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My name is Dora. I am, and have been for many years, a permanent guest at the Wychwood Centre for the criminally insane, for killing my father. Which I both did, and did not do.

No-one knows this story. Before, it was a secret, and afterwards - well, my actions do not make me a reliable narrator. But after all this time I finally have it straight in my head, and I must write it down. Whether you believe or not, this is what I saw, and these are the things that happened to me.

All I remember, growing up, was trouble. Trouble at home, trouble at school, trouble at work, trouble in relationships. It didn't seem to matter what I did, I was always in trouble. I would cry myself to sleep sometimes, or even wake up crying, but do you know what the stupid thing was? I never knew why. It never occurred to me to look for a cause, and so I never even realised there was one.

Eventually, I talked myself into going to see a therapist. This made me very nervous, but she put me at my ease surprisingly quickly. She asked me about all my troubles, and I could see that she was trying to build up a picture from them. Privately, I wasn't really convinced, but I said nothing of my doubts. Eventually, she surprised me: she asked me about my dreams. I felt myself go red, but I told her the truth: that I never remembered my dreams. She just gave me a secret smile and reached into her desk drawer. She drew out a small, battered, camcorder, and passed it over to me. As I cradled it in my palm, she told me that I should go to sleep holding it, and then I should be able to remember my dreams.

It seemed like a stupid idea to me, but the look on her face somehow told me that she knew something I didn't, and I'd come up empty for so long, that any new idea, no matter how stupid, was worth trying.

I put the camcorder in my bag, and came back home.

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