The Woman Hidden

by Lucas Mattias

  The whiskey.

  The whiskey, Georgia’s gift.

  “Distilled in alcohol, would the effect be amplified?”

  “I can’t tell,” Paul answered, feeling the relief that came when silence was broken. “Possibly. Or maybe not that much, exactly because of alcohol absorption. I really have no deep knowledge about anything in this area to… is everything alright?”

  Anthon stood up in a jolt, the results falling to the ground as he looked extremely disturbed.

  And he was. In an impulse, he punched the wall behind him and, although it hadn’t moved an inch whatsoever, he felt his fist throb and bleed, perhaps just a little.

  “I’d recommend you not do that… and you need silence again.” Paul concluded, noticing Anthon wasn’t even paying attention to him anymore.

  Georgia. It made a whole lot of sense. What didn’t make sense were the reasons behind that. Why would she poison him with the whiskey that way, causing him all those problems and almost his and his wife’s death at that accident? What reasons would she have kept to herself all along, sleeping by his side, when she could have killed him in his sleep? Was it torture? Pure sadism? What…

  The evidences. The only person with access to them, Georgia. The deleted e-mails, the timeline. It was all coming together, although he felt he had already known that this whole time, he just refused to connect the dots. But what for? That doubt was the one thing really bothering him. And there she was, at the hotel, with all his crucial evidences to end and solve that case…

  The case. The Derby’s case.

  A missing woman.

  A woman never found, maybe the key to the investigation.

  That woman.

  Georgia.

  She was the one to suggest the subject right at their first meeting. She had suggested helping him and showed interest. She had evaded before. She…

  She had it all planned. The talks, what to say, what to do. A strategy right there, right at his face, without him having the single idea of what was happening. It was fabulous, actually. Cold and psychotic, but fabulous.

  He laughed. And he laughed again. Anthon burst into laughter, leaving Paul unaware of what to do. He was done as a steak and all because of a vile woman, trying to erase her footsteps.

  He had the monster captured. He even knew where she was, exactly where, and he could simply go and capture her and interrogate her and find out everything that had taken her to do it all. And that would not only grant him an award at work, but it would also bring his marriage back.

  All he had to do was to get her at once and, for that, he would have to keep on playing that vertiginous game of Georgia, if it was her name after all.

  Anthon’s phone ringed, warning him about unread messages.

  “Anthon, if there’s anything else I can…”

  “I’m fine, Paul, thanks.”

  “Anthon, you still haven’t told me--”

  Anthon was about to answer Paul when he unlocked his phone. There was not only one message from Monica, but thirteen. Text messages she must have sent him a while ago and, due to his anxiety, he hadn’t read. Now he regretted that. The last text message, particularly, had disturbed him in such ways he almost vomited all over Paul’s feet.

  Ignoring is not always the best answer. I know which hotel it is. Meet you in a few minutes.

  Anthon didn’t bother reading the other ones, he was already late. Monica was going to the hotel and, in case that were true, she would be giving herself away to Georgia’s sick mind. If she had promised to love him and still have poisoned him, he feared whatever she could do to Monica who, despite being a storm of a woman, was helpless and not ready for that.

  Without time left to answer Paul or offering him a convincing explanation, Anthon ran out of the lab. It was maybe already too late, perhaps the worst had already happened…

  Maybe it was all an illusion and he was still under the effects of that drug. He couldn’t tell, but that worm in his brain, the one telling him something was wrong, that same worm was now exploding and taking the shape of tension and he knew there was nothing he could ever do, not from there.

  He thought about calling the precinct, but it could all be just another daydream and he didn’t want to risk looking stupid in front of his coworkers again. He didn’t want to be fired and throw his whole career down the toilet for that.

  As soon as he sat back at his car and sped up, Anthon tried calling Monica. Nothing. While he snaked and zigzagged throughout the avenues, trying to decrease the time he would need to arrive at his destination before the expected time, he kept on trying, but he couldn’t reach her.

  At last, he opened the inbox again as he stopped at an intersection and this time he read it completely. Monica was furious. Monica know where he was, because she had followed him, she knew the room, the hotel, she knew all about his new lover. Monica was not just going to the hotel.

  I’m here. I hope you’re ready, because I’m tired.

  What frightened him the most was not the text itself, but the time stamp.

  And he was forty minutes late.

  Right when the traffic lights allowed him to continue, he hit the gas again, screeching. The traffic, affected by the snow, didn’t seem to help and his anxiety did nothing but increase, while he tried to picture every possible outcome that delay could bring him as well as the countless possibilities of arriving to his destination in a faster way. He was also trying to organize his ideas, doubting it all to be real or an illusion, trying to comprehend what was happening and all his perceptions about it.

  It was real. He had to act.

  While he couldn’t reach the hotel, Anthon dialed again her number and waited. At some point, Monica would have to answer it.

  At some point, someone would have to.

