Author: Unlikelybon

Unlikelybonhttp://everydaybonnie.comFull-time mom, part-time human.
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The Endless Doom

Dropping a new short story for y’all called “The Endless Doom”. Let me know what you think. Not proofreading before I drop it. So if you find any glaring mistakes let me know.

The Endless Doom

“Mark, you came into today’s session saying you had big news and now you’re refusing to talk about it. I can’t force you to face your issues, Mark, but if you really want to see improvement, you have to be willing to talk about these things.”

“I know you’re right. It’s just, I don’t know what this means for me and Erika.”

“Well, Mark, what do you want it to mean?”

“I don’t know. Erika is everything I’ve ever wanted but…”

“But what, Mark?”

“She’s… there’s something about her that I…”

“Mark, you have twenty minutes left in today’s session. You can spend the time however you like but I recommend using it to really get to the heart of this issue you have with Erika.”

“Alright… Well, you know I met Erika in the fall…”

Mark met Erika through mutual friends. She was intelligent, beautiful, the life of the party. Mark had always been more reserved, trying hard to fit in wherever he went. He wanted to be liked, and not stand out. But he was immediately drawn to the funny girl with the crooked smile.

Erika, however, was not drawn to Mark. While she debated current politics with a group in the corner, Mark stood close by and just nodded along, never taking his eyes from her face. Erika hardly noticed him.

When their mutual friend Greg excused himself to attend to other guests, Mark and Erika found themselves alone.

“So, what do you do, Mark?”

“Uh, I’m a writer.”

“Oh? Would I have read anything you’ve written?”

“Not unless you’ve read The Endless Doom series.”

“No. What is it?”

“It’s a comic series. I do the writing. Stefan draws.”

“Oh.”

And that was it. Erika gave a weak smile and found an excuse to leave. Mark was a leaf blowing across her path on a windy day. She wouldn’t have been able to pick him out of a lineup the next morning.

But for Mark it was entirely different. He’d met a few beautiful and fascinating women but none that consumed his every thought the way Erika did. In the few moments they’d had together at Greg’s party he’d memorized every line of her face, the way she smelled, the lilt of her voice. He was certain he’d never see her again and just as certain that she would occupy every waking moment of his day for weeks to come.

“So, how’s the comic biz?” Greg asked, having returned to the corner after seeing Mark alone. He liked Mark but in the way you like someone you pity.

“Excuse me,” Mark said. He couldn’t make small talk with Greg at that moment. He needed to get somewhere private. He rushed into the bathroom and unzipped. He wasn’t sure he’d ever been this hard before and it only took the lightest touch of his hand to find relief. Naturally, he left the party immediately after.

He spent the bus ride home scouring social media, looking for any profile of Erika’s. He looked through their mutual friends’ profiles but turned up nothing. In the end he used an avatar generator he found online to recreate her the way he remembered her. He just wanted to look at her a little while longer.

It was a month later, when he had just begun to think of her less, that he ran into her again. Mark and Stefan were leaving a local comic shop they frequented when Greg and Erika crossed their path one evening.

“Oh my god. This is crazy,” Greg was saying, “I was just telling Erika about your little series. What’s it called again?”

“The Endless Doom.” Mark tried not to stare but he couldn’t help himself.

“You remember Erika?” Greg asked. But he didn’t need to. Of course Mark remembered her. While Stefan introduced himself, Mark reacquainted himself with her features, her scent. He studied her, if only to later improve the look of the avatar he’d created.

“We were just about to go get some Chinese. Do you want to join?” Erika’s voice cut through Mark’s daydreaming. Before he could think, before Stefan could respond…

“Yes!” He smiled and averted his eyes. Had she noticed how he’d been staring?

The four of them went down the street and sat cramped together in a decrepit, old booth eating wontons and drinking beer. Mark found himself talking more than he usually did. Something about being in her presence was absolutely electric. Soon four became three and three became two.

“I don’t remember you being this funny the last time we met,” she said.

“I wasn’t.”

Erika laughed and her voice sounded like pixies skipping on the wind. Mark laughed too. Being with her felt natural and pure.

“You haven’t touched your food,” he said. Mark was right. Erika’s plate was the only one untouched. He was sure he’d seen her eating but there it was.

“I wasn’t really hungry,” she said.

The waitress came with the check and set it firmly on the table, hands on hips.

“You pay now. We closed.”

