The first time I created a nightmare it was an accident. I wasn’t focusing. To tell you the truth, I was having an off day. The spill-your-coffee-on-your-white-blouse, drop-your-iPhone-on-the-sidewalk-and-crack-the-screen kind of day. Mrs. Turner was in for her Tuesday afternoon session, and we were sitting on my therapy couch, my palm on her wrinkled forehead as I put her under. Mrs. Turner breathed in and out, utilizing the techniques I’d taught her for faster submission. Within a minute I was in her mind, crafting her dream. But again, I wasn’t really concentrating. And, I’ll be honest, it wasn’t my best work.
Yes, I’m a dreammaker. It’s a highly skilled, incredibly difficult calling. It requires intelligence, diligence, empathy, and a certain amount of creative flourish. Some people compare the practice to psychology, but with a more direct approach. It skips over all that talking, figuring out the reasons why, and instead dives straight into the mind. Plus, dreammaking gets much faster results.
Some people don’t like dreammaking. They think it’s like a drug, that it should be outlawed because some people abuse it. I would make the argument you could say that about a lot of things. Anxiety medication, alcohol, food, relationships—none of those things are illegal. I help people, and I’m covered by most health insurance policies.
At the start of our session, Mrs. Turner asked for a dream about her husband. I take requests for my regulars; that’s not something all dreammakers can offer. I scanned through her top ten memories and found one with Mr. Turner: happy memory numero ocho. I like to look inside my patients’ minds and choose the fourth or fifth happy memory hovering in their subconscious. I’m not big on the top three because people dream about those memories naturally. Happy memories four through ten usually hold that surprise and delight factor. I can dig deeper of course, but that takes time, and most days my clients are back to back. Unfortunately for me, and I guess for her, the happy memory I chose wasn’t all that happy.
Look, I never mess up like that. I only watched maybe half of it on fast forward. That was my first mistake. The one memory I don’t scan start to finish is the one that ends in a violent sex thing that did some lasting mental damage. And okay, my second mistake was to play up the second part of the dream. The first part was all boring beach stuff—good, but it doesn’t tend to leave the clients with that lasting sense of calm I like to imbue. I figured that the second half was where the memory got really good, the part that made it a top tenner.
I’ll admit it, on that count I was wrong.
Can I say something in the it’s-not-all-my-fault department, though? If that’s Mrs. Turner’s eighth happiest memory, she’s got some serious sorting out to do. She needs to see a psychiatrist. Dreammaking isn’t going to cut it.
I made her forget it. I’m not proud of it, but after I realized that she was suffering and my dreammaking wasn’t going as planned, I went back into her mind. I saw what she was seeing—that husband of hers is a real creep; he should be jailed, or castrated—and tacked on a little oblivion bend at the end. Unfortunately, once a dream starts, you have to let it play out. Not even I’m that good. Oblivion was really the only move. I don’t like to do it—it’s a bit like cheating—but Mrs. Turner was in real pain, and pain sticks with you a lot longer than joy.
“You should send your husband to me some time,” I told Mrs. Turner as she collected her purse to go, an unsure smile on her face.
I can’t tell you where that comment came from. But the moment I spoke it, I knew what I wanted to do.
Mrs. Turner paused to consider the suggestion before saying, “You know, that’s a good idea. He doesn’t really believe in the whole dreammaking thing.” She rolled her eyes in that convivial men—am I right? way. “But he’s been really stressed lately, and he’s commented a few times about how well it works for me. I think I can get him to come around.”
Fun fact: most people who come in to see dreammakers are not great people. There’s a reason they need me for their sweet dreams. There are too many bad memories, too many guilty ones that overwhelm the positive memories when they stop actively suppressing them. Say what you will about the subconscious, but very few people can avoid its consequences.
I was pretty upset when I realized that more than a few of my patients were shielding themselves with nice smiles and polite conversation, that they were hiding something rotten just beneath. It made me feel pretty bad about what I do. I had this minor existential crisis thing, questioning my entire career and who I was helping and what my purpose was, et cetera, et cetera. But when I emerged on the other side of those dark days, it was with that sense of calm that I used to like to see my clients come out of our sessions with. I figured that I may sometimes deal with scum, but there was something I could actually do about it.
The second time I created a nightmare, it was on purpose.
It wasn’t with Mrs. Turner’s husband. No, him I dealt with later. My first intentional nightmare was with a man named Patrick Lansing.
Now Patrick, how do I put this nicely? Patrick was a complete asshole.
“Welcome Mr. Lansing,” I said to him in my calm, therapeutic voice, gesturing for him to take a seat. “Now, with my new clients, I usually like to reserve the first ten minutes to discuss what you’re looking for out of the session. So that I can get a sense of—”
“Skip the mumbo jumbo crap. I know the deal. Put me under and give me a dream about my last vacation: African safari.”
“Mr. Lansing, in order to most effectively treat you, our first session should begin with—”
“First session? Trust me, you’re not pretty enough to keep me coming back, sweetheart. I’m a one and done kind of guy,” Patrick said, snorting. “Now, do what I’m paying you for, and put me under.”
I took a deep breath and put on my professional smile.
“Of course. Let’s begin.”
I sat far from his predatory, bulky build, but it wasn’t enough. As I placed my palm on his forehead to begin the process, he leaned in and placed his hand on my thigh.
