It's Raining Men.

“No, no, please don’t doctor! For the love of god. Don’t play that tape again! You’ll kill me!” I screamed.

“The sound of a little lightning and thunder isn’t going to hurt,” my psychiatrist chuckled. He was completely bald with a full white beard and an unsettling twitch in his right eye. “Especially now. You’re safe. So take a deep breath. Lean back and just enjoy being on my couch.”

He re-wound the ancient reel-to-reel tape, preparing to again unleash the hellish crash and boom that caused me, a full-grown man, to cower with fear. The nightmare cacophony that had transformed me from a healthy boy of six, electrified by the imminent return of my long-absent soldier dad, into the haunted wretch I am today.

 

“You have no idea what that sound does to me,” I yelled, pulling against thick leather restraints. I was strapped to the plush designer couch, heavy black belts cinched painfully tight over my wrists and ankles. Even my head was restrained, leaving me with no option to stare helplessly at the fly buzzing around my nose.

“Oh, yes I do,” the psychiatrist answered, the shrink I’d been assigned to under the government insurance plan for indigents. Even brilliant, overqualified indigents like me, brought to their knees by mental distress. “Which is why I had you undergo desensitization therapy. Exposing you repeatedly to the noise complex that distresses you should have reduced its ability to unnerve.

“After twenty-seven exposures, a thunder crack should now be just that, a thunder crack, not an apocalyptic event that threatens your very sense of self. But you have not improved. You remain a disturbed man. Therefore, I’m going to subject you to an experimental procedure I’ve dubbed Desensitization Therapy Plus+.

“I sensed initial befuddlement when I asked you to bring along audiotapes of your family’s voices; the tapes you said helped calm you when you were in crisis over past traumatic events. Well, now you’re going to find out why I asked. For your twenty-eighth treatment, I am going to play those calming voices in one channel while continuing to transmit thunder and lightning sounds through the other. Though the treatment will again be a painful experience, the psychological halo of the calming voices will, when all is said and done, negate the troubling noises, essentially neutering them.”

I pushed against the restrains, but it was useless to try. The leather straps were thick and my entire body was in full view. There was no way I could try to break free without the psychiatrist stopping me as soon as I began. So I gave up, saving my energy for a better time to strike.

“So you really believe it will work?” I asked. “The voices of my family mean everything to be because of what we went through.” Indeed, I played them in my ear buds when I meditated, an ever-repeating loop culled from various sources of my mom, dad and sister saying, “I love you.”

“DTP+,” he said with a tight grin, “will free you to laugh at a lightning strike, run with joy through the hardest rain. You’re not crazy, you’re not mentally ill, as your previous therapists have maintained.” He pointed to the stacks of file folders spilling across his polished teak desk.” I’ve immersed myself in your case and can say, to use a decidedly non-clinical term, they were full of bulls**t. I’m a full-blown Ivy League M.D.—a psychiatrist. Those others were a bunch of low-grade master’s degree social workers who wouldn’t know the DSM-5 from a coloring book.”

He balled his hands into fists. “I know of what I speak. You, dear sir, merely suffered a childhood trauma that I am going to eradicate today with my ground-breaking technique.” With that, he donned a pair of sound-deadening earphones, punched a button on the reel-to-reel, and twisted the volume dial to the far right.

Into one ear came a furious storm, into other, the soft voices of my loved ones.

The psychiatrist leaned back in his Eames chair, opened a leather-bound notebook and scribbled with a gold Cross pen as I shrieked in pain, until drooling, I returned to the long ago time when my childhood ended. And my benighted adulthood began…

“Mommy! Mommy! You’re so mean! Why can’t Darlene and I go out to play?” I shrieked with all force a six-year-old could muster. My lips were flecked with spittle, I’d been carrying on so long.

“There’s a terrible storm coming. Can’t you hear it?”

Indeed I could. Distant lightning flashed, followed by an ominous rumble. But I was too excited to sit still. My father was coming home from the secret war today after months overseas! Scuttlebutt had it that he was among the two thousand troops being transported back in the massive bellies of C-130s disguised as Fed Ex cargo planes.

