Category: Horror ISBN-10: B003D7K2M8
Type: Fiction
Copyright: May 8, 2006
Benjamin Lore has a problem. His psychologist tries to persuade him that he suffers from a dissociative pattern. Is Ben going mad? Or does his retarded non-responsive fraternal twin possess his mind and body? The animosity for all those lost years of childhood has finally taken its toll. To what limit will Ben go to be rid of the horrible events that occur when Dewey wants to explore.
Excerpt
{1}
“The evening moved on despite its stains. I’d already managed to make a fool of myself more than a couple of times…” Benjamin clutched at his tie, his tongue sticking to his teeth and his sweat-soaked back to the polyurethane sofa. His throat hesitated to squeeze out another word.
“Go on, Mr. Lore,” Dr. Normer said.
Ben cleared a sizeable lump from his throat. “I’d set out for the perfect evening, not a privilege I get very often, you understand. I had been working on getting a date with Theresa, from my office, for months. So naturally when she said yes, I booked reservations at the Rose Cuisine…she looked astonishing.”
“The Rose Cuisine,” Dr. Normer said with some astonishment of his own. The last time he’d taken his wife there, it had cost him an exorbitant amount of money. “Theresa must have been very impressed.”
“Nothing but the best—imported wines,” Ben said, “if you’re lucky enough to get the reservations. I’m no wine connoisseur, but if I remember correctly; we ordered Laffite Rothschild Bordeaux Red or something like that. Anyway the damned stuff cost $456.39 a bottle. By the time I crawled away from the whole insane ordeal I was out nearly six hundred fifty dollars and that’s not including the fifty I slipped the maitre d’ for our riverside window seats.”
Indeed, The Rose Cuisine, being Portland’s premier restaurant, would have been the place for “the perfect evening,” lights down low, dim romantic atmosphere garnished with the various aromatic smells of five-star cooking.
“But?” asked Dr. Normer.
“It had already happened twice,” said Ben, “even before the first course had been served. The candles in the middle of the tables might as well have been spotlights, throwing enough light to reveal the faces of the couples at the surrounding tables as they shot rudely smug and disapproving frowns and scowls at me, because of my actions up to that point. But they weren’t really my actions, you see?”
Even saying it made Ben uneasy, and the crease he saw appear in Dr. Normer’s forehead suggested disbelief or maybe great concern. He’s going to think I’m nuts, he thought before composing himself to go on. “Something had come over me, Doc. I was, uh…stricken, somehow controlled by an extremely uncomfortable and overbearing urge to be inordinately needy for acceptance. This urge forced me to do those things, made me feel like I had to do those things, not something usual for me.” Ben glanced at the floor. “No, not at all.”
He explained further, how Theresa had laughed at first—to ease the tension he had supposed—a sort of nervous laugh. He thought she must have seen he was having some difficulty, so to help him save face, she made things out to be purposeful. As if, it was all part of the plan. As if he had kept the quips hidden up his sleeve only to deliver them in perfect array out of thin air to dazzle her in some way, like a magic trick, as if he had cleverly stashed his witticisms beneath his usually diffident personality. But alas, he knew it was not so. Fact was, Theresa had simply been trying to save herself the embarrassment. “God I am so glad it was dark, I don’t think she ever noticed the hot flush I felt to my cheeks.”
“So, what exactly are you getting to, Mr. Lore?” said Normer, his frown increasing even more.
“Everything twisted wrong,” Ben said, “all wrong.” He then described the restaurant as having contorted into a hellish chamber of insensate examiners. Their heavy and suddenly educated brows furrowing; their sneers becoming obnoxiously obvious; their disapproval, belittling. A queer feeling had come over him bringing his mind down to sub-mental incompetence and everyone around him suddenly grew into mental giants, including Theresa. He was being systematically reduced to the level of…“an idiot.” When the salad came, he didn’t even know which fork to use! The floor started expanding in all directions and the place seemed to grow out and beyond into the darkness. It had started happening again. He knew because It had happened before. It rendered him helpless to stop. “Oh God, Doc, you gotta make it stop!”
Dr. Normer said nothing but Ben saw on his face the silent question, which was clear; “It?”
“I began to act just like a…a…retard.”
“A retard,” Normer said, silently noting it was not exactly the term he would have used, “but go on.”
tly the term he would have used, “but go on.”
“Don’t you—I’m not retarded. Don’t you see that, not like my poor fraternal twin, I was born quite normal, don’t ya see that—I’m normal.”
“I do see a normal man, who might suffer from inadequacies time to time just like the rest of us,” Dr. Normer suggested.
“No, you don’t understand!” Ben sighed, rubbing the back of his neck. “Oh I know how it must sound. However, this is not just a feeling of inadequacy. My movements became uncontrollable, in fact, they were being controlled, weird, over-exaggerated movements, and my speech! It became punchy, childlike, literally! My mouth began to move on its own and I couldn’t make it stop. ‘Yu – go – owe – wif – me. I – like – yu, wif – to – dinnur. I – like – yu. I – got – checks. See? I – got – a – check.’ Oh Lord, I held up my checkbook before Theresa like a child with a prize, like a retard. Then, the worst, there was this ridiculous maladroit sweep of my arm, I knocked wine all over Theresa’s beautiful crème two-piece ensemble. In response my hands found their way up clutching to my mouth, ‘Uh – oh!’ my mouth said, then loud obnoxious tittering burst out, and as I tried to muffle the snickering, snot bubbled from my nose and spit sprayed from my lips.”
