"Thanks for what you did back there.”

“Oh.” Engle looks at me, surprised. “What did I do for you?”

“Lying to Pascal.” I take a sip of actual beer. “For me. I don't know you, you don't know me. It takes a-lot of trust to do something like that for a complete stranger. Especially when the guy is your boss. Presumably your boss, I'm the last person who should assume anything after today.”

“Hmmm.” He says, clinically. “Back on the boat, today. Was that the first time we met?”

“Yeah. Well. It's all I remember.” I hear ringing, and then close my eyes until it goes away.

He patiently waits, silent in all but a cracking back when he hunches over and squints, searching for clues in my face, in my demeanor, in my soul for all I know.

“Something is wrong with me. But I'm sure you can tell. I'm sure everyone can tell.”

“I'm going to tell you something very important, Dean. Something that you have try very hard to keep a secret. And if a gun is pointed to your head, you figured it all out on your own, understand?”

“Yeah? Yeah. I understand.” I shake my head like a wet dog, not out of refusal, but to shudder off a cornucopia of emotional fog that has me covered. “Of-course.” I say.

“It's been two years since you were first admitted to the Blaire Asylum for the Chronically Insane. And I'm your Psychiatrist, Doctor Engle Goldstein.” He puts a palm over my hand, and looks at me how a loving father looks at his son, who was recently diagnosed with terminal cancer. “And I believe in you. Every single thing you've told me. That is why I am willing to lie for you. I want to find what you've been searching for, I want to see the lavender ocean, and the pale-faced mermaids you've spoken of so... lucidly.”

“Two years?” I say, stuck in a haze. “It's been two months.”

“No, no no no no. Dean. No. It's been two years. You've been under my care for two years. And from what I can tell you from all of my years and experience, you are not crazy!

Dean Lamper, you are not crazy! You are not crazy.

You are not crazy!” His voice echoes in my head.

We sit at the heart, listening to crackling wood. I'm on my second beer, and he's staring longingly into the dancing flames. His legs are crossed, his hands gently creased, yet with eyes carrying enough drive to push forward the earth.

I glance at him, and look at the fire reflecting in his glasses.

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

“What's going on here?” I ask, to no reply. “You say its' been two years, fine. I've been in an asylum for twenty-four months, rolling around on padded foam, fine. Just let me get this straight please, because I don't know what is up and what is down right now. I wake up on a boat one day with my boyfriend standing on the bow. I'm suffering from a terrible case of amnesia but nothing I haven't experience before mind you, heading to the island I was assigned to write a groundbreaking story on-”

“There is no assignment.” He interrupts. “This is your last test. If you make it to thirty-days without any mental breaks or lapses, you will be set free. If any time between now and then you revert, you are to return, where more serious measures will be enacted.”

“More serious measures? Lobotomy? Electroshock therapy? Give me the Old Yeller treatment and toss me into a mass-grave in the nearest open field?”

“Relax. Relax.” He squeezes my knee, and then smiles. “I will not let that happen to you.”

“Has everything been a fucking lie?!” I strike his hand off of me in a furor, and shoot to my feet. “How can I believe in anything you're telling me? That you're not just fucking with my head?! I'm here to write a story I was supposed to before... before... before.” I'm traveling through a tunnel, faster and faster... at the end is the lens of a camera.

I'm unable to close my eyes, something is attached to my eyelids. It flashes, and a picture reels.

I'm gone.

“Because.” He says calmly, standing with me. “I've heard the calling, too. I've been dreaming of the violet sky. I've fallen into the mouth of the monster below. We've sat in its belly.. felt each-other as real as a handshake. You've given me a great gift. It's only fair I liberate you from this treatment.”

My body collapses. He comes to me. I crumple in his arms like I'm made out of sandpaper.

“I won't let them hurt you, Dean. I won't sign off on it. I'll help you find the secrets you-we wish to uncover. We'll uncover them together. You and I as we have before in our dreams where we scale the seamounts, and enter the caverns of the forgotten ancients."

He presses his lips against my head. “I need you to remember. I need you to tell me what you've seen, what you've heard. It's time we go back. It's time we go back. Listen to my voice and let me guide you, from the shore to the coral to the bottom of the ocean. Tell me where they come from.”

I hear metal scraping.

“Show me where it slumbers.”

I feel electric static.

“Where it emerges.”

My ears are burning.

“Now.”

Someone is talking inside of my skull.

There are lips in my head and they are moving.

There are two eyes... and the pupils are rolling back to me.

“From the beginning, Dean."

He's looking at me from the inside out.

I wake up on a wool bed, cotton sheets tucked to my chest, head against a fluffy pillow. I smell the ocean breeze long before I see the window is open, and rattling. I swivel off the bed, my feet startle cranky wood, it yawns with every step. On the walls are framed portraits of a man I remember as Marybel's husband, a retired sailor named Dandy, his face young and muscular, perishing decades ago after his boat spiraled into the coast.

From the very first moment I opened my bedroom door, and walked into the hall, the smell of breakfast seduced me forward.

Sausages, mushrooms, and eggs.

And the woman waiting for me. The last time I saw her, she was so young, only a girl.

Sofia stands at the end of the table, alone.

Our eyes strike, and she runs to me.