My Name is Sheol by P. Julian
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Copyright © 2026 P. Julian
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ISBN: 9798268917185
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My Name is Sheol - Full Text Section 3
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Chapter 6 - THE INTERVIEW
99. One slow afternoon Ariel comes to find me and asks how I am doing. I tell her I am fine and she smiles a little sadly at me and says: not that fine though? I nod quietly as tears well up in my eyes. I presume she intends to offer me a hot drink but she bobs down next to me and says: we have a locum psychiatrist on the ward for a few days. Doctor Barrett is her name and she is a little bit… different from the others. Quite a bit different in fact. Would you like to meet with her? I try to think up a polite way to refuse before Ariel presses her hand down on the top of my knee and says: it’s up to you Che of course. I just think it might be a positive experience for you to meet her.
100. have no desire to be prodded or assessed, especially if I have to start from scratch with a brand new psychiatrist. But there is also the overwhelming tedium of the ward that I am always looking to escape. I think for a moment before telling Ariel that I would like to see the new doctor and she beams at me and says: good girl. She asks me to take a seat in the nearest consulting room before she walks off smiling broadly like she has achieved something momentous.
101. Before too long an older woman enters the room, accompanied by a tall male nurse with a serene expression. She looks tired and her mood feels a little off but there is something about her that I like very much, a sense that she is free of the trappings of this place in a way that other medical staff are not. I greet her as Doctor Barrett but she waves that away and says: please Che call me Anne. She is polite in a gruff kind of way and she asks for a couple of minutes so that she can take a look at my notes. I am happy to wait and as she studies my file I can feel something emanating from her that I have not felt since I came to the hospital. A soothing feeling that I struggle to name until it comes to me in a flash: this is what I would call warmth. Humane warmth and a rugged sort of humane affection although Doctor Anne has not yet spoken more than a handful of words to me.
102. Doctor Anne looks up from my notes with a sigh of exasperation. I don’t know why I am bothering with this scrawl, she says. You seem like an intelligent person Che and I might be better off asking you: what do you think is going on? What has happened in your life to bring you to this place? It’s a nasty thing to happen to anyone and we both know you didn’t come here freely. I go to agree with her and also to disagree but nothing comes out of my mouth to fill the silence. Her voice softens a little as she sees my distress and she says: let me put it this way. Is there any way you can make sense of it? How you came to be in this place, and more importantly: what you need to do to get yourself out of here.
103. I should be more guarded but for some reason I just go ahead and tell her. I describe my dreams and how they are more textured than reality, how they escalated at a certain point and frightened the people around me. How they have completely eclipsed what I used to refer to as my real life, so that the events in my dreams are the only things that feel real to me anymore. I tell Doctor Anne that I have done my best to recover in the hospital but I know any abatement of my dreams will only be temporary, that no therapy or medication can dislodge their hold on me. I also tell her: I have no wish to be dislodged from them because entering back into ordinary reality would cause me grief that I would not survive. I even tell her about my most psychotic conviction, that the outside world - the literal space both inside and outside the hospital - is actually some kind of dream realm and not the other way around.
104. When I finish speaking Doctor Anne nods sagely at me. She says that dreams often seem completely real to the person who is dreaming them, just as false beliefs seem real to people suffering from delusions. The difference is that most people do eventually wake up, she says, to find that their inner world was not actually real in any conventional sense. I tell her that I agree with her on one level but then I ask: have you ever genuinely believed a patient who reports this kind of experience? Not just the fact of having the experience but the substance of those realms? Could you imagine a case where you would take those beliefs seriously, or even be convinced by them? Doctor Anne goes to answer but I make her wait for a moment as I ask: what criteria do you use to dismiss them? Is there any room in psychiatry for genuine spiritual experience?
105. Doctor Anne pauses and thinks for a little while before turning to the nurse and saying: I wonder whether you wouldn't mind leaving us for a moment. The nurse jumps up and trots briskly out of the room without stopping to query the doctor or ask for my consent. I am about to protest but Doctor Anne gently holds up one hand towards me and says: this is so I can be frank with you Che. I usually don’t take that risk but you strike me as someone who might benefit from hearing some honest truths from a psychiatrist. And to be honest I have grown tired of doing things in the prescribed way. At this point in a medical career you cease to care very much what might happen to you, and of course any consequences would be greatly diminished. So if you would be up for it, Che. Shall we try it this way and see what happens?
