PSYCHOPHILIA: A Disturbing Psychological Thriller

by Michelle Muckley

  “Thank you,” I say and take a sip of my champagne. “I am well.” As intended, my own reference to my wellness and therefore previous state of illness makes Jemima feel uncomfortable. “I see my doctors regularly and I am fine.” I have made Dana uncomfortable too, which is unfortunate. Gregory doesn't notice what I said because he is still talking to passersby, feeling important.

  “A toast to a wonderful evening,” Gregory begins, holding up his champagne. I leave my glass on the table far away from me and toss my disinfectant wipe on the floor underneath the table. “Dana, you have done a wonderful job,” he says. My lips taste of bleach.

  “Here here,” somebody says, which was probably Gordon Calthorpe but I wasn’t really paying attention because I am sure I have spotted lavender in the floral display next to the stage.

  “The lights are remarkable, they really are.” Sounded like Joseph Lovell.

  “And the champagne is……” apparently too wonderful for a complete description. Jemima I think.

  “Thank you both, thank you. You must buy some raffle tickets. There are cakes, hampers, and the floral decorations will also be given as prizes at the end of the night.”

  I turn as if a holding spring has just been released. “Is there any lavender in that?” I ask, my interest not just caught, but rather strangled into attention.

  “No dear,” Dana begins. “At the moment the flowers that are in season are the…..” I have lost interest and turn away. I think she probably continues to tell Jemima about the season behavioural patterns of the local flora, who would no doubt have known them already.

  When somebody erects a tombola drum in front of the main floral display, and the other smaller supporting displays become obscured by other guests as they take their seats I turn back to the table. During this time I decide that we are all complicit in John’s deceit, which makes us all just as responsible as he is. We all smile politely when Marianne is trotted out on display, accept her into our circle as a friend, chat to her, admire her new bracelets, new breasts, and comment how wonderfully happy she seems to make him. On a night like tonight we all pretend that she doesn't exist. And I might add that it hasn’t gone unnoticed that tonight, Mary doesn't even seem to be here. He hasn't even brought her with him.

  He lies to Mary, and therefore we all lie to Mary. Mary lies in return. Marianne lies to herself. Gregory is lying as we speak, pretending to be a doting husband who has nurtured his wife back to life but really he is waiting until I am otherwise engaged and locked away in a shower for five minutes so he can get all over Ishiko like a bad rash left untreated and so he is lying to me and I suspect also to them but then again perhaps they all know and it is just the expected conduct of an average Windermere Grove resident because if they lie to Mary then they will lie to me the fucking bastards. Breathe, breath I say to myself. Perhaps during my absences, my long stay for recovery and therapy, it was Ishiko that took my place at this table. Perhaps it was Ishiko who slept in my bed, ate my food, wore my clothes, upturned my photographs. Perhaps all along I have been the part-timer, just like Mary is now. Suddenly I feel like the whole room might have seen Gregory with Ishiko and that they are laughing at me. Perhaps he took her out on the boat and sailed around the lake until they found a quite spot for a picnic and a kiss in the early days before their dalliances were so blatant that he would screw her whilst I was in the shower in the next room. Perhaps he brought her here to the last fundraiser as his ‘guest’, whilst all the naive onlookers commented on how beautiful her Japanese face was. Fucking whore.

  I watch Gregory for a while as he fiddles his knife and fork into alignment and shuffles his napkin onto his knees. He is looking around for a waiter and commenting how we need some wine. He is making signs like semaphore, guiding the nearest waiter to land at our table, bottle in hand and ready to serve. He feels entitled because he is rich and floats around a hotel all day long being served. Wait, he owns a hotel. He owns a fucking hotel and still fucks her in our house! I want to crush his head like the roll on my plate which has arrived without warning or request and now lies in crumbs, my fist on top of it like a meteorite in the ground.

  “You OK there, Charlotte?” Dana is watching me, and I realise that I have indeed crushed the roll and now only fragments and crumbs remain, strewn about my place setting. Gregory notices and chooses to say nothing about it.