Mark smiled up at her embarrassed they’d overstayed their welcome and pulled out his wallet to pay. At the same time, Erika reached for her purse.

“Oh no, I got this,” Mark said.

“Such a gentleman,” she gushed. But for just a second Mark wondered if reaching for her purse had just been for show. It didn’t matter. He was here with her, and this was the closest he’d come to being on a date in a very long time.

“I’ll be right back,” she said, getting up from the table. “Wait for me outside?”

“Sure.”

Mark dutifully stood from the table and left the restaurant, wondering where the night would take them. There was a chill in the air, and after ten minutes of waiting he started to think she’d slipped out the back. Fifteen minutes went by and still Erika had not come out. He was on the brink of leaving after waiting a full twenty-one minutes when she rounded the corner of the building from the side alley.

“Geezus! You scared me. I was starting to think you’d left.”

“Sorry,” she said, “I got locked in.”

Mark looked back through the window of the restaurant. A staff member was still mopping the dining room floor. A needle pricked the back of his mind but one look from Erika dulled the sensation.

After that night they began seeing each other often. Erika worked third shift at a hospital so she was always asleep during the day and Mark’s work on The Endless Doom meant he could keep any hours he wanted. So most evenings if Erika wasn’t working, the two of them could be found walking the city streets together, frequenting any place that stayed open late. Mark found himself changing. Being with her brought something out of him that perhaps had always been there, buried. He was more confident, quicker to tell a joke. He started dressing better and even started to wear cologne. Anything he could do to keep Erika coming back for more.

But then one night it happened. At the end of a long night out, Erika excused herself and headed to the back of the restaurant. Just like that first night, and every night since, Mark paid the check and then stood to wait for her outside. He’d grown used to her ordering food she never touched and taking a very long time in the restroom at the end of the night. But this time, she’d forgotten her purse at the table. His first thought was to just take it with him outside. But a nagging feeling, that needle prick again, sent him with the purse through the little curtain in the back that Erika had just disappeared through. What he saw confused and angered him.

Erika was not heading into the restroom, as he’d presumed. She was flirting with a dishwasher and walking out the back door with him. Is this what she’d been doing every night? He couldn’t believe his eyes. Here was this perfect specimen of a woman, going out with him night after night, allowing him to pay for a dinner, never once kissing him goodnight, and now she was heading into the alley with some random dishwasher? It was more than he could take. He decided to follow her.

“Help me to understand,” his therapist interrupted. “You say you saw her go into the alley with this other man, you followed her, and you saw her kissing him?”

“No,” he said, “I said I thought she was kissing him. Except…”

Mark burst through the back door and found the two of them at the other end of the alley. The dishwasher had his back to the wall and Erika was leaning into him, her lips pressed against his throat. As Mark closed in on the pair, he could see Erika’s hands pressed against his shoulders. Her mouth moved across his throat while he moaned.

“What the hell, Erika?”

“Mark!” He’d startled her. And it was only then when she’d pulled away from the dishwasher that Mark saw.

“You saw blood,” his therapist asked.

“Yes.”

“What are you saying, Mark? I’m not sure I’m understanding.”

Relief flooded Mark’s body. The blood dripping from Erika’s lips was a much more welcome sight. She wasn’t kissing him. She was…

“Wait. What’s happening?”

Erika turned back to the dishwasher and wiped the blood from his neck.

“Go back inside, Diego. I’ll see you next week.”

Diego, for his part, did exactly as he was told, though clumsily as if in a daze.

“Mark,” Erika pleaded, wiping blood from her lips, “Please let me explain.”

And that was how they spent the rest of the night. They walked through the city together while Erika explained to Mark what he’d seen and a few other things about herself that she’d been keeping from him.

“Mark, you don’t seriously expect me to believe Erika is a vampire, do you?” His therapist had removed her glasses and was now rubbing her temples. “Surely, all of this is some kind of role play for her.”

But that is exactly what Mark had said to Erika.

“You don’t really expect me to believe you’re a vampire, do you? This has to be some kind of kink thing, right?”

“This is who I am, and who I have been for more than a century. Diego is one of my familiars. I have several around the city that allow me to feed. I haven’t killed anyone in a very long time. I find it easier to stay in one place if I don’t leave a string of bodies in my wake.”

Mark considered this. He wasn’t sure if he believed her completely but so many things about her made more sense when viewed in this light. She never ate. She never left her apartment before sunset. She had no social media presence at all. She wouldn’t even allow him to take a photograph of her. Then there was the way he’d always been inexplicably drawn to her. Had she put him under some kind of spell?

