ALiCE
-3-
I'm not a bitter man. Just confused. Also a little hurt that my family could do something
like this without confiding in me. It hurts to be left out, to not be in the circle. So what if
I've led a busy life. I still had a family, and that's something that can never be taken
away from me. Unless one were to do as the Mob has done to ALiCE.
I don't know what she could have possibly seen that could have moved her to this. The
rape must have been terrible, but my sister swears that the girl took it better than anyone
else in the family. It was as if it had never happened. She accepted her responsibility,
testified in court, and sent the boy to a short jail term. In fact, just this past June the boy
was released on probation, and the town he momentarily left behind acts as if the
atrocious crime he committed existed nowhere else but in the mind of a desperate and
needy young girl.
ALiCE never seems to dwell on the subject. The few drawings she has actually been
moved to make are of a slightly different reality. It would seem to one, as they gaze upon
her sketches, as if they have fallen through the looking glass. Judging from the glass
houses, black cats, and strange boys of her visions, the rape seems to be the furthest thing
from her mind.
The doctor before me didn't think so. He interpreted the signs as more than anyone else
could have possibly fathomed in a drug-induced nightmare. He seemed to believe that
ALiCE was consumed with the rape, and swore that the girl had never seen the murdered
parents she called her own. As for her silence, he supposed that it was psychosomatic (no
shit, Sherlock) and caused by her guilt in the matter. She had been raped, it was all her
fault for letting him take advantage of her, her parents tried to help her, but it only
resulted in their untimely demise. ALiCE cannot escape this, and her drawings were all
the proof this quack job needed.
The glass houses, he said in his reports, represented the needs and desires of the young
girl's heart. If her home had been made of a house like those in her dreams, the murders
never would have occurred. Someone would have seen the assassins as they broke into
her home and ended the lives of her beloved relations. The black cat represents herself.
Always present, she watches without a sound, and cannot do anything to change her
current situation. She is trapped inside a cat's frail and helpless body, meowing her guts
out but no one can understand the cries of a tortured feline. And finally, the boys that
always seem to inhabit her dreams represent the men. The Mafia men, the boy who raped
her, the boy's corrupt father, the opposing lawyers who scorned her. It was all perfectly
understandable to her previous doctor. When ALiCE's world got too tough to handle, she
retreated into one of her own making, where she could recreate reality itself into a more
comforting place.
Perhaps it's just me, but I don't exactly see stark glass houses, twisted cats, and shadowy
adolescents as "comforting." Quite the opposite, but then again I suppose this is all a
matter of opinion. Strange, how people come to doctors, physical and mental alike, and
put their very lives in the hands of an individual who does little more than make
"assumptions." I would have given up long ago had I not received that fateful call.
***
-3-
I'm not a bitter man. Just confused. Also a little hurt that my family could do something
like this without confiding in me. It hurts to be left out, to not be in the circle. So what if
I've led a busy life. I still had a family, and that's something that can never be taken
away from me. Unless one were to do as the Mob has done to ALiCE.
I don't know what she could have possibly seen that could have moved her to this. The
rape must have been terrible, but my sister swears that the girl took it better than anyone
else in the family. It was as if it had never happened. She accepted her responsibility,
testified in court, and sent the boy to a short jail term. In fact, just this past June the boy
was released on probation, and the town he momentarily left behind acts as if the
atrocious crime he committed existed nowhere else but in the mind of a desperate and
needy young girl.
ALiCE never seems to dwell on the subject. The few drawings she has actually been
moved to make are of a slightly different reality. It would seem to one, as they gaze upon
her sketches, as if they have fallen through the looking glass. Judging from the glass
houses, black cats, and strange boys of her visions, the rape seems to be the furthest thing
from her mind.
The doctor before me didn't think so. He interpreted the signs as more than anyone else
could have possibly fathomed in a drug-induced nightmare. He seemed to believe that
ALiCE was consumed with the rape, and swore that the girl had never seen the murdered
parents she called her own. As for her silence, he supposed that it was psychosomatic (no
shit, Sherlock) and caused by her guilt in the matter. She had been raped, it was all her
fault for letting him take advantage of her, her parents tried to help her, but it only
resulted in their untimely demise. ALiCE cannot escape this, and her drawings were all
the proof this quack job needed.
The glass houses, he said in his reports, represented the needs and desires of the young
girl's heart. If her home had been made of a house like those in her dreams, the murders
never would have occurred. Someone would have seen the assassins as they broke into
her home and ended the lives of her beloved relations. The black cat represents herself.
Always present, she watches without a sound, and cannot do anything to change her
current situation. She is trapped inside a cat's frail and helpless body, meowing her guts
out but no one can understand the cries of a tortured feline. And finally, the boys that
always seem to inhabit her dreams represent the men. The Mafia men, the boy who raped
her, the boy's corrupt father, the opposing lawyers who scorned her. It was all perfectly
understandable to her previous doctor. When ALiCE's world got too tough to handle, she
retreated into one of her own making, where she could recreate reality itself into a more
comforting place.
Perhaps it's just me, but I don't exactly see stark glass houses, twisted cats, and shadowy
adolescents as "comforting." Quite the opposite, but then again I suppose this is all a
matter of opinion. Strange, how people come to doctors, physical and mental alike, and
put their very lives in the hands of an individual who does little more than make
"assumptions." I would have given up long ago had I not received that fateful call.
***