I gave her the only answer I had.

     “She’s so beautiful.”

     “Does she know,” she leaned forward with a smile, “how much you love her?”

     “I doubt she even knows my name,” I admitted.

     “Better introduce yourself, young man,” she said, her eyes twinkling, “it’s easier to propose that way.”

     I had no idea she would actually call Molly’s campaign office and tell on me. That’s how I met Fred and Doug as they closed in on me as I walked into the office.

     “You’re the one,” Molly brushed between them and accused me. “You’re telling people to vote for me because you think I’m beautiful?”

     “You are beautiful. Isn’t that enough?” I added with dumb puppy love. “My name is Jonathan.”

     “Hello Jonathan,” she shook my hand and sighed. “I’m ‘Molly from Poly’ as you say it. We’re going to use that in our next radio ad.”

     She looked down at her hand, which I was still holding. I wondered if she could feel the connection between us, too.

     “You can let go now,” she said. “I need you to read these.” She put a stack of brochures and papers in the same hand that had been holding hers. “Just so you’ll know where I stand on issues, and you can give the people more reasons to vote for me, instead of just the beautiful thing.”

     “It’s why I’m voting for you,” I said.

     She actually blushed at that.

     “Thank you,” she said quietly, and then hurried into her office.

     Fred and Doug were watching me.

     “At first I thought she was going to run you off,” Doug commented.

     “Yeah. Right after she knocked his block off,” Fred chuckled.

     “Why?” I asked.

     “Let’s grab a beer,” Fred offered shaking his head. “Then you have some studying to do.”

     The beer was cold, and good. I flipped through the paperwork while we talked.

     “Thanks,” I said as I finished my beer, and handed Fred the papers. “I’m finished with these.”

     “You need to study them,” he said.

     “Ask me anything you want,” I said. “Her positions are based on common sense, and well grounded in the history of our nation. Her ideas economically are straight forward, and should put the state back in the black in two years, possibly three if she meets resistance. But I think she should consider a funds rollover to further help the police. And her idea of having prisoners grow their own food is financially viable.”

     They just stared at me.

     “Trick memory,” I said, tapping my head.

     Five minutes later I was explaining my funds rollover idea to Molly in her office.

     “I like it,” she said. She looked at me for a long moment. “Perhaps you should be one of my advisors, instead of working as a canvasser.”

     “Then how would I tell everyone how beautiful you are? I can do you more good going door to door, and I’ll tell you every idea I get.”

     “Deal,” she said.

     We shook hands, and I amazed myself by taking her hand, and raising it to my lips. “You are beautiful.”

     I had nearly run out of the office.

#

     Another memory pushed into crowd out the last.

     “What’s this?” Fred asked, picking up the brochure for that weekend’s marathon, the one I had snuck onto her desk.

     “Number 138?” Doug asked, reading over Fred’s shoulder.

     “Sounds like the number we should be cheering for on Saturday.” Molly said.

     All three had shown up, and laughed as they pointed at the slogan I had drawn onto my shirt.

Make government beautiful,

Vote for,

Molly from Poly!

     She invited me to her dad’s barbeque that Sunday.

     Her dad liked me.

Her mom thought I was sweet.

#

     Another memory  returned, one more pleasant than all the others. Molly asked me while we walked one morning.

     “Do you remember our first date?”

     “The Italian restaurant?”

     “You had arranged,” she said, wistful, “for the musicians to play nothing but love songs while we ate.”

     “You enjoyed them,” I reminded her.

     Neither of us remembers who seduced who that first night.

     The next day I had arrived at her office with a small black box. She was talking to a couple staffers as I walked up.

     When she turned to greet me I dropped to one knee, and proposed.

     I was scared silly.

     “Yes, Jonathan,” she had said. “I will happily marry you.”

     Fear transmuted into joy.

#

     “Time to wake up Jonathan,” Dr. Dad said, having finished his countdown.

     “Any progress?” I asked.

     “Yes,” he said, his voice disturbed. “Now we know the date.”

