Topic 2 too
Sally woke up screaming in a cold sweat. It was her second nightmare in as many days. The night before she dreamt she was arrested for shoplifting. The dream had felt so real, the store, the Indian proprietor, the carton of cigarettes she shoved in her blouse. And then as if possessed by some mystical demon, the following morning, she found herself under arrest by the police. She begged the officer, explaining that she didn’t even smoke, but he wouldn’t listen. It wasn’t until she explained to the owner that she had duplicated her dream exactly as it was laid out the previous night, that he dropped the charges against her. Raji Parumanjai was Hindu. He knew the power of nightmares.
This next night’s dream was just as vivid as the first. She dreamt she was naked in front of all her coworkers at the brokerage firm. Impossible, but oddly enough, she was scheduled to make a presentation at 9 a.m. in the conference room. She wouldn’t let it happen though. Now that she knew what could occur she would force herself to prevent it from happening.
The huge conference table was surrounded by her fellow brokers with the CEO of the mega firm seated at the head of the beautiful mahogany table. Sally began explaining the third slide of the PowerPoint presentation with the laser pen, when in mid sentence; she jumped up on the table and ripped her blouse off, horrifying and intriguing her peers. Before the CEO could protest, she had stripped to her panties, performed a cartwheel, and landed on her back, legs spread wide, two feet from her humorless CEO. She regained her senses and looked up and over her naked breasts at the man who would soon end her promising career.
Two hours later she lay on her psychiatrist’s couch.
“What made you do that Sally?” he asked. “What possessed you to strip in front of your peers?”
“Exactly,” she exclaimed. “I was possessed. I dreamt it would happen and it did. It was identical to my last dream. I lost my job. I was almost arrested. I need help Doctor Roth, please?”
“Alright Sally, I’ll try hypnosis on you. We need to stop the nightmares, so listen carefully to me…”
Within minutes she was under his spell. It didn’t work. Later that night, she dreamt she ran her car into a large donkey. Although it worried her to drive the following morning, she felt she had no choice. She had another psychiatrist’s appointment, and there were no donkeys in the large city that she knew of. She turned the corner on Primrose and drove the half mile to Dr. Roth’s office until when she came up on a small food store, midtown.
The same fog that clouded her mind earlier, returned, and she floored the accelerator, crashing the car into the side of the small store at forty miles per hour. She woke a few minutes later and stared over the deflated airbag at a large poster of Juan Valdez loading Columbian coffee onto a donkey.
“Oh God what’s happening to me?” she said aloud, as the paramedics helped her out of her wrecked car.
Dr. Roth visited her at the hospital in her private room. “Sally, the physicians will release you in the morning. You’re fine. Was this another nightmare?”
“Yes, doctor, please stop them, please?”
“Alright Sally. I think I can help.” In five minutes she was completely hypnotized.
“Sally,” Dr. Roth said. “You’ve done everything I’ve asked you to do, dear. Everything I’ve told you to do, the shoplifting, removing your clothes, and now the accident. You followed my orders exactly. I’m proud of you, but I have just one more task for you. My partner, Dr. Herman Wells…do you hear me Sally, you’ve met him before, Dr. Herman Wells. I want you to take the pistol you keep in the dresser at your house, bring it to my office tomorrow and shoot Dr. Herman Wells. Do you understand?”
“Yes,” Sally said. “I need to shoot the doctor…Dr. Herman…”
“Wells, Sally, Dr. Herman Wells. Yes that’s right dear, and after you shoot him in the head you will shoot yourself. Do you understand?”
“Yes…shoot myself.”
“Yes Sally, shoot Dr. Wells, then shoot yourself.”
“Shoot doctor then myself.”
“Yes, that’s right.”
At 10 the next morning, Sally walked into the psychiatrist office in a daze. She walked up to the receptionist and asked. “Are you the doctor?”
“No,” the receptionist replied. “There’s the doctor,” and she pointed at the tall well groomed man. Sally removed the pistol from her purse and walked up to the slender doctor who had his back turned to her. She lifted the barrel to his head and fired.
The receptionist screamed as Doctor Roth slumped to the floor while Sally held the barrel to her head and pulled the trigger six more times before realizing the chamber was empty. The fog in her brain lifted and she screamed when she saw what she had done to poor Dr. Roth.