Fear Itself

by Duffy Prendergast

  Melanie simultaneously shook and bowed her head and spoke softly. “I don’t believe you. She couldn’t have…”

  “Well it’s true.” I stood up slowly and expected Melanie to jump up again, still fearful of me, but she just sat there in shock.

  “She’s just a sweet little girl.”

  “Do you think I would put the blame for such a thing on my own daughter if it wasn’t true? I’ve been protecting her all this time, but look where it’s gotten me. But I won’t let them touch her. The truth is that the police wouldn’t believe me if I told them what happened anyway…but I would never let them take her away. She’s my life…along with you.” I looked at Melanie’s face and waited for her to raise her head so that I could read her eyes, “You two are all I have. If you want to call the police and tell them that I did it, go ahead. I won’t move. Without the two of you my life is meaningless.”

  “No. She couldn’t have done it. She’s only nine years old. She wouldn’t know how to do it.”

  “The night she killed Amber we watched the movie Psycho.” I ran my fingers through my hair. “I’m not saying that she learned how to use a knife from a movie…but afterwards I wondered if it gave her the idea. I don’t know. I don’t know what I could have done to prevent it. I latched the bedroom door.

  Amber must have gotten up for a glass of water and left the door unlocked.”

  “She couldn’t have used a knife like that.” Melanie was staring off into space as she envisioned Sarah committing the final act.

  “I love you Melanie. I wouldn’t let her hurt you. That’s why I bolt the door at night.” Melanie stood and stepped toward me and fell into my arms and I held her and stroked the nape of her neck. I nuzzled her shoulder as I cried softly with her.

  Melanie pulled away from me suddenly and looked up at me, “She would never hurt me…would she?”

  “I don’t think so, but I won’t take that chance.” I pulled her back to me. “It was jealousy that inspired her to kill Catherine. To some degree it was jealousy that spurred her into killing Amber. She…must have walked in on us once while we were…” I left my sentence unfinished. “Sarah doesn’t appear jealous of you at all. You two are so close. I didn’t tell you for many reasons, but most importantly I didn’t want you to see her as a monster.”

  Melanie leaned into my chest. The day had come that I had been dreading. Melanie knew my secret. I wondered as I held her, the heat of her trembling body warming me and the smell of her strawberry shampoo tickling my nose, if she could still love Sarah. As we stood there comforting one another, absently stroking each other, I heard Sarah’s labored strides begin to trundle up the back stairwell; her little feet sounding like fine sandpaper as the soles of her shoes slid across the wooden steps.

  When Sarah entered the room she was clutching a cuddly blond-haired doll to her chest and she was smiling as though pleased at the sight of Melanie and me in an embrace. Melanie pulled herself suddenly away from me and looked up at me with a fearful expression.

  I could tell that the thought had struck her that to embrace me in front of Sarah could result in her demise. But I also knew that Sarah didn’t feel that way. I forced a smile before bending down to Sarah and hugging her.

  “Were you crying?” Sarah’s said to

  Melanie as she looked up at her, her voice a little distressed.

  “No, honey.” Melanie sniffled, “I was just peeling onions and they made my eyes tear up…remember how they made you cry when you helped me cut them last time.”

  “Yes.” Sarah smiled, relieved.

  15

  Despite the lock on the door Melanie had trouble sleeping at night. All through the weekend she seemed to be groggy and tired. The next week wasn’t any better. She tossed and turned through the nights to the point that I couldn’t sleep. Our lovemaking had ceased completely. Melanie was far too stressed; far too edgy to think about intimacy. “What’s the matter?” I asked as I tried to initiate the act.

  “I keep thinking of Sarah…cutting Amber’s throat. I can’t get the image out of my mind. I’m sorry.”

  “There’s nothing to be sorry about. I’ve lost my share of sleep over it too. Maybe you should see a doctor; maybe get some pills; something to relieve your anxiety or to help you to sleep.”

  On that Monday night Melanie slept quietly with the help of her doctor’s prescription. She took a pill about an hour before we went to bed and she began snoring in the middle of making love to me for what would have been the first time in almost two weeks had we completed the act.