106. Doctor Anne bustles on and says: anything is possible Che. There are whole religions where people believe the most psychotic things on incredibly poor evidence. Evidence that would be thrown out of a criminal trial, even a civil trial. That God was born into human flesh, that a virgin gave birth, that an archangel chose an illiterate man to receive a holy book. Groups who claim that they are the chosen people of God, even though when you read their history it seems as though they have been chosen for punishment and persecution. Like Job if you know that demented story. All at the whim of a vicious God who incites a father to kill his own son in obedience to the voices in his head, a God who installs that murderous schizophrenic as the progenitor of all His religions. A God who propagates endless war by whispering in every ear: I love you the most, you are my favoured ones.
107. Doctor Anne is just getting warmed up and I do not interrupt her. I was brought up by severe nuns, she says. They beat all taste for religion out of me along with any sensitivity to the spirit. When I see any hint of it in my patients I have to restrain myself from being cruel or domineering or ridiculing their beliefs. From beating them back towards sanity, at least in a metaphorical sense. The irony of it is that psychiatry resembles nothing more than a religion, an offshoot of the dogmatic scientific materialism which is the great modern faith of the West. The belief that number and measurement are the only true ways of accounting for the world. If you don’t understand something: smash it and count the pieces, then take each piece and smash it again and again. Forgetting that a person who breaks a thing to find out what it is has left the path of wisdom.
108. In some ways though Che psychiatry needs to be restrictive. Without some rational limits all sense-data would crowd in on you completely undifferentiated and that is the precise definition of insanity. The rigours of psychiatry allow the chaos of the human condition to settle as we agree - for example - that there is your body and there is my body with the barrier of empty space between them. But taken to an extreme this can become extremely cruel. We give distressed patients no air time at all, and by remaining completely unresponsive we wash their souls out until they lose all confidence in their spiritual experiences although we never call them by that name. The unusual becomes the delusional and this is perhaps the grandest delusion of all. This is why you feel so emptied out in this place. Your experiences were completely discredited long before we brought you in.
109. I ask Doctor Anne why she would tell me all of this and she pauses before she says: Che the honest answer is that I don’t know. This locum stint has begun to look like one of my last and I have very little to lose. I do have a fair bit to regret though. Actions of mine that were well-meant but which I could have done much better, things I failed to do that I knew I should have done. I have come to believe more and more that being honest with patients must be the central part of any cure. To admit the limitations of our drugs, for example, while explaining how much they can really help. Truthfulness puts the onus back on to the patient to take responsibility for their own lives, to take charge of their own reality and not let any other person dictate it. What a good and satisfying life might look like, how to identify its opposite and find ways to steer clear.
110. I am old Che. Older than I ever hoped I would become. I knew my numerical age would keep mounting but the consequences of that were hidden from me. The way age shuts you down against the reality of the living world. My memory I can coax along but the bodily failures are humiliating in a way you can’t imagine. I go to bed not knowing whether I'll wake up and not feeling too bothered either way. Some days I can't shake the feeling that I am already dead and this feeling persists and persists. I have no religious affiliation but that does not preclude my belief in an afterlife and I do worry about being judged. I have never deliberately harmed anyone but I have caused severe harm unwittingly and perhaps not so unwittingly. Patients who told me that their medication was pushing them towards suicide, patients I kept on medicating because I had no other option. Some of my interventions were the exact opposite of therapeutic and that’s just scratching the surface of the harm I have done.
111. Doctor Anne sits up and looks at me suddenly, and with her eyes soft like she is looking at her granddaughter she says: Che I'm going to recommend some simple and practical things. I know you feel angry at this place and the psychiatrists who run it but there is one sure way to get yourself out of here. If you can manage to smile and be polite and agree respectfully with your doctors, if you can bite your tongue and keep yourself quiet and occupied on the ward they cannot hold you. If you get up at a reasonable hour and dress yourself neatly, if you shower and put your hair up and do all of those things that ordinary people do. You could read a book for an hour or even just pretend to read, you could watch a little television or have a pleasant visit with your mother no matter how much she tries to needle you. You could go to morning coffee with the aim of listening more than you speak. Even if they try to keep you on an order after discharge the same thing applies, Che. If you pretend to be sane and agree with what they say you will be free of all restriction in no time.
