Honest

by Ava Bloomfield

  ‘Get out!’ I shouted, pulling the bed sheet up as I twisted and lunged forward, making him jump and quiver.

  ‘All right, all right, princess, it’s okay. It’s just a bad nightmare...That’s all...She’s okay. She’s okay.’ he muttered to himself as he edged warily around the bed, holding his hands up in defeat. ‘Melanie will know what to do,’ he said. ‘In the morning...She’ll know what to do.’

  Even as the door closed I remained upright on the bed, entangled in the sheets, my flesh goose pimpled and cold, my chest heaving as I breathed. My muscles tightened as rage pulsed through me, and I gritted my teeth so hard they creaked. I closed my eyes and tried to focus but I couldn’t relax. I could only let my eyes dart about the room like a madwoman, seething, a bizarre electricity under my skin.

  I wanted to scream, to hit something, to claw something up like an animal would with its bare hands. Peter’s hunched, murderous image came to mind and filled me with his anger, coursing through me like blood of his blood, filling me with his hate. And at that moment, in my bedroom in the dark, I swore, I was Peter.

  When my deep breaths subsided, I collapsed, my knee throbbing in pain, in a bundle amongst the sheets. I stared at the big bay window and listened to the water in the harbour, and the sounds of masts knocking each other as the boats swayed. My limbs stiffened, then relaxed, then stiffened again.

  I let it happen. I lay there, my lips parted, head barely on the pillow, and just stared out of that window. My skin prickled with pins and needles, and soon my bones were numb. I had gone numb. I couldn’t even concentrate long enough to wonder if Peter was entering me or leaving me, or both, or to even register just how crazy all this was.

  I breathed slowly, purposefully, looking at the dark, mammoth shape of the cliffs beyond the harbour, the place where Peter and I would hike. I remembered his guitar playing, and the strange olive tint of his skin in the pale daylight, and his cool, chapped lips pressing against mine for the first time. I thought of the miles of ocean and the sharp wind in our ears; of his glistening green eyes under a hood of eyelid and thick, dark lashes. His wiry hair crowding his head like a halo.

  My body softened, and my heart ached. Soon the throbbing in my knee turned sore and unbearable, making me writhe and clutch the pillow against the pain. I groped inside my bedside cabinet for one of my painkillers, and before my fingers had even hooked it out of the foil, I saw him in the distance.

  He began as a small shadow, getting longer and more visible as he scaled the grassy hilltop. I stared so long, the pill poised between my thumb and forefinger, that I swore I could see the muscles in his calves, as Peter made the long, familiar climb.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Melanie crossed one leg over the other and gave me a long, thoughtful look. I yawned, the sleepless night catching up with me. ‘So, your dad scheduled an appointment with me earlier in the week than usual. Why do you think he did that?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said, rubbing my eyes.

  ‘I think you probably do,’ said Melanie, her voice softening. After a pause she said, ‘He’s very concerned about you.’

  ‘Oh what, just because I’m not his little princess anymore?’ saying it sickened me, but Melanie didn’t bat an eyelid. She didn’t know what I was talking about, of course. A ‘princess’ was an innocent thing to her; how could she know the ugly, biting effect that word had on me whenever dad used it endearingly?

  ‘He said you’ve been having night terrors, and he thinks they might have something to do with the incidents recently with the stairs and the window. What do you think, Ellen? In your heart of hearts, do you think you’re just suffering restlessness?’

  ‘If I am, it’s because people won’t leave me the hell alone,’ I said. I clasped my hands together to stop them from shaking, but Melanie’s quick eyes noted them.

  ‘You’ve had a lot of stress lately. You’re back here, with all those memories, knowing that Dennis has been freed. Be honest, Ellen — how does that make you feel?’

  I slumped in my wheelchair and shrugged. ‘I don’t know,’ I said, thinking of the night with Dennis. Then I thought of the nightmares, lashing out at dad — none of that bothered me. But the strange goings on, the ones I linked with Peter, they did keep me up at night.

  ‘I’ve been feeling uneasy.’ I admitted.

