The Woman Hidden

by Lucas Mattias

  Marco licked his lips, trying to hide the drooling dripping and spilling from them, in a mixed feeling of shame and humiliation.

  “Torture…” He gave it up again when it seemed speaking was too hard. “Torture him.”

  Clarice tilted her head sideways, at first not completely getting what he was trying to growl.

  “He was not alone, Marco. Where were you? You remember the reason of being here, don’t you? After all, wasn’t that the reason you went after your mother’s past after reading the diary?”

  He stretched his neck the best way he could, again trying to put together the pieces that seemed to make more of a sense.

  “You left the diary for me.” He muttered, now already able to form a complete sentence. Victory, Clarice concluded when she realized it was the painkiller being absorbed.

  “Deny it, Marco. Deny that your only concern to that diary was knowing that someone else could’ve heard the true history of what happened that night. You wanted to erase evidence. Deny it.”

  He remained silent. Marco didn’t struggle or trembled anymore and, despite the thick saliva mixed to blood coming out from his lips, he looked more awake.

  “Deny it that you were ready to call daddy when you realized reality was tougher than you had imagined. That the biggest risk ever was standing right there, inside your home. Deny it.”

  Marco’s head dropped and, at first, Clarice thought he had passed out. It was a strong medicine and it could, easily, a big possibility. She was appalled when she saw he was actually trying to hide his tears. It was painful to cry, mainly now when his face was shredded in pieces.

  “I can’t.” He mumbled in such a guttural and low voice that Clarice barely heard him.

  “What happened that night, Marco?”

  “You know…

  “What happened that night?”

  He sobbed, it was hard to breathe through the mouth and cry at the same time. More saliva dripped, already pooling on the fabric of his shirt by his abdomen.

  “You… you know…”

  Clarice, finally, let the monster out.

  “What happened that fucking night?” And then she brought herself down, as if she hadn’t yelled or had a fit for a second. “I need to hear it, Marco, from you.”

  “You know it. You know… You…”

  The cry had become more intense. Clarice knew that even more painful and heavier than deeply crying in pain was the guilty cry. Guilt knew how to speak louder, it knew how to dig its claws deeply into one’s core and pluck, from there, the thing it wanted the most: sanity.

  “I could force you into telling me, Marco, but I don’t need such measures…”

  “I can… I can’t. I promised. I won’t…”

  “I cannot hear you, Marco.”

  “She dies… it was an accident. She died.”

  Clarice leaned forward, she could hear the sobbing right in front of her, Marco’s heavy and spastic breathing touching her face, now. She lifted one finger only and sank it into the open wound on Marco’s nose. She could feel the skin around her index finger, the clotted blood breaking with her touch, the breathing that tried to pass by that area and the heat from his inside. She shoved it deeper, her eyes stuck into Marco’s, still bloodied and obstructed by the swelling and the wounds.

  He yelled. And his shout resonated across the basement, maybe even throughout the house. He flourished, struggled, his feet knocking hard against the floor and uncontrollably moving and raising the dust accumulated through the years, his shrieks turning something able to wake neighbors who were miles away. Luckily, the closest neighbor wasn’t able to tell anything to the cops anymore.

  “What happened, Marco?” She said, trying to keep cool and focused, trying to block that part of hers that was trying to be touched by the moment and remove her from there in tears. “What happened?”

  His scream came out louder. His bulbous and now darkened nose bled again, covering Marco’s lips and chest with that dark, painful and viscous shade.

  “He killed her!” He screamed and Clarice moved her finger away, aware the pain would still linger for a few more seconds until the medicine spread again. Adrenaline was a powerful accelerator. The voice muffled by the pain and cries came out again: “We killed her.”

  His head fell again, the tears coming out untamed from his eyes to his chest. Clarice was ready to leave when he coughed and the voice again left his lips in tears.

  “They were fighting, I came downstairs. I called the cops. Mom was putting her bags in the car when… when he… he hit her. Again.”

  Clarice stood and involuntarily lost her air. Marco couldn’t look at her, he had his eyes closed shut, his lips mumbling the words. Perhaps he was not even completely conscious, it could be simply the medicine speaking for him. It was impossible to tell if his groggy voice was due to the painkiller or his pain.

  “She said it was over. All over. She took her bags to the car and he came back… gun in hand… He… He said… he said he would kill himself, he would kill himself if she left. He needed her… he… he needed her.”

  Clarice’s face didn’t change. She wanted to know how far he would go, how far he would be capable of confessing. Confessing could be liberating, more than death itself.

  “I tried to stop him, I… didn’t think. When I realize… I’m… He’s on top of me and I can’t breathe, I can’t, his hands choke me… it wasn’t…” Marco lifted his head. “It was the drink, my father’s not a… you know it!”

  She kept blank and still and Marco turned his head down again, hiding his tears, his desperation. The concealed plead was sounding like a great confession. She held back.

  “What happened then, Marco?”

  “She hit him with a rock…” He sobbed loudly and banged his head against the beam, finally getting a reaction from Clarice, a small jolt after the unexpected act. “When I woke up… she was dead. She bled, out, I thought she was dead!”

