“I see a leaf on the ground and wonder about the tree that dropped it there, when it was planted, how long it’s been growing, how many other trees its roots touch down there, deep underground. A server at a restaurant hands me a pen to sign my credit card receipt, and I think of all the other people who’ve ever held that pen—the dates they were on, the argument or lovemaking or chilled silence that might have followed later that evening after one of them signed the receipt and handed back the pen. I pass a girl on the street and see her smile after reading a text message, and I fill in what it was she might have read.”

“That simply shows you have a vivid imagination.”

“So you don’t hear them?”

“I imagine different scenarios. Yes, of course. Different ways things might play out. Everyone does.”

“There’s something wrong with me.”

Dr. Percival glanced at the clock on the wall, something they should teach psychiatrists never to do, for all that it communicates to their clients.

Still twenty minutes left in their session.

“I think it’s natural to see connections between things,” the doctor said, “to wonder about something’s past, its origins, its future. I think it’s a skill you’ve honed over time. Being a novelist, you’ve taught yourself to be observant and inquisitive. Your livelihood depends on it. Don’t mistake creativity for mental illness. Your imagination is—”

“Overactive. That’s what my fifth-grade teacher used to tell me: ‘You have an overactive imagination.’ Is that possible?”

“It’s just a saying.”

“How can an imagination be overactive? Isn’t there something wrong with it, then? I mean, if it’s more active than it should be?”

“Timothy, most people’s imaginations have been blunted by years of sensible thinking and—”

“Beveled dreams.”

“Beveled dreams?”

“Dreams that have been chisel-wedge sharpened by the futility of slamming against an uncompromising reality.”

Timothy caught himself scratching at his arm, at the bugs crawling out of the open sores he’d been so careful to bandage over, the bugs Dr. Percival assured him weren’t real.

The doctor watched him carefully, then jotted something in his notebook—another therapist habit that silently spoke volumes.

Sometimes Timothy wondered if Dr. Percival was really writing things related to his case. Maybe he was scribbling out a shopping list. Maybe he was drawing farm animals. Maybe he was writing a letter to his daughter and he was going to mail it to her as soon as Timothy left for the—

Kill him.

“It’s happening,” Timothy whispered.

“What’s happening?”

You see that letter opener on his desk? Pick it up.

“No.” Timothy shook his head, tried to quiet the voice. “Make it stop, make it stop.”

Pick up the letter opener.

Dr. Percival was watching him carefully. “Tell me what it’s like right now, Timothy. What you’re hearing.”