Reports had been sketchy due to what my mom called a “news blackout.” All I knew was the war was still a fierce one, with one side gaining the upper hand before the other seized it back. It was a grim, never ending story told in flesh, blood and steel.

But today I was joyful. Daddy’s unit was flying back to our remote island home-away-from-home, rotating out of the front lines for overdue R&R.

Thunder boomed. Closer now. My mother ripped the living room drapes shut.

I could no longer see out. The playground set in the front yard. The makeshift pitching mound where I stood tall when dad and I played catch. Me, throwing sizzlers, dad behind the plate, flashing signs; two phantom World Series rings on the line. Dad had worked hard to make our assigned property a comfortable place, even though it was on an island without a name. In either the Atlantic or Pacific. That, too, had been censored for security reasons.

“Get down to the basement! Now!” Mom yelled. She was flustered but beautiful, her flaxen hair in an unraveling bun; a sky-blue apron over a sunflower yellow house dress. She was the quintessential mom, always there for Darlene and me, even when she appeared sad, her childhood sweetheart facing death across unknown seas.

I took Darlene’s tiny hand in mine. A prematurely serious girl of four, she depended on her big brother to keep her safe from the dangers that had been omnipresent from the day she had been born.

Little did Darlene know I needed her more than she did me. Her brave, upturned chin, her warm little hand. Wrapping her trembling body in my thin arms, muffling her quiet sobs, she infused me with strength; gave me a reason not to surrender to my own fears.

An unholy thunderclap shook dust from the massive table at the center of my dad’s basement workshop, piled high with cobwebbed hammers and saws, pining away for the touch of my dad’s sturdy hands. Hiding below it, Darlene and I cringed.

Mom clattered down the stairs. “Where are you two? Say something!”

“Here mommy,” I answered, poking out a hand.

“Thank god,” she cried, crawling beneath the table, hugging both of us, cupping our cheeks. Mom and dad were our ultimate protectors. Nothing could go wrong when wrapped within their arms.

It was then storm hit with a vengeance. The house shook. The rafters groaned, as if resisting power forces bent on tearing them apart. Brilliant lights flashed in the crack beneath the basement door. The adventurous side of me wanted to climb the stairs, rip the curtains away from the picture window and behold the awesome spectacle. The cautious part, the real me, wanted nothing more than to remain within my mother’s protective embrace.

Another boom, the loudest yet. The lights went out. I could barely see my hands. And then Darlene announced, “Mommy, I need to go to the bathroom.”

“Try to hold, it darling,” my mother replied, obviously exasperated.

Darlene squirmed. A warm liquid saturated my upper leg.

“Too, late, mom,” I said, “She’s already peeing.”

Darlene whimpered. “I want to be a good girl and sit on the toilet.”

“Okay, okay,” my mom said. “We can’t have you feeling ashamed.” She touched me on the shoulder. “Take Darlene to the toilet down here, in the finished part of the basement. Wait outside and don’t wander.”

I grasped Darlene’s hand. “Let’s move. And be careful where you step!”

“I will,” she answered, “And I’ll hold it until we get there like mommy wants. But please hurry.”

Using my free hand, I felt my way there, but not before nicking my index finger when I bumped into dad’s table saw. I felt blood weaving into my palm. In better times, when it wasn’t storming, I would have shown it to my dad, the stream of blood, evidence that I could sustain terrible wounds and come out smiling. Now, it just hurt.

“Okay, go,” I ordered Darlene when we arrived at the modest bathroom.

Gleeful, she raced in.

“Don’t lock the door,” I warned just as I heard the tell-tale click.

“I’ll be quick,” Darlene said.

I rattled the doorknob, then shrugged. If anything thing went wrong, if the door got stuck, I could easily batter it down with a shoulder.

I leaned against the wall, killing time. It became eerily quiet, as if the storm had passed. Suddenly, I couldn’t wait to go outside, see the damage it had done. Maybe when dad got home, he would ask me to help him clear away a few felled apple tree limbs. I could show him my cut finger, which was bleeding better than ever before. I practiced throwing a slider. Strike one!

