The Trauma Artist
So Daniel, my boyfriend and my therapist, handed her the story of my family’s slaughter as raw material.
He didn't tell me the movie was coming out.
But I went anyway.
On the massive screen, my family—the victims—were twisted into villains who deserved to die.
The monster who murdered them was whitewashed into a sympathetic soul, a man forced into a corner by life.
Watching the nightmare from my past tear through the screen, I had to dig my nails into my palm until they drew blood just to keep from passing out.
When the film ended, the screenwriter, Sabrina, was ushered onto the stage, a star surrounded by her constellation.
She smiled, tucking her arm into Daniel’s, and introduced him to the world.
“This is the city’s most brilliant psychotherapist,” she announced, her voice ringing with triumph. “And the muse for my film.”
The theater erupted in thunderous applause. The host praised them, a perfect match of talent and beauty.
Then, through the roar of the crowd, as Daniel’s shocked eyes found mine, I slowly raised my hand.
“I have a question,” I called out, my voice surprisingly steady. “For the muse.”
1
Daniel’s expression froze.
He clearly never expected me to be here. I recognized the panic in his eyes; how could I not?
Two days ago, we were supposed to leave for a trip to the Caribbean. The day before our flight, he’d told me there was a last-minute emergency at the clinic.
He’d apologized, his voice a soft caress. “Willow, just give me one day. That’s all I need.”
“You go on ahead,” he’d said. “I’ll handle this and be on the next flight out.”
I believed him.
Then my best friend sent me a video clip: Daniel and Sabrina on the red carpet at the premiere. Standing close. Looking like lovers.
I forgot all about the trip. I rushed to the theater, only to watch my family be desecrated on screen.
And it all clicked into place.
There was no emergency. He just wanted me out of the way.
Now, his gaze met mine for a split second before he flinched away, unable to hold it.
So, he could feel fear.
Fear of me knowing. Fear of facing my anger.
But he did it anyway. For Sabrina.
A bitter smile touched my lips. “Dr. Archer,” I said, my voice carrying across the quieted room. “I’m simply curious. This true story you provided to Ms. Vance for creative inspiration—where exactly did it come from?”
I wanted to hear his explanation.
I wanted to give him one last chance.
Daniel’s face was a blank mask for a moment.
Then, his voice came out, cool and distant. “It was based on the experience of an old friend.”
I stared at him for a few seconds before a low, hollow laugh escaped me.
Daniel, I’ve always been too soft. Thank God you’re more decisive than I am.
What a fool I was.
I already knew the answer, but I still wanted to hear how he would lie to my face.
Daniel saw the tears welling in my eyes, and a flicker of concern crossed his face. “I…”
But Sabrina’s voice, sharp and cutting, sliced through his hesitation.
“That’s an excellent question,” she said, turning her smile on me. “It seems you’re a true fan of our film. Why don’t I share the story of how Daniel and I created it?”
She didn’t wait for an answer.
“The subject matter of the film was so heavy that I struggled for the longest time to even start writing,” she began.
“Then I met Daniel.”
Her gaze shifted to him, her adoration so thick it was suffocating.
“As a top-tier psychotherapist, he dissected the authentic inner world of individuals with post-traumatic stress disorder for me. We spent hours discussing the complexities of human nature, the blurred lines between crime and punishment.”
She paused for effect. “He stayed up with me through countless nights. It’s safe to say that without him, this film would have no soul.”
Finished, she looked at Daniel with pure devotion.
He glanced at me, then looked away as if my gaze had physically burned him. But he still gave a stiff nod, playing his part.
The audience burst into another round of applause, mixed with envious sighs.
“My God, they’re soulmates!” someone whispered loudly.
I just watched his face, a self-deprecating smile on my lips.
I’d known Daniel for six years, loved him for four.
And now, I was just an “old friend.”
The scars I had once revealed to him in trust had become anecdotes he shared with Sabrina.
He had used my wounds to court another woman.
When the applause died down, my composure returned.
“Exploring human nature, dissecting the psyche. It all sounds so noble,” I said, my voice clear and cold.
