Artie sat in his big leather chair. It smelled like old books and the cheap coffee he drank to keep his heart beating. He was a mind doctor. People paid him a lot of money to listen to their dreams. He was the best in the business. But Artie’s own dreams were empty. He lived in a house that felt too big for one pair of shoes. Every night, he ate a sandwich over the sink so he wouldn’t have to clean a plate. His only friend was a photo of a girl named Della that sat on his nightstand. He hadn’t touched another human hand in three years, not since the funeral.
His new patient was a man named Reid. Reid was a tech billionaire who owned half the satellites in the sky. He was a small, pale man who wore hoodies and looked like he hadn’t seen the sun since the nineties. Reid didn’t sit on the couch. He sat on the floor in the corner of Artie’s dark office. He said he felt safer where the shadows were thick. Artie didn’t mind. He liked the shadows too. They didn’t ask questions.
“Tell me about the dream, Reid,” Artie said. He held his pen over his notebook.
“It starts the same way every time,” Reid said. His voice sounded like dry leaves scraping on a sidewalk. “I see a man. He wakes up at 6:12 AM. The alarm is a soft beep, but it sounds like a gunshot to him. He stays in bed for ten minutes just staring at a crack in the ceiling that looks like a crooked finger.”
Artie froze. His hand stayed still over the paper. He had a crack in his ceiling. It did look like a finger. And he always woke up at 6:12 AM. It was the only way to get to the office before the traffic got bad.
“Go on,” Artie said. His voice was steady, but his skin felt tight.
“The man goes to the kitchen,” Reid whispered. “He makes oatmeal. He puts too much salt in it. He eats it while looking out the window at a dead oak tree. He thinks about how the tree is lucky. It doesn’t have to worry about being lonely anymore. It’s just wood now.”
Artie felt a cold lump of lead drop into his stomach. He had put too much salt in his oats that morning. He had stared at that dead tree for a long time. He felt like someone had peeled back his skin and was looking at his bare nerves. He wondered if Reid had planted cameras in his house. But his house had a top tier security system. He was a doctor for powerful people. He knew how to hide.
“Does the man do anything else?” Artie asked. He tried to sound bored. It’s a common trick for doctors. If you act bored, the patient tells you more.
“He looks at a picture,” Reid said. “A girl with yellow ribbons in her hair. He says ‘I’m sorry’ to the air. Then he leaves. He locks his door three times. Click. Click. Click. He’s afraid someone will take the only thing he has left. But he doesn’t realize he has nothing left to take.”
Artie’s lungs felt like they were filling with sand. He couldn’t breathe. This wasn’t just a dream. This was a play by play of his life. Reid was watching him. But how? Reid never left his high tech fortress.
Artie spent the next week in a fog of fear. He checked every inch of his house for bugs. He ripped up the floorboards. He smashed his toaster. He found nothing. No cameras. No microphones. Just the dust and the silence. He started to think he was going crazy. Maybe he was the one who needed a doctor.
When Reid came back for the next session, Artie was ready. He hadn’t slept in two days. His eyes were red and his hands shook. He had a heavy glass paperweight in his pocket. He didn’t know if he was going to use it, but he liked the weight of it.
“What did the man do today, Reid?” Artie asked. He didn’t even open his notebook.
Reid looked up. His eyes were huge and dark in the shadows. He looked sad. It wasn’t the look of a killer. It was the look of a boy watching a bug crawl in a jar.
“The man tried to find the eyes,” Reid said. “He broke his home. He looked for wires in the walls. He cried in the bathroom because he couldn’t find them. He thinks I am a monster. He thinks I am trying to trap him.”
“Aren’t you?” Artie snapped. “How are you doing it? Is it the satellites? Did you put something in my brain?”
Reid shook his head slowly. “I don’t need wires, Artie. I own the dream world now. My company built a bridge. We can see the collective hum of the world. I just picked a frequency. I picked yours because you were the saddest one I could find. You’re like a song that only has one note.”
Artie felt a strange, hollow laugh bubble up in his throat. It sounded like breaking glass. “You’re spying on me because I’m sad? You’re a billionaire. Go buy a movie theater. Go to Mars. Why are you watching a middle aged man eat salty oats?”
Reid stood up. He was so thin he looked like he might snap in a breeze. He walked over to Artie and stood very close. He smelled like ozone and expensive soap.
“Because I wanted to know if it ever stops,” Reid said. “The ache. I have everything. I have the world in my pocket. But I wake up and I feel like a ghost. I saw you. I saw how much you miss that girl, Della. I saw how you keep her shoes in the closet even though they smell like old dust. I thought, if a man with nothing can keep loving like that, maybe there is hope for me.”
Artie looked at Reid. He saw the truth in the man’s eyes. It wasn’t a conspiracy. It wasn’t a trap to make Artie commit a crime. It was worse. It was just a lonely man watching another lonely man drown.
“Does it stop?” Reid asked. His voice broke. It was a tiny, pathetic sound.
Artie thought about the picture of Della. He thought about the three clicks of his lock. He thought about the dead tree in his yard. He felt a deep, soulful ache that started in his toes and moved up to his throat. He realized he wasn’t a doctor anymore. He was just a specimen. A bug in a jar.
“No,” Artie said. The word felt heavy. “It never stops. You just get used to the taste of the salt.”
Reid nodded. He looked like he wanted to cry, but he didn’t have any tears left. He turned and walked out of the office without saying another word.
Artie sat in his chair for a long time. The sun went down. The office got dark. He didn’t turn on the lights. He didn’t want to see the walls. He knew that somewhere, in a room filled with screens, Reid was watching him. Reid was waiting for him to go home. Reid was waiting for him to eat his sandwich over the sink.
Artie stood up and grabbed his keys. They jingled in the quiet room. It was the only sound in the world. He walked to the door, but he stopped. He looked at the shadows in the corner where Reid had sat. He realized he didn’t want to go home to an empty house. But he had nowhere else to go.
He walked out to his car. He drove through the city. He saw thousands of windows. Every window had a light. Behind every light, there was a person. And he wondered how many of them were being watched. He wondered how many of them were just songs with one note, playing for an audience of one.
When he got to his front door, he pulled out his keys. He put the key in the lock.
Click.
He stopped. He thought about Reid.
Click.
He thought about Della.
He didn’t do the third click. He just stood there with his hand on the cold metal knob. He waited for something to happen. He waited for a sign that he was more than a dream in a billionaire’s head.
The only thing that happened was the wind. It blew through the dead oak tree. It made a dry, whistling sound. It sounded like someone trying to remember a name they had long forgotten. Artie pushed the door open and walked into the dark. He didn’t turn on the light. He didn’t want to give Reid a better view.