The Mariner

by Ade Grant

“Is that how you feel? Nothing left to do but sink?”

  [The Mariner] looked out the window to the vast crowds below, pushing to and fro in the busy streets, and wondered if he had the energy to explain it all over again. Could voicing his corrupted mind, his stinking foetid brain, really bring any change other than further shame?

  He wanted to leave and ignore the malfunctions inside his head, but he’d promised to try, he’d promised. So instead he took a deep breath, and allowed it all to come spilling out.

  [The Mariner] lay in bed, awake despite the early hours. Not the early hours of horror films, usually around the one-thirty mark, but the genuine early hours. The sort that make you wince and want to poke out your eyes at a glimpse of the clock. Hours beyond three and before six. Those are true witching hours, the horrifying ones that bring despair to the insomniac.

  His wife lay beside him, breathing gently. She moved slightly in her slumber and murmured. A stranger might take this as a sign of waking, but he’d been married to her for years and spouses learn their partner’s sleeping patterns better than their own. She was in deep, as far into the Land of Nod as he was out of it. Tonight, for him, that land was off-limits. He was barred.

  [The Mariner] stared at the ceiling whilst idly fidgeting with his cock, trying to lure his mind into erotic fantasy, rather than dwelling upon concerns. But he failed. The pecker failed to peck. Concerns won the night.

  Work was one of them. Not far off, the hours would slide by with the resistance of oil. Soon he’d be presented with what he regarded the ‘early morning apocalypse’, when no matter what the day promised, he would wake consumed by a terror of it. Only in films did people open they eyes, yawn and greet the morn with a smile upon their face. Real people kept theirs tightly shut, hoping and praying and pleading against the mechanical protests of their alarm clock. A miniature CIA agent, employing torture of the most persistent kind. There must be some mistake. There had to be. Could life truly be this dreadful?

  The morning mourning would pass (given enough coffee), but the depression would not relent. It would look over every thought that passed through his mind like a conveyor belt before a quality inspector, twisting and morphing. A tabloid stance on every topic. Always the worst. Always the darkest.

  Crippling. Even now, in the dead of night when there was no social interaction to be had, his chest hurt from the tightness of a panic attack. Day in and day out he felt as if he were on top of a roller-coaster about to plunge from an enormous height. Except that moment never came. He was left with the expectant feeling and never the release. It made him want to scream, but of course he never did.

  Well... almost never.

  Sometimes, on nights like this, he stuffed a towel into his mouth so sound couldn’t escape and howled. For a second, as he expelled every cubit of air in his lungs till they shook, he’d believe the pain had escaped, that perhaps he’d birthed the horrible monster inside him, but it was all a cruel trick. It was still there, deep down. It always was.

  His psychotherapist had suggested that all the problems stemmed back to childhood. Apparently all the problematic behaviour could be traced to those early days. Not a difficult child, but perhaps one a tad too quiet, too withdrawn, too needy for approval. And perhaps that had been caused by the incident with the pillow?

  Well, whatever the cause, be it parental influence, chemical imbalance, or just a sharp knock to the head, what’s done was done. He was stuck with a mind that viewed the world through a tint.

  3:47

  Time steadily progressed and still sleep eluded him. Once again he tried to fantasise in the hope that an orgasm would release enough endorphins to end this rut. Like any man, he conjured images pornographic in style, lacking setting or plot. Simple, functional and explicit. Fantastically pliable and sluttish women entertained, dragging his mind away from the cycle of anxiety and into lust.

  And then, just as things were looking up, an image he spent his waking life trying to avoid popped in. Her, his wife, with him. That arsehole who’d managed to plague his insecurities ever since he’d blundered into their lives five years ago. Martin Marling, his wife’s temporary darling. And the man he wanted to kill.

  But kill him he couldn’t, because he’d never met the man. He’d never attended one of his wife’s work socials (perhaps if he had, they never would have begun flirting and the whole horrible situation could have been avoided), and thus had never so much as laid eyes on her supervisor. Martin Marling. World-class shit.