“But for a licensed therapist to provide a patient’s private history as creative material for someone else—”
I let the silence hang in the air for a beat.
“Doesn’t that violate your professional code of ethics?”
As my words landed, the faces in the audience, which had been glowing with romantic fantasy just a moment before, shifted.
They were right. Divulging a patient’s confidential information was the cardinal sin for a therapist.
The reporters in the room snapped to attention, their cameras and microphones swiveling toward the stage like a firing squad taking aim at Daniel.
“Dr. Archer, is what this woman saying true?”
“Did you, in fact, leak a patient’s private history to Ms. Vance to be used as source material for her screenplay?”
Panic flashed across Daniel’s face. He waved his hands dismissively, his voice cracking. “No! That’s not it! You’ve all misunderstood. This wasn’t a patient’s story!”
Sabrina immediately jumped to his defense, her tone laced with indignation. “Our film is based on a real social event, not a patient’s private life. This woman must be mistaken.”
“Oh? A real event?”
I smiled. “Then perhaps, Ms. Vance, you can tell us all how you learned about this so-called real event?”
Back then, a series of procedural errors by the investigators nearly let the killer walk free. Because of the scandal, the case was buried, sealed from the public record. It was never reported.
Sabrina couldn’t have known about it from any source other than Daniel.
Her expression faltered, and she fell silent.
She couldn’t admit she heard it from Daniel; that would confirm he’d betrayed a confidence.
All she could do was glare at me, her eyes filled with venom.
The air grew thick with tension.
Sabrina shot a desperate, pleading look at Daniel. He stared at me for a long, heavy moment, as if making a final, terrible decision.
“The person involved is an old friend of mine,” he began, his voice heavy with feigned reluctance. “She wishes to remain anonymous, so I didn't want to say more.”
“But since this woman is so insistent, I’ll clarify the situation.”
My heart sank.
His instinct, his choice, was to protect Sabrina.
I had already lost. Utterly.
“My friend,” he continued, “has always understood the terrible mistakes her parents made. For years, she’s lived under a crushing weight of guilt, which led to a severe battle with depression.”
“She came to me and confided everything. She begged me to find a way to make the story public, as a warning to the world. It was, in her words, her way of atoning for what happened, a penance for the victims.”
He paused, his voice rising with a self-righteous fire.
“So, you see, this wasn’t a leak.”
“Sabrina and I were simply helping a poor, tormented girl complete her journey of self-redemption.”
I stared at him, speechless.
A sharp, violent pain seized my chest, stealing my breath.
After my parents were murdered, I got sick.
Depression.
Living was more painful than dying.
I’d swallowed pills. I’d cut my wrists. I’d stood on the edge of rooftops more times than I could count.
Every time, someone pulled me back.
After one stomach pump, a doctor who couldn't bear to watch anymore referred me to Daniel.
He told me I was a survivor, not a sinner.
He was like a gift, a light in my life.
With him by my side, I slowly began to heal.
And now, his face was as grotesque and hateful as the killer’s had been that day.
I fought back tears, my voice trembling. “Daniel, you truly have no heart.”
“How noble. You’ve painted yourself as some kind of hero.”
A fractured laugh escaped me, and I asked, my voice raw, “But when you lie awake at night, after twisting the truth and turning black into white, does your conscience ever bother you?”
A murmur rippled through the crowd.
“What does she mean? Is she saying the movie is a deliberate attempt to whitewash a killer?”
“I have to admit, the portrayal of the criminal in the film did feel… off.”
“Yeah, and the victims were such stereotypes. It felt like a classic case of victim-blaming…”
Hearing the whispers, Sabrina’s face paled. She tightened her grip on Daniel’s arm.
At the sight of her distress, Daniel’s expression darkened.
“Willow! Do you have to make a scene here?”
“Your parents’ case was years ago! Why can’t you just let it go? Why do you insist on tormenting their memory even after they’re gone?”
My head snapped up.
He looked at me with disappointment, with anger, even with a hint of resentment.
