Peeling Back the Skin

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**PART 2**

S HE FACED THE ROOM WITH SUCH AVERSION THAT SHE believed it to be miraculous that she had the willpower to even come at all. Rebekah was rooted to the spot, enmity in her veins, hand clenched around the door handle almost fighting the act of turning it. She could smell the bitter musk of rot that accompanied any one of the water stains that ornamented the gridded ceiling tiles, even from outside of the office. She pressed her head against the age-worn green door, breathed deeply, and entered the room.

The tinny whine of the hinges preceded her. She had been coming here for over two years, but the sound made her skin crawl still. Every one of her senses seemed coated in an indefinable distaste that she could only assume was due to the associations crafted by the journeys she had taken here. It was as if the walls were marred with the venom that she shed from each barrier she had reluctantly torn down, a venom desperately seeking to return to her.

Or it could be a symptom of the exile she felt from the truth being deflected by contrived attempts at logic. She had grown to believe that the adults in her life substituted the unknown with rational thinking as a means of controlling that which can’t be controlled, thus disconnecting themselves from what is possible for what is explainable. The weight she felt in this room was . . . conflicting.

“It felt odd and poetic and encouraging coming back after so many years, a shape imposing itself on life again after chaos,” Mrs. Harrity said as Rebekah entered, though absent of eye contact.

“I’m sorry?”

“It’s a quote,” the therapist brought her eyes to meet Rebekah’s.

Those opaque blue eyes, that Rebekah had come to find wisdom in – a wisdom that she hated – were buried in a thicket of wrinkled skin. Her eyes shone like pale blue topazes – tiny gems that, under different pretenses, could be beacons for dejected souls. But, for Rebekah, they were spotlights igniting her frailty, exposing it for what it was. Despite this, for all the wisdom she held, she lacked perception. It was that component that feathered the distance Rebekah had created between them.

“The writer is Graham Greene,” she continued, “while the book . . . less a book and more of a chronicling, is of his research trips into Africa, compiled out of his journal entries. The quote described one of his return trips, but I thought it fitting of your own return.

I am taking my own liberties to manipulate it of course, as your return is not after years away, but a resistant return after years of what I imagine you consider a form of torture. In there I find it encouraging, that despite the lacking desire and faith, here you are all the same. However, the ‘shape imposing itself on life after chaos’ is where our journey should, hopefully, conclude. Wouldn’t you agree?”

“I believe our journey would have but one conclusion, ideally,” Rebekah said with a tinge of spite, laying her shoulder bag in the chair beside her as she shrunk indifferently into her own.

“As always, I am riveted,” Harrity said with a playful smile.

“It is good to have an end to journey towards, but it is the journey that matters in the end,” Rebekah said coolly.

“Hemingway,” Harrity nodded in approval.

“No,” Rebekah cut in sharply. “No, though he is more frequently credited. The quote belongs to one Ursula K. Le Guin from her book The Left Hand of Darkness circa . . . late 1960’s, if I remember correctly.”

“I see,” Harrity postured her knuckles under her chin with a smile. “You’ve always been an avid and passionate reader. A trait I’m quite fond of. And what is your implication with this quote?”

“That you seem more interested in shuffling me off to where you believe you are meant to bring me than you are in understanding where you found me. I don’t believe this will conclude the way you intend, but if you’d set aside your logic and drop the veil that was forced upon me, that I’m some delusional child, you’d gain more understanding. Something that I think is critical to us progressing in any kind of positive direction.”

Harrity shook her head disparagingly.

“I thought we had passed this,” she sighed as she grabbed a pen to jot notes onto her yellow legal pad.

“Passed what?” Rebekah withdrew slightly.

“This misplaced contempt,” Harrity sighed, her pen still scribbling feverishly.

Rebekah let the silence linger, allowing Mrs. Harrity to finish her chronicling. A brief, scornful glare, decorated Rebekah’s face. Harrity set the pen down, eyed over her legal pad for a moment longer, and returned her attention to Rebekah. She lifted her eyebrows as if waiting for a response. Rebekah lifted her own mockingly.

“Okay,” Harrity said with a long sigh, “let’s revisit this then, shall we?”

“Oh, please, can we?” Rebekah goaded further.

“Rebekah,” Harrity brought her hands to her face in exhaustion. She paused, rubbing her fingers into her temples and Rebekah could see the impatience edging her temper. “What is it that you need from me to show you that I am on your side?”

“For you to show me that you are in fact on my side,” Rebekah spat.

“Please, elaborate.”

Rebekah felt a touch of guilt. Behind Mrs. Harrity’s fierce eyes, she saw genuine concern – a sort of pleading or begging for compromise and Rebekah was the unyielding one. She felt childish. She took a composing breath.