  Her indiscretions, three indiscretions, had occurred years ago. A brief trio of secret liaisons at her supervisor’s flat, all occurring over a short period of time and followed up with a tearful confession. It almost tore their marriage apart. Accusations were made, regretful words said, but ultimately he forgave her. What else could he do? He loved her. Love is like that; it’s not the all-or-nothing commodity, as seen in films and teen-dramas, easily gained and just as easily lost. Once love’s worked its way inside you, no amount of pain will tear it loose.

  Forgiveness doesn’t bring peace though, and he’d spent many months obsessing after the fact. However, time heals a clean wound, and as far as he was concerned it were disinfected and sewn up tight. That was until fifteen months later, when she’d tearfully confessed what was about to appear in the Metro newspaper.

  Martin Marling had been a serial seducer, taking advantage of countless employees over a period of seven years. While this may be little more than an abuse of power, another offence had surfaced that was less forgiveable. Marling had hidden a camera and recorded the trysts. His partner, a poor creature deceived for many years, found the stack of dvds in the dark recesses of the loft, discs containing hours of footage, films and photos starring unwitting co-workers. Fortunately, the horrified woman reported the matter to the police.

  Fired, arrested for voyeurism, sentenced and put on the sex offenders register, Marling was sent to prison for fourteen months. This, [the Mariner]’s wife confessed, was about to hit the papers.

  He should have been supportive. Outwardly he was, showing compassion, sympathy, even anger when the moment warranted it, but inside all he felt was a raw terror. Because there was no way [the Mariner] could live with this, the damage was too deep and the implications simple. From that day forth, suicide was inevitable.

  Later, when he would recount this to his new therapist whilst looking out over the streets of London, [the Mariner] would feel ridiculous, knowing there was no rational connection between cause and conclusion. Yet rationality couldn’t change his programming. Not even medication (and there had been a lot of medication) could do that.

  He got up, delicately sliding out the bed so not to wake her and crept beyond their bedroom. Stairs protested, calling out to his sleeping partner, but they’d shared house and mortgage for seven years and he knew just how the sound travelled. His secrecy was safe; she was lost to the world.

  The living-room housed their single desktop computer, and he slid into the cold swivel chair, blowing on his hands to warm them up. With a whir, the computer hummed into life, illuminating his face with small green and blue flashing LED’s. They alternated, giving the impression of a tiny police-car, braying its alarm at the midnight offence.

  Not much later, he was online, fingers tapping away at the search bar. The phrases were long established, and the first returns were like familiar friends, if unwholesome in their company.

  HIDDEN SEX PHOTO

  The list of returned sites spiralled, hundreds of web addresses dedicated to housing images and videos, each supplied by their users. He glanced down the list, selecting not the first, second or third, but the fourth link. He’d already explored the others thoroughly, it was time to move onto the next.

  Suddenly the screen was packed with images of women in various states of sexual arousal. Some pictures were blurry and remote, taken from some distance away, others had tell-tale signs of being hidden in cupboards or air-vents. Inverse fish eye lenses, distorting the image as if
through a crystal ball, betrayed the lengths some had gone in recording their liaisons, installing tiny cameras in light fixtures and lamps. A voyeur’s heaven.

  He used the navigation system to browse, ignoring the ‘girl on girl’, ‘gay’ and ‘group’ sections, instead going for the staple ‘straight’ tab. It returned 10,217 results.

  60 per page.

  171 pages.

  This was going to take some time.

  With a hollow and floaty feeling in his gut, somewhere between shame and fear, he began to browse, studying each image carefully. Sometimes the evaluation could be instantaneous. Was her hair black? No? Move on. Other pictures, usually the blurred or obscured, would take longer to assess. Bottoms would have to be scrutinised, vaginas compared, breasts studied. Each time the same question was asked. Was that his wife?

