Vestavia Hills

Tomorrow was perfect: Robert hoped that this could, had to be, a solution to the heaviness that felt inside his head as if he had a massive bowling ball stuck in it.

Robert noted down the information, said goodbye, and ended the call.

He already felt uncomfortable, and he couldn't quite figure out if it was because he was going to a psychologist for the first time in his life or for that strange feeling that had been crowding him for the past few days.

The next morning he reached Dr. Trevor's office according to the appointed time.

It was a somewhat nondescript building in Miller Hill Way, one of the newly built ones, where concrete and glass rules.

Robert still felt entangled in that uncomfortable feeling he felt the day before when he phoned the doctor.

He looked up to observe the window, which in his hypothesis could have been the psychologist's as if he were facing the challenge with an enemy who he needed to look straight in the eye.

The sun was scorching that day. The reflection of the light in the glass almost hurt the eyes. Robert coped with it as part of that challenge he imagined to face.

He coped with it at least until the building wall and windows seemed to turn into liquid.

The building no longer seemed to support itself on the foundations, and the more the minutes went by, the more it looked like a block of liquid cement and superheated glass pudding.

Robert looked away, convinced it was just caused by the sun's heat. But he did not have time to think of anything that he found himself catapulted into another city.

Or rather, what was around him was still Vestavia Hills, he was convinced. Something in the atmosphere made him think that. However, although he was able to recognize his town in some of the details, he felt cast out. He was like a spectator at the cinema, who can see the places he knows, but who can in no way intervene in that scene to correct the details that seem out of place.

Robert saw Vestavia Hills, but he also noticed that there was something wrong, out of place, in front of him, and he could not change it.

A boy about 7 or 8 years old, dressed in an adult style suit and looking very composed, walked a few steps away from him, he looked at him as if he was an urban fixture that should not have been there, with a mixture of severity and indifference in the eyes. Robert also looked at him sideways, as if to intimidate him, but the boy was gone. He had dissolved to make way for a beautiful girl who was going in the opposite direction, towards Robert.

He observed the provocativeness hidden under a very abundant outfit, but the girl gave him an evil look; evil and satisfied at the same time as if she was observing her prey. Robert wanted to get out of there, but he couldn't move. A much older man came up behind him and brushed up against him to get past. At that contact, Robert turned abruptly: he saw the man's face, or what was left: the older man looked very similar to a painting where part of the front had been intentionally rubbed off.

This hallucination he was stuck in, struck him so deeply that his consciousness woke up, and he told himself with the conviction that what he was seeing was only part of his nightmares. It was another lousy daydream, the result of insomnia and his nerves, as he would tell the psychologist shortly after that.

But this thought was not enough to bring him out of that impaired vision: just as it happens in nightmares, the pinch that someone gives himself inside a dream never helps waking up.

Robert turned to his left: from afar, an older woman walked with tired steps.

Even though he still did not see her features precisely, Red knew that the woman was looking at him.

She was looking for him. She wanted him.

Robert was afraid to look her in the face and was worried that she would be a person without a face like a man before. Instead, contrary to his anguish, the woman seemed to have a friendly look. She inspired confidence and tenderness, and she didn't have the contrite, wrinkled, and depressed expression of many older women.

She wasn't talking, but Robert sensed some of her words: or rather, he heard sounds coming from the woman's face, even if he could not understand what she was saying. It was more like a set of voices very close together, just as if more than one person was speaking at the same time, what he felt was a faint buzzing behind which few words emerged.

"Fire, devil ... ... disappeared ... fear ..."

In short, something not very reassuring and angry.

Then suddenly, the old woman's face looked like someone violently punched in the stomach. Slowly that outraged look turned into a strange grimace: the face deformed, looked cruel, the mouth began to widen and emit a guttural and hollow sound. The eyes grew embers.

Robert looked away and ran away.

Then he realized he was still in front of the same building: he hadn't moved then, but the old demonic lady was gone.

So, as if he were on a treadmill, he started to move towards the entrance of the building.