  Melanie nodded slowly. ‘That’s good, that’s very good. Do any other feelings come to mind?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know. I’m tired.’

  ‘Right.’ Melanie tore a piece of paper from her pad and handed it to me, along with her pen. She snatched up an old copy of Marie Claire from the coffee table and gave it to me to lean on. ‘Let’s try an exercise. I want you to close your eyes and think about the town, the cottage, Dennis, the trial, Peter, David, Lauren—’

  ‘Lauren?’

  Melanie let out a long breath. ‘Yes, Lauren. Ellen, you probably don’t know this, but I’ve known Lauren’s mother for a number of years now, and they’re all very nice, normal people.’

  ‘I never said any different,’ I said. ‘I don’t even know the girl.’

  ‘Yes, fine,’ said Melanie. ‘Which is why I’m finding it very strange to see you dressed like that, and with new hair, too.’

  ‘So what? Everybody dresses like this. It’s called fashion.’ I hugged my old copy of Marie Claire close, still holding the pen.

  ‘That’s fine, but I’m wondering if perhaps you got your style ideas from seeing Lauren.’

  ‘That’s not a crime, is it?’

  ‘No, no, of course not. Look, we don’t have to get into this if you don’t want to, but I think it’s worth addressing. I’d like to know what you think your reasons are behind your recent new look.’ She shrugged.

  I’d always found that funny about therapists; the way they acted as if it didn’t matter one jot if we wasted our time together. I supposed that could be true, but then why become a therapist in the first place if you couldn’t be bothered with the client?

  ‘I just fancied going more blonde,’ I said. ‘What do you think my reasons were?’

  Melanie uncrossed her legs and scratched her knee through the brown material of her drab work trousers. ‘Well, I wonder if it’s your way of asking to be friends. Your way of trying to find a connection with her, or to reach out to her.’

  ‘Why would I want to do that?’ I said. I twiddled the pen between my fingers.

  ‘Well, look, if you want us to talk about Lauren more we can. There was the incident with the phone calls.’

  ‘And I told you that wasn’t me! I said that to them.’

  ‘Yes, we know you said that, but you wanted to know my opinion and here it is. I think there’s definite reason to suggest that you’re trying to get Lauren’s attention, negative or otherwise,’ said Melanie, a new firmness in her tone of voice.

  ‘Well you’re an idiot,’ I said, pointing at her with the pen. ‘It’s my hair and I can do what I like with it. She doesn’t have anything to do with my decisions.’

  ‘What about David? Perhaps you weren’t trying to impress Lauren at all, but him. During one of our last sessions, you said he was your boyfriend.’

  I blinked, confused. ‘No I didn’t,’ I said. ‘I just told you we were friends.’

  Melanie shook her head, her curls swaying side to side. ‘You told me he’d tried to touch you in the car.’

  ‘That isn’t the same thing as boyfriend!’ I made to get up and accuse her properly, but my knee gave a twinge and forced me back into the chair, wincing.

  ‘Well, you were certainly adamant that something was going on.’

  I gritted my teeth and held my knee, feeling too much pain to argue. Instead I just settled with saying, ‘It was a mistake. I don’t even remember saying it.’

  ‘Fine. Let’s move on. Are you all right?’

  ‘My knee,’ I said, breathless. We waited while the pain subsided and then, wiping my brow, I re–adjusted the paper on my lap and put the nib of my pe
n to its blank, white surface.

  ‘OK. So, I want you to close your eyes and think of all those things I said before, including all the people. Go on, close them.’ I did as she told me, keeping my lips closed too, taking long breaths through my nostrils.

  Immediately I felt closed in, stuck in my own head. Panicking, I gripped the pad tighter and tried to breathe even slower, in and out.

  ‘Now,’ said Melanie, her voice a soft whisper. ‘Just start writing. Think about those things, and then start moving the pen.’

  I thought of all those things, and my hand did start moving. A flood of adrenaline made my skin prickle, and I smiled, glad that finally something about these sessions was working. I could feel it as I wrote that one little word, just one, leaking out of me and releasing me instantly. It was so easy it was almost as if it wasn’t me writing it at all.

