“My head is on fire! It’s going to explode!” she screamed. On his screen, the Dream Healer watched as tears streamed down her face. Her body was jackknifing wildly, her feet kicking against the wall. She was still clawing at all that remained of her outer ears—shards of skin and bone. The flayed flesh looked like freshly ground beef in a supermarket meat tray. A yellowish fluid poured from both ears, spattering her blouse, pooling on the wooden floor between her legs. For a moment, she quieted, as though she was in some kind of a weird trance, her incoherent words a monotonic Buddhist mantra.

The Dream Healer smiled.

“I can hear it munching on my brain!” Her words changed suddenly to a high-pitched scream.

“Of course you can hear it,” the Dream Healer cooed, crunching the paper hard and fast between his fingers. He closed his eyes briefly so he could envisage the horrific images of insect mandibles devouring pulsing brain tissue.

Miriam’s eyes took on an insane glazed expression as her limbs temporarily slackened. Saliva drooled from the edge of her mouth. Within seconds she was convulsing again. “Make it stop,” she mumbled. “Please! Make it stop!” Her legs twitched rhythmically in all directions as if zapped by a Taser.

“Perhaps you should think of dislodging this insect once and for all, before it takes a terminal hold on your mind,” he advised.

The girl seemed to understand. She immediately thrashed the right side of her head against the wall. The fifth time her temple made contact, her skull cracked open. A mist of blood and tissue sprayed both the wall and the bed above her.

“Don’t let it take hold, Miriam!” the Dream Healer urged loudly.

“Fight the beastie!”

“My head’s exploding!”

“Let it explode! Let the demon be burned!” the Dream Healer demanded harshly.

There was silence as Miriam’s body finally went limp. She lay on the floor, blood spurting from her open temple. Her lips parted the barest crack, her words the softest almost indistinguishable whisper. “That’s when . . . I . . . wake up . . .”

“Of course you do, my dear. But not this time,” the Dream Healer replied with a short chuckle.

Previous