The night was quiet, all you could hear was the wind curling through the window. What use to be her sanctuary, her bedroom, vanished. It was taken over and made into a prison. It was that night she decided to escape the clutches of the evil that lurked and made her fall into madness. She cried as she felt his body grew weaker over her. The blood pooled around her torso. The knife that sliced through him was still in her hands, he toppled over her making it tear deeper into his body. There was a stench of stomach acid and blood that suffocated her. It came not only from the impalement of the knife, but also from his mouth that spattered on her face and neck. He didn’t struggle, only looking her in the eyes until his soul left his body.
The body was heavy over her, it was over. She couldn’t recall the tragic moment even though a half hour already passed. She couldn’t remember what happened his body fell silent and the corpse remained in the pool of blood seeping into the mattress. It wasn’t the way his eyes didn’t close, no it was that she knew that he deserved to feel what she did. What it was like to be trapped. He used her weaknesses against her. They were married for a year, and tonight was her fourth time back from the clinic since they met. A pang erupted in her stomach that made her vomit. She hurled out the barred window. It was placed the second time she left for the clinic. He caught her at a party on LSD. It wasn’t the first time he followed her either:
“If you want to see your demons just look in the mirror.” He lured her home with the notion that he was concerned and wanted her to ride it out somewhere safe. He rubbed her shoulders and they both faced the closet mirror in her room.
“You feel that?” He asked.
She shuttered preparing herself from a bad trip. She closed her eyes, but that made it worse. She felt an empty blackness that cloaked him. It was as if he was trying to force it into her. His presence alone allotted him to give her the undeniable guilt that the drug was bad to mix with her medication.
“Open your eyes and look at what you done.”
She didn’t want to argue. As she opened her eyes and peered into the reflection. She screamed “Please, stop!” This time his grip got tighter on her shoulders making her cringe in pain. All she could see was the disfigured blackening monster then, she could only fall to her knees and sob to only look up and see him lighting up a cigarette.
“Aren’t you glad I saved you? Don’t you want to be safe?”
Sobs turned into screams. Maybe it was the cocktail of antidepressants and antipsychotics that made her hallucinate like this.
After he finished his cigarette he leaned over her and stroked her hair. Come on we need to go treat those wounds again and pointed at her arms. She didn’t realize that she dug her nails so far into her skin it made it her bleed. There were scratch marks all over her neck and chest when she was clutching herself trying to not to think about the disfigured creature that now stood in front of her.
“No, get away from me” She rose from the floor and began to head out of her bedroom. He blocked her only exit and glared.
“Fine you want me to leave?” He shut the door and locked it from the outside. He listened for her pounding hands. He wanted to hear her say that she will be good and maybe want to sleep in his room again. But there was only silence.
He open the door and saw the window wide open. She was sitting the the edge of their second story window.
“MARY!” he cried with legitimate concern he ran to the window and grabbed her by her shirt and pulled her back inside he sat on the floor with here. Holding her close. She welcomed his comfort.
“I just don’t want to live like this.” she explained. She sank into his chest and breathed heavily
“Do you need help again?” He kissed her forehead
She knew the only way she could get away is being locked up in Loma Linda hospital. She nodded. Maybe this time she will get the courage to explain to her therapist that he is the one that needs help not her. Instead of trying to work on her crippling depression that made her marriage fall apart. Nils was more than delighted to be her saving grace. Its was the only thing love was good for. He was handsome and could afford to let her live her dreams as a journalist, letting her intern for The Santa Monica Tribune and write her blogs. Two weeks passed. She was ready to come home.
“She was silent this time, but we got her to open up and she promised us no more mixing dangerous illegal drugs and medication” the nurse passed on to Nils as he signed her out. “You take care of that lovely woman”
“Mary is breath takingly gorgeous and brilliant, but she is also deeply disturbed” He left the nurse with the cold response.
When they arrived at the house, she went into her room and sat down. Nils told here to get some rest, and promised her that she would be kept safe there while she recovered from her latest episode. She looked out the windows and took a long sigh. The window was barricaded with heavy iron bars. She thought those only existed in the ghetto. She walked to the window and stoked the bars. Mary sat at her desk and pulled a small journal out that was lodged in the wood frame of the old letter desk. It was the only thing she could manage to keep a secret.