“So what does that make me? Am I a familiar?”

“You’re my boyfriend, silly.” Erika smiled and looped her arm through his as they continued to walk. “A familiar has no choice. Once I’ve set my sights on someone, they are under my control until I release them. I keep familiars around for food. I never put you under any spell and I’ve never fed off of you.”

“Boyfriend.” He liked the sound of that. “Ok, but how can I be your boyfriend? We’ve never even kissed, Erika.”

She stopped walking and looked into his eyes.

“I know, Mark. I was afraid.”

Her? Afraid? She was easily the most confident woman he’d ever known. She was so far out of his league he never even bothered to tell people he was seeing her. He didn’t think anyone would believe him. And now she’d just revealed that she was a powerful non-human entity. What did she have to be afraid of?

“I was afraid that if I kissed you, you’d fall under my spell and become just another familiar. You’re with me because you want to be, not because you have to be. I didn’t want to lose that.”

He stared deeply into her eyes. He thought about the first time they’d met at Greg’s party. He’d never been more drawn to someone. He’d been so completely consumed by her that he’d had to go into the bathroom to masturbate just so he could relieve himself of a painful erection. He was embarrassed just thinking about it. But now he realized that perhaps it wasn’t his fault. Perhaps it was just the supernatural allure she possessed. Thinking about it now, he wasn’t sure if he was really attracted to her at all, or if it was just a spell she’d unintentionally cast on him. There was only one way to know.

He leaned in and kissed her.

“So?” his therapist asked. “What happened?”

“I’m not her familiar,” Mark said with a smile. “I’m her boyfriend.”

“So you’ve decided to embrace this then?”

“I think so. The real issues is… What I wanted to bring up…”

“Mark, your time is almost up.”

“She asked me to move in with her.”

“This is what you wanted to talk about?”

“Yes,” he sighed, having finally gotten it out. “It would be a huge step for me. Like I said, she’s everything I’ve ever wanted. But she’s…”

“She’s a vampire. Or at least thinks she is a vampire. And this is what is holding you back?”

“Yes.” He relaxed. It was hard to talk about this, but it seemed his therapist was beginning to understand the problem. “I’m already somewhat of a night owl, so it isn’t really her sleep schedule I’m worried about. But if I move in with her, am I going to have to put up with familiars there? Also, every window in her apartment is covered to block out the sun. I’m not exactly a morning person but I like a little light through the window. So I’ll miss that. And I don’t know if I can even have Stefan over to her place to work on The Endless Doom. I don’t know it’s just a lot to consider.”

Mark’s therapist looked at her watch.

“We’re ten minutes over, Mark. Let’s circle back to this next week, okay?”

“Ok. I think I might say yes. But I don’t know yet. We can talk about it next week.”

The Catnip Paradox, Vibes, and The Real Reason I’m Single.

Is ignorance bliss? Is self-awareness is a blessing or a curse? I don’t have answers to these questions. All I know is me.

If you know me or read me, you know I’m perpetually on a quest to know thyself and that I’m always aiming to improve myself. Reading any of my personal essays will clue you in to the fact that I am often a mess because healing isn’t linear but I never let my messiness stop me. You’ll also figure out that since my divorce, I think and write about romantic relationships, love, sex, marriage, and all that jizz jazz often. Why? Cuz I got dumped, dummy. LOL. Ok, but for real, it’s because like everyone on the planet I want to be loved and wanted and I don’t want to be alone. My fear that I’m inherently unlovable, undesirable, and will always be alone has driven me and not in healthy ways.

So it’ll come as no surprise at all that this personal essay is about that shit. Again. You’re bored already and I get it. I’m bored too. LOL. So for both of our sakes’ I will try to keep this brief.

Here is my latest theory and the reasons behind it, as quickly and as succinctly as my loquacious little fingers can write it:

Theory: I don’t think I will ever be in another serious relationship.

Reasons:

One: I rely too heavily on vibes.

I don’t really give people much of a chance on dating apps. If I don’t feel it pretty quickly, I move on. Truthfully, I find most of the “talking stage” to be so egregiously tedious that I would rather lose the ability to speak (something that might kill me) than to have to suffer through innumerable iterations of the mother fucking talking stage. KMN.

One A: If I don’t find you mentally stimulating, game over.