Ben told Dr. Normer how Theresa had cried out in disgust, her face raging with embarrassment. “If I’d known you were such a jerk,” she had said, “I’d have never said yes to you, you…freak! Ughhh! What is wrong with you?”
Everyone at the restaurant had stopped with their meals and stared at the spectacle that was Benjamin Lore. He hid behind his fingers as if it was some sort of game and yet inside, his mind had been screaming to rectify the disaster. Even so, the only words that came out of his mouth were not really his own: “Uh oh.”
Even so, the only words that came out of his mouth were not really his own: “Uh oh.”
“You know what?” Theresa said at that point, “Never mind, I don’t want to know what’s wrong with you,” and with that, she doused him with a glass of water. All Ben could do was watch from inside him as the horror unfolded. He was trapped inside his own body, his face dripping as she turned and marched indignantly out of the restaurant and out of his life. In response to this, his arms animated, jerking into spasmodic and uncoordinated clapping. His mouth followed by spewing moronic laughter. Security promptly removed him from the restaurant, but not before they had tagged his credit card and tagged it good. People, paying customers, had walked out, disturbed by what was happening, or too sickened to eat their meals.
Dr. Normer scribbled some notes while Ben in his agitated state started squirming and surmising the diagnosis. His sweat-soaked body squeaked as he fidgeted on the now smothering polyurethane sofa. “They thought I had done this on purpose! And Theresa, God knows what she still thinks. That’s why you gotta help me Doc. He spoiled everything; he spoiled the only chance I had with Theresa; he always spoils everything I try to do; he has for years. His thoughts—and again I know this sounds crazy, I mean I know he doesn’t have any thoughts—had taken control of my body!” Ben crossed his arms expecting to hear the worst. That maybe—no—most probably, he was crazy.
Dr. Normer finished a note on his pad then finally looked up again at his desperate client. “Are you aware Mr. Lore that you have not once referred to your brother by name; throughout the whole session in fact,” Normer nodded, affirming his own comment in a gesture meant to try to get his client to see his point. “You’ve only referred to him by using pronouns.”
Ben, who’d been tearing little bits from the napkin that had been under the glass of water on the desk, stopped and with an indignant frown, said “What the hell is that supposed to mean, what is this, a grammar lesson? Pronouns, so what?”
“So,” the Doctor continued as he scribbled, Subject avoids humanizing his mentally challenged brother, possible dissociation, “I would like to know his name.”
“Oh…um, Dewey, his name is Dewey.”
“See now, that’s a little better. Now why do you blame Dewey for what happened to you on your date?”
“Because,” Ben clenched his fists, “he caused me to do those embarrassing things!”
Dr. Normer jotted down yet another note: BLAME TRANSFERENCE. “I’m not sure I understand. Was Dewey with you on the date?”
“Yes…I mean no, Jesus, weren’t you paying attention? What I meant to say…oh I don’t know what I mean anymore.”
“More water?” Dr Normer replaced the shredded napkin beneath Ben’s glass with a new one and poured more water into the glass.
“Sorry about that,” Ben said, “water rings on your desk…thank you.” Ben drank down the cool water and soothed his throat, which had become rough and dry.
Dr. Normer cleared his own throat. “I can see you have a lot of resentment towards your brother, Mr. Lore. What I’m trying to do is understand why.”
“Well, that should be obvious, look what happened at the Rose Cuisine Restaurant.”
“Yes but why do you suppose you behaved that way?”
“IT WASN’T ME. THAT’S WHAT I’VE BEEN TRYING TO FRIGGIN’ TELL YOU, IT WAS HIM MAKING ME DO THOSE RIDICULOUS THINGS, HIM!”
“Have another drink of water, Mr. Lore.”
“I DON’T WANT ANY MORE FUCKING WATER!”
Dr. Normer gave a long sigh and tried again with reason. “Mr. Lore, may I suggest something?” He held his hands up in a non-threatening gesture: Please calm down.
Ben let out an exasperated sigh himself, and wiped a trickle of sweat from his forehead. “Go ahead.”
“There is a sort of psychological condition, so to speak, that could make it seem, at least to you, like your brother is doing this to you.”
“There is?”
“Yes. It falls under the ASC’s or Altered states of Consciousness. As a whole, it’s complicated. There are 14 subscales in determination and measurement, but some are identified as extraordinary mental processes, para psychological experiences, mystic experiences, increased imagination or creativity, hallucinations, changed feelings of time and space, which you described with the expanding of the restaurant. The form I think that is pertinent to your situation is dissociation.
“Dissociation can cause amnesia and depersonalization. You referred to your brother by only using pronouns, for instance. You can have a sense of being more than one person, and being ‘not oneself.’ In dissociative episodes, there are alterations in identity, memory, and consciousness. They can include auditory hallucinations and sensations or impressions, most importantly, of outside forces acting on the person forcing them to commit actions for which their own personality is not responsible. Mr. Lore, does this sound familiar? It sounds to me like exactly what you experienced.”
Happy Halloween. A volume of Horrible Haunts & Twisted Tales taken from the horror books La Belle Rouge has written every October for a decade and a half. If you have read her works in the horror genre, you know the invitation is for you to enjoy thr