“I hear it’s best to have more personal contact,” he said and then squeezed.
I snapped.
I flooded into his mind and took away his consciousness, forgoing the usual process where submission is mutual, shared between dreammaker and patient. Patrick had no more choice in this. I was in control.
I raced through his deadened subconscious searching for something murky, something toxic. I found the thick, slinking memories within half a minute. It’s funny, I’d never done that before: looked for the painful memories, the ones that inflicted shame, but they were almost easier to locate than the good ones. Maybe it was because they were so close to the surface with Patrick, or maybe it was because I was meant to seek them out. It was like they called out to me, begged me to expose them.
There’s something really satisfying about watching someone wriggle and squirm and sweat, knowing that for the next fifty-some minutes, they’re in an inescapable nightmare. A mental prison of your design.
Now, I know what some of you men are thinking (some women too—and trust me, there’s a special place in hell for women like you). All that for one little squeeze of the thigh? You don’t know my history, and you don’t get to. I made Patrick piss himself in fear. Luckily, he was my last appointment of the day.
“Barbara?” I called to my secretary after Patrick had fled. “Can you make sure to get the cleaning crew in here tonight? That last patient had a little accident.”
Barbara came in and widened her eyes at the dark spot on the floor (he’d fallen off the couch to cower on the ground about halfway through).
I smiled. “I don’t think we’ll be seeing any more of him.”
Barbara gave a flighty little laugh.
“Should I cross off any follow-ups he may have made to free some time on your schedule?” she asked.
“Please do,” I responded, even though I knew that Patrick hadn’t made any additional sessions. He was a one-and-done kind of guy. And in this case, I was too.
Now I’m not saying I know best when it comes to right and wrong, nor that I should be the one who gets to draw that line, but I do know more people in this world need to feel what they’ve done, need to experience the pain they’ve inflicted on others. And I just happen to be in the position to deal out that justice. Who wouldn’t do the same in my position?
After Patrick, I began to push my own boundaries. The thing is, going inside someone’s mind is invasive. I see things that I’m not supposed to see. And once I started seeking out a different sort of memory, I realized just how many of them there were.
But Mr. Turner was a tough one. I’d thought I could pull his versions of events with his wife, amplify certain threads of the narrative to really heighten his suffering, and let the wave of shame do its thing. I wanted to manipulate his thoughts into dreams so that he could feel exactly what Mrs. Turner had felt in those last terrifying seconds as his hands tightened around her neck, and then her confusion in the moments after, as she regained consciousness, when he presented her with a diamond necklace.
I put him under and weaved my way into the maze of his memories. It was odd, though. None of them had the typical markers of guilt or the red pulse of pain. None of them had the softer, glowing qualities of happiness, either. They were all kind of an unorganized gray.
I’d only seen that one other time in my life, when I went into my own mind, and that’s only because it’s harder to interpret your own thoughts than it is to decipher someone else’s. At first, I thought I’d done something wrong, that I’d somehow imposed my memory structure onto his. Then I realized that his memories weren’t positive or negative because they didn’t have any emotions associated with them. They were neutral. His mind had warped what he’d done to his wife (and, as I also discovered, to his children) into something he interpreted as normal.
I have say, I was intrigued. He was my first sociopath. But that didn’t stop me from figuring out how to make him suffer, of course. Did I mention that I’m the best at what I do?
I gave him something to suffer with. I’d never done that before. I’ve taken memories and molded them into something else, combined them, enhanced certain aspects and downplayed others, but never had I created something new.
I crafted completely new situations in which he was the victim and I the tormentor. It was fun to watch him deteriorate. Mr. Turner couldn’t handle it. He talked to himself, pulled out his hair, hit himself in places where clothes would cover the bruises. I may have extended our session by half an hour. He needed it. I made a man who hadn’t experienced real emotional pain in his life feel the culmination of agony he’d made his family endure.
That’s how I knew I could get creative with my dreammaking. I didn’t have to rely on my clients’ past memories at all; I could implant something completely new. The best part was, to my delight, my mental grafts didn’t dissolve like I thought they would. They seeped into the subconscious and took root. When Mr. Turner came back, I looked inside his mind and saw my creativity in there, throbbing and raw. He took the pain from our session and continued to experience it in real time.
It was incredible. Completely uncharted dreammaking territory. I couldn’t tell anyone (they’d probably take my accreditation away), but it was revolutionary for the field.
How do I feel about this transition in my dreammaking? I consider it more of an evolution really. I still keep my regulars, like Mrs. Turner, and give them their requested reprieves. But more and more of my time is focused on the nightmare side of my practice. I’d eventually love to do it full time. It’s been rewarding to see the effects of my treatments over time. Recently, I’ve begun to permeate my patients’ subconscious with a temporary sense of happiness at the end of their nightmares. I hate to give these people even one shred of relief, but it’s done wonders to ensure my patients come back, gluttonous for that temporary escape. They arrive more frayed around the edges, their mental facilities crumbling with each session.
I must say, it’s been great for business.
Abigail Wessel is a writer and editor based in New York City. She is currently in the throes of editing her first novel and takes a break from this frustrating (but admittedly rewarding) endeavor every once in a while to write short fiction that hinges on the bizarre.