As with the sound of the approach of something rolling, sizeable, and speedy, a crescendo of warning built within Tim, yet awareness failed to prevent it from continuing headlong toward him.
The dreams grew more intense; the feeling of mind and body at odds left him ready to scratch away through any means possible his unwanted and despised bits. Despite his best efforts to mitigate and manage these and associated issues, methodology that ran the gamut from seeing Dolores to talking with Susan Woodward, his dysfunction almost killed Susan, and it grew worse. A threshold of despair and hopelessness approached, and once across, there was no going back.
What most scared Tim – and all those around Tim – was of what exactly lay on the other side of the threshold. Nothing was visible beyond that doorway. Where was all of this leading, and how exactly would it – or he – arrive?
With the forces inside coalescing from diverse and scattered, to gathered and actively challenging, Tim began to fell a conscious push or pull – depending on perspective – toward things that never played through his mind before.
The first and by far the most important of the oddities of change: music dominated his thoughts. Music to a song he never heard before, yet it played repeatedly, louder and louder through his mind, its increasingly urgent calling self-evident. Was this an earworm of warning, or was it an earworm to solution? How does one know in a moment where they watch all else around them remain standing, while they melt down into some unknown and unsolicited reconfiguration – one that likely meant madness and loss of awareness of those they loved so dearly?
The mental push toward music began with Tim setting at their computer, absent-mindedly browsing through the pre-programmed functions that came with this machine. He found a programme that came with the system’s sound card, one that allowed the user to synthesise, create, and edit music, whatever suited their mood and wishes at that time.
Intrigued by the power of this unheralded and unknown programme, Tim opened it to see what it afforded a novice, only to stare at a wide array of controls, and lists of musical instruments the programme could emulate.
Creating a new file proved easy enough. Once created, his attention moved to what to play; Tim felt a pull toward the sound of a keyboard. Not knowing how to read music or play any instrument, Tim plied at generating a rather disparate array of sounds – a typical creation of those absent musical skills and understanding. Stringing randomly selected sounds together, the result was quite similar to that of a young child learning that striking the keys of a keyboard actually made noise, empowering them in some new and wondrous way.
Frustrated and somewhat grasping and comprehending that his efforts proved childlike, Tim left the programme – though keeping it open – and moved on to read current national news.
After a half-hour of scrolling through news stories of interest, the bottom tab on his computer recalled his attention to the music programme. Tim wandered back, ready to see if his evident lack of ability suddenly morphed into that of a concertmaster. This time, Tim edited out sounds, and added in a few new notes that appealed, that felt right.
Over a few hours, he deleted, assembled, moved, and revamped his budding creation. Finding things that worked, the sound that fashioned together felt as if it were the code to some sophisticated locking mechanism within his mind; note by note, each new right addition clicked somewhere in his deep sub-conscience, as if reassuringly calling out to Tim ‘this new one is right, and what you have so far is on target! Bloody good work, Tim; now, do move on to the next piece of this assemblage!’
Addison came into the room, drawn and intrigued by the music her dad struggled to create and play. Watching in fascination, she asked for a turn at the keyboard and this heretofore-unknown programme. Tim saved his music file, and gave up his seat to Addie. “Sure sweetie, go ahead and give it a go!”
Tim laughed aloud as his daughter immediately fashioned together a string of sound into something rather respectable. This was not the first time either of his daughters exhibited artistic skill of which he proved rather bereft.
“What is so funny, dad?” Addison asked, fearing her efforts proved mediocre.
“Addie, you sat down and immediately played something that sounded like music. I’ve been there for hours, and what I managed to create sounds like a baby who can plink at a keyboard!”
Hours later, everyone in the household fast asleep, the dreams came calling on Tim, never forgetting to lobby for their interests. Once again, Tim screamed out “Oochnha, Jahrae,” reprising words Ronnie immediately recognised. In truth, this utterance of words no one understood was at once both perplexing and disturbing. How would Tim know of some language to the point of repeated utterance, yet a search of the internet proved unconnected to any known language? Even if he did know of this language, why would he cry out words from it in his sleep?
Ronnie gently rousted Tim from his disturbed sleep, a routine occurrence at this point in their lives. Within a half hour, Tim returned to deep sleep, and with renewed deep sleep came even more vivid imagery. Tim felt someone angrily rip the clothing off his body, while his body simultaneously ached from every imaginable part and location. A smaller man stood before Tim, though only the man was visible in his mind’s dream eye; Tim just assumed his place, given all the indicators were of confrontation between him and this man.
