Interrogation

Interrogation

Dwayne sat with his eyes closed, bound to a chair with plastic ties and duct tape around his ankles. He instinctively relaxed as much as he could to relieve the pain that his bindings inflicted. He no longer knew what they wanted of him, that is if he ever knew. What was real and wasn't real wasn't clear to him, and he wasn't sure it even mattered. It was obvious to him, though, that anything he thought he knew, his inquisitors angrily told him he was wrong.

"You said you lived on a farm in New Hampshire," declared his inquisitor, " Describe it."

"It had a pond out front. It froze every winter. My sister and I would skate on it, that is until the ice broke one day, and she drowned."

" Did you try to save her?"

"Save her? How? The ice broke! "

"Did you call for help?"

"There was no one to call. Don't you understand?"

"You don't have a sister. You never had a sister. Why do you lie to us?"

"Tell us about the flowers."

"Oh, yes. There were flowers. Marigold flowers….and tiger lilies….and irises, I think."

"Who planted them?"

"I, I, I don't know. I don't think I've ever known. Why do you ask me these things? Leave me alone."

"There was no farm in New Hampshire. There was no frozen pond. There were no flowers. You never had a sister. You have lived your entire life in Maryland."

"Where was the pear tree?" he was asked.

"The pear tree?"

"Yes. The pear tree. You told us you remember a pear tree."

"It was in...Bethesda, I think. Some nuns had it, I think."

"It's not real Dwayne. There never was a pear tree or any nuns."

"Why do you keep calling me Dwayne? My name is Wade, and it is the only name I ever had. I remember, I was in a car, waiting for the light to turn green, yeah I needed a green light. I was going to a reunion. I may have had a suspicious looking box wrapped in plain brown paper with me. It had no writing on it."

"Your name is not Wade. Your name is Dwayne. And you did not go to a reunion."

"My sister, I took her a slice of chocolate cake. We were twins, but she died."

"No Dwayne. You did not have a twin sister, just as you didn't have a sister who drowned in a frozen pond. It's not real, Dwayne."

"Well I do know I visited a bull in Tennessee. They even had a hedge trimmed to look like him."

"No Dwayne. No topiary. You haven't said a single thing that is real."

The inquisitor looked over at the other man in the room, and nodded toward the door. They left the room, caught an elevator down to the third floor, and went into an office. Sitting down, Dr. Hagan buzzed Daryl, his receptionist. "Daryl, would you mind bringing in some coffee? Black, two cups," he said, looking over at Dr Mortl for confirmation. Getting a "yes" nod he said, "Thanks. I think we both need it."

"Well, Doctor, what do you think?" Dr. Hagan asked.

“I have to agree with your diagnosis,” Dr. Mortl replied. “It is rare, but it is a severe case of Writeritis. Everything he says, or thinks he remembers, is taken directly from the stories he has written. It is not multiple personalities in the traditional sense, but a psychological subjugation of his real self by memories of things written in his stories. He doesn't live out the lives of any of the characters, he just has their memories, but limited to what he wrote about them. I think if you looked you would see that he exhibits every symptom Dr. Brannon described for Writeritis in his book on the subject."

"I agree. I even called Dr. Brannon and discussed Dwayne with him. He said essentially what you said."

"Well, now that you have a definitive diagnosis, what is the treatment?'"

"There's only one treatment that I know of. I am going to prescribe a new faster laptop for him, with lots of memory and a broadband Wi-Fi connection, and tell him to write a new story everyday. Then hope that one day he will write something approximating reality."