Dr. Joseph J. Coates, Dream Specialist

New York City, NY. At 4:30 in the morning, while it was still dark outside, Joseph Jacob Coates awoke to a knock on his office door—well, cell door really. It was one of the hospital’s nurses. He fumbled for the light switch on his desk lamp to turn the light on and rubbed the last stubborn remnants of sleep from his bleary eyes. He squinted and checked the wristwatch lying on his desk beside his bed and shuffled over to the heavy metal door to open it.

“What is it?” he asked, flipping the room’s light switch on.

“Sorry to wake you up, Joe—Doc—but these two insisted on seeing you,” the nurse apologetically explained. “I told them to come back during your regular business hours but they said it was urgent.”

“Urgent enough to leave their rooms and violate curfew?” Joseph asked with a raised eyebrow.

“Apparently,” the nurse said with a shrug. “Again, I’m really sorry about all this.”

“Interesting… That’s alright, Aurora,” Joseph said. “Thank you. Let them in.”

Two men—Joseph’s fellow patients at Alexandria Psychiatric Hospital for the Criminally Insane—cautiously entered the room and looked around at their surroundings. Whereas most cells at Alexandria Hospital were stark white and could drive any patient even madder than they already were, Joseph’s cell had a very homey feeling to it. It had a finely crafted mahogany desk beside the hospital’s cold metal bed and a comfortable leather chair for Joseph to sit on. The walls were lined with artwork featuring absurd psychologist humor from The New Yorker and The Far Side. Dozens of scholarly books on psychology and psychiatry lined the walls as well. On Joseph’s desk was a bonsai tree, and on the deep window ledge sat other potted houseplants. The four corners of the square room were marked by four hanging plants in wicker baskets.

“Nice room you have here,” Michael Baker, one of the men said in awe. Indeed, it was a step up from all the other rooms at Alexandria. But for Joseph Coates, despite all the privilege and favor from the hospital’s superintendent and his luck finally turning, it still felt like a cold, dark prison. He had been at Alexandria Psychiatric Hospital for the Criminally Insane for eleven years. He was only a young boy of seventeen when he was dragged through its doors, kicking and screaming. He had been working at Potter Meats when his employer’s wife, Mrs. Potter, accused him of failed seduction and rape. Enraged, Mr. Potter had the boy arrested, tried, and thrown in prison forever. But at the last minute, Mr. Potter took pity on Joseph and petitioned the judge to have him locked up at Alexandria instead, even though he was the sanest individual you would ever meet. Once at Alexandria, young Joe Coates quickly rose through the ranks as he had done at Potter Meats and the superintendent took notice of him, taking him under his wing. He was a charming young man who was polite and friendly to everyone. They could all see that the accusations against him were false and completely unfounded. He completed his GED, studied psychology and psychiatry while inside the hospital, apprenticed under the superintendent, and was given a better cell than he originally had. He soon graduated, the very first person in history to ever graduate from within a psychiatric hospital for the criminally insane, and was given an office and a title. He was now twenty-eight.

“Hmm? I’m sorry, what? What was that?” Joseph said distractedly as he shook himself from his reverie.

“I said you have a nice room here,” Baker repeated.

“Oh, thank you,” Joseph said. “That’s very kind of you. Please, take a seat. You can sit on my bed. Make yourselves comfortable. So! What brings you to my…office…at this hour?”

“Thank you,” the other man, Henry Coppiere, said. “We’ve, uh… See, we’ve been, um… We both had nightmares and we don’t… We don’t know what to think or what it even actually means.”

“Alright,” Joseph said, sitting in his leather office chair and crossing his legs. He steepled his fingers in thought, his thumbs resting under his chin and his index fingers touching his nose and lips. Then he closed his eyes and leaned his chair back, making the spring squeak. “Tell me your dreams, and with God’s help, maybe I can interpret them for you. Henry? Would you like to go first?”

“Uh, sure,” Coppiere said, perking up. “I dreamed I was in a wine cellar and before me were three rows of shelves filled with bottles of wine—excellent vintage too! I selected a bottle from one of the three shelves, uncorked it, poured it into a wineglass, and went back up the spiral staircase to the ground floor where there was a party. Then I handed it to my old boss, Mr. Sayeed, and he drank from it. And then that’s where the dream ended.”

“Good,” Joseph said, opening his eyes. “That’s good, actually. The three shelves of wine symbolize three days. In three days, you will have served your sentence and your old boss will rehire you and you’ll be working for him again just like you did before.”

“Thank you!” Coppiere said, springing forward to embrace Joseph. “Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! This is great news!”

