ne night, as I lay under my bedcovers, my head resting on pillows, my eyes wide open, staring into space, my mind empty, a blank, feeling too tired to go to sleep, too tired to think about anything, I thought I saw a motion in the large mirror hanging across from my bed.
I stared at the mirror, in the darkness. I tried to focus my sleepy eyes across the room at it.
The mirror, like the void, stared back at me.
This staring match lasted until I was sure I would begin to see the glimmer of the sun nearing the horizon. In fact, the mirror seemed to lighten and brighten as I stared at it. My eyes were nodding, and the mirror was winking at me. Then, I began to see something in the mirror. I began to see my father.
Professor Rowe sat on the leather wingback chair, his pen hovering over a notebook.
Anita lay on the couch, her eyes closed. She was shaking her head.
“I don’t know, Doctor,” she said. “I just don’t know.”
“You do know,” he replied.
“No!”
“You must let go of your resistances. Your conscious mind is blocking your unconscious knowledge. You do know!” He stood up from his chair, restless, and began pacing the room.
Anita put her fists in front of her eyes. “No!” she said. “I know nothing about it.”
“You’re making yourself sick!” shouted the doctor. “You’re hurting yourself!”
“I don’t care!” she shouted.
He whipped toward her. “You don’t care? You don’t care! Not you aren’t, but you don’t care! That’s wonderful, Anita. That’s a breakthrough!”
Anita began to cry.
“You’re horrible!”
Professor Rowe laughed.
“Go back to it, again,” said Professor Rowe. “Go back to the beginning.”
“We have been over it and over it.”
“Again. It’s essential. Can’t you see that we’re on the verge?”
Anita sat up on the couch. She removed her fists from her eyes, and placed them in her lap. Her hands did not unclench, and her fingernails bit into her palms.
“I was walking down a long corridor,” she said. “Long and dark. It was unbearably hot, hot and humid, and I wanted to get out. It was suffocating. The corridor was long—and I rushed along it to get out.”
She looked up at Professor Rowe, who nodded encouragingly.
“My feet seemed to stick to the floor, though, and it was hard to make progress, hard to find my way through. I was just turning a corner in the corridor, when the— “
She paused.
“Don’t pause,” he said. “Don’t think. Don’t block the words from coming.”
“I don’t know how to describe it,” she said.
“You do know how to describe it.”
“This thing was coming—pummeling down the corridor toward me—I don’t know, it was like a monster, or a machine. It filled the whole corridor, as if the corridor was its tunnel.”
“Was the corridor the thing’s tunnel?”
“Yes,” she said softly. “Yes, its lair, its cave. I turned and ran from the thing, and it chased me back through the caverns, into the depths of its lair.” She let out a small sob.
“How did you feel?” asked the doctor.
“Afraid! Hopeless. I wanted out, wanted to escape.”
“And it was keeping you in?”
“It chased me into the very heart of the place, and then receded. Every time I started toward the exit, it would reappear, merciless, barreling down upon me, chasing me again into the depths. What does it mean, doctor? It’s so frightening.”
“There is no reason to be frightened, Anita,” said the psychoanalyst. He came and kneeled by her, placing his hands on her shoulders.
“It is natural,” he said, “to be frightened. The human mind fears those things that are beyond it. You must try to step outside of the dream and view your fear as merely another element of the dream. And remember, everything in your dream is a representation of God and God’s message. Step outside of your fear and think about the dream objectively. Put your fear outside of yourself. Your fear is part of the dream, nothing more. It is part of a message from God. From beyond the fear, from outside the dream, what do you feel?”
She looked up at him. “I don’t know...”
He moved his hand from her shoulder, cupping her chin in the palm of his hand.
“You do know,” he said, with incredible certainty.
“Oh!” said Anita.
Her breathing was fast. Her heart was beating. Her palms were sweating. Soon, she found herself in the arms of the handsome doctor.
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