  “You are still wearing your coat, Charlotte,” he says instead. The waiter arrives, guided well by Gregory’s signals. “I would like the white,” he says to the waiter, and then, “please take her coat.” The waiter finishes pouring and then stands to the side waiting for me to remove my coat.

  “I’m fine Dana. Never better,” I say as I stand up and slide my arms out of the coat in three, maybe four quick shakes. He waits for my gloves, but I am already sat back down still wearing them. I usher the waiter away. It is the kind of never better that nobody takes at face value. It is the kind of response that comes from a couple who have clearly had an argument before they turned up at an event, when neither of them wants to be there but it was too late to change the plan. One might suggest that Gregory has no idea why I am behaving like this, but I cannot honestly believe that.

  “Charlotte, whatever’s the matter with you. Look at the mess you have made.” He is half whispering, half shouting. He is brushing crumbs onto the floor, embarrassed by my mess. If it was he who had tried to kill himself, he would surely never be able to show his face again. If Gregory was going to try to die, he would without fail get it right. The shame of failure would be too much. Yet I have learnt to live with it. He has no idea of the strength I hold, the stamina to see something through and to come out the other side. He’ll learn.

  “There is nothing the matter with me, Gregory. I am quite fine,” I say picking up a chunk of the broken roll and stuffing it into my mouth, tearing at it with my teeth.

  “Well, then act like it. You’re acting insane.” He looks me up and down. “And take off your gloves, for goodness sake.”

  “But I am insane Gregory. Don’t you remember?” I put my hands up to my face and waggle my fingers around in front of my eyes as I roll them around trying to look as mental as possible. He isn’t amused and turns away. My voice was starting to break a bit, stretched out like an old tyre, worn in places and likely to burst. My words are laced with giggles that have nothing to do with humour and when I catch Dana’s eye I see that she is already on her feet and heading in my direction.

  “Charlotte, calm down,” he says, “you promised a normal night. Stop this.”

  “Come on Charlotte, dear.” This is Dana at my side and she is holding my shoulders which I feel now with her hands against me are shaking. “Let’s not do this here. Let’s go to the ladies toilet.”

  “I’m quite calm,” I say, sounding anything but, “and Dana, thank you, but I do not need to go to the toilet. Are you sure there is no lavender in the flowers.”

  “Just for a tissue. To wipe your eyes,” she says, ignoring me.

  “I have a tissue here,” I say, and reach across for my purse. Gregory snatches it away and opens it up, an attempt to get me under control. “Give me that,” I say, snatching it back, but he has already opened the clasp and the items from inside fall out. Perhaps it was not one of my more sensible ideas, but I had chosen to bring the photograph of Ishiko with me tonight. It falls onto Gregory’s plate as if she has been served up as his next meal.

  “Why do you have this?” he says, pulling the photograph under the table.

  He is astonished. He turns it over in his lap and looks at it for a while, and I wriggle my shoulders free from Dana’s grip. They are all staring at me, including Ishiko with her idiotic smile and splayed jazz hands. Staring back, judgementally. I lean in closer as if I am following the scent of something, eventually my nose landing up on Gregory’s arm and I shout, “Lavender!”

  “Did you take this from her room?” he asks.

  “Let’s go to the toilets, Charlotte. Come on.�
�� Dana is still trying, and I swear I am only one more comment from cutting out her tongue with my knife and fork.

  “Why? Do you recognise it from her room?” He hadn’t thought that one through. “Have you been inside it?” I lingered over the word inside, hissing like a snake as it rolled from my tongue. He was flustered. The sharp people amongst us may have picked up on the flickers around his eye, the way it twitches when he lies, the way his eyelids flicker just before staring at me in defiance. It only ever takes him a microsecond to pull himself together, to trample over his natural reactions, but I see them. He’s quick, but I am too. I see him.

  “Don’t be absurd.” He bats me away. I know he is wondering why I have it. Why is screaming in his head as loudly as another much more pleasing word is screaming in mine. “Take off your gloves and pull yourself together.” The rest of the table already know the night is over before it really began. Gregory is holding onto the last hope of saving this situation, but the rest of us know it’s over. I tried.

