Now she just needed the hardest part. Although Clarice knew she was already in a horrible condition after the argument with her husband, she still needed a few more details to her story. She held the gun tight by its barrel and closed her eyes, returning to that numb state she knew so well in which she pretended to be lying on her bed, in peace, while feeling the blows. She counted tot here and hit the back of the gun against her forehead that, already injured, didn’t need that much to go back into bleeding.
She dropped the gun, dirty with blood, and went back to running. Now, if no neighbor had woken up after the gunshots, they sure would as soon as they heard the car splash. She had to run. Bleeding, Clarice used her faked wound to spread her blood further, while running towards the kitchen door, which would take her to the back of that mansion. There, where she had a pretty view from the mountains, she would get inside the woods and move down the pines field, until she found the south road that would grant her the next step of her plan.
Just as Clarice stepped out of the house, she heard the boom. At first, she heard the wood cracking and, then, the sound that the car had sunk into the lake. She had no time left anymore. It would soon be morning and, in a matter of minutes, the police would be there.
Clarice fled, trying to remember the path she had memorized whenever she got away to practice her gardening and reap the fruits and leaves from her deadly nightshades that so carefully she took care of. That would be a long walk and she needed to save energy. She couldn’t forget, either, to bury the bag with the money and jewels. Her head burned, but she needed that state, she needed the weakness and wounds. At the end of the day, Nathan had been a great help.
Nathan. Now just a ghost, a demon from her past, a monster now forever asleep. She wouldn’t have to walk looking over shoulder anymore, or fearing any stupid reason could cost her a tooth or a rib. She didn’t need to fear each step she took, neither live in a bar-less prison horror. She didn’t need his tough and insensitive words no more, she didn’t need that psychological torture any longer.
She was in charge now.
III
The sound of the shattered mug was Clarice’s certainty.
Jason took a few steps back, trying to make sense out of the situation. His eyes, dazed, seemed to be making calculations and connections. He was coming to a conclusion, understanding the sequence of the facts, making sense of all he had lived and witnessed in the past days. He had finally understood the moral of the situation.
Michelle had been just a consequence; Clarice knew most of the nightshade’s side-effects were unknown, presenting thousands of possibilities according to her previous researches. Jason’s sightings were only a consequence of his heavy conscience, merely an obscure reflex of who he really was, of what he actually saw on people. He wasn’t the savior, he was the reason someone longed for saving.
And now, besides realizing who she was, he realized she knew well enough who he was, too. Perhaps not, but it wouldn’t take long to that.
“Who are you?” He muttered, still taken by surprise.
Clarice sipped again from her tea and placed the mug on the marble, staring at Jason without even hesitating.
“That does not really matter, Jason. What matters is if you know who you are. What you are.”
He shook his head nervously, he was confused, groggy.
“Where…” He coughed. “Where’s Marco?”
Clarice kept still, her hands planted on the counter while she observed Jason. The wind blew strong in the kitchen, entering the room now that the tarp was gone and flying away. It was extremely cold and the snowstorm was already out there, thick and milky curtains falling from the skies as in a snow globe.
She didn’t regret, though. The broken glass, Jason’s distractions during his crisis and hallucinations in not realizing that there was no husband on the loose, no psychopaths. There was only Clarice, slowly unravelling her plans all over the trust she had built between them.
“You know what I hate the most about hospitals?” She asked, keeping herself as a marble statue in the kitchen. “The excessive medicine they shove down your throat. Sometimes you don’t even realize the effect of it until adrenaline kicks in and it becomes stronger.”
Jason seemed groggier, although she knew it was too soon for her tea to be having an effect, even when she had triplicated the dosage for him.
“You poisoned me. You.”
She didn’t reply, just kept on observing.
“How did you…?”
“How did I know?” Clarice finished his sentence, after a long deep breath. “Alcohol is a terrible combination. I knew that, once at the hospital, you’d know. You’re smart, Jason. And that’s what frightens me.”
Jason moved further away, trying not to fall. Maybe his eyes were already blurry, perhaps he would be already listening to Michelle’s voice around himself. His breathing was becoming troubled and she didn’t know whether caused by hate or exhaustion.
“What do you want?” He growled, his voice cutting even the strong wind. “Is it vengeance? Is that it? For Michelle? What do you think I’ve done?”
“You know what you’ve done, Jason. You, with your predictable and violent mind, you who…”
Clarice stopped herself and jolted backwards when Jason jumped against the counter. He would have reached her even from the other side, hadn’t his legs faltered, making him fall over the stools, leaning on the counter in a last minute.
Watching Jason, who tried to bring himself up again, she circled the island and kept her distance, leaning against the dish cabinet. Jason got up, but could barely keep himself up straight. He shivered and trembled and she knew, in that moment, he was at her mercy.
“You want to avenge something that doesn’t even concern you.” He accused her, trying to focus Clarice’s face amongst the darkness of the kitchen.
“Revenge or justice, Jason?”
