PSYCHOPHILIA: A Disturbing Psychological Thriller (9 page)

“I
am sorry about yesterday, and the lake.  Dana shouldn’t have said anything. 
See,” I suggest, motioning to my clothes and my general demeanour, “this
morning is different.”

He
screws his lips together and pushes his head forward.  “She should have.  I
must know these things.”  I shake my head dismissively and smile and close my
eyes, as if what he is saying is complete nonsense with no relation to the
truth.

“Did
you call Dr. Abrams?” I ask.

“No,
not yet.”

“Then
don’t.  I promise I’ll behave.  It won’t get like before.”  I cannot make such
promises.  He knows this very well.

“But
if it does?”

“It
won’t.  We are having a baby.  I have to be well.”

“Yes,”
he says, placing his napkin back on the table.  He stands to leave the room
never once making eye contact. 

“So
will you come to me tonight?” I say as he steps towards the drawing room.  He
turns to me, his head cast over his shoulder, speaking without the slightest
hint of a smile.  “I will try,” he says, before walking away and leaving me
alone.  If he had just said no, it might have been easier.

I
imagine he kisses Ishiko with passion and fire, or not at all.  Ishiko isn’t
around because he is stuck with her.  She is a choice, the fulfilment of desire. 
He doesn’t have to force anything with her, or try when he doesn’t want to;
like he does with me.  She is something he
needs
, not that needs
him
. 
I think when he kisses Ishiko it might be with such desperation that her lips start
to bleed.  I think he might grip her hair with such force that he ends up with clumps
of it in his hands, strands of it sacrificed to their lust.  I imagine bruises
on her body from where he has gripped her in his oversized hands because in the
clutch of ecstasy he has forgotten his strength.  His kiss for me is swift and
sharp, like the blade of a knife slicing through meat.  He doesn’t ask how I
will spend my day when he pulls his flaccid lips away from my cheek before he
leaves for work, but I know to him it doesn’t matter.  I have no plan yet.  I
am waiting.  Thinking and waiting.

I
have pleased him by no longer working.  Now I serve nobody but him.  The
importance of my not working is that finally he is able to fulfil his role as provider. 
I need him in the way that he intended to be needed, and for this he is
grateful.  It is not by chance that he has been kinder in the last twenty four
hours.

I
shower.  I dress.  I rinse my mouth.  I wash my hands.  I check that my stored
receipts are in date order.  I undress.  I sit.  I wash my hands.  I shower.  I
dress.   After 9:15 AM I cannot find a car parking space outside the office.  I
stand.  I open the cupboard under the sink.  There are only three bottles of
mouthwash.  I sit on the bed.  The tide of the lake will have changed by now. 
The water will be closer to the road.  The fog has lifted.  I remove my jumper. 
I wash my hands and forearms.  I put the jumper back on.  I sit.  I sit.  The
clock in the kitchen runs two minutes fast and will read 10:02 AM.  I hear a
car outside.  I straighten the towels.  I wash my hands with a nailbrush.  My
trousers are a pair of beige chinos, a style that I think is too old for me.
Gregory told me that I liked them and so I wear them.  My hand is bleeding.  My
head hurts.  I can’t manage the zip because my hands are shaking.  I will walk
to the lake.  I cannot pull up the zip.  I wash my hands.  My skin splits and I
stand by the sink and let some blood flow out.  I tell myself to breathe.  I
wait.  There is a bird singing outside.  I close the door.  I don’t think
Ishiko noticed when I told her to go fuck herself.  When I held the butter knife
in a way that made it look like a weapon for slicing skin, she didn’t even
react but afterwards she.....

.....no
longer than ten minutes as I keep it in colour code and garment type order
already so I read a few of the old newspapers that are stored behind a pile of
jumpers and according to one of the receipts in a different pile on December 17
^th
I purchased a loaf of bread a carton of orange juice and a box of matches a box
of Paracetamol and a packet of marshmallows at 9:57 PM and  I position the pile
of baby blue jumpers so that the things behind them are not visible and I pull
the sheets from my bed and heap them up on the floor on the landing and stop to
wash my hands because the ink from the newspapers is different to the receipts
and so I have contaminated them so I consider throwing them away but I cannot
do it even after standing with them in my hand for three minutes so I step on
the floorboards to determine which one creaks and one near the top of the
stairs and another one close to the guest bedroom door and Ishiko appears
puzzled by my actions but I knew it to be nothing but a theatrical performance
on her part and I quickly ordered her back down the stairs but not before.....

“Ishiko,
take these with you.”  I point to my sheets in a heap at my feet and wonder if it
was me who put them there and if she could smell me on them.  I watch as she
bundles them up.  From her inferior position of four steps down I have a great
view of the back of her head, her neat hair scraped into a pony tail, her
fringe sashaying left and right occasionally revealing bits of skin and eye
like a peep show.  Besides the fact that I feel the need to mutilate her in
some malignant way, she was intriguing to me.  She didn’t flinch yesterday when
she peered through to the bathroom to look at Gregory pleasuring himself.  She
looked past me and at my husband as if I wasn’t even there.  She didn’t seem
embarrassed in the slightest which made me uncomfortable.  She had watched as
Gregory kissed me and groped at my chest.  Stared as he left me panting like a
flustered dog.  It was me who was ashamed.  Of being touched by my own husband.

