Total pages in book: 118
Estimated words: 110492 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 552(@200wpm)___ 442(@250wpm)___ 368(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 110492 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 552(@200wpm)___ 442(@250wpm)___ 368(@300wpm)
Then she turned and left his office. She was afraid if she stayed much longer Dr. Burrows would find some excuse to have her sedated. He would say she was ‘acting in a threatening manner’ or that she looked like she might hurt herself or any of a hundred other things.
Though really, he didn’t have to say anything at all, did he? He was a man in charge and she was a woman under his care—a woman who had been committed to a mental institution—his word was law in this awful situation.
And there was nothing Torri could do about it.
Five
I might as well be living in a nineteenth century novel where men could just hide their crazy wives in the attic! Torri thought, as she walked quickly down the pale pink hall, away from the psychiatrist’s office. How could Chuck tell him about my Seeing Dreams? How could he betray me like that?
She could understand how the Seeing Dreams would look like delusions to someone who didn’t know her and didn’t know her family history. But Chuck had known her Nana before she passed away. Nana was always doing little things, like finding people’s lost socks and sunglasses and jewelry. She just knew where things were.
As magic tricks went, it wasn’t very much, but Nana had done other things too—like that time with Torri’s Uncle and the flat tire. Once she’d been sitting in church and had gotten a very strong feeling that she had to get home right away. She had made Torri’s grandfather get up and leave in the middle of the service—it was scandalous behavior for the time.
But it was a good thing they left. It turned out that someone had left a stove burner on with a dishtowel lying too close to it. The towel was just starting to catch fire when Torri’s grandparents walked though the door.
“Another five minutes and the whole house would have been up in flames!” Grandpa Pete used to say, giving Nana a proud look. He hadn’t doubted his wife’s gift or tried to ignore it or hide it, like Chuck did.
But then, Chuck had never had very much imagination. He never wanted to watch fantasy or sci-fi movies with Torri, saying they were “a load of crap.” So it was probably little wonder that he couldn’t believe that the things she was seeing weren’t some strange delusion but a terrible fate that was coming in the near future.
I’m not crazy, Torri told herself over and over. Nana said when she died that the gift might pass to me. And she only died earlier this year!
She felt a sob rise in her throat at the memory of holding her Nana’s frail hand in her last moments. Her mom had died in a car accident when Torri was only sixteen and after that, it had been Nana who had acted as a mother to her. In a way, losing her grandmother had been like losing her mom all over again.
“Torri, sweetheart…” Nana’s voice had been so soft, Torri had to lean over to hear her. “I’m afraid…you’re going to have…trouble…after I’m gone,” her grandmother had whispered. “The Seeing Dreams…may pass…to you. They are not…easy.”
In the six months after her passing, Torri had been too consumed with grief to think much about her grandmother’s prediction. But it was only three months after Nana had died, that she’d had that first little blip of a sighting of the black alien ship heading towards Earth.
A little blip that had turned into endless fugue states and horrible night terrors. Nana had been right—the Seeing Dreams weren’t easy.
Not at all.
I wish she was here now to advise me—to help me. Nana always knew what to do, Torri thought sadly. Her grandmother wouldn’t have allowed her favorite granddaughter to be locked up in a mental institution. She would have gotten Tori out and given Dr. Burrows a piece of her mind. She would have—
“Well now, how are you tonight, darlin’?” a familiar voice said in her ear.
Torri jerked automatically and looked up, unable to conceal the shock and fear on her face.
It was Mike O’Toole, one of the orderlies, staring down at her from his great height of six feet six inches. He was a shambling bear of a man with skinny arms and legs but a huge beer belly that didn’t seem to match the rest of him. He had blotchy, fish-belly white skin and long, orangish-red hair pulled into a lank ponytail at the back of his thick neck. There was also a beard to match—a long wiry one the color of a ripe carrot. Little bits of food were always stuck in it, near his mouth. His eyes were no-color gray that always lingered too long on Torri’s breasts.
“You,” she whispered, unable to keep the fear out of her voice. “But…you…I heard you had tonight off.”