I rested my head on the couch pillow. Funny, ‘rested’ was a generous term.
The therapist stopped sketching. “Good,” he said. He’d been sketching for a while, in between answers and questions. Sketching and sketching and sketching. If only I could snatch the notebook away and throw it out the window. If only I could find a window. “Shall we continue?”
I let my neck relax. “Yeah.” The clock behind the therapist ticked, louder than any normal clock should.
He flipped through his notebook. His fingers pressed into every page like pins on soft cloth. “Do me a favor. Close your eyes.”
“No.” My hands twitched. “I can’t.”
The therapist paused for a moment. “Why?”
“I might fall asleep.” I pinched my hand to jolt myself awake, discreetly so the therapist wouldn’t see. “I can’t sleep.”
“You can’t or you won’t?”
Good question. ‘I won’t’ was the answer, but I can’t let him know that. He’ll ask too many questions— too many questions I wouldn’t have the answers to. So I said, “Both.”
“Huh.” He flipped a page and jotted something down on the paper. I stared at the notebook, and it stared at me back. Its black leather cover seemed magnetic, enchanted for some reason. What did it have that I didn’t? What did it know that I don’t?
The therapist cleared his throat. “Why do you feel like you can’t fall asleep?”
“It’s really more like I shouldn’t.” Behind crossed legs, the therapist started sketching again. “Are you even listening to me?”
His eyes judged me through his round glasses. “I am.” He lowered his pen and notebook. “Are you ready to cooperate…? And this session is exactly that, a cooperation. It means I can’t do this without you. If you won’t cooperate, we’d just be wasting time.” The clock ticked.
I nodded. “But first”— I grabbed his notebook and set it on the tabletop near to me, out of his reach— “none of that.”
“Fair.” He sat back, opting not to contest. “Now, let me ask you a few easy questions to start us off.” I couldn’t recall how many times we’ve ‘started’, but I knew this wasn’t the first. This wasn’t the second either, or the third, or the fourth. He took a deep breath. “What’s your name?”
I told him my name.
“What’s your age?”
I told him my age.
“Where are you from?”
“The Philippines.”
“Why are you here?”
“I—” I shook my head, trying to remember. I answered his previous questions easily enough. Why couldn’t I answer this one? I blinked. I shouldn’t do that. I can’t close my eyes, not even for a second. I should never do that. My eyes burned through my skull. I blinked again. A cold wind crawled itself up my spine like dark cagey tendrils.
The therapist answered for me. “You brought yourself in. Do you remember why?”
I pinched myself again. Yes, I walked in here. Now I remember. “Because I can’t sleep. I can’t even close my eyes. But I need to sleep. I need to. I know I do.”
He leaned forward, his eyes directly intent on mine. “So do me a favor, close your eyes.”
I didn’t. My eyes were starting to water. I could feel tears begin to rise, because of the pain, because of the fatigue. The heat inside my eye sockets intensified, like small molten hands gripped the sides of my eyeballs. I wanted to rest. I needed to sleep, but I can’t close my eyes.
“Don’t worry,” said the therapist. “I’m here.”
My eyelids pulled themselves closer and closer together, like long lost relatives meeting for the first time in years. Maybe it’s also been that long since I slept. Years. I can’t remember. The last thing I saw were my fingers pinching my forearms to help me stay awake.
I closed my eyes, and the world went dark.
I didn’t know what to do.
“I’m scared.” My voice echoed around my skull.
“It’s okay to be scared.”
“That thing is getting closer, I can feel it.” I wanted to open my eyes, but they were glued shut. The cold wind crawled up again, up my spine and to my neck. I tried to waive the icy breeze away, but the therapist held my arms, his hands offering me some of its warmth.
“What is it? What is ‘that thing’? That thing you’re so afraid of?”
“Some—something.” The therapist let go. The room’s temperature dropped, and the hairs on my arms and neck pricked up. “I just know it’s coming. It’s always there, always waiting for me to sleep.”
“Is it something bad?”
“No. I don’t know, but I know it’s something scary. It’s trailing me, following my every move, like a… a shadow, a monster—like a… “ The icy breeze returned, now stronger. “Like a memory. A bad memory.”
“Like a ghost?”
