“Have you ever tried lucid dreaming?” Evangeline asked the next evening. The day had been calm, nothing unusual had happened. It was a Thursday and it was very good at it.

  “I don’t think so,” I told her, dipping a nacho into a bowl of salsa. Since neither of us were big cooks, we’d made taco meat and thrown together a sheet pan of nachos for dinner. The cheese was nice and melty and we each had our own jar of salsa so we didn’t have to share. She liked salsa verde, anyway, and I was happy with my medium restaurant-style.

  “You could try it,” she said, flipping through channels while we sat on the floor. Kitten was giving us the saddest eyes in the world, but she was keeping her distance since we told her she couldn’t have any of our food. Garlic and onions aren‘t good for dogs, but that didn’t stop her from drooling from a distance.

  “How does it work?” I asked through a mouthful of food.

  “Well, since you are the ruler of your dreams, nothing can happen in them that you don’t approve. You have to take control. It takes practice, really, but I bet if you think about making changes in your dreams while you’re there, you’d be able to fix those nightmares.”

  “You know, you’re the first person who has actually made that suggestion,” I said. Evangeline was the youngest person in the group, having just turned thirty. She’d made friends with Ava in a yoga class and started working at the coffee shop a few years ago. Everybody looked at her like a little sister, since we were all in our 40s.

  “So what do I do first?” I asked, wiping my hands on some paper towels.

  “Well, first you want to think about a trigger, something that when you see it will tell you you’re in a dream. Then, once you realize that, try changing something in your surroundings, like maybe release yourself from the table and run around. Or make the bad guy blow up or bite his tongue or trip and fall. Something like that. And once you have control, you can get out of the dream and move on to something more pleasant.”

  “You make it sound easy,” I said with a sigh.

  “It takes practice, but since it’s all happening in your mind and you’re the one who controls your mind, it makes sense that you should be able to stop all that crap from happening to you all the time. Aren’t you tired of it?”

  “You know I am,” I said, scowling lightly.

  “Well apparently you’re not since you’re still having those dreams.” She shoved more food in her mouth and turned the volumn up on the show.

  “Genna says I’m trying to work through trauma,” I said slowly.

  “And she’s probably right. Genna is wicked smart. But that doesn’t mean you have to suffer while you do it. Maybe after you take control of your dream, you talk to the guy, figure out what he really wants, and then you can let it go. I don’t know. You have options. Figure it out.”

  “I’ll try it tonight,” I said, trying not to be offended by her brusk nature. “Then you can all go back to your lives.” She tilted her head and looked at me out of the corner of her eye.

  “We’re not staying here just because of your dreams. There’s some weird stalker guy out there who might want to hurt you. Remember.”

  “Oh, shit,” I said, feeling dumb. “I kind of forgot about him. I’m so used to having Kitten around, I forgot how she got here. She’s such a good girl,” I said, reaching into the chip bag and tossing her one tortilla chip. She tried to catch it in midair but instead it bounced off her nose and skittered across the floor. She’d gobbled it down before it even stopped moving.

  “It’s been just about a week now. I wonder if he’s ever going to come back.”

  “Cutting his own throat would be an awfully dramatic way to ditch an animal,” I said, sneaking Kitten another chip. This one she took gently from my fingers, laying down beside me so she could lean on my leg.

  “That does seem like a lot of effort to go to,” she agreed. “Has Malcolm heard anything?”

  “He stopped by today and said they haven’t seen or heard anything about some weirdo with a neck wound. He has all the hospitals keeping an eye out, but since nothing has happened, he’s thinking that the surveillance will stop tomorrow. They think the guy has just moved on.”

  “The thing I hate most about this is how random it is,” Evangeline grumped. “Like, it’s all just weird and there’s no reason for any of it and now it seems to be over and there’s no resolution and now you have a dog. I don’t get the point.”

  “I don’t, either, but there you go. I took Kitten to the vet this morning and they scanned her for a microchip but she doesn’t have one. One of the vets even pulled out his electronic detector to see if she was transmitting any kind of signal and that turned up nothing.”

  “Why does your vet have an electronic detector?” she asked.

  “He likes spy gadgets and stuff. He was just excited he got to use his bug sweeper.”

  “People are so weird,” she said, and I nodded wholeheartedly.

  We finished our dinner and cleaned up the kitchen and I decided to go to bed a little early. Since spending some time writing in my new journal last night had helped me sleep, I decided to try it again. The worst that could happen would be I’d clear some of the stress out of my brain. The best would be another good night’s sleep, something I appreciated even more now that it happened so rarely. Evangeline stayed downstairs, watching some animal show. She was more of a night owl than I was. Then again, maybe she just didn’t need as much sleep as I did. It’s not like her brain had been trying to kill her for a couple of months.