Two others in the room held Tim; the man in front came closer, pressing his groin upon Tim. As the dream played onward, Tim could feel the man slide into his bod –. “Oochnhaaaa!” screamed Tim’s voice, quite outside the dream. Springing awake right into a sitting position, Tim felt the close proximity presence of the horrified and intense memory of the just shaken off dream.
Ronnie came awake as Tim called out, quickly moving her torso upward, reaching over to turn on the light that sat upon the nightstand just to her right. “Oh, Tim! Still more of that horrid dream plagues you, visiting twice in the same night!” Ronnie moved over closer to Tim, reached out with both of her hands, and soothingly and comfortingly began to rub his back. “Tim, these dreams have not visited twice in one night before.” Ronnie shared what scrolled through her mind, her concern now at new heights, over this ominous new development.
“Ronnie… a man was raping me.” Tim spoke calmly, this calmness in opposition to what he felt within him. He still could not believe how intense and vivid this latest dream was; it still felt more of long repressed memory than of fashioned dream.
“…a rape?” Ronnie repeated, the words spoken somewhat rhetorically, her concern ratcheting up yet another notch.
Tim shared what he remembered of the dream, which was about everything. Fearful of more sleep, he kissed Ronnie and offered, “Ronnie, I am going to go downstairs and read on the computer for a while, it is better I not return to sleep in the moment. Go back to sleep, I will be ok.”
Ronnie gave a reluctant OK, though she too would have trouble finding sleep again, worries as she was over Tim. Her light remained on, and she reached for the book that sat upon the nightstand, under the light.
Tim made his way to the computer, calling it awake – they rarely shut the machine down. The music programme used earlier was still open – Addison did not close it. Opening his saved programme, Tim added and deleted attempted new elements, working through a trial and error process until a new note clicked into place.
Over the next few nights, sleep grew at once more haunting and resultantly more inaccessible, for sleep meant more vivid dreaminess, more reprising of the horrors called out. Tim’s next appointment with his therapist was for Tuesday morning at 10 am, where the Henry Smithson film crew would record the session for their documentary.
Overnight from Monday into Tuesday, Tim slept but two hours, with the sleep divided into two segments. Both produced horrific dreams, the second of which introduced a new element, one that found him in total darkness, although his hands could feel the sides of some unseen but encasing cylindrical shape.
Finding himself at the computer once again in the wee hours of the night, Tim worked with devoted attention to the music he never heard before, yet which compelled him to assemble. By morning, the music felt right, felt complete. He burned a disk of the recording, wishing to take with him on his appointment with Dolores.
After Tim left, Ronnie immediately, intuitively, and silently self-admonished for not accompanying Tim on this appointment, something she would soon enough deeply regret. Calling out of work – Ronnie was a fifth grade teacher in an adjacent town – for the day, she restlessly paced their home, picking up things, dusting, vacuuming, all futile attempts to chase away the worry that would not let her go.
Tim drove north; once again, a drive accompanied by tears, hoping that Dolores could help him finally crack the mystery of these haunting and debilitating dreams. The disk was now in the 4Runner’s player, the music familiar – and important – in some unfathomable way. Over and over, the song played, and each reprise of its playing clicked yet more biological and emotional tumblers within Tim, moving the pent up and unknown forces within one step closer to release.
Parallel parking along the upside of the town Oval, Tim disembarked from the 4Runner, beeped the doors locked, and fed the parking meter adjacent to his parking spot. The weather was markedly colder than at home, leaving Tim regretting not wearing a warmer jacket. A light rain fell, the lowered sky, the rain, and the cold combining to create an ominous feeling of a looming endpoint to the sordid mystery fashioned by his mind.
Tim made his way through the brick-lined walkway that bisected the Oval, his hands tucked deeply into the pockets of his light jacket, taking comfort in their protective cloth sheathing, while elusively searching for warmth generated by his body. He crossed Main Street as cars dutifully yielded to his passage, and once reaching the far sidewalk, made his way toward Dolores’s building firmly resolved to a mission: the dreams of mystery, the issues of his life, needed solving; right now.
Tim could not know before going in that his answer would arrive in the hour ahead, just as he wished for, wished would happen. And little did Tim know that in truth, a new journey would force-couple this life and this existence to that of an older self, refashioning his life in a way that end dated this one, while resuming another that was his true and wondrous path as a being in this universe.
