At the start of our first session, Allison asked me why was I there.

“Because everyone said I should talk to a professional,” was my answer.

“Do you always do what people tell you to do?”

I thought for a moment and gave her the truthful answer. “Yes. Pretty much.”

She smiled. The way she did it reminded me a bit of my mother, which I quickly surmised was either a very good thing or a very bad thing in a therapist. “Good. At least honesty won’t be a sticking point between us. So tell me, why does everyone think you need to be in analysis?”

“Because I killed a man,” I said, knowing well that by phrasing it in that way I was baiting her. “I was sleeping with him, and he killed my sister. So there’s that too.”

She didn’t let on that she already knew those things, although I’m sure she did. Even if there’s some AMA prohibition about googling your patients, unless Allison had been living under a rock, she’d have heard about Charlotte Broden’s disappearance and subsequent murder, as well as how I stabbed my sister’s murderer to death. She probably even came across the articles published by lower forms of media, which speculated that the entire thing might have been a love triangle gone wrong.

“Then it does sound like we have a lot to talk about,” Allison said.

The night after my first session, I had a very vivid nightmare. Oddly, until then, I was convinced that my subconscious had already been unfettered by Charlotte’s murder and my role in avenging it. But, like clockwork, as soon as I opened up the Pandora’s box of my psyche, I was bombarded by suppressed thoughts that I wished had stayed secreted.

In the dream, I was back in the townhouse that I lived in as a kid. Charlotte was alive. She was twelve, even though I was my current thirty-two years. My sister is terrified, her hands visibly shaking.

“What’s wrong, Char-bar?” I ask.

“Oh my God, Ella. I’m so sorry,” she says, crying.

“Just tell me what happened.”

She can’t stop crying. It makes me want to cry too.

Finally, she says, “Hannibal Lecter is upstairs. In Mom and Dad’s room.”

For some reason, the thought that Hannibal Lecter wasn’t real didn’t come into play in the dream. Instead, I ask a logistical question.

“How’d he get in?”

“It’s all my fault,” Charlotte sobs. “I’m so sorry, Ella. Please forgive me.”

“It’s okay,” I say to comfort her. I take her into my arms, but she pushes me away.

“No! No, it’s not okay! We’re all going to die!”

In the dream, I know I have to do something or else Charlotte will be proven correct and we’ll all die, but my solution is as ridiculous as the dream’s premise.