The Woman Hidden

by Lucas Mattias

  “I wasn’t drugged enough, Clarice.”

  “Enough for me to subdue you.”

  “Enough for me to see how far you’d take this game.” He let a laugh out, followed by an angry and powerful shout. “Who do you think you are, Clarice? If that’s your real name.”

  He was too close now, she could feel that stale and foggy breath, with a slight touch of nicotine and tea in the back. She could feel the warm puffs hitting his face while he spoke, she could already feel his body.

  Clarice was against the wall, pressed between Jason and the glass. He, like a thirsty tiger, sneaked until the finally blocked her, their bodies touching, his nose almost touching hers now, even if for that he had to curve himself down a little for being a few inches taller.

  And such closeness disgusted her, more than that kiss ever had. The same way she had killed him she moved on, pretending everything was okay, that everything was under control. Jason was still stronger than her, with his large size and broad shoulders; she knew the strength he had in his hands as well as his abilities to prevent bruises and injuries from coming up when beating a woman. The only screaming difference now being that he wouldn’t have to put on an effort to hide the struggle signs. And that was what she feared.

  “That is my name.” She replied, keeping her voice steady after all.

  “This… this plot you’ve created? I must applause. Standing applause, Clarice. The killer husband, the wife’s ghost? King would be jealous. What about Kubrick?”

  Clarice curved her lips into a proud smile, despite the tension she allowed herself to show him that.

  “The damsel in distress and no memories, the haunted widower… as soon as I put an end to it, Clarice, I swear I will make it all into a great bestseller.”

  “And you, as usual, will go out on top.”

  “Tell me, then, Clarice, who’s in charge right now? Who’s on top? Who’s the man in here, Clarice?”

  She lifted her shoulders.

  “If you could, please, show me, I swear I’d be--”

  Jason’s hand, flattened, grabbed Clarice’s face and pushed her head against the glass, the transparent plate trembling from up to down with the impact. Clarice felt her head spin after the hit, a dry buzzing echoing in her skull while she tried to focus her eyes again to see Jason, who seemed to be away…

  No, he wasn’t.

  He grabbed her by the neck with both his hands and, still pressing her against the glass, he lifted Clarice, and he lifted her until he was at his height, eye to eye. He approached more, putting his disgusting body against hers, aware of Clarice’s horror, aware that such gesture, such action would make her more nervous, more disturbed. She knew he wouldn’t think twice before threatening her, he wouldn’t think twice before trying to rape her. What scared her the most, actually, was that Jason hadn’t done any of that so far, after so many weeks together and her presenting herself so lonely and vulnerable. There lay the next weapon to be used.

  “Can you feel it, Clarice? My body? Is that what you wanted, uh? A taste of what Michelle had, knowing exactly what she went through? You seemed intelligent for someone with such suicidal and masochist tendencies like that.”

  “I… di… yo…”

  She couldn’t speak, his hands were squeezing too hard, his chest against hers didn’t make it any easier. She couldn’t scream, she had nobody to run to or ask for help, she was by herself. And he was getting into that old mind game of his, already trying to make her discredit herself, trying to raise havoc and conflicts. This time, no, she would die before she allowed another man to walk into her head and make from it his own private universe. She would let it happen.

  “You can try to convince yourself you’re a vigilante, Clarice, who came here to do your little revenge act, trying to destroy my safeties, ending my life slowly… But you know you were tempted. You know you desire me, you know, deep down, you need me. And that’s how you women work, isn’t it? Jumping from arms to arms, looking for the one who could best provide?”

  Clarice struggled, her heels hitting hard against the glass she was well aware would give in. She had to hit him, she needed to…

  “I could offer you all of that, Clarice. You just have… You just have to accept me, you just have to taste me, you just…”

  Clarice, who tried to put his hands away by using hers, drove all her strength for a last salvation moment. She let go off Jason’s wrists, something that added more pressure to her neck, and dug all possible nails into his face. In the jump, Jason tried to get away, but it only made the wounds to tear easier, increasing its width and the intensity of the pain.