112. I also want to recommend something else, she says. There are plenty of medications that are dangerous and come with side-effects that I now consider to be unacceptable. But there are also good medications when used at proper dosages and there are powerful synergies when certain medications are combined. They can genuinely heal a person and I have seen them completely transform patients’ lives. If you keep trying different combinations at different doses you should find something that not only suppresses your negative symptoms but actually gives you a boost in the way you want to live. Medications that might enhance your engagement with your dream states, for example, giving you more control over them and supporting deeper exploration.
113. If you would be agreeable Che I would like to write you up for a little dose of something that I think might really help. It’s not a perfect drug but for some people it comes as a miracle medication and a little touch of it might boost you into places you can’t even imagine. I would like you to try it just for a little while Che but only if you agree. Only if you think you could use a bit of a boost. And if it doesn't help we can always taper it off and try some other things. I believe in incremental decision-making and this is a very small increment, a very modest and temporary adjustment that has the power to redeem your life. To redeem many lives Che although it may currently be hard for you to hear that.
114. These words from Doctor Anne keep pushing me towards tears. I thank her profusely and ask why she would bother to help me and she says: firstly because you are a human being, Che. But I also feel that there is something particular about you. Something momentous, even. I can’t write that in the notes and I would probably deny saying it but it’s true nonetheless. My instinct is to reach out to you with whatever help I have to give but you must remember dear that I am hardly Saint Anne. I get paid very well for what I do and all I am suggesting is a small augmenting dose of a common medication. She shrugs but I know this is not the full explanation. I want to jump up and hug her but I know that would be an awkward and backward step, the sort of crazy-person behaviour she has counselled me to avoid.
115. When the consult ends I get up and thank Doctor Anne again. She smiles very warmly at me and tells me that it’s nothing. She tells me to take care and to think about what she has told me and I assure her that I will. I head out of the room feeling brighter than I have for months and I decide to go looking for Ariel. When I find her she looks at me with a strange wicked smile and says: Oh Che I seem to have quite forgotten to come back into your meeting! She seems very pleased with herself and I get a strong impression that she would tell me so many things if she were permitted to tell them, secret facts which might assist me greatly but remain solely for me to find out.
116. Ariel has some tea already steeping and it is as strong and soothing as her brews always are. I thank her and she says: of course darling. I hope Doctor Anne had something positive to tell you. She is one of the good ones, that is what they say. I could swear I see her wink when she says that, this strange silver-haired nurse who always seems so far ahead of me, knowing what I should ask for before I ever thought to ask. She tells me that my new medication will be dispensed immediately and this causes her to smile even more broadly, and although I don’t know what is happening I am comforted by her enthusiasm even if my own feelings about it are not particularly enthusiastic.
Chapter 7 - LOOK DOWN, LOOK DOWN
117. I don’t know why my mother hasn’t come to visit. She failed to arrive yesterday and the day before that, however many days have passed since they brought me into the hospital. I have spoken with her briefly on the phone but each time she sounds more sullen and unresponsive. I have told her I would like to see her and that I have important things to tell her but she just goes quiet or mumbles about things better left unsaid. She has asked whether I need anything but when I give her even short lists of things she makes hostile noises and tells me none of them are appropriate. What I really want is my down quilt with its soft sateen cover. The cotton blankets here are rough and uncomfortable and I never get any decent sleep. I remind her how much emphasis the doctors put on good sleep but she just huffs at me and tells me not to be so dramatic, that I will just have to make do.
118. This morning I came back from coffee to find one of my old backpacks sitting on my bed. When I unzipped it I felt incredible gratitude to see some clean clothes. They had been ironed and they smelled very fresh and most importantly they were my own clothes - even my own underwear - with that fresh linen smell of our laundry at home. There was even a little packet of dark chocolate that came as a welcome surprise. I rushed back to the nurses’ station to ask whether my mother had been in and they shook their heads and said: I don't think so. I don’t think we’ve seen her. I told them about the clothes that have appeared in my room and they just shrugged and said: well perhaps she was able to pop in for a minute or two. I looked anxiously around the ward as they called out to me: Che. If she did come in she is certainly not here now.