  The male ego is such a fragile thing. I was actually a little wounded at her having been able to fall asleep while I tried to make love to her despite my knowledge of the reason. I found it interesting how uninviting her body became, warm and supple as it was, as she snored through my effort to copulate. It was like screwing a corpse. Her body lay flaccid beneath me and her listlessness killed my mood, but I was pleased to see her sleeping. I knew that she must have been exhausted. I hoped that she was dreaming of better things.

  Melanie said that the she didn’t like taking the sleeping pills. She said they made her wake up in the middle of the night feeling dehydrated so she started to keep a bottle of water or a glass of iced tea on her nightstand. She would fill it at night and in the morning she would not remember waking up but her glass would be empty. She said the pills also made her groggy in the morning. Too groggy to get up and make my coffee and breakfast, and apparently too groggy to pack my lunch. I felt bad for her that she needed a pill to fall asleep. I knew that it was partly my fault. But I didn’t see why she couldn’t pack my lunch the night before.

  Melanie tried her best to maintain her loving relationship with Sarah but I began to notice subtle differences in the way she behaved when they were alone. From the living room I watched as they worked together in the kitchen and while Melanie was just as helpful in teaching Sarah to prepare new dishes she would seldom touch her. Melanie used to put her hand on Sarah’s head and muss her hair a little after Sarah had performed a task particularly well. I would sometimes come home to find them nestled together on the sofa watching television; but no more. Melanie used to kiss the top of Sarah’s head before she sent her to her room where as now she would simply lead her to her room by the hand and close the door behind her; and Melanie used to ask Sarah to sit next to her sometimes just to cuddle while we watched television at night but now she was content to have me be a buffer between the two of them. I knew that Sarah noticed Melanie’s unintentional rebuffs and I could tell that she was hurt by them, but what does one say to console a sociopath? I was hoping not to draw any extra attention to the matter. I was hoping that it was a phase; that Melanie would slowly return to her loving ways.

  But over a month passed and the subtle slights grew greater instead of fewer. Melanie would send Sarah off to bed early with some silly excuse like “Come on now, we have a big day tomorrow. You need your sleep.” rather than to invite her to snuggle with us before bedtime. If this had been the norm I would have understood. If Sarah were back in school, again it would have been justified. But Sarah was used to staying up with us and there was no good reason for Melanie to change our routine. She was deliberately pushing Sarah away.

  I tried hard to feel the same way about Melanie as I had before our little secret had been revealed but those subtle indiscretions, I felt, were the difference between love and cohabitation. To love Sarah was to love me; and after all, despite her homicidal tendencies, Sarah had never given any indication that she might harm Melanie. In fact Sarah got upset when Melanie and I bickered with each other. She wanted Melanie and me to be happy together and to get along. She knew that we slept together with the door closed at night and she never once complained about being excluded from the intimacies that we shared. Melanie had nothing to worry about. I wondered why she chose to poke the bear.

  * * *

  One night as we undressed for bed Melanie approached me with an unusual question.
/>   “How would you feel about it if I went back to work?” she said.

  “Why not?” I said, “Sarah will be going back to school soon. Why should I mind if you got a job?” Melanie had run into a friend who she knew to have helped a Mexican dancer to obtain a false birth certificate and driver license. She inquired about getting some false identification for both Sarah and I. Through a friend of a friend of a friend he had come through for Sarah with a birth certificate from a girl who had died some three years previous. It seemed that getting Sarah a new identity was a much simpler task than creating a new me. In any event I had registered Sarah at the local public school and she was scheduled to start back in the fall. I was to remain Mohamed Assad.

  “I meant…working at night.” Melanie averted my eyes.

  “Doing what?”

  “Well…I only know how to do one thing.” She looked up at me but closed her eyes as she spoke.

  “And what would that be?” My voice was purposely calm and monotone.

  “Dancing of course.”

  “That’s not dancing!” I felt the blood rush to my face but I forced my voice to remain cool. She was deliberately pushing my buttons. I didn’t like the way it made me feel but I also didn’t want her to know how upset she was making me.

  “It was okay with you when we first started seeing each other.” She looked away from me again, “And besides, we sure could use the money.”

  “You said you didn’t need to work anymore…that you had saved enough money to live on for a long time.” I kept my voice placid once again but inside my chest my heart was pounding like a like a sledgehammer and I felt the muscles in my wrists clench.