“I want to be heard,” she started slowly, struggling to articulate her emotions. “Or maybe I just want you to believe me. Hear what I’m saying, not as a therapist, but as a compassionate and sympathetic human being.”

Mrs. Harrity thought on this briefly before responding.

“That may sound easy,” she said gently, “but there is no way for me to convince you that I am hearing you as both a therapist and a compassionate human being.”

“I disagree,” Rebekah cut in. “You are so buried beneath your knowledge of the process and response mechanisms that you’ve lost your humanity. You don’t care. All you understand is point A and point B and which roads are best traveled to get there.”

“That is unfair, Rebekah,” Harrity replied almost defensively. “I care a great deal. And yes, while I do lean on my education to help navigate these conversations, it is simply to circumvent my own emotional input – my job is to provide you with an unbiased solution to overcome your troubles. I cannot allow my emotions to bleed into the process and provide you with advice that could worsen your situation.”

“Maybe the answer isn’t always in the cold pages of a textbook,” Rebekah muttered gruffly.

“You are an intelligent young woman, Rebekah,” Harrity spoke softly. “But, for all your intelligence, you lack experience with the world.”

Rebekah didn’t respond and silence re-entered the room, aside from the droning hum of the air conditioning overhead. She hated that excuse; she had heard it more than once and it always came from someone older as if age and experience were exclusively associated. Harrity held Rebekah in her gaze for a moment, before conceding – shaking her head in disappointment.

“You had told me about your dreams,” Harrity continued with a sigh, trying to salvage the conversation. “You said you see your sister in them.”

“Yes,” Rebekah replied indifferently.

“Could you elaborate?” Mrs. Harrity continued. “Could you describe these dreams?”

Rebekah sighed heavily. She had been through these motions; she knew the response she would receive, and she was already weighting how much energy she should drain into this empty venture. Still, there was a buoy of hope that she desperately wanted to swim for.

“It’s always the same,” she began. “We are sitting on the edge of a dock, our feet dangling just above the water, and we talk.”

“What do you talk about?”

“The conversations evolve. Sometimes we talk about her and how she feels overwhelmed with the pressures Mom and Dad thrust on her. Other times we talk about me and the challenges I’m facing. She gives me advice.”

“These are . . . new conversations?” Mrs. Harrity replied curiously, her pen poised over the paper, but Rebekah didn’t notice, she was beginning to sink into her introspection.

“No, more like fragments of memories,” she replied.

“So, you revisit these moments for comfort.”

“I guess so,” Rebekah’s brows creased in thought. “No, I don’t revisit them. It’s more like, I’m brought to these moments. I don’t feel in control, I’m just viewing the moment, searching for . . . advice, maybe? Or counsel? Maybe it is comfort.”

“In one session,” Harrity began slowly, consulting her legal pad, “you claimed that you believe your sister is actually trying to communicate with you.”

“Yeah,” Rebekah felt like she was being mocked. She felt vulnerable.

“Do you still believe this?” Harrity questioned. “Do you believe this is your sister’s spirit visiting you?”

“Would that really be so impossible?”

Mrs. Harrity held her with a pensive stare.

“I never had these dreams . . . you know, before,” Rebekah said.

“Before you tried to take your life?” Mrs. Harrity cut in.

“Yes,” Rebekah said hesitantly.

Rebekah still rejected the suicide attempt, chalking it up to a phenomenon outside of her control, but she didn’t want to share this with Mrs. Harrity. She could only imagine the damage it would do to the perceived progress she had made in Mrs. Harrity’s journal. Truthfully, she didn’t feel like she had progressed at all because she had never felt that the issues lay with her. But she was feeling weak now – like a weight was pressing down on her. She twisted her hands in her lap nervously.

“I’ve always found myself drawn to storms. There is something about them that calms me. After my incident, everything changed and, in that moment, when I thought I was dying, it felt more like I was returning home. I saw my sister, that was the first time she had visited me. And from then on, it felt like . . . I felt like she was there. I felt as if there was some connection to my sister in the rain.

For a long time, I had just thought my sister visiting me is what most people saw at the precipice where life meets whatever lies beyond. I told myself that it was not my sister, but a guardian angel saving me from my premature death. I equated it to people finding religion and that’s what I did. I turned to religion, after having abandoned it for so long, but I found no answers there. It was after I abandoned faith for the second time in my life, that the dreams began and the familiar comfort I felt in the rain became clear.

That’s when the only answer that made sense occurred to me: the dreams were not manifestations, they were my sister visiting me. My brush with death must have connected me in some way to the other side – some form of a bridge.”