“All done,” Darlene, emerging from the bathroom, announced. I’d been so caught up in my fantasies, I hadn’t even heard her.

“Wait here,” I said. “I need to go inside and dress my wound.” I figured dad would be even more impressed if I wrapped a thick wad of toilet paper around it that became soaked with blood. I closed the door behind me, figuring I’d take a leak, too.

The toilet paper dispenser was down to a few sheets, so I bent over to find another roll in the cabinet under the sink. Rummaging around blindly, I stumbled across a plunger, a can of Drano, a can of Raid and assorted wrenches and PVC plumbing parts, but no f*****g TP. Finally, I remembered that mom kept the extra rolls in a plastic bag behind the toilet tank. Brushing away cobwebs and grit, I tore the bag open.

 Elated, I was wrapping my trophy wound when a sonic boom knocked me off my feet. I hit my head on the floor, a staggering blow that made me instantly sick. Trying to stand up, I was brought back down by a chaotic drumbeat of similar booms, accompanied by the sound of massive hail crashing onto the roof. The storm had returned, intensified a hundred-fold.

Swooning, trying to steady myself against any handhold I could find, I lurched out of the bathroom. “Darlene! Let’s go back to mom!” I screeched, blindly flailing my arms with the hope that I’d find her head, her shoulders, any part of her.

But then, I saw a rectangle of flashing light—the basement door was open—Darlene was upstairs!

My mom staggered out of the darkness. She’d noticed the irregular lights, too—shocking white, then black and back again. “What happened?” she asked, fingers splayed over her mouth.

“Darlene got away! I was taking a—” Stopping mid-sentence, I flew up the stairs. There was still time for the World Series hero to save the day.

What I saw when I slid into the living room has shaped my life to this very day: The drapes had been pulled back, the view through the picture window a hallucination of jagged silver streaks and snapping branches. And everywhere massive objects were hurtling down from the sky, battering the muddy earth, forming craters.

Then Darlene, her face pressed against the glass, turned to me and, with wonder in her voice said, “Look. It’s raining men!”

Indeed, torsos, limbs and intact bodies were pounding down like human hail, caving the roof of the family car, pockmarking the corrugated steel roof of dad’s workshop until it collapsed of its own accord.

Explosions rattled the firmament, as enemy rockets burst the C-130s, spilling their precious cargo far and wide. Starting out as specks, the soldiers became recognizably human as they pelted the flattened landscape, spewing viscera and mud.

“Oh my god,” my mother cried. She raced past us, flung open the front door and staggered into the front yard, her arms upstretched as she turned round and round.

“Mom, come back,” I implored. “You’ll get hurt.” I hurried onto our covered porch, but couldn’t bring myself to leave its shelter. A body pierced the roof above me, a uniformed soldier with a shredded scalp and ballooning eyeballs jolting to a stop inches from my nose. His dress blues were littered with dangling medals. An insignia stitched to what remained of his right shoulder indicated he was a member of my father’s unit.

I sought refuge in the furthest corner of the porch, pressed my back against the wall, shut my eyes and tried to make it all go away. Until, until, Darlene shook me by the shoulder, pulled me by the hand and said, “Come see. Come see.”

I followed, Darlene looking back every once and a while, her eyes alight, a big smile on her face, a wonderful like I seldom saw. “I have a big surprise. I have a big surprise,” she chanted.

Finally, when we reached the far edge of the porch, she stopped and pointed. “Daddy’s home,” she said.

And there he was, my big handsome dad, wearing his military best, lying in a heap atop a lifeless figure in a sky-blue apron over a sunflower yellow housedress.

No!

No!

Yes.

Mom.

My parents were locked in a final embrace, their broken faces fused in an eternal kiss. Mom’s lips had been sheared off upon dad’s impact. From my vantage point, she appeared to be smiling.

Then the audio tape stopped and I emerged from my reverie.