  I journaled for about an hour until my eyes felt so heavy I thought there was velcro holding my lids in place. I decided my trigger, if I started dreaming, would be the feeling of steel around wrists. I thought about that again and again, reminding myself that if I felt that, I had the power to take control. I was pretty sure this meant I was increasing the likelihood of finding myself in that dream, but maybe if I could figure it out, as Evangeline so elegantly put it, I’d be able to reclaim my sleep.

  The steel was cold and the edges of the shackles bit into the flesh of my wrists, which didn’t really have enough flesh to begin with. I took a deep breath. This is what I was preparing for. I knew this was coming. This was my dream and I was in charge, not that freaky guy, and if I wanted to free myself, I could. I took long, even breaths and looked around with my eyes. I wanted to start with something small, just to convince my brain that what Evangeline said was right, that I was in charge and I could do anything. I thought about the flying dreams I had years ago, and how free I’d felt, even though flying was hard work. If I could do that, I could do this.

  On a counter to my right, I saw a glimmer of light. A rack of test tubes sat filled with different colors of liquid about ten feet away. Six tubes gleamed through the shadows. I wanted to turn my head to see things better, but the chain holding my left horn in place had been adjusted to make it so I couldn’t turn my head to the right without extreme pain. So I focused on my peripheral vision and watched those six test tubes.

  Six tubes, and a flask.

  And a flask.

  A Flask.

  Flask.

  I blinked and refocused and saw a flask to the left of the test tube rack. Behind me, footsteps began to grow louder. I grinned around the gag and woke up.

  “Oh, this is going to be interesting.” I rolled over and went back to sleep, spending the rest of my dreamtime on my own.

  Something I hadn’t told most of the people in my life is that I’d started therapy nearly as soon as Mac and Cassie had saved me. We’d all known I wasn’t going to survive without professional help, so Mac had asked Genna on the down low if she knew anyone who would be good at dealing with PTSD, and she’d given her a few names. I’d selected the one with the best name and had been seeing her for nearly 2 years. Dr. Imanja del Mar (I know, right?) was a friend of Genna and had been able to work me into her schedule quickly. Aside from our first meeting where she asked the standard “what do you want to get out of these sessions” questions, she had pretty much been letting me talk about whatever fell out of my brain. I kept waiting for her to start asking more invasive questions, but she kept not doing it. The biggest problem I had with this, though, was I felt like at some point I was going to have to come clean with her. When I moved here, Cassie had helped me take on a new identity. It was necessary to help me feel safe and to know that no one from my past, friend or otherwise, would be able to find me. When I started therapy, I used it as a tool to get used to that false identity. Now it was two years later, and, due to some recent changes I was seeing, I knew I needed to come clean.

  “The problem as I see it is that, while the current political system is obviously broken, there doesn’t seem to be any decent solution to fix it so we just continue on this path to ultimate destruction and the eventual collapse of society.”

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  “That’s a good point,” Imanja, my therapist said, “but it doesn’t really answer my question.”

  “Oh, sorry. What was your question again?”

  “Why are you sitting upside down on my couch?” One of her long legs was crossed over the other at her knee, but her legs were hidden by her billowy skirt that fluttered subtly as the heater blew warm air around the room. I could see the bottom of one of her shoes as her foot dangled and tapped at nothing, suspended in mid-air.

  “I don’t know,” I said, trying to shrug, which was really hard since my shoulders were resting on the couch cushion. “Seemed like the thing to do.”

  “I thought maybe it was to get a new perspective,” she prompted, lifting her eyebrows and not quite hiding her amusement.

  “Oh, sure, if you want to be all psychological, that would be a good reason. But no. I was thinking about when I was a kid and I used to watch TV upside down and I kind of wondered if I could still lay on the couch like this.”

  “And you can,” she said, taking a drink from her mug. “Thank you for taking off your shoes first,” she went on.

  “Yeah,” I said, carefully moving around to lay flat on the couch so the blood would run back out of my head and into my body. “I was a lot shorter then. Turns out the main difference between doing this as a kid and doing it as an adult is that my legs are way too long for this to be comfortable anymore.”

  “That and the chances of you passing out if you stand up too fast.”

  “Truth,” I agreed, slowly moving back into a normal seated position. The room swam slightly around me and I could hear my blood pound in my ears for a moment, but soon everything was fine.

  “So I see you still have Kitten with you,” Imanja said, looking at the dog who was happily destroying a toy.

  “The guy ran off,” I told her. “I’m not going to hunt him down. At least she’s a nice dog.”

