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“You witnessed a traumatic event, Marina. It’s normal to have nightmares.”
I turn my head away from her, willing away the tears that threaten to fall. She’s leading me to places and memories I don’t want to talk about. Isn’t it enough that I can’t forget them? That I’m forced to replay them nightly?
“All right, we can talk about something else.” She clicks her tongue, unhappy to relent. “Start with the conversation you and Maggie had four days before her death.”
I stiffen at her words; every sentence she speaks only drives the knife in deeper. Heat spreads through my body as my blood boils. The fact that everyone just assumes that Maggie is dead makes me livid. Without a body, I’ll never believe she’s dead. To me she’s just... gone.
“Marina, are you all right?”
“Her body was never found. She could still be alive,” I snap. “She’snotdead.”
She taps that damn pen to her mouth.
“What makes you think that?” Her eyes narrow. “The experts all agree she couldn’t have survived.”
“She’s my twin. I would know. I’d feel it.” I run my hands through my hair, tired of this conversation. I’ve had it a million times with a million different people over the past four months. Every one of them says the same damn thing. She didn’t survive that fall.
“In your dream, you see Maggie on a gurney. Perhaps, subconsciously, your mind is trying to help you come to terms with the events of that day.”
“No. It’s just a dream. I can’t control what I dream.”
She doesn’t respond to my comments, but forges ahead, annoying as ever.
“Tell me about the conversation you two had four days before,” she presses.
“Ugh,” I groan, annoyed at her probing. “She was scared and the medicineyouprovided wasn’t working.” My voice rises as I dig my fingernails into the skin of my legs, desperate for more pain. I need to stifle the sadness creeping toward the surface.
“Why do you say that the medicine wasn’t working?” Her brow tilts upward.
“It made her tired and intensified the things she was seeing.”
“Tell me about the things she was seeing.”
I sigh, frustrated.
“This is my session. Not Maggie’s.” My words are biting, but she doesn’t react. She doesn’t say a word.
Dr. Tilney is a dog with a bone. She won’t stop until our time is up or I walk out, which I’m currently tempted to do, but in the end, I won’t. I’ll give in and tell her what she wants to hear. It’s the only way I’ll ever be free of her. I need to play nice and appear rehabilitated. Like before.
“She was seeing monsters.”
She knows full well what Maggie was seeing. It hasn’t changed since we were three. She just wants to hear me say it. She believes that facing your problems head on is the first step in rehabilitation. I think she’s a sadist.
“Just in her dreams?”
I shake my head back and forth.
“Everywhere.”
Dr. Tilney places her pen back on her desk.
“The same monsters you used to see?”
Inhale. Exhale.Lie.
“My monsters weren’t real. They were a figment of a childhood imagination created by the shadows in the dark.” I grit my teeth at the lies I’m forced to tell. The rehearsed words I’ve repeated constantly since I was ten years old.
I know my monsters were very real. They hid in plain sight, disguised as people, but I saw their darkness. The way their eyes glowed a blazing red, burned holes into my being every time I saw one. They bared their elongated canines as if to prove they were to be feared. It wasn’t necessary; my body shook when it sensed their presence. I didn’t have to see them to be scared.