Once
I was certain she was gone I slipped into the guest bedroom avoiding the creaky
floorboard.  I closed the door behind me and turned the key.  The sheets were
crimpled, the sign of a disturbed sleep or the joining of bodies.  One of the
two but I cannot tell which.  I looked around the room.  It was lifeless.  Dust
motes floated through the air and I could feel them in my throat and it made me
cough.  I coughed so much that I began to struggle for breath and so I went
into the bathroom only moments from panic and coughed up what I could into a
tissue before I choked on it.  It was mainly froth from the back of my throat,
but I am certain I saw the grey specks of dust.  I composed myself with a few
deep breaths the way Dr. Abrams had shown me and counted until I felt better.  This
time I stopped at one hundred and twenty three.  I put the tissue in the pocket
of my chinos.

The
weak light from outside was ideal, enough to fumble my way around, yet my
actions felt unreal in the semi-darkness.  I moved to the bed and stared at the
sheets.  I looked for marks, the sign of fluids split.  There was nothing
evident.  I smelt the pillow nearest to me and it smelt of hair, grease of
man.  It smelt like a body that had been wrapped up overnight, leaking its
scent and marking its territory.  His smell was all over the sheets, and so I got
into them, breathing him in, which seemed to stir a distant memory of something
better.  The other side of the bed was crumpled.  Less so, but nevertheless it
was disturbed.  I placed my nose on the sheet like a cat, my palms flat and
elbows sticking out behind me.  It smelt cleaner, less used.  It smelt of
lavender.  Womanly.  I slid over to her side and rested my head on the pillow,
nose down breathing deeply.  I pulled the duvet up over me, and lulled like a
baby by the scent, I closed my eyes.  I thought about a faceless girl who might
have sold me the sheets in Collings and Rawlings and realised that I had no
memory of it but I am sure that’s where they are from because he told me that’s
where I liked to shop.  On the radio this morning one of the local schools was
said to be closed because a man had been seen hanging around outside the gate. 
He had tried to snatch one of the girls who was no older than ten but the news
report didn’t say how old exactly so she could have been only six.  It’s a
Tuesday today so the local swimming baths will be closed but I find it
disgusting to be in there anyway, submerged in the dirt of another person for a
kind of morose pleasure.  I think of other things too whilst I am here.  Lots
of things.

I
had never thought Marianne a whore, but the more I give her and her situation
consideration, the more she seems to fit that label.  She arrives when he tells
her too, she is provided for during her stay, she receives beautiful gifts,
such as the new pearl bracelet, and is gone in time for the return of the
wife.  She hijacks the life of the wife Monday to Friday.  Marianne is an
imposter, a lookalike, not deemed good enough to be a permanent fixture.  She is
an understudy, waiting to replace the other woman.  I am watching Ishiko
cleaning the mantelpiece, because I have now gone downstairs to observe her, because
I realise that she too is playing the same role in my house.  She is waiting
for me to break a leg, wishing me luck and kissing my cheek, and secretly
hoping that something bad would happen so that she can step into my shoes and tread
these family built boards as her own. 

“What
time are you cooking lunch?” I ask her.  For once it is an actual question and
I wait for my response.  I am sat in Gregory’s green Queen Anne chair and the
lake is drifting in and out of view as the mist creeps back and forth, teasing
me. 

“Mr.
Astor likes to eat at two o’clock.”  The radio is playing in the background, a
classical song I don’t recognise which would irritate Gregory if he was here because
he would realise that I don’t know it.  

“It
is twelve twenty now,” I said looking at the watch that I inherited from
Gregory’s mother after she had passed, an old Rolex which Gregory told me is
worth a sizeable amount of money.  He told me this only two months ago, right
before we stopped talking to each other in any reasonable or friendly way.  He
told me with a look on his face that suggested I should be grateful, as if the
value of the watch was bargaining power.  Sort of
how do you not love me
anymore, this watch alone is worth almost fifteen thousand pounds.  Look at the
life I have given you and this is how you thank me. 
How dare I be
depressed or crazy?  He can feel it just like I can that the love, whatever it
was that was here and that kept us together has disappeared.  I don’t remember
if it was me that killed it, but I think that in perhaps trying to kill myself,
the only thing that I was really successful in doing was killing us.  I am
amazed at how quickly time has passed watching her work through the room
cleaning.  I realise that I have been sitting here for an hour.  “You better
get organized, hadn’t you?”

“There
is some soup ready for heating up and some bread, Mrs. Astor.”  She doesn’t
turn to look at me as she speaks.  Her work is completed with such delicacy and
precision, that everything is done at a constant rate but without appearing
tardy.  I wonder if she feels close to him in here, breathing in him, sucking
up the dust that he has created.  Perhaps she feels his presence, his smell,
like I could on the sheets.  I haven’t thought about killing her once in the
whole time I have been sat here.  I am hungry.  It’s the boredom. 

