Your brain is muddled. The answers to life’s questions seem to be buried in the recesses of your mind—a complete mystery.

How do you emerge from the utter confusion in which you are immersed? This becomes evident in . . .

I’ve Been Talking In Your Sleep

     I met Lily many years ago. I sat on the black leather couch in my living room with the Sunday Tribune staring up at me from my lap. A brisk autumn wind rustled the trees just outside the living room window. My mind flittered from the article on the front page of the paper, “Merry Maid Spooks Neighborhood,” to thoughts of how bad the predicted storm would be, when the front doorbell rang. Nine a.m. on a Sunday morning. Who the devil could that be? I thought.

    I slipped my lethargic body off the couch and ambled to the front door. Although it had been my practice to look through the peephole before opening the door, my still half asleep, wandering mind didn’t afford me this luxury this morning, so I just yanked it open. When I did, I couldn’t believe my eyes. Standing before me, a tiny, no more than five-foot tall, redheaded women, dressed in a white, frilly blouse and red skirt covered by a red and white-checkered apron, gave me an impish grin. Her upper teeth bit into her bottom lip. She bowed her head and, in a sheepish manner, whispered, “Hello.”

    She seemed so innocent, so cute. I responded, “Hi, may I help you?”

    “No, I’m going to help you,” she replied in a quiet, yet confident way.”

    This response intrigued me more than it alarmed me. So small a women couldn’t hurt me. Could she? I thought. If she was the “Merry Maid” from the paper, I couldn’t imagine her spooking anybody. So I muttered a simple, “How?”

    “Invite me in and I’ll tell you.”

    This made me pause a moment before responding. I stared at her. She can’t be more than sixteen years old, maybe younger. And if she isn’t of age, do I want her in my house? Is she a child prostitute? My mind jumped around in all directions. Focus. Just focus—so I did. “How old are you,” I asked.

    She didn’t hesitate before replying. “Twenty-three,” she said and flashed that same little impish smile. “I have a growth hormone deficiency that makes me appear younger.”

    She seemed to have read my mind by giving me the answer to my next question before I had a chance to ask it. I thought about pursuing this, but chose not to. Thinking she must be harmless, I said, “Please come in.”

    “Thank you,” she replied softly and followed me into the living room. Before I could offer her a seat, she plopped down in the antique gold and white rocking chair across from the couch. A prized possession, it had been left to me by my great grandmother.

    “I’m Jack Rich, may I ask your name?”

    “My given name is Lilibeth Crenshaw Addison Picasso.”

    “Any relationship to the painter?”

    “Why yes, in a way. I was his muse for many years.”

    “But he died a long time ago and you told me you’re only twenty-three.”

    “Let’s just say, it is what it is. I whispered sweet somethings in his ear as he slept.”

    She must be delusional, I thought. I think I’ll drop the subject for now.

    “You’re dressed like a maid, Lilibeth. Is that how you support yourself?”

    “Please call me Lily. Being a maid has been my cover. It has kept people from asking too many intrusive questions?”

    “Are you the ‘Merry Maid’ the paper says is spooking the neighborhood?”

    “Spooking? That’s a bit of a stretch. I just tell people what they need to hear.”

    “Is that what you’re going to do to me?”

    “On no, I dare not do it while you’re awake.”

    I began to ask a follow-up question to her response, when she jumped up from the rocker and proclaimed, “It’s been nice, but I must be on my way.”

    “Will I see you again?”

    “No, I doubt you will. But who knows, anything is possible. However, after our little chat, I’m quite certain you will be hearing from me.”

    “Okay, I await our next conversation.”

    “Who said anything about a conversation? I must be going.”

    Before I could get up off the couch, she danced off through the front door, slamming it behind her. When I looked through the window next to the door, I saw nothing. “But that’s not possible,” I muttered. There wasn’t enough time for her to move beyond my view. Knowing I would never find out the answer unless she wanted me to, I decided to go on with my life.

    Ten years passed since my brief encounter with Lily and I heard nothing more from her. I was thirty-five when Lily and I met in my living room. She fascinated me. I was attracted to her, but not in the way you might think. She interested me and piqued my curiosity. During these ten years since our meeting, I excelled in my field as a professor of Biology and Physics at Boynton State University and as a scientist specializing in biophysics. My world filled me with questions I needed to answer. The stress became overwhelming. But as crazy as it might sound, I felt someone had been giving me directions and information on how to find answers I couldn’t trace back to my studies or research.

    It all confused me. At night after a day of teaching and experimentation, I would go to bed with a nagging question hanging over me. By morning, it seemed everything would fall into place and the solution to my dilemma would stare me right in the face. Try as I might to discover how I got from Point A to Point B in my scientific undertakings, I found little or no connection between my experimentation and the answer I’d found—none.

And this disturbed me. So much so, I decided to seek counseling to help me make sense out of all of this.

    Sitting in a comfortable leather recliner in Dr. Ansell Abrams office, Dr. Abrams asked, “So Dr. Rich, why have you come to see me?”

    “I seem to be able to find solutions to complicated scientific problems, doctor, yet I have no clue how I arrived at them. I’m unable to trace the steps I took and, in many cases, the information, which came to me, had nothing to do with the experiment I had run. It’s as if someone is providing the answers I need.”

    “Who might this be?” Dr. Abrams queried.

    “I have no idea.”

    After six therapy sessions with Dr. Abrams, he arrived at the conclusion that certain connections in my brain might be broken, therefore damaging the links that would permit me to remember the process of how my experiments led to the solutions I came up with.

    “So what do I do?” I asked.

    He just shook his head in dismay. “I’ve never seen anything like this. It’s as if someone—a very bright someone—has taken up residence in your head and has the ability to override these broken connections and then provide you with answers as you sleep.” He then threw up his arms.

    “Huh. But doctor, I need to know what to do now.”

    He stared at me and stated, “Aside from what I just told you, I have no idea. And drawing such a conclusion makes me feel as crazy as you are.”

    “You think I’m crazy?”

    He didn’t respond. That was the last time I saw Dr. Abrams. That night as I got ready for bed, my head spun. Frustrated and confused, I had no clue as to how I’d become so brilliant. This bewildered and annoyed me. I didn’t know if I could go on. I thought about quitting my job and becoming a

hermit. This decision, however, would have to wait until morning, as I needed to get some sleep. The day had drained every ounce of energy from my body.

    I drifted off into a restless sleep. As I tossed and turned, I heard a voice—a very familiar voice.

    “Jack, this is Lily.”

    “Lily? The ‘Merry Maid?’”

    “Yes, Jack.”

    “Why can’t I see you? If you’re in my dream, I should be able to see you.”

    “Concentrate hard and you will,” she whispered.

    I did what she told me to do. And, to my amazement, standing before me, was the twenty-three year-old young woman, with the impish grin, I remembered from years ago. She hadn’t aged a day.

    “Hello, Jack.”

    “Why haven’t you changed? And where have you been all these years?”

    “I only change if you want me to. And I’ve been with you every day and every night of your life.”

    “Why didn’t I know that?”

    “But you did.”

    “I did?”

    “Yes.”

    “How? And why didn’t you talk to me?”

    “I did talk to you. Almost every night.”

    “That can’t be. I never heard you.”

    “Well, I’ve been talking in your sleep. And you must have heard me, for you did everything I told you to do.”

Copyright © 2015 Alan Lowe. All rights reserved.