  Given the few facts he knew of her encounter, he knew to dismiss photos plainly taken anywhere outside of a bedroom. Shots in woods could be skipped. Those in offices offered no interest. This was a search, a quest for answers, and he put his mind to it with the vigour of the obsessed.

  When asked what the point of such a search was, as his therapist would later do, he’d answer ‘just so he’d know’. It was a paranoia, lingering in his brain like a foul smelling tumour, a suspicion that Marling had uploaded pictures of his dearest for the whole world to see. In court, the man had sworn he hadn’t, but that struck [the Mariner] as obvious. Who would admit to violating his victims more than he’d already been shown to do?

  But the internet was vast, and the perpetrators of this crime many. So he’d began searching for signs of the recording’s existence. Night after night he clicked, images passing before him like a game-show conveyor-belt of prizes; a blow-job here, an ass-fucking there. But for all the copulations revealed, he never saw her. Sometimes there would be a likeness, and his heart would seize, mouth run dry, stomach flip as if on a plane plunging from the air. Fingers trembling, he’d select the thumbnail image, maximising to study in close-up. There would be the woman, body bent in throws of passion, face similar in hinted structure, yet partly obscured by dark locks. Beneath some brief description of the photo, generously supplied by the author, usually instantly confirming the miss-match. ‘Me fucking my girlfriend Jessie’. ‘Ploughing a slut I met in Portugal’.

  Not once had he found a picture of her, yet still he searched. And whilst he did, he wondered what his reaction would be if he finally did find one. Would he show her? Would he call the police? Or would he simply save the image and keep it for himself? There was no way to know until he found it. No way to predict.

  And as he did with increasing frequency, he grew hard as he browsed the images. Slowly, as one hand searched, the other drifted down, fondling his member. With greater boldness he massaged himself, allowing his attention to linger longer on each passing photo, fantasy overtaking intent, for he no longer dreaded discovering a photo, but longed for it. Each degraded woman would be substituted for her in his mind’s eye. Repetition became tradition. Conditioned to love the pain.

  No more! Please, no more! But there was no looking away. There was no stopping his hands. Trapped in an endless search, locked in place by his lust and obsession. He could feel his balls stirring, and his pace slowed. He couldn’t let it end yet, not when there were more pictures to see. Not when there was a chance of seeing her. So the ritual continued, horror and lust entwined, a multitude of dark-haired women degraded. He loved them all because each was her, and every betrayal was his own.

  Sometime later, the fantasy reached its peak.

  Soon the images were gone, browser closed, computer powered down. All that was left of the search was the spent semen on his chest, clinging to him like blood to the Scottish King’s hands. The brief, yet powerful, lusts were also banished, though they left a residue of intense guilt.

  And still the paranoia remained.

  Was it not enough to endure the degradation? Was his mind not satisfied at betraying the woman he’d married and loved? Why make him go through all that, to spend himself in a moment of madness and agony, only to have him back where he began, unable to sleep and haunted by the notion of inadequacy?

  [The Mariner] put his head into his hands and groaned. There was only one way he was going to get rid of these thoughts for the night. Masturbation, just didn’t cut it.

  He turned his head towards the kitchen, already knowing the process. First the whiskey, then the knife. The incisions would be small, just enough for the pain to drive these horrors from his mind so he could find sleep. The cuts would be subtle, the minimum price for his mind’s corruption.

  [The Mariner] quietly crept into the kitchen and did his work.

  Thirty minutes later, he fell asleep.

  Twenty minutes beyond that, the alarm-clock sounded.

  “Do you cut yourself often?”

  “Yes.”

  “Any other coping strategies?”

  “I drink. I think I might be an alcoholic.”

  “You think you might be? How much is a drink?”

  “A few shots when I get depressed. Enough to numb things.”

  “That’s hardly alcoholism, no more than most Brits at least.”

  [The Mariner] didn’t respond, staring at his book avoiding eye contact.

  “What’s really upsetting you?” His patient remained silent, perplexed at the stupidity of the question. “A lot of other people, faced with the news of their wife’s betrayal would get angry and move on. Why haven’t you? Why do thoughts of this incident result in so much self-resentment?”