If I hate the talking stage so much, how will I ever find out if I find someone mentally stimulating? I don’t know, bitch. I don’t make the rules. Again, it’s about vibes. If the vibes are vibing then I’ll stick around long enough to find out if you’re a dumb dumb or not. If I find myself dissociating while you’re telling me a story, we probably aren’t gonna go on very many dates.

Two: I have a type and my type’s type is not me.

It’s cliche but I like me a bad boy with a heart of gold. Or to put it another way, there is a certain type of masculine energy that is absolute catnip for me. However, the type of masculinity that I’m attracted to is not attracted to soft, autistic, nerdy girls. They want the hot, baddie. The girl all the bad guys want is not me. LOL. And let’s be real just cuz Sandra Dee dressed up like a dominatrix at the end of Grease didn’t mean she was really a “bad girl”. I could try to play the part of a baddie, but the reality is I’m not. I’m an emotional, socially awkward, fat girl. (With a wicked sense of humor and entertaining writing style, but that’s neither here nor there.)

Two A: I know that to someone out there, I am absolute catnip. The problem is they are not catnip to me.

I’m talking about catnip a lot. The point is somewhere out in this wide world there are people who like my personality, think my face is pretty, and don’t mind my soft bod. But the people who like me I don’t typically vibe with. It’s extremely problematic. LOL.

I see one likely outcome, one “eh, idk, maybe” outcome, and one “would take an act of a deity to happen” outcome as a result of all this.

Likely: I continue to go on casual dates and make friends and have fun but never settle into another serious relationship. It’s a bummer but I’m starting to accept this as my fate for being such a picky ass.

Eh, Idk, Maybe: I settle for someone who is not my type but that likes me and I get along with. I mean, this could happen. I’ve settled before. I wouldn’t be alone. But I’d probably be bored.

Would Take An Act Of A Deity To Happen: I meet someone I fall head over heels for. We vibe. They stimulate me mentally. They’re a baddie with a heart of gold. And somehow, impossibly, I’m exactly what they want too. I know, sounds unlikely. One in a million.

That’s it guys. That’s my theory and the reasons behind it. I’ll be honest, today I am ok with the likely outcome of being alone forever. Today, I can handle it. Another day, who knows? But for now, I accept it. I accept myself as I am. And for today, I love myself.

I started this post asking if ignorance is bliss. Would I be happier if I weren’t so self-aware? If I wasn’t always reexamining myself in order to improve as a human being, would I just be a happy, ignorant, slut? IDFK. But at the moment, instead of making myself miserable because I’m not loved/wanted/with someone, I am accepting myself and my singleness and knowing that somehow it will all be ok.

Dr. Palmer’s Life Affirming Hypnotherapy Clinic and Alterations

Ok, friends. I finally finished the random word short story I promised you. I was given five random words that had to be included in the story and y’all gave me some difficult words. But I got them all in and wrote a very silly little story. I hope you enjoy it.

As a reminder the five words were: cantankerous, emetophobia, kerfuffle, somnambulism, and bumfuzzle.

Now, without further ado: Dr. Palmer’s Life Affirming Hypnotherapy Clinic and Alterations

P.S. I have not proofread this yet.

**********

“‘Maybe you should see a doctor.’

“This was Eric, my best friend.

“‘I just need a few good night’s sleep. I’m fine.’

“I was not fine. I was waking up every morning more tired than when I’d gone to bed. It had started about a month prior. At first, I just chalked it up to the long hours I’d been keeping at work. I had been working nearly sixteen-hour days and it seemed to me that it was just catching up to me. Then management brought in a new hire, and I was able to cut my hours back. I was finally getting some sleep again. Except the exhaustion didn’t abate. I continued to wake up with heavy bags under my eyes. And, more concerning, was that I often woke up wearing something different than when I’d gone to sleep, or nothing at all.

“‘Do you notice anything else when you wake up?’

“‘Like what?’

“‘I don’t know. Like dishes in the sink that weren’t there before. Or the front door open.’

“‘Maybe.’ I didn’t want to admit it, but there were sometimes strange things in my house when I woke up. And, if I’m being honest, I already knew what Eric was going to say or what a doctor would say. I just didn’t want to hear it.

“‘Dude, I think you’re suffering from somnambulism. I watched a whole video on it the other day.’

“‘Som what?’

“‘Somnambulism. It means sleepwalking. Everything you’ve described to me just sounds like you’ve started sleepwalking. It’s probably from stress.’