There was a brief pause as Rebekah wondered if she had said too much. In her mind, she could almost hear the footprints of the white-clad soldiers tramping down the hall, guns primed with Pentobarbital, strait jackets in lieu of handcuffs, ready to cart her away to some padded room. Despite this fear, she continued – she felt as if this was a weight she needed to shed.

“My sister was the one who raised me. I owe everything I am to her, so maybe I’m not ready to say goodbye. My parents wanted her to be a lawyer or a doctor like them, but she always talked about how she wanted to be a poet or a writer or an artist . . . and she had the mind for it.

She was the one who taught me wit and sarcasm. She showed me how to use my intelligence as a shield against bullies. I still hear them, though. The voices of all the people and the horrible things they said behind my back. I still hear the vile things they whispered about me as I passed them in the halls. I hear them talking about how I don’t belong here – that me and my family should be in the slums or in some down-trodden neighborhood with other people who look like me.

I have been the subject of ridicule my entire life because it makes them comfortable. It’s easier for them to view me as a statistic than a person, because if I fail that’s just part of the plan, but if I succeed . . . I’m somehow dangerous to them.”

Rebekah paused, head down, watching her fingers pick at the polish on her nails. Tears swimming along the brim of her eyes.

“I know these dreams aren’t real – I know that,” she continued. “But I want them to be. I want so badly for my sister to be here now because I am lost without her. I go home to this void – this empty existence. I go home to an empty house, filled with silhouettes of people who used to be my parents, greeted with cold and obligated formalities. The daughter they wanted, the one they poured all their hope into is gone and they are left with me.”

Rebekah was now crying. She was wringing her hands together franticly, panic pounding at her chest like a drum.

“I feel empty,” she wept between gasps of breath. “I feel so lost, and I need her now more than ever and she’s gone. So, no. I’m not ready to say goodbye. I’m not ready for her to leave and if these dreams are all I have left of her, then I welcome them.”

There was a long quiet that followed her confession, where Mrs. Harrity weighted Rebekah with a pensive and compassionate stare. The stare was both comforting and concerning to Rebekah. It wasn’t until Harrity moved her knuckles from under her chin and began scribbling more notes in her legal pad that Rebekah settled on which emotion Mrs. Harrity held more dominantly.

“You must know how unhealthy that is,” Mrs. Harrity said gently. “Memories are wonderful tools, but they cannot replace a person.”

Rebekah’s panic to retreated and a sense of loathing began to work its way in.

“Don’t,” Rebekah threatened.

“I don’t blame you for clinging to some sliver of hope. But you are battling yourself internally. Consider the child you were - your closest friend, your sister was taken from you, followed immediately by your parents abandoning you emotionally. You suffered for years in your own silence until a catalyst appeared leading you to the only logical catharsis that you could find – which regrettably was suicide.

It was a low, your proverbial rock-bottom, and since you had never dealt with this grief, it compounded and the child in you created an imaginary friend, not to be too blunt. It became your life raft in an endless ocean, which is why you want so desperately for it to be true.”

She lingered momentarily. Rebekah’s eyes were wide in disbelief as a mixture of emotions whirled inside of her.

“But the truth is that you are only hurting yourself to place so much stake in these dreams instead of accepting the reality and moving on. I’m sorry to be so crass, but after two years, at some point the truth must come out. You are afraid to let go because to let go of these dreams would cause you to confront the fact that she is indeed gone. I understand the difficulty and I am sympathetic, but the charade cannot continue. Otherwise, you will bury yourself in this fantasy, unable to reconcile. Your life will truly have ended. Your sister would not want this for you. Perhaps, she would want you to be a poet or a writer.”

“I don’t think you’re quite at liberty to make that decision,” Rebekah spat. “She’s not here.”

“Well, if she does indeed visit you in your dreams, then you have the unique opportunity to ask her.”

A moment of tension lingered between them. Rebekah brandished her scowl like a weapon; hatred adorned every inch of her piercing stare.

“Fuck you,” rage flowed through her like magma.

“Excuse me?” Mrs. Harrity recoiled with genuine shock.

“How dare you,” Rebekah spat. “You claim compassion, but you dance on my sister’s grave, waving around some psychological bullshit – defiling the memory of her so you can try to persuade me to act however you think is best. Move on you tell me. You have no idea what is going on in my life. Two years in this hell and you haven’t heard a damn word I’ve said.”

“Try to view this from another perspective,” Harrity sighed, rubbing her temples in frustration. “First, which sounds more possible, that you are grief stricken from a traumatic experience and have developed methods of shielding yourself from the pain? Or that you are being visited by the spirit of your departed sister?