  Free from the squeeze, she took her hands to her neck, trying to recover the air. She only had time to inhale twice before she felt Jason grabbing her again, this time from behind, throwing her to the floor, against the coffee table.

  Clarice’s back hit the table’s structure and she saw – and heard – the metallic candleholder swing on the glass with the living flames still slowly burning. The blow had hurt as much as Jason’s choking attempt and Clarice had her body too protected to suffer with the abrasions that could have come from the floor, so she used one hand to support herself and tried to get up again…

  Only to feel the tip of Jason’s boot hit her in full at the stomach, once more stretching her body out on the bear fur rug.

  “Who’s in control now, Clarice?”

  Nathan. Nathan’s voice came to her mind and Clarice asked herself if she had, by any chance, taken a wrong tea. No, it was just a memory that came to bother, playing a prank, trying to play a game. Her memory, dazed by the hits and the traumas, associating the taste of blood to pains and past moments, moments Clarice would be extremely happy if she could ever be able to forget them. Just then she recalled the moments she envied the idealized Clarice, the Clarice she had taken to the Flyces’ house. That Clarice didn’t remember and would probably live a calm life, recovering from a stupid trauma without knowing specifics about her own past. She, although free from Nathan forever and, soon enough also free from Jason, would still have to live with all those evils through eternity, until the day they stopped making any sense.

  When Jason clasped her hair and dragged her away from the sofa and the glass table, she recalled Nathan again, and the love he had for her hair, a love that was so deep he didn’t mind plucking tuffs of it out from her scalp and spread them across the house during his rage fits.

  Jason, then, sat on Clarice’s body, this time holding her wrists by her head, firmly holding her against the ground and preventing her from scratching him again.

  “I have the control, Clarice.”

  She gave up on fighting. She would get nothing from spending her energies that way, not when she still had the rest of the dawn to break Jason apart. She calmed herself and took a deep breath a few times, ignoring Jason body humping against hers, ignoring his lips running across her face while his blood dripped onto her skin. She knew he was doing that on purpose, perhaps even fooling himself on the hopes that Clarice, at the end of the day, would realize all she wanted was a long night of wild sex so that she could leave and never return.

  She calmed down and waited, trying to conceal the shudders and the ire, trying to compartmentalize hate inside of her, trying to run to that place she would always go whenever Nathan humiliated her, hit her or even raped her. What had happened every time that, according to Nathan, they had made love before her husband’s death. She no longer desired him, no longer wanted him, but he’d always find a way to tranquilize her and force whatever he wanted, using all strength necessary.

  She slowed her breath to its minimal intensity, lowering all the sounds around and imagined the beautiful beaches from South America, picturing the summer, her own freedom. Jason’s lips ran through her neck, her face, her lips. And she waited.

  “There you have, the real Jason.”

  He laughed. And guffawed. Droplets of his saliva were sprayed onto Clarice’s face. The evil laugh filled every corne
r of the house, hysterically, frenetically, possessed.

  “I’ve always been here.”

  “No!” She afforded, for the first time, to let her feelings pour out. “You have never been truly here, you have never allowed yourself to that, Jason. You concealed, you…”

  “Ah,” He faked the pity under his sigh. “Are you upset, Clarice? You played the same game, the woman hidden within. You broke into my house, you convinced Marco and I…”

  He reached for her mouth, covering it with his hand, muffling her voice and the sounds, drawing on excessively and unnecessary strength. Still holding Clarice’s mouth and face with his wide hand, Jason pulled himself up and pulled her against him, her head against his chest, still keeping her silent in a way Clarice knew by heart. With careful moves, he dragged her to the fireplace. At some point, Jason stopped from moving and leaned down, forcing Clarice to do the same, completely surrendered to his desires.