It was written in her journal, a prediction to that day:
“I’m dying inside, I’ve lost everything. I can’t go on thinking that it will stop. He touched me, he was in my room. He came in through my door. All I could do that night was lie in silence and pretend that I don’t feel it. His hand…”
The night Nils entered the bedroom, entire house was still. She thought he stopped loving her when she felt like she wasn’t beautiful enough to love. She cut the long hair he use to be so fond of. Now it was in roughly cut patches. Her arms were covered in scars and burns. He couldn’t touch her when she had the scabbed up lines going across her arms. Her skin grew pale as she reclused into their home. Her eyes stopped shining like they did when they fell in love, instead they grew dim and dull complementing the dark circles under her eyes. She lied in bed, he was gone for three days to a destination unknown to her. She knew that no one but Nils could ever love someone like her. She grew loyal to him when he would not allow her into his bedroom anymore. She knew that if she left she would have nothing..
“Oh, Mary” he he mouthed. He slid his hand over the blanket. “What happened to us?”
Nils choked on his words, “Lord give me the strength to continue to love this burden, I know this is only a test for me. You would never give old Nils anything he couldn’t handle”
In the dark, she was almost as beautiful as the day her met her, he could almost recognize her who he remembered her by. He balled the blanket into his fist.
She wasn’t impressed with this side of town. It was where you went when you wanted to disappear entirely. However the drinks were cheap and everyone kept to them damn selves. Eli, the bartender working that night played music that made Mary more apprehensive than normal.
“What is that noise?” She whined
“Its my band’s newest album! We were going for if Amanda Palmer and Iggy Pop made a love child. Its a little experimental.” He saw the look of discomfort on her face and flipped a switch, “Here doll, take your mainstream”
Finally, he put it on KROQ. The late show began, instead of LA’s #1 rock station, a man who must have idolized Howard Stern, came on the radio answering phone calls about tonights topic: how to blow off a one night stand who wants a second date”
“Oh lovely” She thought to herself. She wasn’t in particularly bad mood for any reason. She just wished she could drink in peace and quiet. She knew that she was the only one in the bar who couldn’t hear the sexist remarks as mere background noise coming from that loudmouth radio star.
“So what your telling me that you literally had to break her spirit and tell that poor girl that she wasn’t as pretty as the night before?” the man asked one of his callers.
“She wanted to know the true reason why I couldn’t go out with her after that night” the caller replied.
Mary grimaced. She touched her cellphone in her pocket daring herself to call up these goons and tell them a thing or two about respect.
“So she was a butterface?” the man asked.
“All I’m saying Jerry that I beer goggles that night that would have made Rosie O’Donald look like a porn star.”
That was it, she had to tune out their voices. She looked around the bar hoping that she would find some kind of conversation. Mary had been living in Venice for two months now since she came back from college. She spent all summer after graduation working two jobs as a waitress and and a dishwasher in two competing restaurants. She couldn’t bare to see all the students flood into town so she in just enough time skip fall and enjoy the endless California summers. She still had no friends who cared enough for her homecoming. It took her six years to finish her degree in Journalism. She battled with her failing grades the last three years when her parents insurance couldn’t afford her medication anymore. No one wants to be friends with someone who made themselves so emotionally unavailable and detached that anyone would forget her instantly forget she even existed moments after meeting her..
Mary became lost in thought as she began to daydream about all her friends that have came and went. When did I become so distant from everyone. She let that thought rattle in her head. She thought that moving to the beach was going to be her cure. Instead it made her fear everyone even more that her own insecurities and paranoia that no one wanted her unless they wanted something. Whether it was sex, which was far fetched thought because she hadn’t made love for over a year and a half. Or her mother begging her to move back to the house to get back on her feet instead of killing herself over the summer working blue collar jobs that wouldn’t be worth here mental health with all those hours. Mary’s mother hadn’t called her phone for a month. There was an argument about her lifestyle choice: not taking her meds and not seeing a therapist since she moved back and her mother bought her insurance premium during Mary’s first episode when she moved back. She smashed her fist into her mother’s kitchen wall the second time she asked Mary to move back home. She hated to have a weaknesses coddled.
“So the other night, I banged this chick and…”
She didn’t want to hear another sexist comment coming from that ignorant radio prick, “Fucking turn that off, Eli”
He flipped the switch and went back to work. The bar grew silent. There was only here and another couple in the back corner. Maybe they are having an affair. She held on to that romantic thought.
Nils never approached Mary, he just appeared. Not a single footstep was heard before the first hello, it was like meeting Casper. He tapped her on the shoulder, “Got anything good here? I’m new….”