  “I know, but you wouldn’t want me to use up all of my savings would you?”

  “You can’t have had to spend much. I give you my whole paycheck every week. Isn’t that enough?”

  “No, it’s not.”

  I drew a long pause, “You’re a big girl. If you want to prance around naked shoving your cunt in the faces of scum-bags…if that’s what does it for you, then who am I to stop you. It’s not like we’re married.” I knew that I was losing it, but what was I supposed to do? I was of course opposed to my girlfriend prancing naked before men and grinding her pelvis in an undulating simulation of intercourse. I felt threatened and jealous. Who wouldn’t?

  “I think you spent too much time around Amber!” her expression was terse; “Her dirty language seems to have rubbed off on you.” that.”

  I drew a long breath, “I’m sorry I said

  “I was just asking. I don’t have to do it.” She waived her hand at me as if she had just suggested something as innocuous as taking a walk. “Forget I asked.”

  I knew what Melanie was doing. She had been slowly distancing herself from Sarah and now she was trying to finish the job by pushing me out. Perhaps the stress of living with a murderess was just too much for her. But she didn’t have to go to such lengths to get rid of me. I would have rather she had asked me to leave. She’s the one who wanted me to move in with her. I felt betrayed by her asking to go back to dancing. If she wanted me to get out of her life I felt that she should have asked me in a more direct way.

  She took her pill that night right before going to bed. We slept side by side deliberately not making contact with each other. No effort was made by either of us to couple or to reconcile; and it wasn’t easy to sleep together so deliberately avoiding even the slightest touch since we had grown accustomed to sleeping with our bodies intertwined either at the feet or the waist or spooned and cupped or sometimes still attached like a pair of knotted dogs. I tossed and turned and did not sleep well at all and to be honest I found her quietude annoying. Her pill had, as was the norm, knocked her out cold and she snored provocatively.

  After several hours of sleeplessness my agitation with Melanie welled up inside of me like a volcano seething to eruption. Melanie’s tranquility vexed me. She had riled me up and then dissolved her tensions with a little pill and a glass of cherry Koolaide. I laid in the bed fuming until I fell into short fitful spurts of sleep only to awaken again.

  The next evening when I came home from work Melanie was gone and Sarah was sitting on the couch watching television. I felt a dull ache in the pit of my stomach as I sidled up next to Sarah and hugged her.

  “Where is Melanie?” I asked.

  “She went to work.” My heart was broken but I did my best not to reflect my pain.

  “What’s for supper?”

  “Melanie said that you were going to take me out to get something to eat.” I felt that Melanie was sending me a final message. She had gone back to stripping and she had left us to fend for ourselves for dinner. My heart could not sink any lower. Her message was clear.

  “Come on, let’s go.” I said and I pulled

  Sarah by the hand.

  “Is this a date?” she smiled up at me. We had not dined out alone for quite some time. She had not called me lover or suggested a date since our little humping incident. I didn’t want to encourage her. I certainly didn’t want to resume espousing her, but her smile indicated that she had missed our little playful intimacy and in my weakened emotional state I caved.

  “Sure.” I forced a smile and then we left on our date.

  Later that night I lay in bed unable to sleep as I monitored the L.E.D. readout on the digital clock on Melanie’s nightstand. The minutes turned slowly while I stared at the clock but time seemed to accelerate whenever I turned away and minutes passed in blocks of ten and twenty. Before I knew it the hour was past three a.m. and Melanie still wasn’t home. All the while I jealously pictured her dancing naked on a stage rocking her pelvis in the faces of strangers and parting her legs in open squats as they tucked dollar bills inside her garter. As the hour passed three I imagined that she was naked on a hotel bed, a line of half dressed men trailing down the corridor waiting to fuck her for twenty dollars apiece and the joyless pleasure that it gave her. I began to cry quiet tears at her imagined defilement and my projected betrayal. When I heard the back door squeak open I quickly dried my eyes and turned my body to the side of the bed and feigned sleep.