  “And then what did you do, Marco?”

  “He had saved me, he saw what he had done, he saved me.”

  “He didn’t save you, Marco.” Despite the rage inside, Clarice kept monotonous, velvety. “Michelle saved you.”

  “It was… it was the alcohol…” He kept on sobbing, his entire body trembling while he drowned into his own tears and blood. “He… he loved. I loved my mom.”

  “It was the monster he is. The monster you are, Marco. You knew it. You knew about all that happened in this house, in this marriage. And what did you do? You helped him fake an accident. You helped him kill your mother, for real and for good, and helped him keep his lie to everyone. What kind of love is that, Marco? What kind of love is that that humiliates, that kills, that shuts up and consents?”

  “I was…”

  “Don’t tell me it was out of fear. It was out of cowardice.”

  “I…” He stopped himself in tears, accepting the guilt. “I loved her.”

  “She feared you, Marco. More than she had ever feared your father, because she knew what he was really capable of. He was just a wrong man, a monster who abused her, who destroyed her. But you, Marco? You were her blood, her doing… imagine how disappointing it is knowing that something you love so much is just an evolving monster. Tell me,” She moved closer to him again, abruptly, and she noticed when Marco recoiled the best he could, which was not a lot. “how would you feel whenever you heard it? Whenever you heard the atrocities, whenever you heard your father saying she was nothing nor no one without him? Telling her she wouldn’t know how to live? Saying she was a lonely, inferior and unhappy person? Whenever he forced her into believing she was crazy, that she was being neurotic and, afterwards, he would threaten to kill himself in case she left? How did it make you feel when he took her to the edge of suicide and then he blamed her for all evils in the world? When he alienated hem from the world and made her his property, so that he could just dispose of her as roadkill? How did you feel Marco? How?”

  She no longer had the smooth v
oice from before. The soft tone had given space to yells and heavy growls, that ricocheted on his face, though it didn’t seem to cause much of an effect.

  “How did you feel, Marco?”

  He didn’t answer. He just struggled harder, withholding the grunts, sealing his blown lips. He wanted to run and he struggled a little more, violently, as a wild chained animal that wouldn’t accept being subdued by someone he’d consider inferior to him. No.

  Marco shook harder and Clarice moved away, watching the show. He yelled and, for having stood up, she noticed his right arm was no longer tied behind the beam, but it was crawling down, trying to reach his right pocket…

  … where she had left his phone.

  Marco’s forearm was completely sliced, the wire leaving deep lacerations all over the flesh, cutting it to the bone, painful tears from where blood ran and pooled around the wooden column and Marco.

  Stupid.

  Clarice advanced quickly against him and gave him a kick in the stomach, shoving his arm back to its original position and removing the phone from his pocket with the other hand as soon as she saw herself free from his movements. Marco shouted again. And again. And again.

  They weren’t yells of pain anymore, they were angry howls. Clarice removed the phone from his pocket and smiled, standing in front of him, this poor animal about to be taken down.

  “Who would you call? 911?” She threw the phone onto the floor and watched it as it bounced away, being only stopped by an old chest at a corner of that room. “Or Laura?”

  He finally came to his senses and lifted his eyes to her; he was now unrecognizable by all the rage boiling inside and the level of destruction and pain, his contorted face didn’t offer space for any more wounds or hurt. He relaxed his muscles and dropped his jaw slowly when he noticed Clarice’s countenance.

  “Laura couldn’t help you.”

  “What did you…”

  “Just told her the truth. She knows who you are, Marco. She’s always known. But, calm your soul, she’s never trusted you anyway.”

  “Despite the bitch you are,” he said through his teeth. “you’re smart… for a woman.”

  Clarice could’ve jumped against him once more, enraged, and dig her nails deep into his skin until he couldn’t handle the pain anymore and passed out. She could punch him until he withdrew all he had said or she could just shoot him as many times as necessary with that crossbow, trying not to hit any vital part so that he would keep on suffering for many hours until she finally released him from it.

  There was no point to that. Marco was merely a brat, a monster who had grown and learned how to be one, just another abusive man in formation, one who wouldn’t hesitate before killing another woman, just as he had killed his own mother. Clarice wouldn’t do anything else because life had already done him too much.

  She smiled at him and gave him her back, walking to the table where her flashlight and crossbow lay.

  “What now? Are you gonna kill me, fucking whore?”

  Clarice moved just her head, staring at him from above her shoulder.

  “No, Marco. Guilt will.”

  “At least… at least finish what you started.”

  Marco laughed, spilling blood as he did. Clarice tried to calculate the amount of blood he had already lost, and as far as she had paid attention, it had been a lot. He was damn strong, that she knew.

  At the same time, deep inside, she held the fear of Marco she also had. She was seeing, there, why Michelle feared for him, the real reason. That was a pain that not only hit her chest, but her belly and her guts. Matricide. Suicidal. Guilty. He was a monster and she had to treat him as such, even when she believed there could be something good in him at other moments. The warnings had been fateful, she could not get carried away.