  “There is nothing absurd about me, Gregory. I know you. I know you better than anybody. Better than anybody here who thinks they know you oh so well. I see you.” I can’t get the word out of my head. My heart is racing like a jackhammer and my eyes are throbbing and I am sure that blood is going to rush out from my open oozing head wound like a natural bloody geezer. I feel sick. I hear nothing but my own voice and the same word rolling over in my head. Dying.

  “You need to go home. Dana,” he says, looking for some assistance.

  “Of course, Gregory,” she replies, putting her hands onto my arm.

  “No,” I say. “You are not shipping me off like that. I have a right to be heard, Gregory.” I wriggle from Dana’s grip. Jemima looks away, and John Wexley appears gripped in total panic as if he is only moments from a painful death. He must have had enough of the craziness with Marianne. “Why am I not allowed to speak?” I want to tell everybody that he is a liar. A cheat. A destroyer of lives. I cannot. I settle for the baby. “Why can’t we tell them?”

  “No, Charlotte.” Suddenly Gregory looks panicked too.

  “But why?” I am trying to stand up, licking at my lips like a cat with a fur ball stuck in its throat because I can still taste the wipe from earlier. I am almost on my feet and I would be already if it wasn’t for Dana’s hands that have moved up to my shoulders.

  “No. Don’t,” he warns.

  “I want to tell everybody. I want to be something new. Something better.” I barely heard the words come out of my mouth. They hadn’t been my intended words, but as I said them everything seemed to move away from me and blur into the background. The first thing I saw were the stars. A network of stars racing along above me like I was floating up above our earth. The fairy lights. I felt a pressure behind me and suddenly the stars disappeared. My legs made the first impact, quickly followed by my buttocks, my hips, back, hands, and finally head, and the pressure behind me gave way to solid floor and the smell of lavender wafted straight over me. I saw heads above me blocking out the blanket of lights above me. There were seconds of silence followed by panic and Gregory above me, his head close to mine. Gasps around me. I was flat. Faces peering in on top of other faces. Eyes probing at me as I lie spent and exhausted.

  “Dana,” I manage, almost shouting I am sure over the noise of the rising panic and commotion. “The baby.”

  “Yes, yes, dear.” She is stroking my face. The face he has come to despise. “OK.” I see hundreds of eyes peering at me, some I know, some I have never seen before. I see Stephen Jones at the edge of the crowd but he is just one face amongst many and within another few seconds his features have been replaced by somebody else’s and it was all so quick I am not really sure if he was ever there at all. I close my eyes and succumb to the sensation of removal, my thoughts taken and my body limp. Still one word floats around in my head. Dying. This is how it felt.

  “Call an ambulance,” somebody shouts.

  “No, it’s fine.” I’m sure that was Gregory.

  “Get her a glass of water,” I hear. No idea who said this.

  For a moment my eyes flicker open and I can see two heads peering over me. Dana and Gregory. But then as their faces fade again I hear the lake, the water lurching towards the shore, pretending it is a gentle beast, fooling those who walk near it into believing that there is no danger. I hear the horn of the rescue boat and Gregory shouting, 'Breathe, Charlotte. For God's sake breathe.' Dying. I am dying. The last words I hear are nothing more than muffled sounds, like my ears are still underwater and I wonder again if I am drowning. This is how it felt.

  I am dying, I think.

  I am drowning.

  I must be drowning.

  Then nothing.

  Chapter thirteen

  In the first seconds between dream and consciousness, everything felt normal. I woke in my own bed, I saw light streaming in through the cracked open curtains from the sun rising high in the sky, and I could hear the clatter of plates and the hush of voices. I took a few deep breaths before sitting up. My head felt dizzy, maybe the blurring effect of drugs. I remember this feeling from before, only when I woke up on that occasion the room was alien and the voices were coming from a hospital corridor. That time when I tried the door handle it was locked, but this time I was already through it and on the landing, tiptoeing downstairs, the voices growing louder and louder with each step I took.