119. When I first came to the hospital I was happy to wear the soft flannelette pyjamas that were always folded in piles on trolleys parked in the hallways of the ward. They were warm and comforting as I shambled around the place in my shoes that had been stripped of their laces. I had seen many new patients do the same thing but when I saw those clean clothes folded so neatly I knew it was time for me to dress like a regular person, just as Doctor Anne had suggested. In my backpack I found t-shirts and jeans and even a pair of my soft-soled walking shoes with their fixed elastic laces, and the thought of wearing shoes that would remain tight to my feet came as an absolute pleasure. I chose an outfit and set it out on the bed - right down to my favourite pair of socks - and just to look at it was enough to convince me that I was going to get out of here.
120. I can’t remember the last time I had a shower. I might have had one or two early in my stay but that seems a very long time ago. I keep intending to have another but whenever I go to get a towel or some soap something intervenes and I never quite make it. A nurse redirects me and I lose focus and many hours pass before I remember what I was going to do. I have some body spray to stave me off from smelling too bad but I have increasingly noticed a weird rank animal smell surrounding me and that is not like me at all. When I look down at the food stains and the other smears on my hospital pyjamas, when I see those clean clothes and how I would like to keep them clean: it becomes obvious that I am in desperate need of a shower.
121. I should go and find some soap and maybe a towel but I am desperate to feel hot water on my skin. I charge out of my room empty-handed and go directly to the nearest bathroom unit. Once inside I snib the door lock and drop my filthy pyjamas straight on to the tiled floor. I have been wearing them for so long that they keep some of their shape even after they drop down against the tiles and I smile to see those grubby flannel pants half-retain the look of someone standing in them, my pyjama top nearby only half deflated. As though I have mugged some poor pyjama person and pummelled them so severely that they have lost half of their air.
122. The water rushes out of the shower head at good pressure and it quickly grows very hot. I have to mix in a ton of cold water to prevent it from scalding me while fighting the urge to leap under the stream no matter how hot it is. I restrain myself until I can bring the water down to a comfortable temperature but I can already feel the fine spray wetting my skin and it feels too delightful for words. Once I get under the shower it livens up my skin and makes me feel as though I am coming back to life. All the grime of the ward, all the stress and indignity I have endured are soaked away by the heat of the water and the feeling of being cleansed is the most irresistible thing.
123. As the hot water flows across my skin I hear myself making small involuntary noises. You might call them sighs but they sound more visceral than that, little groans or moans of bodily pleasure as the heat seals and then infuses my body. I pull water through my hair with my fingers and my whole scalp tingles with it, I feel life coming back into my muscles and bones right down to the soles of my feet. The water still feels a touch too hot but even that slight searing flow gives me pleasure. These sensations block out every other sense including any sense of where exactly I am standing. I feel my body begin to shimmer until the heat on my skin is the only thing I know.
124. They must have started knocking on the door some time before I hear them. The water is pouring over my head and through my hair and for a long time I can’t hear anything but the rush of water as it pops in and out of my ears. I gradually begin to hear knocking and muffled inquiries from the other side of the door but I really don’t feel like responding to them or having my shower interrupted. I guess they could open the door from the outside if they really wanted to, and surely I can’t be sedated or put in HDU just for having a shower. I find a remnant scrap of soap on the shower rack and I swash it around my body, feeling intensely pleased as it dislodges the grime and the smell of the ward. It all feels so good that I make up my mind: unless they physically stop me I am going to stand under this shower for as long as I need to get clean.
125. As the noises outside the bathroom grow louder I stand very still with my head bowed. Water pours down through my hair, splashing on to the tiled floor in a semi-circular pattern. The noises grow louder and I begin to hear proper banging and I know that I should turn the water off soon. It sounds like they might break down the door and there is no need for that kind of craziness just for a bit more time in the shower. I look down at my hands and will them to go towards the large chrome faucet to turn off the water and there is this very strange moment when I stand there wondering what my hands are going to do. As though they are sovereign citizens somehow foreign to my body, as though the power over this decision lies within their strength and not mine.
