Under Purple Sheets

by Coco Houston

  I don’t remember entering the house. I am stunned and in deep shock at what has just happened. I am so numb, not being able to accept any sensation of disbelief. Reality begins to hit me slowly as I start trembling. He said he was just scared of us being apart, what about me? I am absolutely terrified. I sit outside amongst the cherry blossoms, my thoughts go to the recent times we sat under them together; we were supposed to be so much in love. I get up, go back inside, banging the door. I hate cherry fucking blossom trees. I hate all the trees, especially more so the oak ones, as an old gypsy had lied to me long ago under one of them.

  "Well what did you expect? You went with a married man. Now you are suffering the consequences of that action." Action – fuck the consequences, I fell in love with him. I just let him walk out of my life with all the dignity I could find. I let him go! I told myself. As it all comes back to me, once more a feeling of calm enters my body, then covers my whole being in a blanket of bewilderment. I refuse to acknowledge that it is the end of the road for us; all my earlier strength and determination of not needing him has somehow in this lonely house disappeared. I put my arms out, throwing my head back to look at the ceiling as I start spinning around and around; I spin in my kitchen like a spinning top.

  “I will someday be his wife, in another life, in another land. Why not? In a land that time forgot. Perhaps in a thousand years in the wintertime, he will be forever mine, where it will still be today and he won’t have gone away. I will marry him in a land of snow.”

  “Remember the snow, Coco? Brad loves the snow – and you, of course. Where would that be your land of snow, Coco? It would not be Coco Kingdom tonight! Fuck off! Would it be Canada Coco, Canada all covered in snow?” the voices in my head sing.

  Still spinning I ask the wall and broom out loud: “Is Canada all covered in snow right now?” They don’t answer; from my friends in my head I receive no answer. I should know the answer to this stupid question, yet I don’t. Feeling dizzy, I lie down now on the cold tiles of the kitchen floor. The tears flow like the Niagara Falls, or the Angel Falls, which is perhaps more appropriate, as my guardian angel seems to be a fallen angel now. Your guardian angel is supposed to stay with you, be constantly by your side, it should never leave you. I would say he should be dismissed, as the bastard did exactly that. To Canada he takes an invisible trunk, filled with love, which would fill this universe, so such a lot of extra baggage. The hurt he left behind, however, doubles that. As Brad packs his case right now to go to Canada, I pack too. I pack the memories of some happiest months of my life and put them in a box.

  Take the sun, the moon, the stars and the rainbow from the sky, put them in the box. Take all the colours from the world, put them in the box. Shut lid tightly, pack it all away in the back of the unused cupboard under the stairs. Switch off all the lights, tell the glow worms to glow no more, put the world into darkness. For as Brad leaves, the tenebrosity of this world is all I know, my dark world, which will follow me wherever I go.

  I think perhaps, no I know, because I am the one who made it, pitch fucking black. The pain rips right through me as I hold my tummy, yelling. I can’t stop the hurt inside me, my head is full of floating misty grey clouds and I can’t see his face anymore. I try to get up but I can’t as I slump back down, feeling the ice-cold tiles of the floor on my legs. I hear his voice in the distance saying only one word, he is calling my name. Coco. Gloom takes over me before I blackout.

  Sometime later, I wake up. I have no concept of time or how long I lay there. I must’ve fainted, I guess. My hair is all tangled with the tears, and my eyes feel sore, swollen with crying. I struggle to stand. I can’t walk. I crawl on all fours to the bottom of the stairs. I go up them, crawling the way a monkey would. I lie on the carpet at the top of them as the pain and murkiness of night smothers me once more. Struggling into bed, I pull the duvet over my head. Screaming, crying in black obscurity, distressed, I continue to weep with more agony inside causing me to vomit out the side of bed onto the carpet. I howl into the night like a wounded animal, as excruciating thoughts of him cause me, this time to regurgitate the stinking contents of my stomach and spew all over the bed. Lying in the vile liquid, praying I was dead. Sombreness comes back this time, bringing with it inevitably sleep. Shortly, I wake up cold and shaking; I’ve had a nightmare. Reality hits, not a bad dream as I smell the sick on me. Squealing, soulful wailing of an indistinguishable sound echoes through the empty house as in tears I uncontrollably suffer with the sharp daggers stabbing at the mental torture of suffering returning deep inside me. I crawl on carpet, feel stairs and cold floor, sleeping pills. Diazepam. Drink strawberry milk, he always brings me strawberry milkshakes in the middle of the night, not tonight though Coco! I feel pain, burning me, scorching me inside, hollowness deep within as I swallow more milk with a lot of hard pills. Crawl, feel carpet on stairs, yet again puke over the bed, green bile soaking right through to the mattress, pull the already stinking, wet quilt back over me. Absence of light, torment and anguish, manic delirium arrives. Now floating around and around on a silky cloud. Numb. I feel nothingness settle in, with my acceptance of the present all gone, just as is my existence for now in my head all disappeared. BRAD GONE! Peace in the calm with oblivion but not in DEATH!