“That’s revenge. Justice does not…” He lost his balance again, relying on one of the stools while he tried to walk towards her. “Justice…”
“What is justice?” She asked, standing her ground, watching Jason drag himself across the kitchen. “A complaint to a cop who was supposed to help me, but who’s siding with my tormentor? Hearing I’m being hysterical? That it’s all my fault? Or the justice you gave Michelle when you killed her?”
“I didn’t kill her.”
“If you tell a lie often enough, you start believing it to be the truth. You know what amazes me? Your hypocrisy, Jason. Through everything, what amazed me from the beginning was your hypocrisy, the fear you could be as dissimulate as--”
“You?” Jason’s voice became a low and hoarse shout, almost a rough whisper through the freezing kitchen.
Clarice laughed. Not only because of the phrase, but by the depressing state in which he was, trying to keep his dominant male, protective of his home male even when the drugs and the tea were draining him of his energy. Hurt manhood, crunched ego. The perfect recipe for the rage of a man like Jason.
“I was scared, at the start. Scared you’d recognize me. That was the first time we saw each other, the first time I understood what Michelle said as soon as I looked you into your eyes.”
“The hospital.”
“Yes, Jason. The hospital. The day she died because of you. May I ask you something?”
He stood up and tried to stand still, keeping his ready-to-attack posture, stiff, almost as a Greek hero. Despite the posing, she could see his hole scaffolding ready to tumble down, giving away the effort he had put to keep himself on his feet.
“Go ahead.”
“Do you at least know the monster you are or do you really believe that nothing it ever your fault?”
Jason turned red and, leaning against one leg with more power, he thrusted again Clarice, trying to hit her with a punch or a wild embrace; she couldn’t tell, because before he could even finish his movement, he fell. If he had been a little faster, Jason would have hit her and brought her down alon
g, but Clarice was fast in noticing his trajectory and moved aside, leaving his body to meet the dish cabinet – that danced and tinkled, but kept steady.
Jason, however, fell to the floor and rolled to his back, facing the ceiling and trying to breath.
Clarice simply watched, trying to calculate how long it would take him to give up fighting and give himself to the forced sleep. It could take a while, so she pulled one of the fallen stools and sat at the counter, willing to finish her tea while treating him as her private circus main attraction. It would be a long night.
She was still putting her gloves on when she heard Jason wake up. Outside, the wind blew hard, the sounds like thunder while the ice kept on gathering and piling up. It was not as heavy as before, the snow had taken a moment, but the storm Jason had waited so much for had arrived at last.
She turned, hearing the cries of the wood when Jason moved on the chair, still sleepy. Clarice zipped the glove up and put the coat’s sleeve on top of it, giving her attention back to him.
Jason didn’t seem content. She just couldn’t say his unhappiness lingered on the way she portrayed herself now, ready to leave, or on the shining gun over the armchair in front of him or on the fact that the house was almost completely dark, except for the candles had spread throughout the house that didn’t offer that much illumination. In her adventure, she had even found a beautiful metal and crystal candleholder, which she left at the glass accent table near the chair Jason was tied on. Phantasmagoric.
“It was not my intention.” She said when as she sat on the armchair, facing Jason while crossing her legs. “But I find it a nice touch, candle lights.”
“You’re crazy.” He mumbled, trying to lift and keep the head up.
“As if I’m not exhausted of hearing that. Another typical thing of your kind.”
Indeed, it hadn’t been totally Clarice’s idea. Jason was still passed out when the lights suddenly went out and she realized the whole area should be in darkness. Nothing could ever be more conducive. Probably some tree or broken cable. She didn’t care about it and thought that the change of set was particularly interesting, although the house was cooling down, too.
“Why don’t you just shoot me?” Jason said, his head slightly tilting back as he watched Clarice.
“I’m not here to kill you, Jason. I said what I want is justice.”
She put on a cynical smirk and her head slipped sideways. Jason was still sleepy, but not for having just woken up from his passing out. He was under it. The way he moved, agog, gave away his state of mind. Clarice suspected him to have been seeing her in a twisted way, maybe even side by side with Michelle’s ghost.
“You brought her here.” Jason shouted, talking to a blank space next to them.
Clarice didn’t even flinch. He was hallucinating, his eyes blinked fast and he was sweating. Delirium, hallucinations, tachycardia. She had given him all the symptoms of living in a harmful relationship on a platter. Literally. She knew how it felt to live in such state of panic, anxiety, always on the edge of real madness. And it was amazing that, while she had to use some drugs to get such an effect on him, all he needed was simple words and a little bit of cynicism. Not that he was smarter or stronger, he just knew how to use those words in a way Clarice whished never to learn. She didn’t want to become the thing that for so long had oppressed her, she just wanted to give him a taste of what it was like.
“Is she here? Michelle?”
Jason showed her the same cynical smile he had before, moving the corner of his lips, still trying to look at Clarice in a superior way from below his sweaty, matted and dirty hair.
“You think yourself too clever.” He purposely whispered and Clarice knew it to be an attempt to piss her. “You all think you’re smarter than you really are.”
“You all?” Clarice lifted her shoulders. “Women, you mean?”
She slid her finger across the short barrel of her Walther, which rested in her lap. It was just for the effect, she repeated to herself.