126. I stare at my hands through the halo of streaming water and they begin to look very peculiar. I do genuinely want to turn off the hot water but I am held in place by some opposite instinct. My hands look intensely present before they fade very slightly, and when I see the familiar luminescence grow around the edges of my fingers my stomach suddenly drops. I feel as though I might vomit but as I stare down at my hands their luminous edges glow brighter and brighter and I know what happens next. In a moment everything will cut to black and I will be back with him again but under this shower at this time in this place that fails to happen. My hands snap back into ordinary vision with their halo slightly dulled and I am left trying desperately to determine how long I have been in this dream.
127. I manage to shut the water off at the faucet before falling to my hands and knees on the wet tiles, retching and spitting. I have always wanted to wake up within a properly visual dream but now I would give anything to be torn back out of it. To be sent back into what I would naively refer to as the Real World, or even to come back into this dream without knowing that it is one. I spit and curse but as my body cools down I realise that I am marooned here without any hope of rescue, without the slightest idea of how I should orient myself to this place or make my way out of it. As I cool down into this continuing dream that feels like my permanent reality, with no way to wake from it or to find my way home.
128. Eventually I pick myself up off the floor and yell something to the nurses on the other side of the door. When they hear my voice they quieten down a bit and I have a moment to pull myself together. My hands still glow very slightly but the rest of my body feels dense and real and I see that this dream is not going to resolve itself any time soon. I grab a damp towel that is hanging from a rail and I pat myself dry with it, securing it around myself before opening the door to the throng of nurses outside. As soon as the door opens they fall silent and stare at me with surprise and also with a hint of awe. I gesture at them as I move towards my room and they recede on each side of me like the waves of a parted sea. I walk back to my room and shut the door behind me and not a single one of those nurses complains about it or tries to follow me into my room.
Chapter 8 - QUIZZING THE QUIZMASTER
129. Waking up inside a dream is a disorienting thing to do, especially when you are the only one who realises it is a dream. The persistence and texture of it bring me a strong sense of the consequences of getting this dream wrong, the way reality has consequences but even more pressing and intense. I also see how the intrusions this place makes on me work the other way: that I could bend and stretch the fabric of this dream space effortlessly if I were to be reckless about it. I could even tear this entire dream reality into pieces if that is what I chose to do.
130. As I sit on my bed trying to think up a plan I notice the plastic laminated page that sits on my bedside table. A statement of patient rights and responsibilities that I haven’t bothered to read. I pick it up and my eyes are drawn directly to the section entitled Right to Treatment and the first paragraph tells me exactly what I need to know. If you are distressed about your experiences please speak to a nurse or request an interview with your psychiatrist. This is the one thing I can't be faulted for doing and I see how powerful that is, how this space actively calls for my honesty and the open expression of the way I feel. I see how this might be some kind of genuinely caring space, radically oriented towards my welfare and my dignity and liberation, even if that was not the original intent of whoever set down these rules.
131. I walk down to the nurses' station and tap gently on the glass. When the nurse looks up I could swear she is startled to see me, looking around anxiously as though she is distressed by my presence. She looks like she wants to get up and run but she just forces her eyes back down towards her paperwork. I tap a little louder and she shifts in her chair and I see how she is compelled to stay where she is no matter how insistent I become. I feel her hostility and how vulnerable she seems and I decide this is as good a time as any to test out my new powers in this place. But just as I draw back my clenched fist to smash as hard as I can on the glass I feel a slight brush on my opposite elbow. I glance sideways to see nurse Ariel looking at me with concern, her sweet smile easing my frustration as she says: Che sweetie I thought you might like to try this.
132. Ariel offers me a fine bone china cup with both of her hands. It has a gilded rim and I want to ask her where she found it but she presses it into my hands and I take a little sip. For a moment I cannot identify what I am drinking but as it soothes and revives me I realise that this is the most beautiful cup of tea I have ever tasted. It is smooth and strong and has been brewed out of good leaf tea, it has just the faintest hint of raw sugar exactly as I like it. I sigh with the warming pleasure of it and Ariel smiles at me and says: Che you look like you're feeling much better. I tell her that I do feel different and she smiles even more broadly and says: I love that scarf in your hair it really suits you.