On the outside, it still looked like a modern building, but inside there was a moldy scent mixed with the smell of something that had just burnt down.

It was a kind of sacred building: it could have been a church since Robert was staring at a wooden cross. It was very dark; only a faint light filtrated in there, coming from who knows where. Despite this, Robert saw everything with clarity, with exaggerated precision, as if an extraordinary faculty was born inside him as if someone or something wanted him not to miss any detail.

At that point, when the wooden cross drew his eyes, it seemed to come alive: it bent slightly on itself and, even if no Redeemer was hanging as in other crucifixes, it appeared, in a bizarre way, to be staring back at Robert. Then it expanded as if something was boiling under the surface of the wood. Finally, the cross, just as the young man stared at it more intensely, completely lost in what it was a real nightmare, exploded: a black stream burst from its center, a tongue of darkness seemed to crawl towards Robert, who backed away a few steps. The cross continued to spew darkness, spreading across the floor and between the benches. Then a figure appeared from the left behind a room that led somewhere: it was a human figure, indeed a man, who was walking solemnly. There was something unstoppable and frightening in his presence.

Robert could not see the face of who was coming. A new thrill of anguish had caught him, the fear of that black stream that continued to leak out the crucifix.

Then, finally, his need to escape had the upper hand. So he ran away.

He found himself by the building where that vision had begun, the psychologist's office, which now seemed to Robert like a piece of land in miles and miles of ocean. He had been catapulted there by a sort of teleportation. The impact of that "journey" was so strong that Robert staggered for a moment.

He looked furtively around, and it was more to make sure that there were no other diabolical beings and that he had returned to what must have been the reality, rather than for fear of being caught out.

He walked in with a knot in his stomach, a mixture of anxiety and desire to drink something very strong.

Even the brass plate that indicated Dr. Trevor's office seemed unreal: but it was only Robert's extreme desire to enter it that made it so. Red stared at it almost to challenge it to turn into something else.

Fortunately, at least this time, nothing happened.

After he rang and someone opened the door, he was welcomed into the waiting room, once the bright living room of a tasteful apartment, by the doctor himself.

It was a man in his forties, sporty and very accommodating: Trevor wore dark jeans and a dark brown jacket worn over a turtleneck sweater that gave him a truly professional look. Over his nose, he had a pair of trendy eyeglasses, framing a smile that looked like a part of his outfit.

"Nice to meet you, Robert," said the doctor. "Excuse me just a few minutes, I'll be right back" he then pointed at the sofa to sit on and also invited the patient to help himself to the gummy candies that were on a table.

Robert sat down where Trevor indicated but left the colored candy. Although he had calmed down slightly compared to the cold sweats of the nightmare just before, he inhaled deeply and exhaled loudly. He felt like he was on his first date.

He would have liked a glass in his hands, at least to give himself a demeanor. He had to settle for an anonymous magazine, which didn't interest him at all.

After a few minutes, as promised, Dr. Thomas Trevor came back: "Here I am. This way, please."

Robert was invited to enter a much smaller and more intimate sitting room than the waiting room.

Everything specially arranged and designed to instill calm, Robert thought. "Who knows if these things work," he said to himself, "we'll soon find out. I bloody need some calm."

A carpet softened the steps by muffling them. The patient chair was so puffy and soft that even if a rusty scrap metal robot had sat on it, it would have made nothing but a faint "puff" noise. On the table was a salt lamp with orange and pink tones, while a floor lamp in the corner of the room emanated some more light, just as soft and discreet. The walls were pastel-colored, also in pink and orange tones from what you could make out with the lighting of the room: no paintings hung on the walls.

The doctor took a seat on a more straightforward chair.

The psychologist didn't waste any time: "So, Robert, tell me: why did you decide to come here?" His tone was friendly, but that put Robert on the defensive.

He took a few seconds before replying. Then said, just as straight to the point: "I don't sleep anymore. I have been suffering from insomnia for a long time. "