  My hand stopped when I finished the word. In a soft voice, Melanie asked me to open my eyes and read out the word I’d written down. I blinked, then became afraid and dropped the pen.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ asked Melanie, leaning forward. ‘Why are you looking at it like that? What did you write?’

  Now I wasn’t so sure I had written it.

  I took a deep breath. ‘It says You.’

  Melanie sighed and ran her fingers through her tangle of dyed red hair. ‘And what is that supposed to mean, Ellen? Come on, help me out.’ When I didn’t answer, she groaned. ‘How can I help you if you don’t let me inside your head? What do you mean by ‘You’ Ellen?’

  I shrugged, helpless. ‘I really don’t know,’ I said. I thought about my hand curling around the pen, the way it had felt, so easy, as if it hadn’t been me writing it.

  ‘Well tell me how that word makes you feel, then. Write that feeling down.’ Melanie pinched the bridge of her nose and re–crossed one leg over the other again.

  I reached for my pen on the floor and, without hesitating, I wrote the first word that sprang to my head. Next to ‘You’, I wrote ‘Threat’.

  ‘OK,’ Melanie said when she read it. ‘We can work with this. So we’ve got two words, ‘you’ and ‘threat. What do you think those words mean together?’

  My mouth had gone dry. I continued staring at those words. I wanted to say, you should ask the person who wrote them, but I didn’t. She wouldn’t understand. I licked my lips and said, ‘That I’m threatening.’

  ‘OK,’ said Melanie. ‘Does that ring true with you? Do you feel like a threatening person right now?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said, wringing my hands. Melanie’s eyes watched me, noting every little detail. She leaned her chin on her fist, her pointed elbow digging in to the arm of the sofa, and looked from my hands to my face again.

  ‘Are you the threat, or do you feel threatened?’

  I shook my head, staring at the ugly words on the page. Was that even my handwriting they were written in?

  I thought of Peter’s anger inside of me, making me hit dad and thrash out like some kind of madwoman. Then there were my dreams, those constant dreams I had about him, night after night, and the way he plagued me during the day, never once leaving my side, even in spirit.

  ‘Both,’ I answered honestly.

  After Melanie left, I used the stair lift and filled the bath tub with hot water until it was hot and steaming to the brim. Every inch of skin felt filthy now, as if coated in an irremovable layer of sweat and grime, and though I wiped with my palms and scratched with my nails, the grime only ever spread further. For once I just want to get it all off of me.

  Using my stick and the arm of my chair for leverage, I pulled myself up and hooked my good leg over the side, letting it sink into the velvety hot water. Next I shimmied onto the ledge and let my bad leg fall into it also, groaning with relief as the swollen, sore knee was enveloped in a cushion of soothing heat.

  By the time my whole body was in the bath it was bliss. The house was silent, my wheelchair by the door, and all that existed in those few moments was the water and me. I scooped great handfuls over my head, soaking my white–blonde hair, my pallid, freckled skin warming up and becoming rosy.

  The light dimmed outside, cloaking the room in darkness, but as I laid back and enjoyed the heat I paid no mind to it. Even when the air surrounding me chilled and made the skin of my shoulders prickle, I ignored it, emptying my head, thinking of nothing but the warmth.

  Soon the air grew colder around my neck, too cold to ignore anymore. My eyes fluttered open, and in a flash two hands took me by the shoulders and plunged my head underwater, forcing me down. I kicked with my good leg and scratched thin air with my hands, but the weight on my shoulders pinned me so that I could hardly move.

  My screams sent bubbles whirling before my eyes, obscuring the image of the man holding me under, though I could feel his fingers gripping me to the bone.

  My final breath flooded from my mouth in a great bubble, and suddenly I was locked in, the roar of water in my ears, the splash of my own limbs now a muffled sound far away. My throat was stopped–up as if with a cork and I wretched, the muscles of my stomach aching as I heaved and heaved, desperate for air.

  My mouth shot open and I screamed. My throat tightened as my voice struggled to blare out through breathless lungs. Still I kicked and beat with my fists, until a sudden weakness stifled me and my limbs relaxed. My mind fogged up and I closed my eyes.