And if I may suggest, she says.
Now that things are progressing for you.
If you need anything, if you have any concerns.
Do please come and see me.
Or speak to Michael over there, or Stella.
We are here to assist you in whatever way we can.
133. I think for a moment before testing her on that promise.
Can I ask for something specific?
You can ask for anything my sweet.
Can I see my psychiatrist?
Ariel smiles as though she knows what I have planned and she says: of course you can Che. It might just take us a little time to locate him, and then convince him that it would be a good time to see you. It gets more and more difficult for us to get our hands on doctors these days but because things have shifted so rapidly he should be agreeable to meet with you. I will do my best and when I have him I will let you know.
134. It is a strange fact about psychiatric hospitals that actual psychiatrists are very thin on the ground. Even your own treating psychiatrist might only meet with you every fortnight or so. It is a matter of great frustration for everyone involved and in the end it comes down to money. Psychiatrists have accumulated such enormous salaries to themselves that the system cannot afford enough of them to give patients a humane amount of attention, and they construct their therapeutic models in the opposite direction of spending any time with us. But this hospital does not exist in the craven spaces of the real world and I know Ariel would never tell me lies about what she is able to do. Before too much time passes she glides up to me and says: Doctor Samuels is waiting for you. I think she must have made a mistake but when I query her she nods at me and says: yes Che Doctor Samuels. You know him quite well. I ask whether she has time to sit in with us and she smiles broadly and says of course I do Che it would be my pleasure.
135. Doctor Samuels is perched on a plastic chair looking through my notes. He looks a little awkward, like he is unsure of what he is doing there, as though he might have woken abruptly from a dream even though it’s just the opposite. He is however the consummate professional and as he looks up at me his ingrained superiority completely obscures his doubt, and any hint of uncertainty is camouflaged by his customary smile. The space around us has the appearance of ordinary space but I also see his image overlaid with metaphorical content from some parallel realm, faint runes and pictographs suggesting what this man really is. I see him sprawled on a pile of ill-gotten gains accumulated through his work, I see him bought and sold by his materialist view of the world and the wealth he has appropriated from the needy.
136. There is a faint light surrounding the Doctor’s heart that resembles compassion but as I look at it in this symbolic space it seems mostly made out of superiority and condescension. His heart harbours some small fraction of pity but never in its loving form, only in those corrupted declensions which confer power over the person he pities, serving to make them more and more pitiable. And it is with this kind of pity that he opens our consult today, asking me in his best concerned voice: how are you feeling today, Che?
I pause and then mimic his speech back to him.
How are you feeling, Doctor?
Pardon?
How are you feeling today?
His professional demeanour whips up to mask his surprise and he gives out a little chortle before saying: well I feel just fine Che. Thank you so much for asking.
137. His thoughts begin to intrude on my mind and my first instinct is to shut them down. Hearing voices is a cardinal sign of catastrophic mental illness but then I remember that this is just a dream, or something very much like it, and the only thing delineating the sane from the insane in this space is the ability to wake yourself back up. I relax and allow myself to listen to his thoughts and although they are scant and choppy I hear him well enough when he thinks: there is nothing of value in her experience. She should be thankful for medical intervention, which by universal application will rid us of this curse. To quarantine the right-thinking from madness and despair. Regulating the dysregulated without temptation towards credulity. Feelings follow thought and not the other way around.
138. After a while a pause comes into the doctor’s thinking and I leap in quickly to ask: could I try you out on another question?
I don't see why not.
Do you know where you are?
In the hospital, he says.
Saint Mary’s Hospital.
So it would seem, I say.
I guarantee it, he says.
He is smiling at me like I’m an idiot so I deliberately provoke him.
Do you want to bet?
139. The doctor lets out a patronising mmm-hmmm and I know this one errant question has completely closed him down. He confirms it by saying: Che I am sorry but I feel obliged to tell you that when you ask me questions like these you are actually communicating some very concerning things. About how you are feeling, how you are perceiving the world.