  11th April

  My phone ringing wakens me. I stretch out to reach for it, I get it, and then drop it as I realise my hair is now all stuck to my face matted with sick. My phone rings again. I get out of bed desperately searching for it, on finding it I grab it, shaking I try to answer the damn thing as well as pull my sticky hair off my skin.

  “Hello? Hello?” Nobody is there. I press buttons.

  “Coco darling.” Oh my God, it’s him. “Coco, I’m leaving for the airport in a little while, please wait for me. I promise I will come back home again to you. I love you so much.” His voice is breaking, he is extremely upset.

  “Brad? Brad, please don’t go. Please stay, Brad?” Nothing, he has gone. The phone is informing me I have no new voicemails. I have missed the calls. I was listening to his voice on the answer machine. I try to phone him back, it goes to his voicemail. I try demonically frustrated to call him continuously. Shouting out his name, I fling my phone at the wall and still all covered in the bitter, rotten substance my body projected leaving dishwater like concoction everywhere. I lie down on the bedroom carpet amongst it, hollering at full volume, as I am destroyed and tormented mentally all over again. I am back in the jeep as I re-live last night once more, with everything said word for word. I am deranged as I lie there smelly and dirty still wearing the green jumper, thong and Ugg boots from yesterday evening, which I have slept in. Somewhere in the far distance I remember getting into bed last night with the boots on as I play the voicemail repeatedly for over an hour. I continue to play it, this time on loudspeaker non-stop. Each time I do this I am being charged as Brad is on his way to the airport, this message is costing me a fortune, yet I don’t care – I don’t want too.

  Suddenly, I stop. I get off the floor as if I have been struck by lightning; of course, he won’t go to Canada the voices in my head inform me. He will be here soon. Fuck sake! I put phone on charge and happily singing now I flee for a quick shower to rinse off all the filth from me. I fling jumper and thong in the wash, the Ugg boots, ruined, go straight in the bin .Fuck them, Brad can buy me a new pair! Next, I run and strip the bed, scrub the carpet then the quilt with Dettol; hurrying about cleaning the mess, I have to work fast; to help get rid of the stench, I fling the window wide open. I light candles and plug in an electric diffuser air freshener. Quickly, I burst open the packaging on new sheets and quilt set. I have no time now to rinse them in fabric conditioner, I need to get them on the bed now. Good, all finished, perfect room prepared for Brad. Next, scampering to the shower hurriedly I shampoo my hair washing all the disgusting dirt thoroughly away. Blow drying it quickly with the hairdryer as I hold my head upside down. This creates a lot of volume, making it look all wild, fuck it! That wil
l do. I rummage demented through my drawers, and then pulling out of the clothes my old jeans, his favourite pair, he likes me to wear them for him. With those I fling on a white T-shirt, no bra also I wear no knickers. No make-up either but spray loads of Coco Chanel perfume on myself, now I am sorted I wait. I wait for him.

  “Brad won’t get on the flight!” I tell the broom. “Brad will love the new purple sheets!” I tell the wall. “Brad will make love to me under my new purple sheet!” I confirm out loud. (“Yes! He will,” says the voices in my head. “Maybe not, eh! Not today, YES, yes today he will, Coco, and he will again tonight.”) For once I don’t want them to shut up.