  “No, Marco. You don’t deserve to die. Neither of you do. Now, be a good boy,” she came back down and produced, from her pocket, the bloodied dishcloth. She rolled in into a ball and stuffed it into Marco’s injured mouth. It was hard, at first, but as soon as she noticed his bestial eyes and recalled what he had said, she ignored the latent feelings and shove it further inside, though aware that could choke him to death. “And be quiet. I still have other things to work on.”

  Clarice took the disposable phone from the floor and turned it off, putting it back to her pocket. In that same way, she turned the flashlight off and filled with parsimony and ease, she walked out of the basement, wrapped by the sound of creaking wood under her feet and Marco’s muffled screams that, the higher she moved, more inaudible they became.

  Jason would soon arrive and she had to be ready.

  II

  She dove deeper inside the dark hat and the sunglasses. It might look cliché, but she didn’t want to be seen. Not by him.

  There was, also, a deep attachment to that piece of accessory. She liked the way the brims protected her from the alien eyes, she had gotten used to the way the simple adornment hid her from the curious eyes of people who’d ask her about bruises or tired eyes. Whenever she had that hat on, she didn’t need to come up with excuses or pretend it was all fine, she could just be whomever she truly was.

  At time, the long-brimmed hat reminded her of good times. Moments those that looked now like a distant and faded recollection, memories that were so fragile that barely seemed to exist. A honeymoon in a paradise island. Happy vacations at a distant beach. Stifled memories, now wrapped by a muddy present.

  It was her fault. She had to accept that. If only she weren’t so flawed, so insecure, so… fragile.

  She removed the thoughts from her mind as she noticed the man walking away from the hospital room. If there was something she truly hated, that something was the smell of hospitals. It could be just another trigger, something that sent her back to painful moments that, one way or another, had been caused by her. Smell that made her remember the list of excuses she had ready under her lips, varying from a simple gardening accident or maybe some slip on the stairs after mixing alcohol and Vicodin, although she had never actually taken such medicine.

  Except when she tried to forget life for good.

  Memories, she laughed to herself. When she was not struggling to forget it all, she struggled to recall moments in which she had known how to be happy. How to be free. If only she could select them, if only she could know what to remember…

  Unfortunately, that was not an option.

  Now that the room was free, she could walk in. She needed to go through the door before he saw her. Michelle’s message had been clear enough. Although it had passed from mouth to mouth until reaching her, Clarice knew she could trust what she heard, the same way she could trust the ones who delivered her the message. She was safe.

  In a unaware moment of the husband, Clarice snaked through the hallway and entered the room. She closed the door behind herself and took a deep breath, attempting to ignore the smell, now even stronger in the small place, besides the loud and lingering sounds of the machines, the beeping and the breathless sounds of the patient on the bed.

  Michelle.

  Clarice held the burn she felt in her face in and pretended toughness. She needed that stiffness more than ever, she was used to pretending everything was fine.

  It wasn’t.

  Her friend was lying down, still connected to life by a thread so fragile as her own sanity. Her head was wrapped in bandages, one of her legs had rods and metallic edges popping from it, while the other… was not even there. Her left arm was free, although covered by bandages and sutures, while the other was in a cast. Clarice had thought about the consequences of what happened, she only hadn’t imagined the state in which she would find her friend. That was cruel, that was a monstrosity. And there was nothing she could do.

  “Hey…” Michelle whispered, removed the oxygen mask with her free hand, barely bothered by the tube inserted in her arm.

  She was weak, just as a vase almost empty now, keeping itself up after having all the shards reunited and glued, with no possi
bilities of being the same ever again. Clarice wanted to stay there until she reached full recovery, but she couldn’t.

  At the exact moment, she heard about the accident, she dropped everything and went after the friend, who had request seeing her right when she regained conscience, something people didn’t even believe to be possible anymore.

  “It could be a quick lucidity,” a friend had told her when telling her about it, “a surge some patients have before… before dying.”

  And luckily, she was around. Well, actually, it had nothing to do with luck, it had been an agreement. Agreement that now would be settled anymore, probably ever. A promise of freedom frustrated by an accident and Clarice could only comprehend the accident itself. Michelle had confided to her once that she had attempted suicide a year before, slitting her wrists just to find out the way she had cut them wouldn’t be effective. Just to hear lectures from the husband as soon as she got better, accusing her of being a coward and abandoning him. She feared Michelle had jumped, that she had tried to die again, just now, when they were so close to be free from it all. Together they could.

  Clarice squeezed Michelle’s hand, carefully, trying to focus herself onto her friend’s eyes and not on the rest of the mess. Her eyes were still the same, having that unique sparkle that remained at each and every moment, including the anguishing ones.

  “I’m here.” Clarice whispered back, her wet eyes hidden behind the glasses.

  “I…” Michelle’s voice, weak, showed no signs she would get any better anytime soon. “I’m dying. I can feel it…”

  “Shh…you’ll be fine.”

  Michelle slowly leaned her head to one side and, then, to the other. No, she knew she wouldn’t be fine.

  “I needed… a friend. I needed you. I didn’t abandon you…”

  A tear rolled down from Michelle’s eye. And another followed. She carefully helped her friend, wiping her face. She wanted to do more, but her own tears were already running, no estimated time to stop.