“Maybe? I don’t know. Yes?” Was it like a ghost? I didn’t know to be sure. I looked back before, when that thing was following me. It was dark, hooded, and clothed in shadows. Its eyes were open wide and white with apathy. It looked human, though. Strangely human. Ghosts were humans too once.
The clock ticked. “Ghosts are the memories of the dead that live within you.” It ticked again. “Did someone die recently? Someone close to you? Someone you love?”
“No,” I answered. “They’re all safe. My family, I mean. At least as far as I know. I hope.”
“Of course.” I heard the therapist shift in his seat. “How about a friend?”
“No.” I took a deep breath. “I don’t really have many friends.”
“Some studies say that sleep is the most important thing to a person’s health. That you need sleep to survive, and that you need it to live. Rest is essential to function. I tend to agree with that sentiment.” The therapist’s pants ruffled. He must’ve crossed his legs again. “But an artist once said, ‘sleep is the cousin of death’.”
“I don’t have any cousins.”
“I know.” The sound of his pen on paper rang through my ears like the screeching of chalk on a blackboard. The clock ticked.
I opened my eyes. “I told you—”
He faced his notebook to me. Rough lines of ink littered the page, like desperate scratches. In the middle of the page was a drawing of a person, of a ghost. The ghost. My ghost.
“How did you—”
The therapist lowered the notebook. He leaned forward, his face merely inches from mine. Then he took his glasses off. “How do you think?”
Without his frames, I saw him more clearly. I didn’t notice it before. I couldn’t have noticed it before. Why would I have to? He was my therapist. I’ve been seeing him for all my life.
How could I have realized that he was me?
The clock ticked. My eyes darted to the wall, where the clock was. All that was there was a hazy black ring. The numbers melted and blended with the white background of the clock’s face. I squinted. Still, nothing. Nothing but blurs.
I tapped my face, looking for my own glasses. I didn’t realize they were gone. Had they always been? I hadn’t had them on since I got here. I must have left them at home; I always did.
“You brought yourself here.” The therapist stood up. The floorboards creaked with each slow step he took. He stopped behind his chair. “You’re running. You’re afraid.”
I stood too. The pillow behind my head fell to the floor. “I’m not afraid of anything.” I looked at him in the eye, a spitting image of myself. “And I’m not running.”
He nodded, resigning. He held his glasses with a finger, acutely placed on the frame’s bridge between the two lenses. “I see.” He looked tired, rundown. He’s been in this conversation before. He’s heard the lines and the words, and he doesn’t want to go back in again. “Do you remember how you died?” But he will.
The clock ticked. His glasses hung on his finger, balanced and calm. I moved my hand to take it, slowly so he doesn’t see it as a hostile act. The therapist obliged.
I wore the glasses. The clock ticked. It’s 3:04 PM. “Is that it? Am I dead?”
His silence was acknowledgement enough. He moved his chair, so the space between us was empty. He hugged me then. I felt his warmth go over me, the warmth I never had. I hugged him too. “How do I stop running?”
I heard strain from his breath— strain for all the time he’s held our burdens for the both of us. Who gave him therapy? I wondered. “The only ghost you’re running from is your own. You know how.”
I closed my eyes. I felt tears rise from the wells of my soul. The temperature rose too. The cold drifted away, albeit slowly. The tears helped with that, I think, like rivers washing the muck away from the city— like rain. In the darkness of my mind, nothing chased me anymore. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be.” He wiped my tears with the back of his hand. Then he stepped back, clasping my shoulders. “You did all you could, and you did good.”
I heard the pen fall on the tabletop. I opened my eyes. My therapist was gone. For how long have I been alone in the cold void, I don’t know. Not that it matters. In the end, all we truly have are ourselves. At least until our ghosts catch us.
But ghosts don’t scare me anymore. They can’t tell me anything I don’t already know.
I walked to where the clock was and removed its batteries, only now realizing the ink stains that marked the bottom of my palm.
A fresh wind breezed through the room, flipping the pages of my notebook. The front-facing page held a message. There, on the paper it said, “rest.”
I sat back down and retreated to my couch, placing the pillow back behind my head. I closed my eyes. ‘Rest’ is a generous term.
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