  When Jason let her go, imposing her to sit at the very same chair she had kept him tied before, Clarice saw he had her gun in hands. And he pointed it to her. She kept herself sat and still, quiet, facing the gun barrel.

  “Where’s Marco?” He asked, waving the gun to her face.

  “Dead.”

  “Bullshit!”

  Clarice shrugged and curved her lips, sarcastically.

  “Believe whatever you want to, Jason. Allow yourself to feel, now you’re free again.”

  He smiled and, still pushing the gun against her, Jason put his free hand on his own face, feeling the scratched, wiping the blood and sweat away, bringing himself to peace again. She was sure that, on his mind, the picture of his dead son hovered around, haunting him more than Michelle had ever done.

  “I’ve always been myself, Clarice. I was here, and ready…”

  “Ready to what, Jason?”

  “Ready to love again, ready to shelter you. I offered you my house, my attention, my cares…”

  Clarice laughed and her laughter bothered Jason to the point of him moving against her again, one hand on her shoulder, while the other pressed the gun against her cheek.

  “Liar. How can you be so sly, Clarice? People might hear, people might believe that…”

  “That you are a sadist? All you ever do is to rotten everything that exists around you, Jason, trying to bring everyone down to the same shitty life you have.”

  “I gave you my tenderness and that’s how you answer.”

  “You gave the same tenderness to Michelle and what happened to her, Jason? You don’t even know how your mind works and I’m not the one who’s going to teach you.”

  “Oh, yeah?” He pressed the gun harder, Clarice’s pale skin slowly turning red. “And how does my mind work?”

  She smiled.

  “You nurture, you provide, you shelter. And then you take it all away just to make yourself sure. To show you are God, that you’d be all and everything I need and nothing else. You’re an alienator, Jason, an executioner.”

  “How could you say that, Clarice? After all?”

  If she didn’t know any better, she would have said he was in the middle of a crisis of conscience. Despite the bleak scene, she could feel sarcasm in his voice, perhaps even a little bit of unawareness, but it all was part of that game, a game that was as familiar to her as were those scars in her body.

  “Haven’t wondered thus far the reason I faked amnesia?”

  Jason moved away and sat by the armchair Clarice had been before, the gun always pointed at her, his finger right on the trigger.

  “Tell me.”

  This time, he showed no disturbances or discomfort. His stern eyes shone, reeking of stiffness and power, as if her actually had the power in the room.

  “I could have ended Martha’s life way before, could’ve taken her house and introduced myself as the new neighbor, the distant niece, a typical messy rom-com cliché…” She sighed and tossed her hair back, freeing the face from them. “But you wouldn’t have fallen for that, Jason. You’d move on.”

  “But you seem to know me so well.” He replied, skeptically caustic.

  “You would never fall for the hot hunter girl next door, Jason. Because you’re the hunter. You need to feel you’re the savior, the hero who saves the damsel from distress and brings her home, because that’s the best way to subdue her, to take from her all her shields, leaving her to your will.”

  Jason chuckled as if the conversation pleased him, as if he was listening to a frivolous narrative and pretended to have fun with it.

  “It came to a moment, however, in which you felt more saved than saving. And then I had to take my own actions. Those scars are going to take a while to disappear, Jason, but oh, were they worth it.”

  His eyes ran to Clarice’s wrists, covered by the dark leather gloves, but he had gotten that message clear.

  “You faked suicide just…”

  “So you’d open up. So you’d confess. It should be a part of your game of seduction and domination. If you look closely, wasn’t that the reason you kissed me in first place? That was the reason you spent so many nights awake and trying to protect me. In an immutable setting, how long would have it taken you to show your true colors?”

  “You just…” He guffawed again, and Clarice wasn’t sure if it meant he was vulnerable or bothered, or maybe both. “You have a beautiful imagination.”

