TRANSCRIPT: SOMNARIUM. S.011 – Marked For Removal
Case of Samuel Baptiste. First seen by Dr. Susan Renwyck on February 16th, 2006, for recurring nightmares, chronic insomnia, and severe hoarding behaviors following a court-ordered property cleanout.
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INTRO
I’ve spent the last few days trying to figure out how Renwyck organized all of this originally.
At first I assumed it was chronological. That would’ve made the most sense. Dates, intake forms, follow-ups, discharge notes. But it isn’t. Not consistently.
Then I started noticing the handwritten notes.
A lot of the files have labels added in the margins. Not full comments, just short notes. Sometimes a symptom. Sometimes a name. Sometimes a single word that doesn’t really mean anything until you’ve read the rest of the case.
The last one had Glass written in the margin. Same as Case 2.
I don’t know exactly what that means yet, but it’s one of the few things that’s repeated cleanly enough that it feels deliberate. Almost symbolic.
Both cases marked with Glass had this fixation on reflections. I’m sure there’s something there. But I haven’t figured out what.
I’ve tried sorting by everything else. Date, patient, symptoms, even the way Renwyck marked things up. None of it quite holds.
Some case files are complete. Most aren’t. A few look like they were broken apart and reorganized later. There’s also fragments that don’t seem to belong anywhere at all.
And then there’s the one file in particular I’ve been trying very hard not to open.
It doesn’t fit with the others. I mean, technically it does. It’s a case file like all the rest. But it’s the only one Renwyck marked so distinctly. Whatever this case was, she felt strongly about it.
It’s been stuck in the back of my mind for weeks now. I keep telling myself to leave it alone.
I’m not opening it tonight.
Not yet.
Instead, we’re looking at another case I was able to piece back together. And one name in here stood out immediately, because it comes up again.
Dr. Brine.
Just like Case 3.
This one is about an older gentleman with a severe hoarding problem. His refusal to let go of his things becomes his downfall.
Case of Samuel Baptiste. First seen by Dr. Susan Renwyck on February 16th, 2006, for recurring nightmares, chronic insomnia, and severe hoarding behaviors following a court-ordered property cleanout.
REFERRAL LETTER
Patient: Samuel Baptiste
Date: January 26th, 2006
Subject: Patient referral
Dear Dr. Renwyck,
I am referring Mr. Samuel Baptiste, for further evaluation following a significant deterioration in functioning associated with severe sleep disturbance.
Mr. Baptiste was placed under psychiatric review after a court-ordered cleanout of his residence, following legal action related to damage caused to a neighboring property. While his longstanding hoarding behaviors remain clinically significant, his presentation has shifted in recent weeks toward near-total insomnia, recurring nightmares, nocturnal panic, and increasing difficulty distinguishing dream content from waking events.
Mr. Baptiste reports a repeated dream setting which he describes with unusual consistency and distress. Given the intensity of these episodes, and the apparent relationship between symptom progression and sleep disruption, I believe further assessment under your care would be appropriate, particularly in light of your experience with difficult and atypical sleep-related cases.
Sincerely,
Dr. [REDACTED]
CONSULTATION NOTE
Patient: Samuel Baptiste
Date: February 16th, 2006
Subject: Partial transcription – patient interview
[START OF PARTIAL TRANSCRIPTION]
I grew up in New Orleans. In the French Quarter, to be specific.
My father had a repair shop there. Watches, radios, fans, little kitchen appliances, anything people thought wasn’t worth keeping once it stopped working. He could fix just about anything.
I thought I’d take it over one day.
But when I was still young, barely old enough to work proper, he died. Sudden. No warning. And when he went, everything else started going with him.
I didn’t have his skill. Not enough to keep the shop running. My mother tried to hold things together for a while, but we were already behind by then. Bills, debts… whatever my father had been keeping ahead of, it all caught up with us at once.
They closed the shop first.
Then they came for the house.
I still remember that part clearer than I remember the funeral. Men walking through rooms that still felt lived in, deciding what had value and what didn’t. What could be sold. What could be taken. What stayed. What went.
After that, my mother and I left New Orleans.
I found work. Enough to keep us housed. Enough to look after her.
And she kept things.
At first it made sense. My father’s tools. Old receipts from the shop. Broken radios he never got around to fixing. Shirts, photographs, little things that still felt like him. She’d say she wasn’t ready. That once something was gone, it stayed gone.
So we kept it.
Then the years passed, and she got older, and sicker, and the piles got higher.
Not all at once. Slow enough that you stop noticing.
