3 Sugar and Spice

The soft breeze the next afternoon carried more warmth than most days of this season. There was still some clutter blown into odd places by the night's storm, but the world had returned to normal. A few people were out with yard tools and ladders, and somewhere in the distance was the hum of a street sweeper, clearing up the evidence one slow pass up and down the streets at a time.

The breeze was sweet with more than the scent of decaying leaves. Traces of sugar and bountiful harvests wafted in the air, as though the return of power after a night without had inspired half the city to bake. Pumpkin and nuts, beans and bacon, dozens of scents of seasonal food seemed to mingle on the breeze.

She drew in another deep breath and then retreated into the warm room. Her cat held down his place in the window, snoozing as deeply as though there weren't a care in the world. She envied the depth of his relaxation, but she didn't try to imitate it.

She made herself a lazy man's caramel apple, sliced apple on a plate beside a stack of caramel squares. She alternated taking bites between the apple and the candy. The soft sweetness of the candy and the clear tart sweetness of the apple blended in her mouth.

Caramel was one of those strange products of alchemy disguised as cooking. It was a mystery how sharp crystals could transform into milky softness by being lightly singed for a long period of time at the right temperature. She'd tried making caramel herself, it never came out well. Certainly nothing like the sticky soft blocks of the professionally made candy.

One of the trees outside along the walk reached down and plucked a bird out of the shrubbery beside it. Her hand froze halfway to her mouth. A feather drifted out of the tree and wafted into the next yard over.

She swallowed hard and set the half eaten candy on the plate. She was losing it. She was definitely seeing things that couldn't be real. Her hands trembled, so she tucked them under her arms to hold them still.

--

On the wall at the psychologist's office there was a poster that spoke to the reader about how brave they were.

It compared them at length to a combat veteran lost in a jungle after some terrible experience, stranded and starving, and searching for a stick to aid them in obtaining the resources to survive. It said, "You amaze me! You're here telling me that you can make it out alone with nothing but a stick! And all I'm doing is handing out sticks."

When her turn came, she said, "A compass, I think?"

"What?" the psychologist asked blankly.

"The poster outside, it says we're all just looking for a stick. I think I can find a stick, but I don't know which direction I should go," she explained.

"Ah, right. The poster," the woman answered noncommittally. She waved to the chair in front of her desk and asked, "Have a seat? Your appointment request says that you saw a tree eat a bird?"

She nodded. She hadn't been brave enough to write down that she'd seen severed heads in her shower. "I don't know why I keep seeing things," she said nervously.

The woman hesitated a moment, and then asked, "Have you seen other things like a tree eating birds?"

"Yes," she replied. It all came out in a rush, the skeletal branches clawing at the window, the stranger who seemed too much like the man with the red cap, but thinner and in brown. Finally, she described the heads that she'd seen in her shower, which she was fairly certain had to have been a dream.

The psychologist observed her calmly over folded hands and asked, "Have you had your vision checked lately?"

"What? There's nothing wrong with my eyes!" she protested. She couldn't even explain why the suggestion hurt. She thought that if someone said they'd seen a tree eat a bird she might have asked the same thing. She took a deep breath and said more calmly, "I can see you perfectly clearly, and I haven't had any trouble reading, either up close, or distant things like street signs."

"And yet you doubt your own eyes, right? I don't hear you telling me that I should be notifying the police to start looking for bodies, or that you want the city to cut down the carnivorous tree," the woman said calmly.

"I, no, I guess not?" she replied in a muddled fashion.

The psychologist smiled and said reassuringly, "The brain is a very complex machine. You'd be shocked to see what little information your eyes actually convey to it to create the images that you see everyday. It's very creative too. If there's a distortion in the input, it makes up reasons for those, and presents them as fact."

She gazed at the woman doubtfully. "Shouldn't I at least be seeing similar things each time then?" she questioned. "A damaged spot in my eyes wouldn't change so drastically would it?"

"I don't know, it would depend upon a lot of things. People often see strange things when they have high fevers, because of different pressures upon their nerves and interference in the brain's usual processes. You can always come back any time, I just think that maybe you should start by having your eyes checked," the woman said almost kindly.

She stood halfway before she thought of the strange apparent memory loss before and after what she thought must be a dream, and stopped and settled awkwardly back onto the edge of the seat.

The psychologist glanced at the clock and asked, "There's something else?"

"No, I mentioned it, but," she hesitated. "What about the disorientation after the dream? Not remembering putting on those pajamas and stuff? That wouldn't be caused by my eyes would it?"

The psychologist hesitated again, but then said calmly, "Forgetting things that you do every day is much easier than forgetting something unusual. The brain is lazy. It doesn't bother with things that seem unimportant. After such a shocking dream, it's not strange that some of the mundane stuff seems to have gone missing. It hasn't really, it's just buried in the fine print, while all you can see when you look back is the headlines."

It sounded logical, but usually her memory was very good. She hesitated on the edge of the chair.

"Get your eyes checked first," the woman suggested more firmly, "and then go from there."

"Okay," she agreed finally, and stood.

Having stood, it seemed like the proper thing to do was leave, but she couldn't help glancing back as she opened the door. The psychologist was frowning at the clock, so she hurried out into the empty waiting area. She couldn't help but wonder if someone else was late to their appointment, or if the psychologist worked such short days that she usually went home so early in the afternoon.

The wind tasted like cinnamon, and smelled slightly burnt.