Dr Forrester pushed her spectacles up the bridge of her nose and folded her hands in her lap. “So, Nieve, how are the dreams?”
We’d agreed not to call them night terrors.
“I’m still having the same one. Every night.”
“Would it help to talk about it some more?”
I blinked, and the memories began to resurface – being frozen still, as though pinned down by some invisible force, the darkness around me converging to reveal the figure at the foot of my bed, its presence too hellish to face.
Still waiting for my reply, Dr Forrester spoke again. “Perhaps we could talk about the figure. . . the person?”
“Not today.”
I must’ve looked shaken because she gave me a moment to collect myself.
“That’s perfectly fine,” Dr Forrester said. “How about your art? Are you still drawing?”
“Yes.”
“And you find that this helps you?”
I glanced at my bag, lolling open on the couch beside me, and spotted my sketchbook. Some small part of me wanted to share it with her. Flipping through the pages, I found the cherry blossom tree I’d sketched the previous day.
Even though it was just roughly drawn with pencil, it was good. The dimensions, the depth, the movement. It was almost exactly like the one in our back garden when I was a kid. I reminded myself it was OK to feel proud of it.
I slid the sketchbook across the low table between us, careful to avoid knocking over the box of tissues in the middle, or our empty teacups on either side.
“Wow, Nieve,” Dr Forrester smiled. If she was only pretending to like it, she was doing a pretty convincing job. “This is beautiful.”
I looked again at the sketch, now facing Dr Forrester and upside-down. From this angle, it took on new characteristics. Intertwining branches became a web of chains. Thorns and leaves mutated into claws and teeth. Falling petals shifted into droplets of –