Gone was the tenderness, the empathy.
I felt a wave of dizziness.
For years, he had been my salvation.
He would whisper to me in that soothing, hypnotic voice:
“Willow, don’t be afraid. I’m here.”
“Willow, look, the sun’s coming up. Let’s go outside. I’ll read you some poetry.”
I numbly raised a hand to my cheek.
The unshed tears I had held back for so long were finally streaming down my face.
When Daniel saw them, he froze for a second, a look of regret crossing his features.
He instinctively started to raise his hand, as he had a thousand times before, to wipe my tears away.
But he stopped. We were too far apart.
He was on the brightly lit stage, the center of attention. I was in the dark, isolated and alone.
He let his hand fall awkwardly to his side. Across the chasm of bodies and noise between us, his lips moved. I couldn’t hear the sound, but I could read the words clearly:
“Willow, stop this. Let’s go home and talk.”
Home?
After he and Sabrina had nailed my entire family to a public pillar of shame, what home did we have left?
I gave a contemptuous smirk and began walking toward the stage, step by step, until I was standing right in front of him.
“My parents were slandered as criminals who got what they deserved. You’re the ones who won’t let them rest in peace! Daniel, if this were you, could you let it go?”
His mouth opened, his Adam’s apple bobbing.
“Willow,” he croaked, “I’m doing this for your own good. Your parents’ story needs more attention. It needs a version of the truth to be out there.”
The absurdity of it was breathtaking.
A short, sharp laugh escaped my throat.
“The truth?”
“You mean the ‘truth’ that glorifies a murderer and tramples on his victims?”
“Or the ‘truth’ where my father is painted as an exploitative monster, my mother as a gold-digging mistress who broke up a marriage, and me as the vicious bully who drove a classmate to suicide?”
My voice suddenly rose to a shout. “Daniel, how does my family’s blood taste?”
The atmosphere in the room turned to ice.
Daniel’s voice trembled. “Willow, that’s not what I meant. I was just… I panicked.”
His eyes were red, as if he were truly remorseful.
But in the next breath, he pleaded, “But this movie is everything to Sabrina. It has to succeed. Willow, please, just back down this once. Please?”
“After this is over, we’ll get married.”
I slowly looked up at him, a scalding tear tracing a path down my temple.
And I started to laugh, my whole body shaking with it.
“Back down? How can you ask me to back down? You know better than anyone how much I’ve suffered for the last six years. You know everything!”
My laughter seemed to grate on his nerves. His tone hardened with impatience.
“Then what is it you want?”
“Do you want to destroy my career? Destroy Sabrina’s most important work? Is that what it will take for you to be satisfied?”
His eyes were full of disappointment. “When did you become so unreasonable?”
I stood frozen.
That face, the one that had once been my only source of comfort, suddenly seemed like a stranger’s—a terrifying stranger.
“So in your mind, her defiling my entire life is a ‘work of art’?”
“And I’m the sinner? The victim whose bones you scraped clean for your own gain?”
My questions made his face contort with anger.
He broke eye contact, unable to look at me any longer.
Sabrina, seeing her opening, scowled at me with contempt.
“Ms. Thorne, your language is disgusting. Daniel and I are trying to generate a meaningful discussion about this case, to preserve it through art.”
A flash of malice crossed her eyes.
“The way you’re carrying on… anyone who didn’t know better would think you actually were the daughter who bullied her classmate into jumping off a roof.”
So, she knew everything.
This was her plan all along. To force me to admit who I was, to humiliate me in front of everyone.
I had always hated Sabrina.
The feeling was mutual.
I remembered her saying to Daniel once, right in front of me, her words dripping with insinuation, “Daniel, pity isn’t love. You can’t let a patient confuse you.”
My already fragile sense of security shattered. I’d needed constant reassurance from him after that.
“Are you only with me because you feel sorry for me?”
“Daniel, are you going to leave me one day?”
And he would pull me into his arms, his voice a mix of exasperation and adoration. “You silly girl. What are you thinking? I could never leave you.”