Yes, I say.
I agree with you doctor.
These things are very concerning.
What you say is absolutely true.
140. So would you like to tell me about them?
The strange thoughts you are having?
I don't think so, I say.
Rather I would like to show you.
So that you can see what I mean.
Che I don’t think…
I cut him off abruptly.
Doctor with respect I no longer have much interest in what you think. To be honest I don’t really care what I think either. Certainly there seems to be little value in what either of us have to say. So instead I would like to show you how I currently see things, so you can see how they make me feel. But I should warn you: you might find yourself feeling some very unpleasant things.
The doctor shrugs and throws up his hands.
And I know exactly what will happen next.
141. As a way in I ask the Doctor whether he remembers any of our prior consultations, or the way I ended up in hospital instead of getting well. Doctor Samuels says that he does recall the substance of our interactions but I can see in his heart that he doesn’t. I ask him for one concrete example that he remembers and he says: well, Che. I remember you telling me about dreams haunted by some kind of… void. How you would be sucked into it, how you would fight to resist, how it sometimes escaped your dreams and leached into the real world. You waxed very poetic about it and I think you have a fine imagination but it runs away from you at times. So there you are: the terrible churning vortex at the centre of the room, that you once asked me whether I could see. He smiles in obvious pleasure at proving me wrong but I latch on to his very accurate description and say: Doctor I think I can show you precisely what you have described. Can you lock on to that image in your mind? Got it? Good. Now sit tight and watch this.
142. What I did next was surprisingly easy. I had been tugging pretty hard on the fabric of my dream state well before I knew it was a dream, and my new insight gave me almost unlimited power to pull it into any shape I chose. This dream was built like all dreams on that foundation of absolute void which lucid dreamers have to strain so hard against, to prevent their dreamscapes from collapsing in on themselves or blasting outwards into runaway expansion that explodes towards infinity. The vast whorling emptiness that is the beginning and the end of all things, the starry dynamo that threatens to rush in and obliterate every dream reality that has ever been.
143. I thrust both hands forward into the space at the centre of the room in order to split the illusion of common-sense reality. As I do that the room shudders violently. The gap I tear begins to rotate in every direction at once and as it yawns wider and wider it pulls everything in the room towards it. The file on the table in front of the Doctor is ripped open and page after page of it is torn out until the whole flapping mess simply vanishes into the chasm that I have created at the centre of the room. The Doctor turns deathly white and grabs desperately after his fleeing papers, and when they are lost he grabs on tightly to the sides of his chair and lets out a terrible forsaken moan. The front of his shirt is ripped open and his jacket is pulled up over his head, blinding him for a moment before it too is dragged into the terrible maelstrom heaving at the centre of the room.
144. Nurse Ariel does not react to any of these events, or express any surprise at what is happening to the doctor. She watches on gravely as the room itself begins to fragment and swirl. I should feel horrified at this demonstration of my power but I have longed to teach this man a lesson and so the void grows to consume every inch of the room. The doctor starts openly wailing as his chair buckles and begins to give way, and as his soul gets sucked out of his body he emits pitiful screeches that I find intensely satisfying. His cries crescendo until they are the screams of a petrified child, holding himself against the terrors of the night as all pretence of adulthood is stripped away from him. The doctor stands seconds away from his utter destruction, his face lifting up into a mask of terror as his soul is brutally leveraged out of his body.
145. Doctor Samuels becomes a figure of impotence and pity and I am consumed by my desire to punish him. To demonstrate my power over him just as he wielded power over me. As his soul is torn in every direction I feel rage explode in me - along with the pleasures of revenge - but as I move to flay this man’s soul I see Ariel looking directly towards me across the fragmenting core of the room. She holds up the index finger of her right hand and waves it backwards and forwards, pursing her lips and shaking her head and I know she is telling me: don’t. Warning me against continuing down this barbarous path, counselling me not to sink to the level of harming a human being for my pleasure. She knows what he has done and what he deserves but she also knows that the reckoning of these things vests in a power completely beyond my own, some reckoner or judge invested with authority that I lack. Vengeance is mine says the Lord. And I am commanded once again to stand down.