  A distinctive, eerie tingling under my skin kept me on the brink of consciousness.

  As the sensation swam up my arms and legs towards my core, the grip on my shoulders lifted, and I felt weightless and dead as a white–eyed fish, drawn away from the shore by an overpowering wave. Then my limbs stiffened, the sensation strengthening my muscles again, even my swollen and sore knee now overpowered and renewed. I rose up from the water.

  I sucked in a low, hoarse breath, my body quivering yet strong, white as bone in the dark, dark room. A sound on the landing made my head twitch in its direction, and of their own accord my hands gripped the edge of the bath and lifted me, effortlessly, out of the tub onto my feet. I stood and waited for what seemed like so long, until a creaking noise came from the stairs, and I saw the grey crown of a head.

  I didn’t recognise the man who came onto the landing, pensive, his blue eyes widening as he saw me there, naked and pale, waiting for him. I sucked in another long, low breath, slowly filling my starved lungs with air.

  ‘What are you doing, love?’ he asked, his voice so soft and meek it was barely audible. My ears were so stuffed–up with water that his seemed too far away, and I was isolated and unaware, and all the while my skin tingled, and numbed, as my feet took a slow step forward.

  The man backed away against the banister, before stretching out a shaking arm. ‘Let’s get a towel around you love, eh? Let’s get you warm and in your chair. That poor leg of yours, hm? Look at it, love, all swollen and red. Aren’t you in pain, love? You ought to be crying, with a knee as sore as that.’

  My fingers curled and uncurled, growing stronger, until they stiffened up in claws and a ball of energy fired up in my core. My mouth twitched as I stared at the man, grey and pathetic, cowering away from me, so infuriating that I shook.

  ‘What’s the matter? Ellen, you look so—’

  I shrieked and ran at him, all the energy bursting out of me like beams of furious light breaking through the surface of my skin. As I hurled myself against him, my body weightier than the pair of us together now, he was knocked from the banister and we tumbled down the stairs.

  I was knocked off by the thump as we rolled down and hit the bottom. I hooked my thighs around the man’s waist and climbed back on. I screamed in fury as the momentum of all that rage sent my fists down upon his face, again and again, while he shouted and struggled underneath me.

  ‘Get off me!’ he cried, blood trickling between his eyes, over his lip and down the chin. Still I clawed and thumped and smacked him, gripping him between my thighs.

  Then suddenly the rage evaporated from
me. I was dry, and limp, and it left me with my hands raised above my head, quivering, before the tingling sensation left me completely.

  I slumped against the wall, my legs releasing, while the man with grey hair scrabbled away against the far side of the hall.

  ‘What the hell is wrong with you?’ he said, his voice hoarse, wiping the blood from his face.

  His voice was clearer now, and more familiar. The fog in my head diffused and my limbs, limp and soft as jelly now, became lifeless and white as the flesh of a corpse. I was a corpse, laying there, staring weakly at the panting man I’d been intent on killing moments ago; intent on making him as pale and lifeless as I was, forever.

  The light faded in the hallway, our breaths filtering through the silence, when all at once I recognised him, and in recognising him I recognised myself.

  There was my father, and there was me.

  Chapter Twenty

  ‘What will make you stop this, Ellen?’ said Dad, still slumped against the wall just as I was. His lip wobbled as he spoke, the fresh gashes in his face glistening wetly. His eyes had dulled and his demeanour was now an exhausted one, tired of fighting me, physically, mentally, and all in between.

  But I was tired of fighting him.

  ‘Night after night,’ I said, my voice a sharp croak in my throat. ‘You always take what you want, don’t you?’

  Dad gulped, helping himself up in a seated position. ‘Ellen, stop it.’ He turned his head and wouldn’t meet my eyes, but I watched him, and I knew he could my feel my gaze.

  ‘Stop what? Stop talking like that?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said, wiping his brow. ‘Oh god. What are we going to do?’

  ‘Why do you do it?’ I said, my voice making him flinch.

  ‘Ellen, stop.’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘I’m tired of you. You’re a vile, disgusting man, do you know that?’