  He took a deep breath, uncomfortable debating the peculiarity of his psychology. “Psychoanalysis suggested that it’s all down to damage as a child. I was taught to blame everything on myself. So that’s what I do now; I internalise every event. A form of eternal punishment.”

  “Isn’t that a bit of a cop-out? To blame your parents?”

  The bluntness came as a shock. He stammered for a moment, struggling for a reply. “I don’t blame them, they explain me. To explain doesn’t mean to excuse.” He shifted, uncertain. “Don’t you agree?”

  “We’ve just met, I can’t possibly comment, but I find that nothing is permanent. Take your alcoholism. I’m pretty sure you’re not an alcoholic at all, and you only drink the way you do because you’ve convinced yourself you’re dependant. Believe me, if you were physically dependant it would be a lot more than just a few shots! And you certainly wouldn’t have made it here today! I’ve had patients who drink a bottle of whiskey a day look like a corpse. No, it’s all in your head and everything in there can be undone.”

  It sounded like the same promises he’d heard a thousand times before, and [the Mariner] nodded idly, allowing his interest to float back to the window and the Londoners below. There was no doubt the therapist with his warm eyes and round summer face meant every word, but truth be told, [the Mariner]’s heart wasn’t in it. He’d been through enough of these treatments to know nothing could be done. The past could not be changed.

  The book slipped in his hands and gave a dull thud as it hit the carpet. He reached down, pausing as the bright cover caught his eye. It was a slave-ship, probably the Neptune, crashing through waves manned by an insane looking captain, more of a pirate than a merchant. The character reminded him of that old poem, The Ancient Mariner. It held his gaze, and the therapist must have picked up on this.

  “I’ve often found that the root causes are hidden within us, and need to be identified, understood, and extracted. These are often events that we only partially remember, sometimes insignificant in the grand scheme of our lives, and yet they send our psyche spinning off in unwanted directions.”

  [The Mariner] nodded vaguely, trying to follow the therapist’s explanation.

  “Imagine for a moment that there is a ship, just like that one there, in an enormous ocean. The ship is your mind’s eye. Somewhere in that great ocean of your subconscious is an island containing the truth of your being. If we can find that t
ruth, and remove it, your desolate ocean will become a blissful playground, rather than the stormy hell it is now.”

  [The Mariner] couldn’t hide his cynicism. “If we find the island?”

  His therapist persevered, thinking his analogy clever in linking to his patient’s nautical novel. “Not only do we need to find the island, but we need to get onto it, and often the islands are ringed with defences to keep us out.”

  “Defences?”

  “Yes. Mental disorders are like parasites, once they have taken hold, they would rather die than be dragged from their host against their will.” His eyes seemed to light up as the metaphor shifted. “The defences are natural, yet must be overcome.”

  “I think I follow. And I’m willing to try anything you suggest, absolutely anything. But I’m not sure what can be done that hasn’t been tried before.”

  “But you still came to me,” said the therapist, pulling his chair closer to the patient. “Which means you’ve heard I can get results that no-one else can. So you know that I have tools to break through these defences, tools other psychologists can only dream of.”

  [The Mariner] became transfixed by the gentleman’s confidence. Could it be true? So many therapies had been meaningless, vague attempts to pretend the problem was not there. Would this one finally remove that corruption that ate at his soul?

  “I want you to look in my eyes.”

  “I hope you’re not going to try to hypnotise me,” he laughed, only half-joking.

  “No, no, nothing like that. But, like hypnotism, I need you to work with me. You remember what I said a moment ago, likening root problems to islands in an ocean? Well I want you to begin locating those islands now. You said you identified with that ship in the book, well imagine now that you are that ship, searching them out, putting them on a map for me to find. Can you do that?”

  [The Mariner] nodded, trying his best to think of all the worst moments in his life. They hopped and squawked for attention, and many needed suppression to make way for more destined chicks.