He reached for the parchment paper that had previously wrapped his sandwich, and gently crinkled it next to microphone the computer.

“You see—” She stopped abruptly. “Hey, is that you?”

“Is what me?”

“Making that noise.” A nervous tick under her left eye began to pulse.

“I don’t hear any noise, Miriam. You must be imagining things.”

The girl looked suddenly afraid and confused.

The Dream Healer watched her on his screen as she rose slowly from her chair and sank to the floor of her bedroom, her hands pressed to the sides of her head. She dropped to her hands and knees, inching across the floor like a wounded animal, ending up in a semifetal position just underneath her bed. She was moaning softly, clawing roughly at her ears with freshly manicured fingernails.

The Dream Healer crinkled the paper more vigorously. The effect was startling. The girl’s limbs began to twitch violently, and her breathing now came in short snorting gasps.

“Oh, SHIT! It’s moving faster! It’s going to burrow right through! Right through my brain! Oh, my God . . . the pain! It’s unbearable!”

There was now a fierce intensity to her voice. She was shouting, pitching her head from side to side like a cork in a storm. The Dream Healer rubbed the paper even more vigorously. Almost at once, she began to pull at her face, raking the skin of her cheeks harshly back and up, her hands covering what was left of her brutalized ears. She tried to deaden the appalling chewing noise, but the horrific aural images, that sound emanating from her computer, was like a virus. The imagined pictures were too much to bear.

Crunch, crunch, crunch.

CRUNCH, CRUNCH, CRUNCH.