The counselling office was homely in the same way that candles smell like what their labels say. Some redolent semblance of comfort shone through the large matte green chairs and the professional bookshelves, topped with little zen gardens and potted plants. The sun shone blue with a still young morning. The counselor across from him sat cross-legged, a clipboard balanced precariously on his knee, no expression on his face. His certification hung on the wall behind him, too far away to read the name that Ethan hadn't bothered to remember anyway.
"Have you ever been to counseling before?" he asked, with a tone as plain as his face.
"I never had to," Ethan replied blandly. "I'd have preferred it stay that way. I've already had one too many people in my head, thanks."
The counselor poised his pen without looking down at the paper. "So this requirement has been a source of stress?"
Ethan shrugged. "I've had worse."
The counselor scribbled something in what sounded like a doctor's chicken scratch, then looked up at Ethan with the same plain expression that he wore before. He never spoke a question but Ethan knew what he was asking. He wouldn't answer a question without words, and met the gaze with the same aggressive neutrality he'd felt for months. The time was his to waste. Either way the counselor was getting paid with Blue Umbrella's money. A heavy silence persisted.
The counselor reviewed his note but remained unchanged. The question thickened, and the obvious answer loomed. They both knew it. The ticking of the clock beat the passage of time in labored analog clicks. The rest of the conversation would be arbitrary and predictable. What stress was worse? How did you handle it? What did you get from it? Far-fetched analogy. Attempt at relatability. How does it affect you now? How do you handle it? What do you get from it? Let's unpack that. Well-intended recommendation for a prescription. Tactic to try. See you next time.
Ethan sighed imperceptibly as his patience wilted. Even spelling out the beats in his head was exhausting. The counselor seemed unmoved. He leaned forward as if to convey a nudge. He tipped his chin down and peered at him from under clean dark eyebrows. "Will you tell me about it?"
The invitation seemed to land on the floor between their two chairs, all Ethan had to do was reach out and grab it. What stress was worse than counseling? Dulvey was a nebulous entity with no real beginning or end anymore. Dulvey was obvious. Shooting his wife before his stump arm bled out was stressful. Attending Lucas's fucking party was stressful. Retrieving the D-series arm was stressful. He hadn't considered comparing moments. He could talk about Dulvey, it was all right there in his head. But how and where to begin? "I don't know," he decided.
The counselor raised his eyebrows minutely. "If I may be so bold, Ethan, I think you do."
Ethan stared at the floor in front of the counselor's shiny brown dress shoe. No scuffs, not even the dry Texan dust tainted them. There's an indoor boy, he thought. There's a city boy who's never gone out of his comfort zone. The disparity between their experiences struck him like a bullet to the head. He almost laughed trying to picture this plain and mild yuppie going through the Baker house. He tried to picture messy red staples behind the nicely poised pen, or Jack's bootprint swelling one of his eyes shut. He wondered if he had what it took to make it out alive and left the thought with no definitive answer. Regardless, there was no way he could possibly understand. "All that Halloween shit had me on edge."
He didn't have to look up to hear the sound of another note being made. "On edge." The counselor iterated. "Tell me about that."
"I don't know." The sound of the metal ballpoint on the clipboard grated his nerves. The feeling of surveyance and close perception loomed. On edge. He held his tongue on the obvious example and focused his thoughts elsewhere. October wasn't an easy month. He drummed his fingers on the armrest of the chair and felt the stitches wriggle with the anticipation of coming out soon. "There's all those clichés and tropes out there in the horror movies. I guess I just never noticed how close they were to reality. It's weird to see, I don't know, The Fly and think 'yeah that mutation is pretty accurate.' or Carrie and think 'yeah, people really are unassuming about young girls but look how much fucking damage they do.' It sucks. You grow up thinking it's just fiction and it's on that side of the screen while we're not. Then you find out that's not true."
"Because of Dulvey."
"Fuck yeah, because of Dulvey."
A moment passed. The counselor only stared with the impeccable and excruciating wait time he was so keen on exercising. The clock beat the seconds. Any movement Ethan made would be recorded, not that it mattered, but his pride kept him from shaking his head, or crossing his arms, or glancing around the room. His body language would tell more than his words. He stopped drumming his fingers. He wanted to purse his lips, but didn't. Then he resumed, "you say that like there would be any other fucking reason."
The counselor scribbled something else down, then adjusted his clipboard on his knee. "I notice you're a little tense. What you went through was upsetting."