  I wait and wait, as the mauve shades of evening falls he doesn’t come. The sky is becoming the colour of the sheets. I don’t feel very well now, so I just put on my purple silk negligee made of lace all down the back, his favourite one. Feeling pleased and pretty proud with how I look, I wait some more knowing he will be here soon. I check my phone, no missed calls. Strange, he must just be running late, so I will wait some more, it won’t be long before he arrives. Midnight. I realise Brad isn’t coming; he has left the country by now. I play the voicemail; listening to it I wet myself turning the purple silk material also the colour of the sheets, into dark wet patches clinging to my legs. Shaking like a leaf, I throw up only bile. I realise I have pissed myself. That won’t do. I strip the fucking thing off trailing the urine right up my body and over my face. I fling the negligee in the washing machine marching starkers to the shower. Fuck run, Coco! I wash for the third time, and then still naked I go looking for my Diazepam. I fling wet towels in the laundry basket, standing in the nude looking out the window at the shadows of the cherry blossom trees; I want to shout at them how much I fucking hate them. I don’t shout out. I stand silently hating them, hoping they lift their roots and walk away, go, fuck off into the night. Brad won’t come tonight, so he won’t see my new purple sheets. “Brad won’t come tonight, Brad won’t come tonight Coco; he is in Caannaaddaaa with his wife,” my friends in my head say. They sing “Caannnaaddda” drawing the name of the country out in a singsong form of torturous shit. I reach into the cupboard for my pills; I take my bottle of innocent calignosity, my vulgar friends of the night. I swallow them, washing them all down with coffee, long gone cold as I had made it earlier waiting for Brad, he didn’t come so I didn’t drink it. Now I do.

  I go to bed under my new purple sheets. I am alone feeling as if I am just drifting. As I sink further into the smooth cloud of indifference, my friends in my head sing me a lullaby. “Where you float like the bubbles in the champagne glass in a world trees are made of marshmallow mass, float above the chimney tops on a carpet made of lemonade pop, in a world somewhere afar, where everything is made of bubbles like the Aero chocolate bar, where the sun melts chocolate and pain away. I’ll stay there with Brad forever and a day.”

  “Brad will come tomorrow, then make love to you under the new purple sheets!” I hear the voice say in my head just before the music box tune plays on and on and a beautiful voice sings “He loves me? He loves me not?”

  12th April

  I wake up wishing that I had not. I had no idea that it is Easter Sunday. I go out to the supermarket for shopping this is when I realise what day it is, so I buy River chocolate eggs. I make a nice Easter Sunday dinner, making promises to myself as I eat the chocolate egg I bought myself, whilst drinking wine to forget Brad Blake. It works for an hour as I look over and there on the kitchen table sits the huge egg I bought for him. I will give it to the bastard when he returns from Canada. (“You are a clown, Coco, the clown,” is what the voices in my head call me.)

  The weeks that follow are the worst of my life. Usually, there are highs and lows, fucking days of drama with Brad but this; this shit is just weeks of being constantly depressed. I mostly feel anger now, which is usually followed by tears at my own stupidity for allowing me to fall in love with him, that wasn’t part of my plan way back then, though I convinced myself that being with a married man would be totally different from this. I am now mentally at breaking point, living in a world of tears, which is then accompanied by a complete non-acceptance that he did perhaps want to go with her. All in a cycle with absolutely no happiness, I start to think I may end up a patient in the mental health unit rather than an employee. I become addicted to Diazepam pills. I need them to help me get through the day as well as the night. Sometimes I see myself taking eight at once, hoping perhaps they will make me sleep forever, as sometimes I wish not to wake up. I just function wandering mystified around in a haze of everyday life. Everywhere I go, I’m reminded of Brad. Everything I see, I am reminded of him. At work, in town, at my parents’ house, at home I see him standing everywhere about my house, his ghost haunts me… Everywhere I go, I think of his dark green gypsy eyes, his curly hair or travelling in the jeep with him. I just can’t get him out of my mind or the witch chant I wrote as my friends in my head continue to repeat it, “I close the circle turning from the light, I offered my soul to the devil tonight, in return I damned Brad Blake to me, so it was worth it don’t you see? Don’t you see? Don’t you see?” The music box melody follows: “He loves me? He loves me not? He loves me? He loves me not? He promised to me love forever, leave me not, fucked off to Canada, all promises forgot. Bastard. First class bastard.”