Now, he stood against me, defending the very woman who had tried to drive us apart.
It turned out he could leave someone.
That someone just wasn’t her.
I met Sabrina’s malicious gaze and smiled. “You’re right. I am that person. I’m the daughter from the story.”
Her triumphant smirk froze on her face. She hadn’t expected me to admit it so easily.
But she recovered quickly, her expression shifting to one of mock surprise. “Oh, my! So, Ms. Thorne, you’re the bully.”
The room exploded.
“Ms. Thorne, was your father really a ruthless capitalist? Was your mother really a homewrecker?”
“Ms. Thorne, do you think what happened to your family was karma for your bullying?”
The reporters were ecstatic.
They didn’t care about the truth. They cared about the scandal, the juicy headlines.
The crowd surged forward. A powerful shove sent me stumbling backward. My head hit the hard floor with a sickening crack.
CRACK!
The world went silent.
As the room spun around me, distorted faces swam in and out of focus, merging with the face of the devil from my deepest memories.
I was back in that blood-soaked afternoon, crammed into the dark closet, my parents holding me down, keeping me quiet.
Through the narrow slit between the doors, I saw it all again—
My father, on the floor, his head a bloody, unrecognizable pulp.
My mother, thrown to the ground, her dress violently torn, the monster’s face twisting into a lecherous grin.
Her eyes met mine for a fleeting second, and in that instant, they filled with a terrifying resolve.
She guided the killer’s knife into her own heart.
Then, she crawled, step by agonizing step, leaving a thick, wet trail of blood, until she reached the closet.
She used her last ounce of strength to slump against the doors, her body blocking the slit, shielding me from the killer’s searching gaze.
Her blood began to seep under the door. It was warm, sticky…
“Aaaah!”
I clutched my head and screamed, my body shaking uncontrollably.
The suffocating feeling of imminent death washed over me again.
My reaction startled the crowd. They stopped pushing, backing away with uneasy expressions.
I could finally breathe.
“Willow!”
Daniel’s face was a mask of terror. He finally saw how broken I was and rushed forward to help me up.
“Don’t touch me!” I scrambled backward, away from his reach.
His hand froze in midair, his face a canvas of hurt and shock.
I lifted my head, my red-rimmed eyes boring into him.
“Was it fun?” I whispered. “Turning everything I ever told you into cocktail party chatter for her?”
A flush of shame, or perhaps anger, crept up his neck.
“Willow!”
“Not everyone is like you,” he shot back, his voice strained. “Not everyone assumes every act of kindness is secretly an act of malice.”
I slowly, unsteadily, pulled myself to my feet.
“Daniel,” I said, each word deliberate and heavy. “Was it so hard to treat me with basic decency?”
“I don’t know how I never saw it before. You are disgusting.”
His eyes darted away.
His reaction was not lost on the audience.
“Now it really does sound like her story was stolen.”
“You know, I thought there was something wrong with this movie. The killer was a monster. Why were they trying to make him sympathetic?”
“Exactly! And they put him front and center on the promotional poster. Their intentions couldn’t be more obvious.”
The tide of doubt was turning into a wave of accusation. Sabrina was panicking now.
“Don’t listen to her!” she shrieked, her voice high and shrill. “She’s insane!”
“She’s one of Daniel’s patients! She’s obsessed with him, and when he rejected her, she made up this entire story to ruin us!”
The crowd looked back and forth, trying to keep up with the dizzying twists.
Sabrina shook Daniel’s arm, her voice urgent. “Daniel, stop playing along with her! You’ve been more than patient, and now she’s trying to destroy everything! You have her medical records, the ones about her delusional disorder! Stop being so soft-hearted and tell them the truth! Tell them I’m right!”
Every eye in the room locked onto Daniel.
He was silent for a long moment, then closed his eyes.
When he opened them again, they were empty of all emotion. All that remained was a cold, clinical detachment.
He looked at me and said, his voice quiet but clear:
“Yes. She… she suffers from a severe delusional disorder. She is one of my patients.”
“She has been stalking me for some time…”
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