“Do me a favor though,” Joseph said. “When you’re back out there in the world, put in a good word for me, alright? Get me out of here! You know as well as I do that I don’t belong here. My brothers thought they were being smart when they illegally sold me to Mr. Potter and had me working like a slave, far away from my beloved Los Angeles. And then I get accused of a crime I never committed and end up here.”

“Don’t worry, I will,” Coppiere promised. “You have my word. Thank you!”

“Michael?” Joseph said, turning to the second man. “Your turn. What did you dream about?”

“In my dream, I was standing in the garage of Mr. Sayeed’s mansion. In front of me were three limousines and I was trying to decide which one to drive,” Baker recounts, recalling his dream. “I picked the middle one, opened the back passenger door for Mr. Sayeed, closed it, then I got in the driver’s seat and drove off. At one point in my dream, the car malfunctions and I drive it off a cliff and it explodes. Before I pass out from the fumes, I see vultures circling above us, but I know for a fact that Mr. Sayeed escapes unscathed. Pretty sure those vultures were coming for me.”

“I really wish I had good news for you,” Joseph said, watching Baker go pale. “But I don’t. The three limousines in your dream also represent three days. Like your friend Henry here, you will have served your sentence. But you won’t be so lucky. In three days, Mr. Sayeed will publicly humiliate you and you will die in shame.”

“Ah,” Baker said, looking dejected.

“I’m sorry, my friend,” Joseph said. “I wish there was something I could do.”

“Don’t worry about me,” the former driver said. “It’s in God’s hands now.”

True enough, within three days of the dreams, their sentences were up. Henry Coppiere and Michael Baker were freemen. Coppiere returned to the employ of Akim Sayeed as his butler. Baker, however, was publicly humiliated by a drunk Sayeed in front of all his guests at his birthday party. He was not rehired, unlike his friend Henry Coppiere. That night, Michael Baker went home shamed and dejected, called his lawyer, set his affairs in order, and promptly hanged himself with a sheet from the ceiling fan in his apartment.

Two years later…

Joseph Coates walked the carpeted halls of Amunet Financial International, Akim Sayeed’s secretary at his side. Her name was Ashley. When they reached the boardroom at the end of the hallway, Ashley knocked and announced Joseph’s presence.

“Mr. Sayeed?” Ashley said. “Your guest is here.”

“Let him in,” Akim Sayeed said. “So, Mr. Coates… My butler tells me you have a knack for dream interpretation? He says you accurately interpreted his dream and predicted the outcome. Is that true?”

“Only partially true, sir,” Joseph said. “I believe interpretations come from God. I am merely a messenger—a vessel, if you will. Now, if you would be so kind as to tell me what you dreamed about?”

“Thank the gods you’re here, Mr. Coates,” Mr. Sayeed said with a sigh. “None of my advisors could interpret my dream. Anyway… In my dream, I saw two babies playing on the floor of Amunet Financial’s main bank branch. They were each playing with wads of cash, fourteen billion dollars in total. One baby was plump and fat—really healthy. The other looked as sick and thin as those poor African children in those save-the-children TV commercials. And then I saw half of the wads of cash quickly turn to dust in the sickly baby’s hands—dust, all of it! Seven billion dollars, thrown to the wind! Gone!”

“Go on,” Joseph urged, listening intently.

“But that wasn’t even the most disturbing part,” Mr. Sayeed continued. “The thin, sickly baby ate the fat baby like a bloody cannibal! The strange thing was that even after the sickly baby gobbled up the healthier, fatter one, she still looked thin and sickly. She looked even worse! It’s like she hadn’t eaten! And then I had another dream.”

“Please,” Joseph said. “Continue.”

“In this dream, I went down to the bank to personally check the money in the vault, to make sure it was all safe,” Mr. Sayeed went on. “I opened it, and there it was—intact and all accounted for. I went and visited another branch, but when I opened the vault at that branch, all the money—all seven billion of it—turned to dust right before my very eyes! What could it possibly mean?”

“Your dreams tell you the same thing, Mr. Sayeed,” Joseph pronounced. “The healthy baby playing with wads of seven billion dollars and the money in the vault are one and the same. So is the dying baby playing with seven billion dollars and the crumbling money in the vault. They both mean seven years. Seven years of prosperity and wealth—you’ll be at the top of your game. But then it will be followed by seven years of bankruptcy. Not just you—the whole world will be affected. I’m talking recessions, Wall Street collapse, stocks crashing, businesses closing, higher prices… The reason you dreamed about it twice is because the matter has been set in stone. It has been decided by God and will happen soon.”

“What can I do?” Mr. Sayeed asked, wiping the cold sweat from his brow.

“Here’s what we’ll do, Mr. Sayeed,” Joseph suggested. “If you don’t mind me advising you, that is…”