The Key to Midnight

insisted.
        'It's only your conscious mind that's floating up there. On a conscious level, perhaps you can't hear him, but your subconscious hears him clearly, every word, every nuance. I want you to let your subconscious speak. What is Herr Doktor saying?'
        Joanna fell into silence and became deathly still.
        'What does he say to you?'
        'I don't know, but I'm scared.'
        'What are you scared of, Joanna?'
        'Losing things.'
        'What things?'
        'Everything.'
        'Please be more specific.'
        'Pieces of myself.'
        'You're afraid of losing pieces of yourself?'
        'Pieces are falling away. I'm like a leper.'
        'Pieces of memory?' Alex guessed.
        'I'm crumbling,' Joanna said. 'High above, I'm floating and burning, but down here I'm crumbling.'
        'Is it memory you're losing?' Inamura pressed.
        'I don't know. But I feel it going.'
        'What does he say to you to make you forget?'
        'Can't quite hear.'
        'Strain for it. You can remember.'
        'No. He took that away from me too.'
        Inamura followed that line of questioning until he was convinced that he would learn nothing more from it. 'You've done well, Joanna. Very well, indeed. And now the treatment is finished. The needle has been removed from your neck. The other needle has been removed from your arm. You are gradually settling down, down.'
        'No. I'm still floating. Not burning any more, not being eaten up inside any more, but floating. I keep floating for a long time afterward. For at least an hour. Longer.'
        'All right. You're floating, but the needles are out of you. What happens now?'
        She covered her face with her hands.
        'Joanna,' Inamura said, 'what's happening to you?'
        'I'm ashamed,' she said miserably.
        'There's no need to be ashamed.'
        'You don't know,' she said from behind her hands. 'You can't ever know.'
        'Nothing to be ashamed of at all. Put your hands down, Joanna. Put them down. It's okay. That's right. You haven't done anything wrong. You're a good person. You have a good heart. You're the victim here, not the criminal.'
        She could not speak. She tried and failed.
        The wind at the windows.
        The bird in the cage. Talons on the brass.
        She struggled to tell Inamura what he wanted to know, and it was clear by her tortured expression that she needed to spill those secrets and be rid of them. But her mouth worked without producing a sound.
        Alex could hardly bear to watch her as she lay torn between shame and the need to confess, between fear and freedom. Yet he couldn't look away from her.
        Finally she said, 'If only… I could die.'
        'You don't really want to die,' Inamura assured her.
        'More than anything.'
        'No.'
        'It's the only way to stop him… what he does to me.'
        'It's already stopped. Years ago. You're only plagued by the memory now, because you haven't been able to face it. Confront it and be freed, Joanna. Tell me the rest of it and be free.'
        Her voice was so faint that Alex had to lean forward in his chair to catch what she said: 'Hear it? Hear it?'
        'What do you hear?' Inamura asked.
        'The clicking.'
        'Clicking?'
        'Click, click, click,' she said softly.
        'What is this clicking?'
        'The gears.'
        'Ah. In his hand?'
        'Soft at first. Then louder. Then as loud as gunshots. The gears in his fingers.'
        She shuddered and made a pitiful sound that weighed like a stone on Alex's heart.
        Inamura said, 'Where is Herr Doktor now?'
        In her still small voice, she said, 'Beside the bed. He strokes my face. With those steel fingers. Click, click, click.'
        'Go on.'
        Her hands moved from her face to her throat.
        'He massages my throat,' she said, 'I try to push his hand away. I really do try. But I can't. It's steel. So powerful. Hear the little motors purring in it?'
        She opened her eyes, staring at the ceiling. Tears shimmered.
        'Go on,' said Inamura.
        'He grins,' she said. 'I’m floating very high, but I can see his grin. I'm way up high, but I can feel what he's doing. I ask God to stop him, just to stop him, that's all, because I'm too weak, I need God's help, but it… never… it never comes.'
        'Don't bottle this up,' the