146. I pull back from my vengeance at the last possible moment and the chaos in the room begins to wind down. The doctor is safe although I was never motivated by mercy, but in showing him these things I have been merciful just the same. I see very clearly that this man still lodges in the material world outside of my dreams, although he was dragged down into this dreamscape to be warned about his fate. I have delivered that warning without doing him lasting harm, and as I pull back from my anger and vengeance the fabric of my dream world settles down. The yawning void retreats to a tiny point floating in the centre of the room before normality snaps back like a sprung elastic band and everything goes quiet again. The doctor has lost his jacket and tie and every button on his shirt but apart from that he is not injured, although his skin has a ghastly pallor to it and his eyes are the eyes of a hunted thing.
147. I pull my chair up against his chair and I put my face right in his face, and although he recoils he has nothing to fear from me now. He speaks in a much softer tone and with a quavering politeness that I have not heard from him before, having seen what I can do to him in a way that cannot be unseen.
What are you doing now? He asks.
His voice sounding close to tears.
I am warning you, Doctor.
Just one final warning.
Do you think you can listen to me?
Just for a minute?
Without talking?
He says yes in his new tremulous voice and I say to him almost in a whisper: this is your final warning, Doctor Samuels. You will not have the benefit of being warned again.
148. Words come spearing out of me that sound nothing like my own. Pouring out of me in rebuke and warning as Ariel sits quietly averting her eyes. Words that say who is the true keeper of the world beyond, heaving her basket of grain continuously so the chaff may be separated and burned. And the terrible fate of any bad seed found amongst Her good grain, to be crushed between Her teeth and spat out on to the Threshers Ground. I tell the doctor that a choice still looms before him while he lodges in the world, when he wakes up to his home realm of which this place is a mere facsimile. That his comfortable living must be abandoned in favour of a search for real remedies for the suffering and the distressed, rather than the clichés of his diagnostic manuals which do nothing but blame the afflicted. He must find more healing ways to respond to the unwell than the blunt tools he knows very well do not heal. And just as he has been shown mercy he must know that mercy is wholly circumscribed, and that if he will not repent then he should not expect to be shown such mercy again.
149. These words come to an end and I put my mouth to his ear.
This is a dream, doctor.
As you may have guessed.
But you have seen one true future.
A future fate that is the opposite of a dream.
So when you wake up?
You need to do better.
He nods at me terrified as I hold my fingers in his face.
Wake up, I say.
Do better.
You have been warned.
Ready to snap my fingers.
Do better.
Wake up.
Snap snap.
The doctor goes slack in his chair.
150. I push my chair backwards with both feet and turn away from Doctor Samuels. I expect him to disappear when he wakes up but as I glance back I see him sprawled unconscious in the room with me. Ariel is smiling broadly and I realise that dreams and wakefulness may not be as straightforward as I supposed, that a man might dream in one place and simultaneously wake up in another. Ariel speaks to the Doctor as though he were still conscious and says: I think Che might be a little bit overwhelmed at the moment. If you don’t mind I would like to take her for a few minutes and make her a cup of tea. She looks at me intently and just for a moment I feel her surge with admiration, for both the strength and the restraint I showed in dealing with the doctor. It erases any trace of my fury and vengeance and I nod gratefully at her, tears suddenly misting my eyes. She takes me very gently by the arm and says: come on Che. You’ve done really well my darling. Let’s go and see about a nice hot cup of tea.
151. As we walk out of the consulting room I look up through the glass on each side of the nurses' station into the High Dependency Unit. Jonathan is tapping on the far pane to get my attention, and as I look over at him he smiles his best maniacal smile and gives me the most enthusiastic two thumbs up you've ever seen. I lift my hands up to show him that I can't hear what he's saying but he just smiles all the more, tapping his hand on his heart and gesturing towards me, blowing me a couple of kisses while he dances there and sings. I don't know who this man is but I see how he shares this lucid dream space with me, how wild he is and how unrestrained and also how full of love. As I watch him capering about behind two stands of reinforced glass I can feel how much of his love is for me, that he genuinely feels great personal love for me. I give him a thumbs up back and he reaches out to capture it and hold it against his heart, closing his eyes in a beatific expression of ecstasy.
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