  I heard her undress. I listened as the silk of her shirt slid across the tiny invisible hairs on her back as she pulled the garment over her head; as she unsnapped her lace bra and the weight of her breasts tugged at the fabric as she removed it; as the cotton of her tight jeans glided across the flesh of her thighs and the nylon of her socks slipped across her smooth delicate feet; and as the shimmering fabric of her panties shimmied down to her ankles and she stepped out of them one foot at a time. I felt her weight, light as she was, as she sat on her side of the bed. I listened as she opened the safety cap to her sleeping pills and laid one on her tongue and I pictured her open mouthed with her tongue sticking out, wincing at the taste of the pill as she rushed to poor the liquid from her glass into her mouth to wash it down. The sound of glass on wood as she set her drink down on her nightstand made a brief muffled clunk; then she resealed the lid to her pills and placed them next to the glass and laid down facing away from me…being careful not to touch any part of her flesh to mine as she shifted beneath the covers seeking a comfortable shape.

  As I lay stewing in my jealous brew I consoled myself with the fact that Melanie had not bathed upon her return. If she had slept with another man she would have bathed to wash away his scent. I realized too that despite my anger and my jealousy that I still loved her very much and I didn’t want to lose her. I wanted to find some way to salvage our relationship. It wasn’t just that she was all I had. I had truly grown to love her and to appreciate what we had. I reached over and even though I knew that she would not know that I had visited her in her sleep I kissed her and then turned on my side and I wept in self- pity until I finally fell asleep.

  We didn’t share a wakeful moment together as Tuesday through Friday night Melanie was gone when I arrived home from work and I left before she woke. I pretended, for Sarah’s sake, as though all was well between u
s and that Melanie had simply found a legitimate job. I listened each night as she undressed (pretending that I was asleep) and took her pill and slipped into bed. Each night my pain grew exponentially as wild thoughts riddled my subconscious filling me with an ugly resentment. In my mind, whether true or imagined, I was a cuckold to the woman I loved. I was inextricably tied to Melanie through a bond of an inexplicable emotion and yet I was as tortured as a boy in the throes of unrequited love. My soul was wounded and I hardly slept at night and my strain was showing at work, as I became a worthless broken tool to Tony, plodding through my days in one continuous yawn. By weeks end I was exhausted and I slept soundly for the first time Friday night until I was awakened by what I thought to be the clicking sound of my bedroom door being shut. I wasn’t sure but I thought I heard the patter of tiny footsteps trotting away down the hall. I sat up and looked around the room but in the dark of night I could see nothing out of place.

  Then a horrible thought crossed my mind. I quickly jumped up and backed away from the lump that occupied the other side of my bed. I stared at the lump which was Melanie. The pink quilted blanket we shared covered her body and her head. There was no sign of blood but she appeared too still, as though she were not breathing. I was too scared to pull the covers back for fear that she was dead. I just couldn’t take finding another lover dead in my bed. I couldn’t stand to lose Melanie. I loved her so. I needed her so. I vowed at that moment that I would put up with her behavior no matter how agonizing the pain if only God would let her be alive when I lift the covers.

  I crept over to our bedroom door and I felt for the latch. It was undone. Melanie had forgotten to secure the lock when she crawled into bed. I crept over to Melanie and I slowly lifted the quilt. Her face was pale and her breathing seemed shallow but to my great relief she was alive. I placed my head to her breastbone and I listened for a pulse. I felt the slightest rise and fall of her chest but I could not hear her heart beat. I lifted my head and I tried to gather my bearings. My eyes were still adjusting to the dark so when I looked at the nightstand and saw that her pill bottle was open I thought at first that I was seeing things. Melanie sealed her pill bottle religiously every night. I picked up the bottle and verified that the lid was missing and I tilted the bottle but it was empty. At first I supposed that she had left the lid open because it was empty, but then I noticed that there were six broken capsules on the nightstand. The glass next to the bed was empty. I picked it up and I walked over to the closet and I switched the closet light on. I swirled the backwashed contents of the glass and noticed a powdery residue mixed in with the remnants of her beverage. I turned my head toward Melanie as I realized what had taken place. Sarah had struck again. She had split Melanie’s sleeping pills open and emptied them into her glass after Melanie had fallen asleep. Melanie had drunk from the glass to quench her thirst in the middle of the night. Melanie had overdosed on sleeping pills.