"Yeah, no shit."
He glanced to his clipboard so quickly it seemed more like a courtesy, and asked a question he already had posed in his mind. "You mentioned the feeling of someone else inside your head. What was that like for you?"
"Uh," he blew a sigh so his cheeks puffed out, and shook his head. "Not great." The inside of his mind felt like the basement, black and labyrinthine. Hard to tell what was dripping water, or footsteps, or heavy breathing. The night of the Incident was all one place in his mind. He dragged one hand along the wall trying to find the door that had the answer behind it. So many memories he had locked away, some more actively than others. "My brain doesn't let me go back there," he said distantly. "I think I blocked most of that out."
"It doesn't have to be what events you remember. Just the way you felt."
He felt his heart lurching in his chest. Running through the corridors, anticipating the bite of a chainsaw blade, falling stories at a time. Each held its own rhythm and panic. The molded staggered through the hallways of his mind, once-human and now unrecognizably overtaken. How many times he'd considered that that could have been him, if Eveline willed it. But she didn't, she wanted him in the family instead. The map in his mind was dark, but the answer was close. It hid behind the door to the processing room. The door rattled on its hinges.
"Just the way you felt," the counselor repeated quietly, with more patience in his voice than before.
"I know," Ethan almost jumped, "I'm fucking trying. Just… give me a minute."
"What was it like?" He refreshed.
The shiny brown shoes seemed to smile with a stupid naiveté. Ethan had had almost the exact same pair. But city-slicker engineer Ethan Winters was remade in Dulvey. He never knew he could run, shoot, and problem-solve as quickly and effectively as he did then. He never knew how well he could survive until he was forced to. He never knew he was capable of saving his own life, Mia's and Zoe's in the course of one night. His strength and sense of purpose got stronger with the infection, pushing through Eveline's hallucinations until their strength outweighed his. The door rattled on its hinges. The deadbolt that sealed it knocked against the frame as he hit at it with the heel of his hand.
"It's like," the door budged but not by much. He sighed impatiently through his nose at the non-answer that faced him. The way was shut. It was made by irreplicable events, never to return. "It's like you're sitting here talking to me, and then I say 'manual breathing' or 'now you're aware of your blinking' or 'swallow your own spit' but it's so much-" he clenched his fist and felt the strain of his flexed muscle against the tug of his stitches. "It's so much worse than that. Because it's not breathing or blinking or swallowing, it's…" he hit against the door in his brain with one last attempt. It rattled, and that was all. Blackness faced him. Nothing more. "It's nothing I can possibly explain, or that you could possibly understand."
The counselor nodded an indication of listening and set the clipboard aside. "I think," he stated with a thoughtful pensivity, "that these memories are incredibly difficult and elusive, but altogether worth addressing. Our past experiences direct our current perspectives, so the more you acknowledge this experience, the more sense your stress, tenseness, actions and reactions, will make."
Ethan raised an eyebrow.
"Picture driving a car."
He could almost feel the sedan's interior in his palm as he nervously shifted his hands on the wheel. The texan dust melted to a lusher, greener, wet heat.
"And all of life is just driving forward, sometimes making deliberate turns and other times seeing where the road takes you."
The turn indicator blinked eagerly as he merged off the highway, where the road had wound on with a ceaseless monotony. The sway and curve of the lanes fell into a steady predictability. The farther along he drove, the fewer cars crawled along beside him. Peeling off to the exit ramp, he felt like the only car for miles, trusting the map to get him to his destination.
"But you cannot go forward without occasionally checking the rear view, where you see what's already passed and how far you've come, and what's going to inform the way you continue forward."
The car crawled cautiously over the rocks and large branches that riddled the overgrown, bushwhacked trail. He pressed the gas and pulled the car forward with a wet, organic sucking sound and continued driving until the trees got too thick and too dense to weave through.
"There's a point to which that is necessary."
He shut off the car and stepped into the dewey Louisiana air. His shiny brown dress shoes sunk a little into the wet marsh and dirt. He read over Mia's email once more despite being able to recite it word for word.
"And there's a point to which that is dangerous."
He followed the trail into the thick of the property with mutilated dolls and carrion to lead the way. A van stood derelict amongst the trees, just outside a wrought iron fence. A hand painted sign obscured the first view of the house, which smiled from beyond with twisted wooden teeth.
"So if there's a safe way you can try and bring those memories back," the counselor spoke with a deliberate and slow lilt. "I would encourage you to do so."