  “She is a very good dog and a good protector,” she said. Kitten met her eyes for a moment and seemed to nod before going back to pulling tiny chunks of rubber off her toy. “I think it is good that you’re not alone anymore.”

  “I was never alone,” I objected. “I always had the cats.”

  “Yes, but they can’t save you from invaders.” Her Jamaican accent made my brain dance a little, like it was listening to music. She was a friend of Genna’s and had been able to schedule me for my first appointment almost as soon as I called. I had a feeling Genna had called in a favor, but she continued to deny it.

  “That’s why I have weapons hidden around my house,” I said. “It’s my job to protect them. Besides, if I had a normal job, taking care of Kitten would be really hard. I work weird hours and I’d have to get a sitter for her or take her to doggy daycare, and really, that might be fun for her but scheduling my dog’s social calendar would be ridiculously hard. Have you seen her face? Everybody wants to spend time with her. Taking her to the coffee shop just makes it easy to keep track of her.

  “So are you going to ask me why I’m here or not?” I said abruptly. I surprised us both a bit with my sudden change of topic, but the thought had been gnawing at my mind since I started seeing her. “It’s been two years and you’ve just been letting me talk about nonsense all this time.” Apparently, I’d let the tension build up over there and hadn’t even noticed.

  “I know why you are here,” she said. She gave me a gentle smile when she saw the blood drain out of my face.

  “Let me rephrase. I know that you are here for a reason, and the longer you avoid talking about whatever the trauma is, the harder I imagine it is for you to open up. It is not my job to drill into your brain and pull your deepest, darkest secrets into the light. It is my job to help you feel comfortable enough to start drilling on your own. I can tell you this is a safe space or I can wait for you to decide that for yourself. Genna told me recently that you have had a bad time of it, but she didn’t tell me anything more than that. When you want to tell me why you’re here, you will. I know it’s been a long time, but I can’t make you feel safe or like you’re ready to open up. All I can do is let you talk and enjoying your company.” She sipped her tea and set the cup pointedly in the center of her coaster.

  “Oh,” I said, a little confounded. I flopped against the back of the sofa and crossed my arms and legs, holding myself in tightly. Her office was lush with plants and decorated with treasures someone had pulled from the sea. The coffee table between us held one of the biggest conch shells I’d ever seen. I took a few breaths and decided to start from a place of balance.

  “I have an identical twin sister,” I told her. “Theodosia. I think Mom likes her more.”

  “Miranda and Theodosia?”

  “No,” I said, making the decision, “Althea. My real name is Althea.” We were both quiet for a few beats, watching each other not react. Finally, she blinked and nodded slowly, as if realizing the puzzle might be bigger than she had originally thought, which was really saying something considering how long I had been perpetuating this scam on her. Yes, I was feeling some guilt about that, but for the first time in a long time, I needed to tell someone the whole story.

  “I assume Cass and Mac know this?” she asked, holding her teacup lightly in her hands.

  “They helped me figure out the name thing and get fake papers. We made my last name Alan so if I ever respond to being called Al, it would make sense, at least on the surface.. It’s the kernel of truth within the lie. I’ve been Al as long as I can remember. Rather than think up some new name and get used to it, we just incorporated it into my new identity.” The doctor nodded. She glanced at her clock and flinched. We both understood that I had made this revelation knowing that I only had a few minutes left in my time.

  “Do you want to stay and talk more today?” she asked me after a few minutes. I shrugged because I honestly wasn’t sure. I hadn’t planned on telling anyone here the truth of who I was, especially not a virtual stranger.

  “Will you lose your nerve if you leave?” she asked gently. I shrugged again because I was already regretting my decision. My hands started to shake and I could feel my skin flush. She was studying me too closely. Time seemed to pause, stretching between one second and the next. For a moment, she was a goddess, held by waves and the crashing of the sea, surrounded by power and love. For a moment, my feet were hooves, cloven and digging into moss on a forest floor, one horn cut away and bleeding, the other weighing my head to the side. And then we were women sitting in a room, staring at each other, trying to understand what was happening.

  “Come back tomorrow,” she said at last. “If we move forward today it won’t be so good for you, I think. Rest tonight and if you want to start here tomorrow, this is where we will begin.”

  “No,” I said. “I think it’s time I told someone. Especially with the weird crap going on. If you have time, I would like to tell you today.” She nodded and picked up her cell phone. She sent a text and put it back down.

  “Alright,” she said, the ghost of a smile floating through her eyes. “I only had one more meeting today, but it wasn't with a patient so it is easily cancelled.” She stood up and went to her desk, pulling out a bottle of grappa. “Would you like a drink?” I shook my head and pulled my vape pen out of my purse. I held it up to ask permission, which she gave with a nod. She knew it was weed, but we both knew what I was about to tell her wasn’t going to be easy. At least this way her office wouldn’t smell like dispensary.

