Memory On Repeat

Memory On Repeat

“I’ve been here before,” Harper Stokes said as she sat down and looked at Phillipe Desjardin.

The doctor looked up from his notes, with a puzzled look.

“Have you been a patient of mine before?”

Harper shook her head emphatically.

“Then why do you say you’ve been here before?”

“I was here in World War I. I convalesced in this very room.”

The doctor leaned forward eagerly.

“You are what, twenty? Twenty-two?”

“Twenty-four.”

“Tell me about this memory,” the doctor said.

“My name then was Fontainebleau, Marcel. I was a private. I got wounded in the first days of the war. While I was convalescing, I fought nightmares, and invisible foes. Finally, I could stand the horror of my life no longer. I snatched a knife and slashed my wrists. I died, Doctor.”

“But you aren’t in the military today?”

Harper shook her head.

“So, you think you suffer from shell shock, battle fatigue, whatever they used to call it, from a past life?

“Yes, I firmly believe I suffer PTSD from the past.”

“Would you allow me to hypnotize you?”

“I want you to, please! Can you begin today?”

“Stretch out on my couch and we can,” the doctor directed as he pulled out a pendant.

“You are getting gradually sleepy; you are falling deeper and deeper asleep.”

When she became agitated twenty minutes later, the doctor woke her gently.

“We are coming to the heart of your trauma, Harper. But we will need more hypnotic therapy.”

Harper sighed.

“Of course, when?”

“Next week, same time.”

She rose slowly and turned toward him. In her hand was a pistol.

“You shot me! I recognize your face,” she said as she pulled the trigger twice.

As if sleepwalking, she put the gun in her pocket and left.