“And how does my favorite patient feel now?” the psychiatrist asked, his gin-soaked breath overpowering, his smug, bloated face just inches from mine.

“No improvement.” I struggled to throttle him, the thick leather restraints saving his life.

“Don’t jump to a conclusion. Remember, I warned you that this session would cause the same unmitigated pain as the previous twenty-seven. The true test comes now, in its aftermath. If my theory is correct, I can now play for you the storm audio in both channels and you should suffer no harm.” He leaned towards the reel-to-reel. “May I?”

Still reeling from the last assault, I was not ready for another. But before I could object, the tape again rolled. The same earth-shaking blasts, the rumblings, reverberations. But I felt nothing. No childhood terror. No adult fear. Nothing but a feeling of wonder at Mother’s Nature’s grand fury.

“I’m cured,” I bawled. “Cured! Cured! Cured! Oh thank you doctor, for relieving me of eternal pain. You’re a genius. A great man!”

Beaming, he said, “Hold on. We’re not quite yet done.” He rose unsteadily from his Eames chair and undid my straps.

I sat upright, rubbing my swollen wrists and ankles. I felt faint, blood draining from my head. So this was what it felt like to be a liberated man, able to acknowledge suffering while remaining on an even emotional keel.

“Put the head phones on again,” the psychiatrist asked, holding them out.

“Why? Didn’t you proved that Desensitization Plus+ works?”

“There’s a finishing touch. I want you to listen to your family’s voices again. It will smooth out any kinks, cement your gains. I know that sounds like psychiatric gobbledygook, but any job worth doing is worth doing well.” He was drinking Tanqueray openly now, straight from the bottle. But hey, I thought, he deserved to celebrate.

“Whatever you say, doc.” I donned the headphones. He flipped on the recording, and from the first parental, “I love you,” I was in unbelievable pain. “I love you,” said my mother, sister and dad, each word like a .44 Magnum slug piercing my skull. I fought the urge to break the headphones in two, hoping the anguish would subside, but it continued until the loop ended and started again.

“What the hell’s wrong?” the doc asked, tearing the headphones off me, throwing them aside. He finished off the gin.

“I can’t listen to my family talk without excruciating pain. And their voices, their precious voices were all that kept me hanging on.” I rose to my feet, now face-to-face with the stinking, slovenly doctor. How could I have allowed myself to be fooled by him?

“Listen young man,” he said, “I informed you up front this was an experimental procedure. Yet you decided to proceed for unbridled personal gain.”

“Personal gain? You mean to feel well again?”

The psychiatrist took a wild swing with the bottle. “This can all be fixed, if you’d just settle down. Obviously, what happened is an unexpected boomerang effect. You were desensitized to lightning and thunder while simultaneously developing an aversion to your family’s voices. A novel sort of transference. It’s fascinating twist, actually that warrants further investigation.” He shattered the Tanqueray on his teak desk, pointing the jagged end at me. “We’re making history here, son. You and me.”

Adopting a messy fencer’s pose, he lunged at me with the bottle. Missing, he began whipping it back and forth, nicking my finger, the same one that had been bloodied during the storm.

Enraged, I slammed the reel-to-reel into his chest. He fell to the floor. I beat him senseless. The spools of tape kept whirling, going nowhere.

I bent down, found his Brooks Brothers wallet, extracted $140 cash—the same amount he charged for a session—and said, “Hope you feel better now.”

I strode out his door and down the hall, past the other patients, beleaguered by unknown psychic maladies, waiting their turns. “Doc might be a while,” I informed them, “He’s recovering from a heavy dose of anger therapy.”

I hit the street crying. Lord, was I going to miss hearing from mom, dad and sis. But in my heart and gut, I knew I would survive. For the first time ever.

In a weird and unexpected way Desensitization Plus+ had truly worked. 

When the psychiatrist recovers, I’ll recommend him on Yelp.    

by: Anonymous

as told to: 

Doc Paranormal

Adjunct Professor without Portfolio

Edgar Allan Poe Community College