  The phone vibrated. A long echo caused by the weight of the device against the wooden floor boomed all over the floor as if it were empty. The device insisted, its screen shining and showing that image she already knew.

  And finally it went silent.

  At half-light, it was difficult to find anything in the room. Amidst the mess, it was even worse. And she didn’t want to look for anything. When she thought it was all calm again and she could finally breathe, the phone rang again, the echo from the shaking reigniting the nervous sparks all over her body, spreading as an uncontrollable fever of astounding temperatures. Other echoes joined to the main one when the phone started to spin slowly on the floor, movement forced by the vibration.

  Among shards of glass and blood, the phone kept on ringing and dancing with Anthon’s face on the screen, waiting for someone to pick it up.

  Georgia, on the corner of the room, had her arms wrapped around her legs. She felt her whole body tremble in panic, something impossible to control, while her eyes insisted on pouring rivers of tears that, in her face, danced between scratches and bloodstains. Her crying came out like begging and screams. She had to run from there, she didn’t want to be there, she wanted to hide and sink into the wall.

  That was not in her plans, not that part, that moment…

  It was not supposed to go that way, no… it couldn’t be…

  What if it all came tumbling down? Right now, when everything was working out so fine.

  That woman…

  No.

  She shuddered and cried, the hands covered by yellow cleaning gloves trying to get a grip around her naked legs, also stained by blood and superficial cuts.

  Sitting on the floor, Georgia needed a plan. A plan that went beyond the face now smudged by the watered make up and tears. She was not weak and she would not cry, not now. It all had been just an accident, just an accident.

  But she had no strengths to come up. She had no energy to take that further.

  She had to.

  While her hands were covered by the yellow cleaning gloves, her hair were held safe under a bath cap, all in the way she had planned – at least part of that night had been previously thought. She wanted to get
up and move on, but she couldn’t.

  And the cellphone kept on ringing, in an annoyingly loud way, as if announcing to the whole hotel she was there and what had just unraveled in there.

  Georgia dragged her body until the phone and saw Anthon’s face. She cleaned her own face with the back of her gloved hands and stood up at last, silencing the phone with a single touch. He was on his way and she had to get ready.

  She put herself on her feet and took the phone with her, putting it in the pocket of Anthon’s shirt she had been wearing. Shirt that, by the way, was also covered by blood, completely crumpled and dirty. She didn’t mind. She crossed the room and, finally, found her own and true self. She was there, completely and wholly, ready to give it the go ahead the whole situation needed.

  The room, as any self-respecting presidential room, had a majestic bathroom. The double doors seemed about to reveal a ballroom behind them. She, however, knew it not to be true.

  Georgia pulled the doors and walked in, the first thing she saw being her own reflection upon the mirror. Georgia stared at herself for a while and observed her own green eyes that, now, didn’t seem to shine anymore. And there was still a damn blood drop in her eyebrow, she remembered how that drop had ended up there.

  Her eyes hesitated, getting wet again. She closed them for some seconds and took a deep breath, exhaling with the same precision and slowness, trying to focus herself on the simple action of inhaling and exhaling, of calming herself. She was calm.

  When she reopened her eyes, she smirked while she cleaned her face with her forearm. It all would end very soon and, sooner than she had waited, she would be free.

  She inhaled deeply one last time and faced the bathtub where, laying in the same way she first came to this world, Monica rested with her open and petrified eyes, the naked body was now pale, almost the same tone of the tub itself. As if in a scene worthy of a painting and exhibition, the blood wasn’t gushing out from her neck anymore, neither was it spreading all over the porcelain, embracing Monica’s body and pure skin in a picture that would have been iconic if not so tragic.

  The chest tightened and she had to take another deep breath to hold back the new crisis that threatened to burst out. She was fine. She would be fine.

  She had to pull herself together. There was still a lot to be done.

  Acceptance

  “September 8th, 2012.

  Grief. That a beautiful word, although simple and so small. The hard thing is to define what it might mean with so few letters composing it. In a cold way, I’d define it as the process of accepting that something had died and that you still have to move forward. Lately, this word has stunned me and I can’t tell why.

  Maybe because I have to deal with my own grief. That grief of noticing that many things have died. Part of my life. My whole life. Me. I feel, sometimes, I’m already dead. It’s as if, often, I’m just watching as my life passes by, at distance, as someone who has already left this world. And it hurts me. Hurts me to see I have a son who’s growing up and who I do not know how to follow up, mainly because I don’t know how to relate myself to his happiness. To his laughter, his discoveries, his moments. I feel trapped. Locked inside myself.

  This week, a friend told me something important: harmful things must perish so that good ones may arise. This friend was the one thing those conflicts granted me with, a real friend and mainly because she’s not like me. She’s strong, her own woman, one of those who silence the place in which they walk in. I wonder how could she have let herself come to such point, allowing herself to suffer this way when life seems to tell her it is not at all necessary. It’s sad, but it is not up to me to judge her, not when she understands me in ways I cannot even begin to… Clarice is a true friend and the best person I could have ever meet in Agnes. A sister by choice.