And when she died, I couldn’t do what should’ve been done after.
Not to her things. Not to his. Not to any of it.
Because by then it wasn’t just stuff anymore. It was the house. It was them. It was what was left.
I kept working. Kept paying bills. Kept the place standing. The house had been rented at first, but after enough years the owner wanted out, and I bought it. People said it was a bad investment. Too old. Too much work. But I wasn’t about to let that house go too.
So I stayed.
And the things stayed.
Then a few months ago the water started coming through.
By the time I noticed it, it had already done damage next door. The man there was only renting. The property owner got involved, then inspectors, then lawyers.
The owner had some expensive, fancy lawyer. Price was his name, I think.
The damage had to be assessed and repaired, and that meant access to the source. My house.
That should’ve been simple enough. Find the leak, fix it, be done with it. Except by then the room where the damage had started was so full that nobody wanted to touch it. Wet boxes, soaked papers, ruined furniture, mold spreading through the piles… no plumber was willing to work in it. Not until the space had been cleared.
So they took it to court.
At first the order was only to clean enough of the house to allow the damage to be assessed properly. That was all. Clear access. Make the room safe. Let them inspect the wall, the pipes, the floor.
I told them I’d do it.
And I meant to.
But every time I started, I ran into the same problem. There was no such thing as clearing “just enough.” Once something was in your hands, they expected a decision. Keep it. Move it. Throw it out.
Simple, for them.
Not for me.
Weeks passed. The judge lost patience. I was told that if I could not clear the property myself, then the house would be cleared for me, and the cost would be mine to bear.
That was when the company came in.
They said they were there to help. Said nothing would be removed without being documented.
But they came in with gloves and masks and bins and black bags, and the moment they started touching things, I knew exactly what was happening.
They weren’t there to help me keep my house.
They were there to decide what parts of it I was allowed to keep.
At first I tried to stay calm. I told myself that if I watched closely enough, if I kept track of what they touched and where they moved it, then maybe I could keep some order in it.
But they moved too fast.
Every bag was tied before I’d finished looking through it. Every box was given a label that meant less than nothing. Mixed paper. Damaged goods. Non-salvageable.
They kept telling me they needed access.
That was always the reason. Access to the wall. Access to the pipes. Access to the floor. Access to the bathroom where the leak had started.
The bathroom was where everything changed.
By then the damp had been sitting for too long. The smell had worked its way into everything in there. Towels, boxes, medicine cabinets, small appliances I’d meant to dry out and look at later, old razors, folded linens, paper sacks, all of it touched by the leak in one way or another.
They said it all had to go.
Not sorted. Not reviewed. Removed.
Everything.
I told them no.
Not all of it. Not like that.
There were things in there that had been there for years. Things my mother had bought. Things my father had repaired. Some of it may have been wet, yes. Some of it may have been ruined. But ruined is not the same as worthless. Damaged is not the same as gone.
They didn’t care.
That was when I lost my temper.
I started pulling things back out. I cut one of the bags open. I told them to stop touching my property.
After that, they left.
And when they came back, I didn’t let them in.
A few days later I was told the first company would not be returning. Then they sent a second team. Smaller crew. More patient, they said. People trained to assist, not just remove. They were supposed to work with me, help me sort, help me decide, help me keep what mattered.
By then I didn’t trust any of them.
So when the second team came in, I watched them even closer.
And somehow that was worse.
I stopped sleeping properly after that.
At first it was just difficulty settling down. Then I started waking at the smallest sound, convinced someone was in the house again. I kept getting up to check rooms that hadn’t been touched, just to make sure everything was still where I’d left it.
After a while I wasn’t getting more than an hour or two at a time.
And when I did sleep… that’s when the dreams started.
[END OF PARTIAL TRANSCRIPTION]
Mr. Baptiste presented as polite, soft-spoken, and fully oriented throughout the consultation, though visibly fatigued. His speech remained coherent and organized, but he displayed clear emotional distress when discussing the court-ordered cleanout of his residence and the ongoing interference with his possessions. Despite the severity of the circumstances, he did not present as hostile or outwardly volatile during session. On the contrary, he appeared deeply embarrassed by the situation and at several points seemed more concerned with being understood than defended.
I found him difficult not to sympathize with. His attachment to the contents of the home is excessive, clinically significant, and clearly impairing, but it is not arbitrary. Much of his distress appears rooted in unresolved bereavement and longstanding associations between retained objects, family memory, and personal continuity. He does not speak about the house or its contents as clutter, but as the last intact structure connecting him to both parents. This does not lessen the seriousness of the pathology, but it does make its progression more understandable.