  “I used to only smoke my own weed,” I told her, as she poured herself a surprisingly large glass of the spirits. “Margie knows how to process it down to oils and you can buy these batteries at smoke shops now, so I like to keep this in my bag for emergencies.” I took a large hit and started coughing. She laughed and handed me two bottles of water. I took a swallow and nodded my thanks. For a few moments, she sipped her alcohol and I drew off my pen. When I felt my back unclench, I leaned back and tucked my stocking feet under me. She kicked off her shoes and curled up in her chair, tablet on her lap for taking notes.

  I started talking, telling her about my kidnapping, confinement, and sexual assault. I gave her what details I could and watched her take notes. She didn't ask questions and waited patiently when I had to stop to catch my breath.

  “He kept me there for three days,” I told Dr. de la Mar. “He cut me out of my clothes and ziptied me to the bed. He’d rape me and then snuggle in and sleep for a couple hours. He acted like I really wanted to be there, like every time I told him I wanted him to leave the told me I was lying or just saying that so he would rape me again. Not that he thought it was rape. He thought, somehow, that keeping me restrained and forcing himself into me was some big turn on, like it was some kind of twisted dream come true.” The doctor was on her third glass of grappa and tears ran down her face. I had been crying off and on since I started talking and had a pile of crumpled tissues stacked carefully on the cushion next to me.

  “You know what really pissed me off, though?” I asked, gasping out a half-laugh. “That motherfucker rearranged my kitchen. He even moved the spices around in the cabinet and threw away anything he didn’t like. By the time I got out, I didn’t know where anything was. The only things Mac and Cassie were able to find were the things I’d kept hidden in my fire safe behind some shoe boxes in my closet. I left everything else behind, even my underwear. I didn’t want to have anything with me that he might have looked at, let alone touched.”

  “How did Cassie and Mac get to you?” she asked. She was drinking directly from the bottle at this point. I had been hitting my vape pretty hard so my body was very relaxed and my brain was cloudy, but it was the only way I could get through this.

  “They had my address,” I said. “I used to send postcards and Christmas cards to them, so they knew that. But we hadn’t really seen each other in years. And it was even longer since we’d been able to feel each other like that. I think the sedative opened a mental gate we’d all closed off and let them know I was in trouble. It sounds ridiculous, but that’s what happened.” She shook her head and set her glass on the table between us.

  “When I was a child, my mother was hit by a car. I heard the glass breaking and metal crunching from miles away. My babysitter at the time couldn’t figure out why I was screaming, and she kept trying to quiet me. I told her my mother was hurt and we had to go save her. She told me I was silly, but when the phone rang an hour later and she heard about the accident, she told them I already knew. Just because something seems impossible or improbable doesn’t mean it’s not true. You were children together. It makes sense you could feel when one of you was in danger. As adults, we fill our heads with ideas of ‘reality,’ but our world is much bigger and stranger than most people are willing to accept.

  “That being said, it seems like your nightmares are the way your brain is trying to cope with the horror you experienced. The only difference is that you can’t see the face of the man keeping you captive.”

  “Oh yeah, definitely,” I agreed. I'd understood that from the beginning, though the thought was too raw for my brain to touch it directly, even after all these years.

  “I think the thing that has always bothered me the most was that I thought I’d fight more,” I said now, comfortably numb from the vape pen I was quickly draining. “I studied hapkido and qi gong when I was a kid. I know how to handle myself in a fight. Why did I let him control me like that? Why didn’t I fight him more? I still don’t get that. Why did I let him make me a victim?” I took a hard pull on my vape, held the vapor in my lungs for as long as I could, then let it stream from my lips in a long, white cloud. Dr. de la Mar poured the last of her grappa into her glass. I was impressed with her ability to hold her liquor. If I drank that much, I’d have blacked-out. And now, because I was extremely baked, I knew that I was going to have to tell her The Thing.

  “But that's not even the weirdest part. There’s one thing I haven’t even told Mac and Cassie about yet.” I pulled one foot up to my lap and removed my sock. Sticking my foot out straight, I stretched. My foot lengthened and shin shortened, my toes drew together with the cleft between my big toe and the others growing deeper and more defined. My foot curled in on itself and my toes turned into a cloven hoof. Thick tawny fur sprouted from my skin, slicking itself to my flesh and covering every inch of my leg. The leg, which had been human just a moment before, now looked like the back leg of a goat. Dr. de la Mar watched, transfixed, until the transformation was complete. She blinked and tilted her head.

  “Isn’t that a hell of a thing,” she muttered, and began laughing.