“Ishiko,
put that down and look at me.”  She places a small crystal dish back onto the
table and with her dust rag clutched at her side like a security blanket she turns
to face me.  It could just be fantasy, but she looks a little nervous, I think. 
I smile to myself as I sit here on the Green Queen Anne chair which we both know
is his.  “I do not want soup for lunch.  We will have lamb chops.  You will go
out to the butchers.  Go on,” I said shooing her away.  She looks bemused with
the new routine, like a dog suddenly pushed out in the cold, wondering what it
had done wrong.  “Off you go.”

I
follow her through to the hallway where I watch as she dresses in a thick woollen
hat and red duffle coat.  She wraps her scarf around her neck and I think how
she looks like an overgrown school girl.  A dangerous overgrown school girl like
the red berry of the Yew tree.

I
watch from the landing window as she paces down the private road.  The guest sheets
remain on the floor of the guest bedroom, and I make a note not to tell her
about them.  I wait until she turns the corner, and then through the bare
branches of the furthest trees I see her red coat disappear into the distance.  
I consider at first if her room might be locked, but as I twist the handle I
find that it is not.  It opens without effort, the door swinging into the room,
almost as if it is inviting me in.

It
is a mixture of familiar and alien, the past and present.  The room is
decorated with wallpaper, perfect stripes split through the middle with an
Aztec style border in baby blue.  The single bed divides the room in two, with
two small cupboards either side.  The wardrobes form a corridor towards the
bathroom, and I can see a selection of toiletries lined up next to the sink
through the open door.  The familiarity ends.  I sit on the side of the bed,
made to perfection with hospital style corners underneath the duvet, and finger
my way through the items on the nightstand.  There is a magazine that looks
like a juvenile version of something like Cosmo, covered in so many colours and
pictures that it looks like a collage.  Next to the bed there is a pile of the
same magazines, back issues all looking like different versions of the first. 
On the front of each one is a girl, pretty, young, big heavy fringe, pigtails, and
black eyes.  None of them have black hair, rather orangey brown, but other than
this they could all be Ishiko.  There are so many items on the nightstand it is
impossible to focus on them all.  There are bracelets, hair bands, creams with
symbolized writing which I do not understand.  There are several CD’s, one of
which depicts a levitating man who appears on the cusp of death, screaming into
the air above him.  Another, a woman hanging out babies to dry amidst a stormy
sky.  Megadeth.  Feeling an instant attraction to the cover, I pick up the
first box with the near dead man on the front.  There is no CD in it so I look
around and find the CD player.  I turn it on and push play and within a few
seconds there is a drum roll followed by some angry sounding guitars which is
very different to the string music that I am used to.  The singing, if you can
call it that, mumbles on for a while but he or she - I’m not certain - is singing
something about slit wrists and a hit and run.  I don’t dislike the music and
so I leave it on while I look around.  Make up, eye liner, blusher, lipstick. 
I try to think of a time when I have seen her wearing make-up but cannot.  There
is a bra hanging off the handle of the wardrobes and a pair of knickers on the
floor in the corner and I feel a sudden urge to GET OUT NOW but I force myself
to stay, calmed somewhat by the music which is a surprise because it doesn’t
seem that relaxing on first impression.  The chorus has broken in. 
No
escaping pain, you belong to me,
the he/she sings.  Above the bed there are
photographs. 
Clinging onto life by the skin of my teeth,
I hear
.
 
An undecipherable second verse follows.  Ishiko looks younger in the
photographs on the wall, her face chubbier and more like mine, pushed up
against other girls who look similar to her.  All Japanese, I guess.  There are
older people in the photographs too, her parents and grandparents perhaps,
pictures taken before she came here.  A goodbye party?  I pull a photograph out
from the elasticated holder that grips everything in place and study her.  The
room smells of lavender.  She is alone in this photograph.  Her hands are
outstretched, jazz hands, her mouth wide.  She is in front of some sort of
temple, a building that looks cobbled together with different layers lodged on
top of each other.  The song ends.  Another one starts and for a second I think
a choir is about to break into a choral chant, but the guitars take over again. 
I have decided the singer must be a man based on the CD case.  I like this song
less and fast forward until I come across a song I like, presented by four long
haired men who Gregory would definitely disapprove of.  The lead singer
continues to mumble but the chorus is clear and interspersed by what I assess
to be extremely talented guitar playing and he is singing,
There is
something wrong with me, There is nothing left of us, Lying on your bed,
examining my head.
  I lie down, certain that the lyrics are an instruction
to me, clutching both the CD case and the photograph.  A connection to the
music sends me into a trance and for a moment I cannot think again.  I hold the
photograph up in front of me.  I look at her gaping mouth and imagine Gregory
standing before her, him grunting and her kneeling. 
This is the part of me
that hates!
he sings and screams.  I stare at the photograph until I close
my eyes.  I open them when the music stops and stand up.  I put the photograph
into my pocket, take the CD and put it in its case and take it with me.  I close
the door behind me.