That said, his thinking appears increasingly dominated by the need to prevent removal, interference, or misclassification of possessions. Even where he acknowledges damage, contamination, or disrepair, he remains unable to tolerate the idea of external decision-making. The practical issue has become inseparable from control. He is not simply afraid of losing objects, but of surrendering authority over what is allowed to remain. I am concerned that this fixation has narrowed his thinking considerably and may worsen further under continued legal and environmental pressure.
When discussion turned to sleep, Mr. Baptiste described recurring nightmares beginning shortly after the first attempted cleanout of the home. Notably, the dream content does not repeat the waking events exactly. Instead, he describes being brought somewhere unfamiliar and made to wait while unnamed individuals sort, label, and remove things belonging to him according to rules he does not understand. He reports a strong recurring sense that something is expected of him in these dreams, though he is unable to explain what. At present, the imagery remains indirect, but the emotional pattern is consistent with his waking distress: loss of control, forced compliance, and escalating panic in response to imposed decisions.
Follow-up scheduled in two weeks, though given his current distress I urged Mr. Baptiste to call me if he felt the need to.
SLEEP DIARY
Friday, February 17th, 2006
Started this journal at the doctor’s recommendation. First appointment was yesterday. She wants me to write down the dreams and how I’ve been feeling.
Don’t know what good it’ll do, but she’s the doctor, so I’ll listen.
The “decluttering experts” are coming today. Bunch of thieves is a better name for them, if you ask me. Putting everything away in boxes and black plastic bags as fast as they can, hoping I don’t notice.
Didn’t get much sleep last night because of it. Too stressed about them getting rid of my things.
Dreamt I was made to sit in a chair while people stood around me holding up items one by one, asking if each thing should stay or go. Then they started going faster. Faster and faster until I didn’t even have time to answer anymore.
The dream made me furious. All these people are the same. They come into my house and start deciding what happens to my things.
Woke up with a pain in my jaw, like I’d been clenching it all night.
I was told to give this new team a chance. Supposedly they’re here to help. Supposedly they’ll listen.
Thursday, February 23rd, 2006
Had another strange dream last night. One of the experts called me into the yard. They had started several piles of boxes and bags out there. One of them told me to begin labelling what they brought out, but the boxes kept coming faster and faster.
I didn’t even have time to look through half of them before they started deciding for me.
Another one was already throwing things into a large container, as if my possessions were nothing but rubbish to be hauled away.
I woke up furious again, with a throbbing pain in my jaw and a slight metallic taste in my mouth.
The day was no better.
I got into an argument with one of the experts when she tried to throw out an old broken radio. I explained to her, calmly at first, that it had belonged to my father and I simply hadn’t gotten around to fixing it yet.
She said it was trash and pulled it out of my hands.
I shouted at her to give it back. I told her it had sentimental value.
And she said, “Mr. Baptiste, you have to let go of the past. Some things can’t be fixed and need to be thrown away.”
The others just stood there watching us. Not one of them tried to step in.
I looked at all of them and told them to get out.
As she was leaving, the woman turned back and said, “Fine. We’ll come back when you’re in a better mood.”
Sunday, February 26th, 2006
The dreams just keep getting stranger and stranger. Last night I dreamt I was in the living room, sorting through things, when one of the experts called me over to the bedroom on the ground floor.
When I opened the door, it was completely empty. The whole room had been cleared out. There was plastic sheeting on the floor and it reeked of disinfectant.
They looked at me and asked, “Well, what do you think?”
I was speechless. I didn’t know what to say.
They just stood there in face masks and rubber gloves, as if the room they’d cleared out had been some filthy, dangerous thing.
One of them stepped forward and said, “It’s much better now. Easier to work with.”
Work with.
That’s the phrase that stayed with me.
The room didn’t look better. It looked dead. Like something had been stripped out of it. Like a place where a person had lived had been turned into a surface.
I kept trying to remember what had been in there before. I knew it had mattered. I knew there had been boxes against the wall, a chair near the window, a standing lamp that hadn’t worked in years but still belonged in that corner.
But in the dream I couldn’t picture any of it properly. It was as if the room itself had started forgetting.
That frightened me more than the empty space.
I asked them where everything had gone, but they only looked at each other. Then one of them pulled back a sheet of plastic near the wall and pointed down.
There was a pile there underneath it. Not very large. Just enough to suggest they’d decided something for me already.
I woke before I could see what was in it.