“I knew he was right. It was the only thing that could really explain everything. But if I was sleepwalking, I was most likely leaving the house at night. I knew this because one morning I found my neighbor’s lawn gnome in the fridge. I live alone and I didn’t know how to stop myself from going on these little field trips. I just kept telling myself that if I got a few good night’s sleep everything would work itself out.

“‘Eric, I really don’t want to see a doctor. And I can’t afford it anyway.’

“‘No worries. I got you.’

“He pulled out his phone and search through his contacts. A moment later my phone buzzed with the notification that Eric wanted to share a contact with me, would I accept?

“‘This is the number to my hypnotist,’ he said. ‘I know what you’re thinking but this guy is legit. He cured me of my emetophobia.’

“‘Your what?’

“‘My fear of vomit. You remember when we went to Six Flags that time?’

“‘Oh yeah. That was a rough day.’

“‘Yeah, well, after seeing Dr. Palmer a few times I’ve actually gone back by myself. I even rode a roller coaster. I’m telling you hypnotism works.’

“I was haunted by that day at Six Flags. Eric had it really bad for this girl, and she had season passes. Despite having a huge fear of vomit, he decided to go and since they had a free ticket, I went too. Everything was fine for a while until Batman: The Ride.

“Eric had been steering us away from coasters most of the day, pointing out the long lines or finding some interesting thing we could do instead. I knew he had some kind of thing about vomit, but I hadn’t really put two and two together. Finally, this girl started practically begging to ride Batman. It was her favorite ride, and she rode it every time she came. Eric agreed. But once the ride started and a kid in front of him shouted, ‘I don’t feel good, Daddy,’ it was all over.

“Eric started to scream. And not the fun ‘yay I’m on a roller coaster’ kind of screaming. No, this was fully terrified, panic. And to make things worse he was screaming, ‘Get me off! Get me off! Get me off!’ At some point he decided the only logical thing to do was to try to climb out of the ride while it was moving. They had to stop the ride. Firefighters and paramedics were called. They had to carry him down. Needless to say, he never saw that girl again.

“If Eric was able to go back to Six Flags on his own and ride a roller coaster, maybe there was something to this hypnotism thing. I accepted the shared contact from him thinking, ‘what can it hurt?’

“A week after that conversation I found myself in Dr. Palmer’s waiting room reading a Highlights magazine. Dr. Palmer’s Life Affirming Hypnotherapy Clinic and Alterations turned out to be in a mostly boarded up strip mall near the train yard. There was a reception desk, of sorts. It was a folding table where an elderly woman sat hunched over a sewing machine. I rightly guessed that she was the part of the operation that handled alterations. Since there was no one else there I checked in with her.

“‘What?’ she shouted over the sewing machine.

“‘I said my name is Brian Williams. I have an appointment with Dr. Palmer.’ I tried politely shouting over the machine but halfway through my sentence she cut the thing off and then I was just yelling at an old woman.

“‘No need to shout, young man.’

“She reached for something under the table, and I discovered their brilliant and totally HIPAA compliant filing system, a bunch of papers shoved into a box.

“‘Becky Johnson, you said?’

“I guess I looked like a Becky.

“‘No, Brian Williams. I have three p.m. appointment.’

“She narrowed her ancient eyes at me, as if I were there to simply ruin her day, then went back to shuffling papers.

“‘Here we are,’ she said, after pulling something out of the box. ‘Palmy’s filing system leaves me all bumfuzzled. But I found you.’

“She looked over the sheet of paper for a few minutes before loudly proclaiming, ‘Sleepwalker, huh?’

“I can’t imagine this woman was capable of reading facial expressions but that didn’t stop my face from emoting.

“‘Yeah,’ I said.

“She picked up a phone that was sitting on the corner of the table and pushed a few buttons.

“‘Palmy, you got one,’ she said then hung up the phone. ‘He’ll be right out.’ Then it was back to sewing.

“I was deep into the Highlights word search when a middle-aged man wearing a bright green sweater vest appeared in the waiting room. He walked quickly and confidently to where I was sitting and stuck a hand in my face.

“‘Dr. Palmer,’ he said. ‘You must be Mr. Williams.’

“I shook his hand.

“‘Come, let me show you around.’

“I stood awkwardly, folding Highlights in half and sliding it into my back pocket. At this point, I wasn’t sure what I was really going to get out of this visit so I thought I might as well walk away with a magazine to read later.

“First stop of the tour was the folding table.

