“It was soft like feathers, too, when we lay down on it. There’s not a cloud in the sky. The sun’s hot and the breeze is warm. The he-doc’s lying on his back waving in the wind like—so help me—a tall sapling.
“All of which turns me into a firecracker. What I mean, little Lisa’s so hot there’s twin penpoints poking holes through the halter of her sunsuit. And below I’m so hungry I’m practically swallowing the material of my shorts. The situation’s changed. Now it’s me who’s in a hurry, not the he-Doc like before at my pad.
“So I rip off the halter and my size 38’s are pointing free like arrows quivering in the wind. I hip-wriggle out of the shorts and when I stand up my legs are like question marks I’m so anxious. Like this redhead’s red-hot and gushing for action.
“But_it’s no use. With that giant sapling of the he-doc’s, it’s impossible to make the scene. It’s so big now I couldn’t even climb it if I wanted to — let alone straddle it. Still, this only makes me burn even more.
‘Man, the frustration’s indescribable. Finally, I flip with it. I mean like the whole top goes. Naked, crazy with lust, I begin attacking the damn thing. First with my bare hands — hitting and scratching. Then, suddenly — don’t ask me from where — I got this axe in my hands.
“I chop at it, and it’s almost like I’m making it at last. I mean, what I’m doing’s violent, but even more, it’s absolutely sexy. Chopping away at it, it’s like having sex itself in this crazy mixed-up dream. Then there’s a crash and the damn thing just topples over—for all the world like a real tree.
“But I don’t stop hacking away with the axe. It’s still like the way I feel when I’m having sex, but what I’m doing now is working over what’s left of the he-Doc. I’m chopping up arms and legs and the torso and finally the face until there isn’t anything left but a bloody pulp. I begin clawing at the pulp with my bare fingernails, and that’s when I wake up.
“You know how it is when you wake up from a sex dream? Like it’s been so great making it with this guy in your dreams, and then suddenly there you are with nothing but a pillow between your burning thighs? Well, that’s sort of what this was like. Only it was my hand that was going like a piston rod, my fist I was all but doubled up trying to impale myself on. You can believe it, I didn’t stop. Awake or not, I kept right on going until I was so exhausted I had to rest before I could change the sheets. How many times? I couldn’t say for sure. I lost count.
“That’s it. That’s all there is. Well now, how do all you cats like them Freudian apples?”
“Yes. Let’s hear the group’s reaction.” Dr. Golden’s voice.
“Simple.” A male voice. “Just a subconscious expression of every patient’s wish to kill his analyst.”
“Right.” Another male voice chiming in. “Since the analyst is a parent-figure and we all have unadmitted desires to murder our parents, Lisa’s dream is perfectly understandable.”
“I’ve had similar dreams myself. For instance—” The female voice was interrupted.
“We all have.” The voice that interrupted was also feminine. “I don’t think there’s much to be gained by discussing it.”
“I disagree. I think the method of violence deserves examination.” Another male voice, much more high-pitched than the first two.
“Yes. I’ve often wanted to kill Dr. Golden. But I never would have chosen such a method.” A fourth female voice, timid, hesitant.
“Haven’t we all. Haven’t we all. Personally, I’d like to strangle her with my bare hands.” The last voice, deep, grim, masculine. “Killing the good doctor is my favorite daydreaming pastime.”
“But not all of you found it necessary to turn me into the jolly Green Giant to do it.” Dr. Golden, kidding, smooth.
General laughter.
“Seriously, though, dreaming and daydreaming are one thing, but with all your joint perceptiveness about the universality of the urge to kill one’s analyst, I wonder how many of you are willing to admit to it on a conscious level. Come on, now, who here really, consciously, admits to wanting to do away with me?”
“I do. Me too. Are you kidding? You’re my favorite murder victim! I’d kill you in a minute! Just try me, Doc! Don’t ever try me, or you’ll be sorry! Just give me a gun and you’ll find out!” The voices were a chorus of murder!
(“By God, they all wanted her dead,” Durango exclaimed. “And one of them could have done it, judging from this!”
(“Don’t tell me you’re finally admitting I’m not the only suspect?” Debbie asked.
(“‘Shut_up and listen. I want to hear this.”)
“All right. All right.” Dr. Mavis Golden’s voice quieting them down. “I guess I’ll just have to accept my fate as inevitable. Each of you wants to kill me.”
“Then why don’t we?” The question dropped into the sudden silence jarringly.
“Or will we? I mean one of us?” another voice added, wanting to know.
“Yes. Aren’t you afraid?”
“Is there a genuine risk that one of us might actually murder you?” a last voice summed up for them all.
‘Yes,” Dr. Golden conceded. “But it’s a risk that has to be calculated. Taking a scale of zero to one hundred, f or example, I would say that most of you fall somewhere between forty and sixty.”
“You mean there’s a fifty-fifty chance one of us really might kill you?” The voice was shocked.
“That isn’t what I said. Offhand, I’d guess the odds to be quite comfortably less than fifty-fifty. That calculation I gave you stipulates certain factors. Opportunity, for one. Motive — which is to say the feeling of wanting to kill me finding its fullest expression due to some outside pressure—for another. And these two would have to work out in conjunction. I should think the odds against that would be quite heavy. Then there’s the question of the weapon. And the weighing you’d have to do of the fear of getting caught. All these factors enter into it. And with all of them favorable—or, more correctly from my vantage-point at least, unfavorable — you’d all still fall somewhere between a forty to sixty percent likelihood of actually going through with it. So you see, I manage to sleep nights.”
“Is that true of all your patients?”
“Pretty much. Of course, some are more dangerous than others. I have one patient, suffering from the same thing as Brenda over there, but in a far more exaggerated form, whose hostility verges on the paranoid. Close to the brink of violence, or at least much closer than any of you. Still, I feel competent to confine this hostility, to keep the patient within bounds. Hers is merely a further projection of what you all feel.”
“Then you don’t think any of us would really kill you?”