Chapter 30
Maybe the cuckoo clock was a test. If you flinched, you needed treatment for trauma. He wondered what it meant if you tucked and rolled out of the way.
It was procedure, his CO had said. Aberlour was going to be discharged, but the particular situation leading to his discharge required a psych eval.
“For your own good,” the man had said. Aberlour was well versed in seeing right through the government’s line of bullshit. In this case “for his own good” was actually, “we have to know if you’re of sound mind enough not to be a tattletale.”
The whole thing was pointless. There wasn’t a single sane neuron left in his brain. He still wouldn’t tell a single living soul about it.
No one deserved that.
“Tell me about the dreams,” Dr. Lydia Galloway said gently, waiting expectantly, like an owner does when trying to get the family dog to do a new trick.
She was petite, and firm but fair. Aberlour didn’t mind her.
As far as shrinks went, he’d lucked out.
It was their fourth session. He’d spent most of the first one just sitting there silently.
She’d spent the next two slowly pulling at invisible strings, so he’d give up—well, anything, really.
He’d given her less than a shrug so far.
She hadn’t seemed bothered at all, but today she seemed more determined than ever to get him to talk.
“What dreams?”
“The ones that keep you up. You look like you haven’t slept very well in weeks.”
One month and four days, to be precise.
He slept. He was too tired not to sleep, but he woke up in the middle of the night, sweating like he’d been running a marathon, and convinced he was covered in blood, clutching at a nonexistent wound on his neck.
“No dreams,” he answered, shaking his head. He wasn’t lying about that. If he ever dreamed, he didn’t remember them. Maybe it was a blessing, since there wasn’t much up there in that black hole mind of his that would make for peaceful dreams.
“So you sleep eight hours every night. Peaceful, unbothered,” she replied, calling his bullshit.
“No dreams,” he repeated, not wanting to deal with the eight-hour part.
She wrote something down in that notebook of hers but didn’t argue.
“When you wake up, who’s there with you?”
“I’m sorry?” he blurted, startled by her question.
Breathless and covered in blood, that’s how he woke. And behind his eyelids, five men smiled at him.
“Who’s there with you?” she repeated patiently and insistently, refusing to give an inch.
“My men.”
She smiled and cocked her head. She didn’t write, didn’t move. She didn’t say a single fucking word. She just sat and waited.
Waiting, waiting, waiting for grief to hit? For emotion to sweep him under and force the words out? For anger to pour out of him? What was she waiting for?
Didn’t she know that Aberlour had always been filled with those things, and that he’d never let them out?
“Are they angry?” she finally asked.
“Why does it matter?” he responded dismissively.
“You have ghosts, Gavin. Don’t you want to understand why?”
“They’re not ghosts,” he replied, feeling defensive and broken inside.
They weren’t ghost. They were friends. They weren’t angry, vengeful and distraught. They didn’t mean him harm, they were simply there—where they had always been, inside of Aberlour.
“Even if it is full of love, all a ghost can do is haunt,” she said. They weren’t her words. Aberlour could tell, but they burned him like a brand, nonetheless.
“Maybe I like being haunted.”
“Because then you’re not alone,” she nodded approvingly.
Bullseye.
Aberlour abruptly sat up straight, trying to shrug off the combination of displeasure and discomfort the words had caused. He looked everywhere but at her. At the cuckoo clock, out the window, at the painting that displayed nothing other than mazes of overlapping colours.
“Is this enjoyable for you?” he asked her, aware of an increasing level of bitterness and anger.
“Yes,” she replied. “I enjoy watching guys like you realize they’re not dead yet. No matter how long and difficult the process might be.”
Aberlour said nothing else. At all. He sat there, on the leather couch, alone, waiting for something that never came. Dr. Galloway smiled, she wrote, she never offered or asked anything else.
Every time Aberlour blinked, he saw them there behind his eyelids, smiling up at him.
Then the cuckoo clock went off. That goddamned clown shot out from behind the two little doors, and Aberlour jumped to his feet in reaction.
“It’s broken on purpose,” he finally said, as he settled himself back on the couch, smoothing out his shirt like it mattered. He was angry. His hands were shaking with it. All this anger, forced to the surface by a stupid cuckoo clock.
“No—but I keep it that way on purpose.”
He could tell she was obviously pleased the cuckoo clock had drawn words out of him, but she didn’t push.
“To remind people they’re alive? That’s all kinds of fucked up, doc. Does your boss know you’re a sadist?” Aberlour retorted, borderline disrespectful.
“Sure,” she shrugged. “It also goes to show that even the most broken things can still be useful—and loved,” she said, staring right at Aberlour.
“No one loves that thing,” he scoffed in disgust.
“I do,” she replied, casually, obviously enjoying the banter.
“Wonder what that says about you. It doesn’t even fit in here. Where’d you get it? A yard sale?” Aberlour said. The words were coming out faster than he’d planned.
She seemed highly amused by it.
“Is it so hard to believe that someone might love something broken and ill-fitting?” Tilting her head to the side, she smiled curiously and studied his mulish expression.
Yes.
Yes, it really fucking was.
“Wonder what that says about you,” she hummed, the amused twinkle in her eye impossible to miss.
Touché.
“What are you going to do?” She asked him, after a while. She’d scribbled a few notes down, given him time to center himself, but now she was back on the offensive. He could tell from the way she’d sat up, as if preparing to do battle.
“Don’t know,” he said, brushing aside the question as if it wasn’t relevant.
“Come on, Gavin. Guys like you don’t do well with the uncertain. What’s your plan? What will you do with your newfound freedom?”
“Aberlour,” he protested, hating the sound of his first name. Why couldn’t she remember that?
He snorted at the idea of freedom. Is that how he was supposed to view this next phase of his life? As freedom? Like he’d been a prisoner and was now about to be released out into the world.
It didn’t feel like being set free. It felt like being dropped at the bottom of an oubliette. Forsaken by the light forever and forgotten by hope and purpose altogether.
“Nothing. I don’t have one. The military life was all I ever wanted, and all I was ever good for,” he answered, dismissively.
Dr. Galloway clucked her tongue and chuckled.
“Come on. There has to be something you’re good at. Some skill you can still make use of.”
A skill. Aberlour thought, bitterly. His eyes strayed over to the broken clock, and he thought of the clown and its bouquet of balloons.
Yes—yes, he supposed he did have a skill. But what use was a perfect shot, if he had nothing to aim for anymore?