  “No, Jason, I just know. You didn’t need to hold me in, because I offered you a scenario in which I should be locked up. You didn’t need to shape my mind and cast me away from my possible securities because I offered you a woman who no longer had anybody. You fell so perfectly into it, you didn’t even realize. You saw in me the perfect surrogate for Michelle because I gave you the least variables, I gave you all you wanted the most.”

  His lips shrunk into a thin and rigid, frozen line. He wasn’t smiling anymore, Jason’s eyes didn’t sparkle anymore, although the fireplace flames reflected a dark and obscure shade amidst the darkness.

  “Tell me, Jason. How was it to feel, in these past weeks, what Michelle felt? What I felt? What thousands of women feel out there in the hands of men like you?”

  “Shut up.”

  “Abuse is a cycle. It starts when you believe you have found everything you need. Then comes the doubt, the fear between the freedom and the imprisonment of a relationship. And then you realize you want to dive in deep, because that is your savior. And that’s when the suffering starts. You think you’re going insane, when the one you love tells you all that you see does not exist. You start to lose yourself, to drown, considering death, dwelling on the despair of loneliness. You start losing your own essence… How is it to wake up in a place without even knowing how you got there, Jason?”

  “You’re horrible.”

  “And then you see a light. A silver lining, I should say. That is your savior, the person who took you from the darkness… wasn’t that the way you saw me?” She smiled again, her emotionless glare onto him. “And even the good moments can be touched by darkness, by the violence, by that psychological abuse that shrinks you, that hurts you deeper than a punch, it drives you crazy. And you think of dying.”

  “Shut up!” He yelled, raising the gun and placing it inches away from Clarice’s face.

  “Grief is such a beautiful word.” She muttered, unshaken by his gesture or by the disturbed state in which he was, angry for being so exposed, so naked. “It’s not only a beautiful word as it is an essential process. We all must go through it, Jason. I myself have been through it many times, I’ve seen myself go through the grief of my own. And I had my share of grievance when Michelle died. The only light amongst my darkness, my only hope. But… what about you?”

  “God only knows what I went through in grievance.”

  “What a bullshit.” Clarice said in giggles. “You needed to go through grief, Jason, so that finally you could move on. And that was my role. That’s what I came here for.”

  “No. You came here to give me a little taste of wh
at, according to you, it meant to be in your shoes. In Michelle’s shoes.”

  “That too.”

  Wind broke into the house again, the candles glimmering for a while, increasing the orange shade that embraced Clarice’s face, obfuscating even the glow from her eyes.

  “You needed to go through it all, Jason. The denial of death, the anger, bargaining for life, the depression… you’ve never been through the grief, you were merely in a dormant state, awaiting the next victim. You are incapable of love, Jason. You are incapable of feeling, incapable of understand what love is. And you’ll always be.”

  Jason jumped out of the armchair and churned the gun again in a clean movement, only stopping when the pistol shaft hit Clarice, birthing a vertical slit on the right side of her face, right on the cheekbone. Clarice’s blood rolled down and he held the gun firmly, the gun between Clarice’s magical green eyes.

  She didn’t flinch, she didn’t feel it. She just felt the cold wind against her face, while the flames flickered, trying to enlighten the place, trying to warm the room and those bodies, both cold and damaged.

  Jason pressed the gun harder against her face, panting while his dark and devilish eyes faced her from above. Clarice’s chair slightly leaned back, the heat of the fire warming up her backs and her hands that, now, were behind herself, waiting for Jason’s next moves.

  “You just forgot one stage of grief, Clarice.”

  “Oh, did I?”

  “Acceptance. Accepting it’s the end and that you must move on.”

  Jason pressed the gun much harder.

  Jason pulled the trigger.

  Clic.

  Jason pulled it again. And again.

  The gun wasn’t loaded.

  Clarice smiled and raised her legs between them, pushing Jason to the armchair again. Jason fell, losing the gun again. When he put himself on his feet, as a drunk man trying to stand, and moved against Clarice, she was already up, smiling under the candlelight.