“Dreamscape Conspiracy” is a 5-book series containing a very diverse and growing cast of characters. What started as a three-person Dream Research & Analysis project team, several new characters will appear across the pages of this series. I will attempt to add personas of significance as they come onto the radar screen and even revisit some written previously because something in a character’s life surfaces that was not part of the story you read, but matters in the reasoning of why. Keeps the story alive. Keeps the characters alive. They make the story.
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Dreamscape Conspiracy – Dr. Cara Williams
Meet Dr. Cara Williams, Clinical Psychologist & Director of Research in the School of Psychology at Central State University, Carteret County, North Carolina. She lives by herself but under the supervision of a big black tomcat named Ezekiel, better known as Zeke, the center of her world, and the only man welcome in her life. He was the only man in her life by choice because she lived haunted by a past that reminded her how unworthy she was. Zeke, at least, would never judge her, and she never had to worry about exposing her feelings about things from long ago that fed her private sense of unworth.
Her life at 32 years old was punctuated by a fit runner’s body, standing at 5’9” in her bare feet. A tight ponytail of light brown hair with feathered streaks of red framed her brilliant blue eyes. She was beautiful, despite her attempts to appear plain, and didn’t seem to care. But she did care, and by today’s standards, Cara was the poster child of being a strong, driven woman of 32 years, as long as ‘driven’ included total control over just about every damn thing and every damn body. She was a stubborn one and refused to accept the reality that one cannot lose control over what one never had in the first place, because, of course, she was always in control, even when spinning out of it.
Her need for control was largely self-inflicted, layered over attributes of OCD, and fueled by a dogged pursuit of her lab’s Dream Research & Analysis project. Earning acceptance from the academic community and her oppressive boss, Dr. Alister P. Billings, Dean of the School of Psychology, were her most significant challenges, as political headwinds and a conspiracy to end her research sought to undermine the foundation of her project. The dynamics of the conflicts she faced required intense focus, and there was no room for distractions; that meant a limited social life and no romantic interests — beyond shared affections with Zeke, that is.
Research was Cara’s only meaningful relationship. Spare time was spent behind an impenetrable shell protecting her private PTSD from the trauma of sexual abuse. No one would ever be allowed in. No one would ever want to be let in. She was stained with memories of sexual abuse as a teenager sixteen years earlier, and the violence she unleashed to end it. Law enforcement cleared the shooting as justified, but still, who would want to have a relationship with someone with enough rage to shoot her unarmed Uncle Frank fifteen times? True, Uncle Frank was a pedophile planning to celebrate Cara’s sixteenth birthday party after swilling half a bottle of Jack Daniels, but Cara knew whose finger pressed the trigger on the Glock given to her by her father before his death. Cara knew she shot him after he was dead, standing over him dry dry-firing an empty weapon, screaming in a blind rage, until passing out. Who would want a relationship with damaged goods?
That baggage made her wary of anyone who could become close to her. Instead, she learned to live with her deeply buried secret in an awkward attempt to find peace. There was no escape. The secret of her past was a scar that dreams refreshed, reminding her that she was unworthy of having an intimate, loving relationship; at least, that was her belief. The influences of trust and control collide, causing conflict with her paranoia and a private brand of PTSD.
No one would ever see her afflictions worn on her sleeves; those battles were internal, and a perfect example of her need to maintain self-control outwardly. She could be a bit volatile at times, quick to sound off with vocal emotions that can come across as being a bit of a bitch to those within her blast radius when a trigger gets tripped. Cara has her faults, as do we all, but underneath, there is a human heart that needs to be forgiven, especially when the forgiver must be herself. She’s more lovable than she gives herself credit for, and even that can be a challenge to break through until somebody helps her feel it and believe it.
That somebody showed up as a student volunteer for a dream study. He was a 29-year-old, red-haired, green-eyed, former Marine Force Recon Scout Sniper and fifth-year senior named Russell Carter. Neither of their lives would be the same, and neither of them knew it.
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Peace! G.