  As the time goes by my work colleagues notice that I am devastated, when supposed to be working, I am found on a sofa in the corner of the duty room tucked up under a little blanket he bought me to keep warm on the night shift. Under my blanket, I just sit in a trance. They offer me words of encouragement and assure me that Brad clearly worships and definitely loves me. I get that they are trying to help but it just makes me feel worse. Bull shit! If Brad truly worshipped me, loved me indefinitely, then why the fuck is he in Canada with her? I know she is there with him. I know he lied to me. Always listen to, always trust your instincts, besides Bobby and me, we phoned her house from work in the middle of the night, no answer. Surprise! Surprise! Why not? Because she would surely have answered the call at that time in the morning because of the time difference it could be Brad phoning from Canada. No answer. No answer. No answer because she was with him. The next time he phoned me at work, I mentioned the call to him. “Oh! She flew out a couple of days after me to try and sort out her marriage,” was his explanation. The lying bastard, she flew out to Canada with him. I know she did. Of course she fucking did! The fucking voices in my head won’t shut up telling me so.

  Brad continues to make every effort to contact me at work when he gets the chance. Listening to his voice filling me full of promises made of shit are the only moments of joy I have in the time that he has been away. He reminds me he has pictures of me hidden on his phone, which he informs me he has been using to lose sperm over while he can’t be with me, and I am supposed to be happy about the fact he’s not sleeping or having sex with her, he is pleasuring himself over my photographs, yet he chose to go hundreds of miles away with her, leaving me behind. Get to fuck, Brad.

  River notices the condition I am in, stating that he thinks I need help. I need help. “Fucking understatement,” say the voices in my head. I laugh hysterically. He has started to help me with the housework. “Too little, too late,” my friends remind me. At least River is trying. This morning he made me hot pancakes with maple syrup for breakfast. A known Canadian breakfast, the last thing I need. I ate wistfully thinking, God bless River. Then with a great deal of sadness I remembered the time not so long ago when staying over at a hotel, Brad explained he had to leave earlier than usual. Brad on his way out ordered this breakfast to be brought to me in bed as a wonderful surprise. “Now he is in Canada taking her breakfast in bed,” my friends in my head shout out at me. I wish they would shut the fuck up just for an hour of the day. I don’t know how I function, mostly I just do. Being without Brad time seems to go on forever. I just survive it. My little dogs were my saviours. I owe them my life, as they are the reason I have to get up ever
y day, they need me most of all and I need them more than I would ever need Blake. Fuck him! Fuck this month too, because this year with it April brings Canada.

  Chapter V

  Pleasure with Pain

  1st May

  Beltane: May Day

  Ancient druid fire festival celebrating the return of the goddess. Dancing ’round the maypole with coloured ribbons to symbolise the union of male and female. Beltane Eve we light huge bonfires on the hillsides to light the way for summer.

  Fuck all this. I am not celebrating anything do with light or summer or male and female. Fucking Brad is still not here with me. As my world stays in darkness and I am angry and lonely, however, I do eat witches’ honey bread that I had baked earlier on today and I do drink May punch so I suppose that this year that is my contribution to Beltane. I should celebrate it after all as it is very much my religion to do so. Besides the reunion of male and female is not that long away, after all? He is due back home is he not? But for a fleeting moment, I consider doing the opposite tonight, instead of celebrating light move to the dark side. Casting an evil curse spell upon him, distant makes no difference, I am a very powerful witch. I just sit staring then decide not too, he has fucked everything else in my life, am I going to let him take my craft too?

  3rd May

  “BRADFORD RILEY BLAKE ARRIVES BACK IN THE COUNTRY TODAY!” my friends in my head whoop and whoop, bawling, "HE IS BACK! BACK! BACK! BACK!"

  I have to get up off this floor, now! I tell myself sternly. I know deep down inside that he does still really love me, even though he left me. Nothing pains me more right now than the thought he left me with – that he may never return; however, he did, and I’m trembling feeling both nauseated and excited. I am lying on the carpet holding my head, which hurts badly, as my tummy does, hurt real badly now cramping with nerves. On the floor when he left, on the floor when he returns.