Aliens, SHEEP and other Things

So I have been at this story for a good few years and it's something that I have just been messing around with. I thought I'd clean it up with a bit more editing and see what people think. It is by no means finished, though I have written a fair amount of it. I know the title is a bit bizarre, but it was the best I could come up with. Thanks for looking ;)


Aliens, SHEEP and other Things

Thoughts and Traffic
I woke up to the sound of traffic below. Gathering by the light that was struggling to get in through the old dusty blinds it was early morning. I tried to go back to sleep but the events of the previous day were whirring around inside my head. I could almost see my reflection on the bald shiny head of my boss. His glaring blue eyes frightened me. The flare in his nostrils made me jump.

"You're fired!" He gnarled. I covered my ears, screaming got people nowhere.

I inquired into the reason for the sacking the only answer that came was: "We're cutting down on overheads." That was it. I thought about it for a while with my head in an open staff locker trying to tell myself in the dark crampt space that everything would be okay, that I could find another job after working in one for ten long shitty years.

Now I had my head under my pillow thinking faster than I really wanted to. Job, job, job...Money, money...sleep, sleep, sleep. The thinking continued on and on. I had enough of the clattering below so I leapt out of bed, ran towards the bathroom, and doused my head with cold water from the white ceramic sink. There's nothing like a cold bit of water in the morning to wake you up, to reposition your thoughts and to get you to focus on the day ahead.

I couldn't focus. I glanced at my face in the large mirror that was full of dried toothpaste from a ritual called brushing one’s teeth. I hated brushing my teeth, and why did someone have to come up with tongue brushing? I ran my hand over my rough, leathery face. I needed a shave. I tried not to think, tried not to tell myself, "You were fired, so you need to find a job."

If my father showed his face I would have loved for him to say, "You can ride off my coat-tails anytime, son."

That was a fictional incident; such a thing would never happen, I was sure of it. I continued to stare into the mirror, into my green eyes, wondering if luck had anything to do with my current position. Luck had nothing to do with it; I was not superstitious nor had I ever had notions of becoming such.

After deciding to postpone job hunting I crawled back in bed. I owed myself a lie in. I shut my eyes and scrunched them closed to stop any bit of light from entering.

Why? Why what? Why? I thought for a while under the covers, huddled in a fetal position, a stream of images and thoughts filling my mind. Somehow my mind was having a field day at my expense. When I pictured Dad in my head I saw a stubborn, greying-haired man wearing round glasses, standing hunched under a door frame. I heard a dog, and the sound of car engines followed. I had no headache, no pain establishing itself anywhere, just a lot of thoughts that were collecting like a snowball slowly rolling down a hill and then gathering up momentum.

Why is there such a thing as coffee? Why can't hands exist on legs? Why does red offer certain connotations that green does not? Now such questions are what an eight year old may ask himself or his parents, but he quickly learns that such questions are pointless and will only wreck the head if such matters are continually thought on.

I never had such a problem with thinking too much, come to think of it. I think I had, at various times of my life, been accused of not thinking enough. This was different, though. Something wasn't quite right. I would have to pay the doctor a little visit.


A Visit to the Doctor
The walls were a white off colour and a coffee table positioned in the middle of the room was surrounded by a dozen of oddly matched chairs. A bunch of magazines cluttered up the coffee table; a sailing journal, a supplement from some paper titled, How to Look Young in Fifty Easy Steps. I picked up a few magazines aimlessly flicking through the pages. I sat trying not to think of thinking, looking at the clock and tracing its every tick. But the more I tried to resist the temptation of holding back my thoughts, the more it became inevitable that my brain was building something, building up a great explosion of thoughts. My palms began to sweat and my legs started to shake violently.

Don't think, don't think, don't think…

Why are you here? Why is the coffee table of a wood variety? What kind of wood was used? How old is old? Why is love red? Those were only questions, stupid questions that I seemed to have stored somewhere especially for a time such as this. My legs started to shake even more; I tried to resist but it was useless. I sat on my hands, thinking that it would do something to calm me. It didn't.

Light is light and dark is dark. Huh? Such silly little thoughts. Room. I held the thought gathered in my mind and spelt it: R-O-O-M. Perhaps such a word contained an equation, some hidden secret. I thought about it for a second and then jumbled up the words in my head. M-O-O-R. Room spelt moor. It spelt M-O-R-O. Somewhere I read that the Moro Reflex was a response to unexpected loud noise, or when the infant feels like it is falling. It is believed to be the only unlearned fear in human newborns. There was a study done once called the little Albert study which used the startle reflex in a conditioning experiment to make him fear white fuzzy things. Perhaps something like this had been done to me. Though I did not know what the conditioning could have been, it definitely couldn't be white fuzzy things. The more I thought the more confused I became, almost to the point of losing it.

Would the doctor hurry up! What was taking him?

I noticed no one had entered the room nor left it, and from what I gathered I had been sitting in the waiting room for about thirty minutes.

"Mr. Bates!" I heard a husky voice shout out from the hall. "Mr. Bates! Doctor Martin will see you now."

I slowly got up, made my way to the door and pushed down on the handle.

He was sitting on his black leather chair his fingers tracing his chiselled jaw line. A splash of light haloed his blonde hair. He was young, though his brown eyes said, "I have seen a lot for my age."

He was making little grunting noises just below his throat as I took my seat. He opened his mouth to say something and then quickly drew away, continuing to swivel his chair. He listened to my heart, checked my pulse and did a variety of little checks while grunting his disapproval. I listened to the sound of his tapping feet under the desk mimicking the beat of the clock.

"So what is wrong with me doctor?" I asked after a moment of uneasy silence.

He sat upright, tore a piece of paper from a notebook on his desk and drew a square.
It was four sided, nothing out of the ordinary.

"What is it?" He asked.

Puzzled I cocked my head and said, "A square?"

"Yes, and…?"

"A box?"

He looked up at me and said, "You have to think outside of it."

My eyes enlarged. How could I believe what the doctor was telling me?

The doctor continued, "How do you think outside the box?"

"Ermm…" I thought. How does one go about thinking outside a box, how does one develop thinking inside a box in the first place?

"You see Tom, you have what is termed as 'over-thinking'." He was pointing his large bony index finger at me.

"Over-thinking?" I was confused, never heard of such a term.

"Yes it is when you think too much." That was an overly simplified version of what he thought my condition was. Perhaps it was too simple.

Was it a disease? Would I have to live with it all my life?

"I know it may sound bizarre but such a condition, though highly rare, occurs with males between their mid twenties to late thirties. Some say it is brought on by anxiety, but really no one knows what triggers it."

Wonderful!

"You can still live a normal life and with the right medication and mental exercises it can be manageable. Recently a doctor in Holland devised the Outside Thinking therapy, which is a programme of different exercises that will get you to think outside what he terms a mental 'square' or 'box'. You are undergoing a mental flux at the moment where your mind is stuck inside a space. However, with this therapy you can harness your thoughts which are at the moment firing on all cylinders.”

It was all too much for me.

"You also have to realise that this method is very much at the early stages of research and has only been tested on a few patients. I advise you to continue with this therapy for six months, take all the medication that I subscribe to you. I will meet you on a regular basis to discuss your progress."

I put my hand to my head. Great news! It sounded so absurd.

"I'll get the subscription done up right away, and I'll give you all the instructions on how to carry out the therapy. Any questions…?"

I shook my head.

There were lots of questions, a lot of them he couldn't answer so I just kept quiet. I got up from my chair, picked up my coat and left through the door I came in. I took all the information of the therapy and the subscription on the way out. What news! I deserved a coffee for all my troubles.