A man goes to his therapist to have a dream interpreted.
“So, Mr. Carter,” Dr. Greaves said, scribbling a note. “You said the dream has been recurring?”
“Yes,” Carter replied, his voice just above a whisper. “Three nights now. Same dream. Same feeling… of being stuck.”
Dr. Greaves nodded slowly. “Go on. Start from the beginning.”
“I’m seated at a long table — long like a ballroom banquet,” he began. “Candles flicker in gold holders. Silverware gleams. A full seven-course meal lies ahead. I know that, somehow. I don’t see the menu, but I know. Soup, salad, fish, meat, palate cleanser, dessert, and… something after that. Something grand.”
Greaves raised an eyebrow. “Go on.”
“The soup is first,” Carter continued. “Creamy, perfect. I don’t know the flavor, but it warms me. I finish the bowl. I reach for the salad fork… but before I can touch it — the soup is back.”
“Refilled?”
“Exactly the same. Fresh, hot, full again. Like nothing happened.”
“And you eat it again?”
“I try not to… but it smells so good. It pulls me in. So I eat. Again. And again. Five, six, seven times. Every time I finish, it returns. The salad — untouched. Waiting. I never get there. Never get to move on.”
Silence hung for a moment. Dr. Greaves closed his notebook.
“Mr. Carter,” he said gently, “what you’re experiencing is not uncommon. Your subconscious is expressing something very simple through something very elaborate.”
Carter sat forward, hopeful. “What is it? What does it mean?”
Dr. Greaves exhaled slowly, almost dramatically, before delivering the line like a professor wrapping up a grand lecture: “It simply proves… that you cannot change courses in the middle of a dream.”