My jaw hurt worse this morning than it has before. The left side was especially tender, all the way up toward the ear. I kept running my tongue over my teeth just to make sure everything was still where it ought to be.
I checked the downstairs bedroom as soon as I got up.
Still full. Still crowded. Still mine.
For now.
Wednesday, March 1st, 2006
Saw Dr. Renwyck yesterday. She asked whether the dreams had changed. I told her they had, though I don’t think I explained it very well.
At first the dreams were only about the house. About people moving through it, touching things, deciding things. Now it feels as though they want something else from me. Not just my things. My compliance.
Last night’s dream began in the hallway outside the kitchen. I remember that clearly. One of them opened the kitchen door and told me to come with them.
But when I stepped through, I wasn’t in my house anymore.
I knew that immediately.
The floor beneath me was too clean. The walls were white. The air smelled sharp, like disinfectant. There were metal cabinets along the wall, a bare counter, a tray laid out under a bright light. It felt like some kind of hospital room.
I turned around, expecting to see my own hallway behind me.
It wasn’t there.
Just another white door, shut tight.
One of them told me to sit down.
There was a dentist chair in the middle of the room.
I asked where I was. Nobody answered. One of them only said, “You have to let it go.”
Then another voice, somewhere behind me, said, “The longer you hold on, the worse this becomes.”
I said I wasn’t letting go of anything.
They didn’t argue. They didn’t threaten me. They just kept speaking in those calm, awful voices, as if what was happening had already been decided and all that remained was for me to stop making it difficult.
I tried to leave. I remember that much. I got as far as the door before someone took hold of my shoulder and turned me back toward the chair.
Then I woke up.
There was blood on my pillow.
At first I thought I’d bitten the inside of my cheek. But when I got to the bathroom and rinsed my mouth, I felt the gap immediately.
One of my back teeth was gone.
I searched the bed. The floor. The sink. Even the hallway, for some reason.
I never found it.
When the experts came and rang my doorbell, I sent them away, told them I wasn’t feeling well.
Wednesday, March 8th, 2006
I’ve lost so much already.
Boxes gone. Bags taken out. Whole corners of the house I still remember better than I can see them now. And every day it feels like they’re taking a little more out of me too.
I’m so tired.
Last night’s dream began the same way as before. The hallway outside the kitchen. One of them opening the door. Telling me to come with them.
And then I was somewhere else.
That same room again. White walls. Metal cabinets. Bright light. The smell of disinfectant so strong it burned the back of my throat.
The chair was waiting for me.
This time there was someone standing over it.
He wore a white coat, gloves, and a face mask. I never saw his face. Not properly. But when he leaned over me I saw the nameplate pinned to his coat.
Dr. Brine.
I haven’t stopped thinking about that name since.
I tried to get up, but I couldn’t move properly. Not because I was tied down. Just heavy. Weak. Like all the strength had gone out of me before I’d even had the chance to fight.
He looked down at me and said, very softly, “You only make this harder by holding on.”
I told him to get away from me.
He didn’t react. Didn’t get angry. Just stood there with that same terrible calm and said, “Let go, Mr. Baptiste, and the pain will end.”
That was the worst part.
Not the room. Not the chair. Not even him.
The way he said it like he was being kind.
Then he lifted one of those metal tools from the tray beside him and brought it closer to my mouth.
I woke before he touched me.
I was shaking so badly I could hardly stand.
There was blood on my tongue again.
Another tooth is gone.
I haven’t let anyone in for days now.
Not the experts. Not the men they sent after. No one.
They keep knocking, keep calling through the door, telling me they’re only here to help. But that’s what they all say before they start carrying things out.
I’m not opening that door again.
They’re not taking anything else from me.
Sunday, March 12th, 2006
I don’t know how much I’ve slept this past week. Not enough. Never enough.
I’ve lost more teeth.
Two more, I think. Maybe three. It’s getting harder to tell. My mouth aches all the time now. My gums are raw. I keep finding blood on the pillow, on my tongue, on the rim of the sink. I try not to look too long in the mirror anymore.
The police have been knocking on my door.
Not all day. Just often enough. Usually in the morning, sometimes later. Firm, official knocks. Voices through the wood telling me they only want to make sure I’m alright. Telling me I need to cooperate. Telling me this can still be handled peacefully.
Peacefully.
As if they weren’t standing outside discussing how to get me out of my own house.
Mr. Price called yesterday.
I should have let it ring, but I answered before I thought better of it. He sounded exactly the same as before. Calm. Polite. Reasonable. That same voice men like him use when they want to make something cruel sound procedural.