“Eli makes a potent Long Island”
He gave her a careful look when she responded. He admired her beauty. He could tell she was well educated… and those legs. He looked at the skirt she was wearing, plain black with white hem and short enough to almost leave something to his imagination. She dressed like she was still in high school but her figure gave away her age. She left three buttons off the top of her white button up, he saw the white lace bra cupping those large soft breasts.
Nils was older, the gray in his beard gave his age right away. He still had a young face. He also had strong arms that showed when he curled up his sleeves when he sat next to her and rested himself on the bar. His large frame swallowed the area. She felt something magnetic and alluring about the way he order them a drink. He looked at Eli and motioned with his finger that he was ready to order for both him and the lovely woman he wanted to know more about. She couldn’t get Eli to change the music without raising her voice. Or maybe it was because the older gentleman, was indeed a gentleman and by some bro-code between them that only Nils and Eli could understand.
He appreciated her feminine face the most, if only he could read her mind right that second as she stared off into space unsure if she is already bored or just that uninterested. After she finished her own Long Island he offered to pay for her drinks in exchange for honest conversation. He shortly whisked Eli away from his bar duties and waved the two fingers again and this time just pointed at the two glasses. He also appreciated that it only took him buying her four long islands and a brief sentiment about her struggles as a modern woman who’s made it so far in life to get that woman to rebuttal.
Which Mary replied, “What’s your excuse?” She tapped her glass. This time she paid for it. A notion of self worth suddenly came about when her head was spinning from cocktails. She knew that it was only matter of time before she fucked it up. She was an avid blogger for Bitch Fit, which recruited popular commenters from news sites and movie reviews that uphold the feminist agenda. At least that was Nils told her. It was a rude shot in the dark, be he wanted to test her limits.
She huffed. The conversation grew silent. She grabbed her pack of camel wides and took a drag. She knew it wasn’t a good idea to come here alone. She wished for once she stood her ground for that last comment. She slowly stirred her drink.
“Don’t feel obligated to talk to me” he excused himself. “I’m going to pick up some smokes, I don’t think getting one off of you is happening”
That thought lingered as she held her pen reflecting on that night as she was writing her journal entry:
“… it was like he just wanted a warm body to touch. It left me hollow. Like if he could just think up a wish and hope that it would connect us again. He is wrong. I could hear his distant breath. ‘Mary’ he whispered into the other direction. ‘This isn’t the end I wanted’ He didn’t want an ending he wanted to control me even more…”
She should have said fuck off, get bent, or even a scoff as his sorry ass walked out the door. It haunted her. Instead, she flipped open her pack and put on a smile. It wasn’t so bad, the playful insults.
“Is it you’re here alone because you have no friends or have to prove your fierce independance as a modern women?” Nils asked.
Eli was drying off a few glasses, he even gave him a glare for this one. He looked at Mary with sympathetic eyes and said, “Mary, who is this clown?”
Nils turned to look up at the bartender, “Excuse me, I was only joking. If she wanted me to stop should would already said something”
Mary was terrified of confrontation, it wasn’t enough she had crippling anxiety but now she was forced to do something besides groan and and give another sarcastic response. He could never take her seriously. If only she could get through this last drink without having to ask him to leave her alone. She was getting visibly uncomfortable. She played with her hands and looked at the handsome man’s face. He backed off his guard but didn’t acknowledge that she was getting annoyed with his sexist remarks.
She stewed. It was like she almost adored the criticism the way she took his remarks. It was like her comment war when she followed the Pussy Riot coverage. It was the first time she was outraged enough to stand up for the feminist punk band and wailed on the assumption the hooliganism deserved to serve in one of the worst labor camps in Russia.
It was that initial spark, the challenge to see how far she can converse with this guy back and forth without losing her cool and ripping into his psyche. Nils was aware of this it didn’t take him long to figure it out. He was clever enough to play, However he had something else in mind besides making her trip over her keen intuition.
“Listen, you brought this on yourself when you told me you blogged for a living.” He blatantly ignored what the bartender had said. Eli continued to wipe down the bar, it was only closing time. He knew that they would get sick of each others drunken insults, he occasionally glared at Nils and made him order next drink by asking, not pointing at some empty glass.
The bartender rolled his eyes.
“Yes, it is and if you excuse me I have to leave” She stood up, it was time to go. She couldn’t bare the tension anymore. She noticed him undressing her with a his eyes after he loosened up after his second Long Island. She began to walk past him.
“I’m Nils” He grabbed her by her wrist when she stood up. A wave of shock spread through her bones. “How about we try this again, you’re a firecracker”
She gave him her number, and left the bar in hopes he wouldn’t call her.
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