“‘You’ve already met my lovely wife, Laverne.’ Alterations waved a little hand without looking up or stopping sewing. ‘Now, if you’ll follow me, I’ll show you to the place where your life will change forever.’

“As it turns out, the place where my life would change forever was the second door on the right after the restroom. It was a cozy space with a couch and large armchair. The lights were dim and there was some kind of Zen music coming from somewhere in the room. I started to sit on the couch, but Dr. Palmer redirected me to the chair.

“‘Bad back,’ he said after lying down. ‘Old war injury, if you know what I mean.’

“I did not.

“The chair wasn’t so bad. It kind of swallowed me up but it wasn’t terribly uncomfortable. In fact, part of me felt that in the right circumstances I could just fall asleep right there.

“‘Now,’ he said, ‘you’re having a hard time sleeping, it seems.’

“‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘I wake up more tired than when I went to sleep. And I’m pretty sure I’ve been sleepwalking.’

“‘Hmm.’ He tented his fingers over his face. ‘Tell me more about this. When did this start?’

“I gave him the whole story about working too much and finding the gnome. I even confessed to the time I woke up naked in the shower, something I hadn’t told Eric. He listened attentively, adding a lot of hmms and keeping the finger tent up the entire time. When I was finished he hmmed again then bolted upright, slapping his knees as he did so.

“‘Sounds like you’ve got a cantankerous little storm cloud brewing in the old noodle. But don’t you worry, Brian, I think I can help.’

“Something about this man’s confidence was terrifying and oddly comforting at the same time.

“‘Now, Brian, I want you to close your eyes and listen to nothing but the sound of my voice.’

“But just then a train went by, horn blaring, and rattling the building. Palmy seemed completely unfazed by it. He sat there looking into my eyes, hands on knees, presumably trying to see into my soul. As soon as the train was gone he said, ‘Let’s begin.’

“The first session with Dr. Palmer lasted almost an hour. When it was over and I opened my eyes, I felt more relaxed than I’d felt in a very long time. I was a little unnerved to see that he’d removed his shoes at some point during the session. But I put it out of mind. I was starting to think maybe this would work.

“That night I slept better than I had in a long time. I felt almost refreshed when I woke up the next morning. But within a few days, I was back to feeling tired and finding more of my neighbor’s belongings in my house. I made another appointment with Dr. Palmer.

“Everything went basically the same the second time around. Laverne sat at her little table sewing. Palmy greeted me with the force of a smiling hurricane. I took the chair, and he took the couch. And, again, inexplicably, when I opened my eyes at the end of the session, he had removed his shoes. I tried not to think about it. I continued making appointments. I needed this to work.”

The lawyer listening to Brian’s story stopped scribbling for a moment and held up a hand.

“Let’s move forward now,” he said. “Tell me about the fifth session.”

Brian continued.

“Well, as you know, the fifth session is when I discovered what had been going on.”

“You mean with the shoes?”

“Yes.”

“Continue.”

“I was there for my now regular three p.m. appointment when a train passed by, shaking the building. Normally, this wouldn’t have bothered Dr. Palmer but this time we heard something crash, and Laverne give a little shriek from the waiting room.

“‘Verny?’ Dr. Palmer yelled, ‘Are you ok? What’s all the kerfuffle?’

“When she didn’t answer he got up from the couch and ran out of the room. In doing so, he caused one of the cushions to shift a little and I noticed something stuck down in the couch. Curiosity got the better of me. I reached down between the cushions and pulled out a polaroid photo. I was shocked to find someone I didn’t recognize sitting in the armchair, eyes closed, with Laverne waving her feet in their face.”

“Go on,” the lawyer urged.

“I lifted the cushion and found hundreds of polaroids featuring patient after patient seated in the chair with feet in their faces. I found photos of Eric with Dr. Palmer’s feet in his face. And I found several of myself. I didn’t know what to do. I pocketed a few of them for evidence and ran out of the building. Then I contacted you.”

“The polaroids you showed me won’t be admissible as evidence because of the way they were obtained but they will most likely be enough to secure a warrant. I just need to know how you want to proceed.”

“Honestly, I’m really conflicted. On the one hand, I should probably sue the man, right? But on the other, I have been sleeping so much better since I started seeing him. If I pursue this, there’s a chance my sleepwalking will return. What then?”

The lawyer put down his pen and furrowed his brow.

“Are you saying you don’t want to sue Dr. Palmer?”

“I really don’t know,” Brian said. “What would you do?”