He told me the delays had gone on long enough. That the repairs could not be postponed any further. That if I continued to refuse access, he would seek an order to have me removed from the property so the cleanout could proceed without interference.
Without interference.
Meaning me.
As if I’m the obstruction. As if I’m the thing standing in the way of my own house.
He said it would be better for everyone if I cooperated now.
I hung up on him.
I’ve started hearing things even when the house is quiet. Soft dragging sounds. Floorboards shifting in rooms I haven’t entered. Sometimes I can’t tell whether they’re still outside waiting, or whether they’ve already found a way in.
And when I do sleep, I know exactly where I’m going.
There’s no hallway now. No kitchen door. No pretending it is still my house.
I’m taken straight there.
The room is brighter than before. Whiter. Cleaner. The chair is already waiting for me beneath that light. The tray beside it is laid out neatly. Metal instruments. Cotton. Glass jars. Things arranged for a purpose I understand too well now.
He’s always there.
White coat. Gloves. Face mask. That nameplate on his chest.
Dr. Brine.
He never rushes. That’s what makes it worse.
He stands over me like a man preparing for something routine. Like there is nothing unusual in any of this. Like I’m the one making it difficult by refusing to let go.
Last night he placed one hand on my shoulder and held me still.
Not roughly. Not angrily.
Firmly.
Like he knew I had nowhere left to go.
He told me, “You’ve held on long enough.”
I tried to speak. Tried to tell him this was mine, that all of this was mine, that he had no right.
He only leaned closer and said, “It will hurt less if you stop fighting.”
Then he picked up one of the instruments from the tray.
I heard it clink against the metal as he lifted it.
He told me to open my mouth.
I woke before I could see what he meant to take.
I don’t want to go to sleep anymore.
PATIENT RECORD ADDENDUM
Patient: Samuel Baptiste
Date: March 14th, 2006
Subject: Follow-up and case closure
Mr. Baptiste failed to attend his most recent scheduled follow-up and could not be reached directly. Over the past several weeks, his written sleep journal showed a clear worsening in both sleep and general mental state, including heightened paranoia, progressive tooth loss, and increasingly vivid dream content centered on forced removal, surrender of control, and a recurring figure identified by name as Dr. Brine.
Medication for anxiety was discussed during treatment, but Mr. Baptiste was strongly against it. He was afraid anything that made him drowsy or less aware would make it easier for people to enter the house and take his things. Given how strongly he felt about that, I did not think he would take it consistently.
Earlier today, I was contacted by Detective Raynor, who informed me that officers entered Mr. Baptiste’s residence following continued refusal to comply with the court-ordered cleanout and repair process. Mr. Baptiste was found deceased inside the home.
Per Detective Raynor, Mr. Baptiste was discovered seated in a chair positioned directly in front of the kitchen door. The placement appears to have been deliberate. He was fully clothed, and there were signs he had been attempting to remain awake for some time. Several teeth were noted to be missing. No immediate evidence of assault was reported at the scene.
At present, the likely cause of death is being treated as a cardiac event brought on by severe exhaustion and distress. That explanation is reasonable, but it does not account for the full pattern of the case.
In his final journal entries, Mr. Baptiste repeatedly described passing through the kitchen door and entering a bright clinical room not present anywhere in the house itself. The fact that he was later found seated directly in front of that same door suggests he had come to associate it with the onset of the dream state and may have been trying to prevent either sleep or whatever he believed was waiting beyond it.
Of greater concern is the repeated appearance of the name Dr. Brine.
This is now the second case in which that name has appeared independently alongside insomnia, dental loss, and dream content centered on forced relinquishment. The similarities are too specific to dismiss as coincidence.
I need to discuss this with Detective Raynor.
CONCLUSION
Dr. Brine again.
Second case that mentions him, who knows how many more of them are on this hard drive.
Hargrove met a far more brutal end than Samuel Baptiste did. And Samuel certainly didn’t deserve what happened to him after everything else he’d already lived through.
The fact that the name comes back can’t be a coincidence anymore. Too many details are starting to repeat.
Glass.
A city with no sky.
Dr. Brine.
The train station.
And all of it tied to recurring nightmares.
Next file I’m going to look through is the one marked dangerous.
If there’s any clue as to what the hell is going on here, it’s got to be in there.
[static]
Huh?
[static grows louder]
What is that?
[warped laughter through the static]
[confused Alex]
What the hell was that?
[static dies down]
That came from my grandfather’s radio.
It’s an antique.
It doesn’t even have a power cable.
NO FURTHER MATERIAL RECOVERED
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