     “March 21st,” I said, “the first day of spring.”

     “Also the day,” Fred said, “Molly announces her candidacy for Governor.”

     “Promise me,” I pleaded, “that you will keep me away from Molly, even if you have to kill me.”

     Fred and Doug looked at each other. “We’ll keep you away,” Doug assured him, “but that’s all we can promise.”

     “We’ll do it like always,” Fred said. “Doug and I will act as bodyguards, you will roam around the perimeter; that should keep you far enough away.”

     “You must carry guns, and Molly must wear a vest,” I insisted.

     “Why,” Doug asked, “your dream points to an axe?”

     “The rifle,” Dr. Dad said. “Jonathan is thinking about the rifle.”

     “Like the man said,” Doug nodded, “Molly wears a vest.”

     In the week leading up to Molly’s announcement, Fred, Doug, and I checked and rechecked every square inch of the auditorium where she would give her speech.

     I memorized sighting angles, and the location of every fire axe in the building.

     The dreams got worse.

     I had to protect her.

     From me.

#

     Time marched slowly, until the day arrived for me to kill Molly.

     I vowed to kill myself first if I had to.

     She wore a beautiful blue pant suit, the jacket hiding the Kevlar.

     So beautiful.

#

     “A couple of years ago,” Molly said into the microphone. “One of my door to door canvassers dropped to his knees, and presented me with an engagement ring.”

     The crowd applauded as she held up her hand to show off the ring. Light glittered from it, but I saw another glint, high up in a window. I ran for the stairs.

     “Tomorrow, I plan to marry him,” she said, causing me to stumble on the stairs at her unexpected change of plans.

     I tried to wave at Doug and Fred, to warn them. Molly thought I was waving at her, and blew me a kiss.

     The applause was thunderous.

     “But for today,” she continued, “I have another announcement to make.”

     My heart thundered in my chest as I raced up the stairs, taking them two at a time. I tried to find the strength to move faster. I had to protect her, I had to stop her.

     “I have been proud to serve you,” she said, “as your Assemblywoman, and I hope…”

I grabbed the fire axe as I sprinted down the hallway, only seconds now.

“That you will allow me to serve you…”

Her long wavy black hair was swept back on her shoulders as she sighted the rifle, her finger on the trigger beginning to tighten.

“As your Governor!”

     “Nooooo!” I screamed.

She looked up with that beautiful face as I swung the axe with all my strength, cleaving the assassin’s skull with a messy splatter.

     The rifle fell from her lifeless grip to the auditorium floor, its impact hidden by the applause the announcement created.

     “No, no, no!” I cried, falling to my knees, I could only stair at the blood and the back of her head that hid her face. “No, dear God no.”

#

     “Jonathan,” Doug’s voice, his hand shaking my shoulder.

     “No, no, no,” I wailed. “I’ve killed her. I was supposed to protect her, no, no, no.”

     “Jonathan!” This time Doug’s hand slapped me in the face, “It isn’t her.”

     “No, no, no,” his words lost on me, nothing mattered, not anymore.

     “Jonathan,” Molly called. “Look at me.”

I opened my eyes, her hands cradled my face, moving my gaze to her beautiful face. “I’m alive, you saved my life.”

     “What? How? You’re alive!” My arms flew around her, pulling her close, reality wasn’t making any sense. I had killed her, but she was alive. I held her tight.

     “Who is she?” Molly asked as Fred and Doug examined the body.

     Fred used a pen to move her hair away, causing the black wig to slip and revealing the short bleached-blond hair beneath.

     It was the night nurse and his ex-girl friend. She declared it was her or no one else the day they parted.

     “I think it’s your look alike of a nutcase cousin,” he said, then used his handkerchief to methodically wipe my prints from the axe handle. “You need to be gone before the police get here.”

     Doug drove us home, while Fred stayed behind to work with the police.

#

     When we reached Dr. Dad’s house, Molly took my hand, and tugged him away from the parking area.

     “Let’s go find that meadow we have a dream to fulfill,” she told him.

     Best therapy in the world.