Second, from a psychological perspective, we can explain these dreams you are having and the reason that you perceive them the way that you do. We have studies to support these theories, but there is no science to conclude the existence of spirits or their ability to communicate with the living in the way you are describing. That leaves us with a spiritual possibility. In which, what motivations would your sister’s spirit have for lingering? You have given no indication that she is warning you of anything or guiding you towards anything. Simply, what unfinished business would she have?

Finally, which situation has a solution? Which event can we face and remedy?”

Harrity saw the betrayal wash over Rebekah’s face. What little trust there had been was fleeting. Only a handful of times had she faced a situation as difficult to manage as this, but the failure she felt was genuine and she sought to rectify her mistake.

“The depth of your naivety is staggering,” Rebekah’s voice was coated in incredulous rage. “You couldn’t care less about my struggles or my pain. You are focused on the solution; that’s all you care about. I’m just a puzzle to be solved, but not understood.”

“Two years we’ve been at this. More than that,” Harrity recoiled. “I would have thought that we’d made a better impression on each other than that. I can’t believe that you think that I –"

“It’s not a thought,” Rebekah growled through her teeth. “I know the game. For two years I have heard how you speak to me, belittle my concerns, and try to manipulate me. You don’t listen, you attempt to direct and control me.”

Harrity sat in awe at the accusation. The pen hung limply from her fingers and her jaw was slack beneath her wide, unbelieving eyes. Those wise blue eyes.

Doubt began to settle in her mind, and she began to question her own methods. Was she truly steering the conversation to suit her own ends? Was she manipulating this young woman? She didn’t believe she was. But then again, if the perception was there in Rebekah, then perhaps she was guilty of something more than she was aware of.

She blinked a few times to collect herself, emptying her mind of the doubt. She couldn’t afford to doubt herself, not at such a critical time. She laid her pen down and folded her hands on her desk, reclaiming some measure of confidence.

“I don’t intend to come off as malicious, though I fear that is who you have written me to be in your mind. I only aim to help guide you out of this dark place you are in, but to do this, you must take the first step. It all begins here, if you are willing to face that which scares you the most and overcome it.”

The vitriol that was swarming inside of Rebekah rose to a peak, swelling like a wave ready to break. But something clicked in her mind, breaking her anger at the root. A calm enveloped her, something she wasn’t quite aware of.

Mrs. Harrity’s words danced in her mind as if they held some pragmatic answer. She swirled them around her head, over and over, lending silence to the room. Her brow furrowed in thought, trying to unravel the mystery that had formed in her head.

She rose from the chair, slipping her bag over her shoulder and turning for the door. As she placed her hand on the door handle, she turned.

“A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step, Mrs. Harrity,” she said before walking out of the door.

A calling chorus followed her as Mrs. Harrity jumped up from her chair, beckoning her back. The calls sank into the distant crevices of Rebekah’s mind as she trudged down the office corridor and into the elevator lobby.

She floated through the world with an utter lack of awareness of anything happening around her. Her consciousness retreated to the puzzle, ever turning, in her mind. She felt as if she was being pulled by a string, once again, guided on some invisible track to an unseen destination.

The cool evening breeze greeted her as she exited the building, chilling the tears that wet her cheeks. She paused for a moment, drinking in the fresh night air. The sunset cast a brilliant orange on the horizon, lending to a pale blue above the clouds, giving way to a deep purple, and finally the black of the night sky.

She let out a heavy sigh of relief before stepping onto the asphalt of the parking lot. She made her way to her car, a ’95 Honda Civic hatchback – the car that her sister bought before she disappeared. She placed her hand on top of the car and looked to the sunset once again.

It was moments like this that she knew she wasn’t crazy, she couldn’t be. She could feel her sister, standing by her even now. Her presence was so familiar and clear, it gave her a feeling of peace. She closed her eyes and breathed in the evening air once more.

“Tell me I’m not crazy,” she whispered, “please.”

Another gentle breeze swam around her, and she smiled. Fresh tears were gliding down her cheeks. She opened the door, slid softly into her seat, and started the car. The engine hummed beneath the hood, accompanied by a slight whistling, which was drowned out as the radio came to life. Incubus was playing and Brandon Boyd serenaded her.

I dig my toes into the sand. The ocean looks like a thousand diamonds strewn across a blue blanket.

She sat in her car, sinking into the music, and staring off at the horizon. Brandon’s words encapsulated her feelings.

And in this moment, I am happy. Happy.

She watched the fading colors of the sun give way to the blanket of nightfall. Blue to orange and, at last, to the deep violets and navy of the inexorable darkness. She waited for the few brightest stars to puncture the canopy of night before she finally made her way home.

**TO BE CONTINUED**