  We laughed together when she suggested we ran. Maybe it was a good option.

  She also suggested me sink into my own grief, that it is necessary. And that I need to realize this marriage is dead. Not me.

  I need to accept that everything that’s good has died and that, from this, nothing else will ever flourish. I need to accept it all must come to an end.

  I need to accept I’m not dead yet. I’m ready to accept the end whenever it comes, but it’s not time.

  I’m not dead yet.”

  I

  Although she still hoped that day could turn out better than it seemed, her hopes started to vanish when boredom settled in. That was not so unusual, being in such monotonous and predictable house. She was tired, but there was still a lot to work on. Clarice took another sip from the cheap whiskey of Jason’s, aware that she was already taking it a little too far, though she needed some humor, some disposition.

  Jason, by that time, would be doing a series of tests and exams which, probably, would bring him back home the same way he had left. Outside, the snow threatened to fall brutally. Inside, the fireplace burned lazy and she didn’t know what else to do to make time pass. She needed to make the time pass, her unsolved anxiety was something that bothered her and, at the same time, something she couldn’t fight with. And Marco…

  Marco.

  The fright of not knowing where he was by then made her jump up suddenly on the sofa, and the sudden movement brought her glass down, soaking that rug made from some animal skin she didn’t know with whiskey. Well, she would worry about that later, it was not as if Jason was going to notice anything, he was not very good at that anyway.

  Clarice left her empty glass at the coffee table and headed to the stairs, the robe dancing as she moved, along her loose and shining hair, while she walked up the steps. On the upper floor, she had left the backpack Jason had recovered from the woods weeks before, and there she had all she needed.

  Clarice entered the room and, for some split seconds, she glanced at the glass wall, observing ho the skies became darker around the region, even when it wasn’t so late beyond lunchtime. The clouds seemed heavy, as if already announcing something terrible about to happen. The clouds, however, were late. The worst that could ever happen to that house had already happened with no previous notice. She turned her attention back to the room, searching for the bag she had left under Jason’s bed. A great place, even when it showed up all soaked in water in the middle of the night. She grinned and threw the backpack on the bed, removing a coat from it. From the coat, she produced a small disposable cellphone. Before she could turn it on and check the text messages, she heard the noise.

  The house was sinking into total silence, so it was quite easy for her to hear when the Flyce’s car engine ceased its activities on the outside. Either they both had returned, or then…

  Marco. The text message she read on the phone confirmed her suspicions. The seed had been planted and, now, she was ready to reap what she had sown. Clarice let the phone aside, with the screen still on, while she shoved her hand inside the backpack, searching for something else she had kept in there.

  And she removed the gun. A Walther PPK. Years before, that had been her husband’s recommendation, a man who was a true believer that the good people need to know how to protect themselves. And, by good people, he meant rich white men. Just like him. He was not at all talking about women and black people. He was not referring to any person and she learned it, later on, in the worst way possible. Walther PPK. The first time she held one in her hands, she felt like James Bond.

  Clarice checked the clip. It was there, full, intact. She locked the clip again and put the gun back in its place. She would need it, but not in that moment.

  She was still busy putting her bag back to safety when the phone rang. She grabbed the phone, tossing her hair to the left shoulder, allowing her ear to be free when she answered it. The orders had been clear: calls were only allowed under urgent circumstances. That, probably, was one of the urgent circumstances.

  “He knows.” The female voice on the other side said, rushed, no pauses to breath between the words. “Marco knows and he’s at the car, alon
e, he’s going to confront you.”

  And the call died. Clarice waited, the phone still in her hand, and tried to hear anything. Nothing. She reopened the bag and took the gun out from it again, putting the phone inside and then placing the backpack under the bed once more. She needed to think fast.

  She walked out of the room and closed the door behind herself, climbing down the stairs in small jumps, trying to hurry up. Marco could already be by the door.

  As her feet touched the ground floor and she looked towards the pivot glass door, she saw the vastness of snow spread in front of the house, the strong winds and the car, from where Marco had just walked out of.

  Clarice took the opposite direction and ran to the kitchen. The wind still blew hard there, the tarp Jason had stretched offered little to no protection. She thanked that her husband wasn’t actually loose on the woods, after all Jason’s cautionary measures were worthy of a child. She circled the dark marble island and, between the sink and the counter, she looked for the best place to put the gun. Underneath, between the mugs.

  Marco was getting near and she had little time. Soon enough she’d hear the sound of the keys, soon he’d be there, with all his doubts and anger. Even if she kept to herself the element of surprise, Marco was still taller and stronger and could easily dominate her, something she neither want nor planned to do.

  Now all she needed was to reach the living room without being seen by him. Protected by the kitchen wall, she looked at the door. He was still walking towards the house, one arm holding himself while the other kept the phone in his ear. He was distracted and she took the chance to run to the stairs, where another set of wall would block her from his view.