“Yes.” He went back on talking that same way, with his grotesque whispers. Suddenly, he turned aside, howling. “And you shut up! You’re dead!”
Clarice observed, finding in that delirious state some kind of fun, some relishing. She waited, allowing him to give in to his own madness. Behind him, the fireplace sparkled and sizzled, trying to warm her.
“You are dead.” He told himself, lowering his head with his eyes strongly shut. “She’s dead. She’s dead. She’s dead.”
He kept on repeating the sentence to himself, in whispers, his gentle desperation delighting Clarice. It’s hard to realize you are hallucinating when you believe in what you see. It’s hard to save yourself from darkness when they are so close to you, when they choke you. It’s impossible to accept reality when the illusion feels so sweet. She knew it all, she had lived that for oh, such a long time.
“Are you cold, Jason?” Clarice asked, and she knew her own intentions. “Are you feeling yourself slowly freeze, so helpless, so unprotected?”
“Shut up. Shut up. You’re not real. She’s not real. This... this is not…”
“Are the devils still locked inside, Jason? Or are you seeing them, too?”
“Shut up”, he went back to repeating it, his voice gaining volume and hints of desperation at every minute. “Shut up, Michelle. Clarice. Shut up. Shut…”
“Or are you afraid this is all just another nightmare? Suddenly, you might wake up on the woods, alone, or strangling a woman… How does it make you feel, Jason? Good? Confident? Does it cover the hole left by the disregard of your mother?”
“Shut up!” He yelled and, in the violent movement of his body, Jason even managed to drag the chair a few inches. Then he laughed, leaving his body relaxed again. “It was a smooth touch, the soaked room.”
“Was it, Jason? Was it me or Michelle? How could you tell what was real from what was not?”
“You know.” He said, his face already losing part of the freshly-acquired confidence. “You know what happened.”
“I know what you told me. What was real Jason? What was lived? What was a hallucination?”
“Shut up. Shut up, shut up… You’re not… You are real. You are… No, not you.”
Jason’s mental confusion was funny to watch, although Clarice wasn’t showing emotions. Her green eyes sparkled under the candle lights, trembling with the same intensity, the same way. She kept still, cold as the gun that lay in her hands.
“The dog was real.” Jason was talking to himself, in a low voice, trying not to be heard. “Marco… The diary was real. The bathroom, the dog. The glass… the glass broke, the glass was real, it… it was all real, I…”
“Dog?”
“Stop.” And, for the first time, she heard the begging and the pleading in his voice. Clarice, though, didn’t consider it convincing. “Please, stop. Shut up. You cannot be real. Clarice is not you. You are not…”
“The idealized Clarice or the real one? Who am I, Jason? A memory of your wife? Thus, those recent conflicts? Am I real?”
She felt he wanted his hands free, hands that were still tried behind the chair, on the same tie that kept his arms still with his body. He wanted his hands free so that he could scratch his head, hit them against it, maybe try to choke her and prove she was not real, perhaps even try to strangle himself to try a little reality. Maybe he would decide to cut himself, too. What was real? How could he know? His brain was marinated in deadly nightshade juice, offered in so many ways Clarice couldn’t even remember them all, and now everything felt like a pretty illusion in the shape of violence.
“Clarice… No, no… No!” He sighed, pleading, doubting, trying to put his ideas together. Clarice couldn’t understand Jason’s goals from his mumbles. “Shut up, please… shut up. I need… I need to breathe.”
“‘I love him and, more than never, I know that’.” Clarice repeated as if declaiming a poem. “‘I’m getting crazy. Maybe I am crazy’.”
“What
… shut up.” He raised his head and faced Clarice again, his eyes wet and red and looking at her, confused, trying to understand. Or remember. “Shut up… Michelle?”
“‘Now I’m not even aware of my sanity anymore. People call me crazy. They say I’m no longer who I once was.’”
“Stop it.”
“‘I'd give up everything. I'd even give my faith up. I just want back that same feeling from before; not today’s, with its taste of iron and pain, heavy and violent’.”
“Stop it.”
“This last one I memorized, Jason. Do you know why?”
“Shut up…”
“Do you know what blood tastes like in your mouth?”
“Fucking shut up!”
Jason’s voice rumbled and Clarice felt it like a blow, an impact, a roar.
“‘I just want him back before I go crazy once and for all’.” Clarice continued, concealing her scare towards Jason’s reaction. “How does it feel, Jason? Driving a woman literally to insanity, making her believe that her only way out is to be loved by you? How is it to destroy all her bonds, all her bases, all her basic structures in life just to make you feel better, in charge, like the dominator? Is it like getting high? A primal, irrational instinct?”
“What do you want from me?” He asked in a sigh, just so that he could raise his head and shout: “WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU WANT FROM ME?”
“The truth, Jason. Tell me the truth.”
“The truth…” He went back to leaning his head back, the smile crossing his face sneeringly. “The truth is that you are just another little bitch with a lot of free time to spare.”
“Tell me the truth, Jason.”
“The truth is that all you know is to drain, suck, take advantage of us, use us. We are like steps to you and when we rebel ourselves, you get hurt, you hurt, you cry to each other. You are petty.”
The Woman Hidden Page 38