  Dr. Abrams was in the drawing room, standing next to the piano and it was him that I saw first. Gregory was standing at the window doing his best to look hurt and thoughtful. All he needed was a waistcoat and a pocket watch and the picture of a perfect yet wronged gentleman would be complete. Maybe a pipe, too. I could imagine him standing in this exact spot, discussing the feeble minded nature of women with his physician friends and how he shouldn’t have expected any more from me than what he got. It is Dr. Abrams that spots me first. I admit, to myself at least, to feeling slightly embarrassed.

  “Good morning, Charlotte.” Gregory doesn’t event turn to acknowledge my arrival and continues to gaze out to the lake and to a past that we cannot forget. “How are you feeling today?”

  “Good, Dr. Abrams.” I take a seat on the nearest chair, so that I can feel something underneath me. Floating into this atmosphere of repulsion, caused by my latest act of madness makes me feel ungrounded, lacking gravity. I need to feel something underneath me, a connection to an object. I feel the soft leather as I slide onto the chair and I grip the edges with my hands. I am holding on. Just holding on.

  “Good morning, Gregory,” I say. I want him to look at me. I want him to see me. I want him to hear me. I want him to know that I am here with a life, two lives, and that I have a pulse and blood in my veins. I want him to know that I feel things. That I am real. That I hurt. I want him to see what he did. To know that what happened last night was his fault.

  Today I feel shame when I think back to my actions of the night before. I was doing well, until he went and fucked me up. I was coping. I was growing a life inside me and managing the one around me. I feel something else which I am not used to this morning, and that is repentance. For this reason I know they must have drugged me. I feel like my head is detached from my mouth and that somebody is controlling what I say and do like a marionette puppet. Gregory turns away from the window towards me, mustering the strength, breath by breath to bring his eyes up to look at me.

  “Good morning.” He is angry. I know the hands-on-hips stance, the deep breath in, the raised chin of superiority. He huffs out a big breath. A strained effort.

  “Gregory, now remember what we discussed.” This is Dr. Abrams talking. “Go steady with her. She will be feeling out of sorts today.” They speak about me rather than to me. I feel as removed and powerless as I did in the hospital six months ago where I did not discuss, I was only discussed. I remember now how that felt, right here in this moment. I remember looking at Gregory through the reinforced glass window as I listened to the sounds of madness, the bl
eating of agony from up the corridor. I was silent. His head was resting in his hand as he listened to the doctor, his eyes dark and sleep starved. He looked back at me through that window and what I saw on his face was pain. Today it is anger that I see. “Charlotte, how are you feeling?” Dr. Abrams' words bring me back to the moment.

  My first thought was that it was a stupid question. He just told Gregory how I would be feeling. It’s as if I am so far removed from them that they believe I cannot even hear them talking to each other. “I am feeling all right,” I lie. I am aware that my voice is faint, pathetic, and apologetic. My shoulders are slouched forward and the fingers of my left hand are working nonexistent dirt from underneath the fingernails of my other hand. I stop and take hold of the chair again. “I am alright,” I say, but I am anything but alright. I am married to a cunt who is fucking our housemaid after getting me pregnant and I can hear her rattling plates in the kitchen. If I wasn’t so drugged up I am sure I would be able to smell lavender in this room wafting from my husband’s skin. I am aware that my speech is slow and slurred. “I’m dry,” I say. My lips feel like they might crack and fall away from my face and crumble into my lap like old plasterwork they are so dehydrated. I haven’t rinsed my mouth today. I didn’t even consider it. This is how I know I have been medicated. I forget things when I am medicated. Important things.

  “Ishiko, water!” Gregory calls through and within moments she brings me a glass of cold water which I drink too quickly and spill onto me and the chair because my hands are shaky. She stays there and watches me whilst I drink and she takes the glass from me when I finish. Our fingers touch and I feel a spark of electricity. I think she feels it too because she looks at me when I feel this. I spot the faintest of smiles. Pity, is what you would call it.

  “Charlotte, you are indeed alright. But you are recovering from the sedative I gave you so you will feel a little woozy,” Dr. Abrams says. I knew it. “You gave everybody a little scare last night.”