Chapter 5

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Together they went closer. The figure did not move as they came up. In the faint starlight they both saw a rabbit as real as themselves; a rabbit in the last stages of exhaustion, its back legs trailing behind its flattened rump as though paralysed: a rabbit that stared, white-eyed, from one side to the other, seeing nothing, yet finding not respite from its fear, and then fell to licking wretchedly at one ripped and bloody ear that drooped across its face: a rabbit that suddenly cried and wailed as though entreating the Thousand to come from every quarter to rid it of a misery too terrible to be borne.

“So how are you?” This could work, being here. It’s a long shot, but, it could work.

“I feel better.” My eyes wander about the room, as they tend to when I am bored, which is often, searching for something interesting to look at. Something has changed here, though I’m not sure what. Everything seems to be in place.

“That’s good to hear. What do you think it is the cause for this positive change?”

“I don’t feel like I have to go through this alone. It’s comforting, to not be left alone.” It was comforting. The little blue chair is gone. And the rabbit. And the child with them, I suppose. I’m somewhat unsettled by this sudden absence. I look at you, expecting to see you change too, as if my observation of the missing objects would cause a disturbance in the psychosocial space-time continuum and suddenly you would realise the significance of such a loss.

“And what is the source of your succour?” What does succour mean? I can’t ask you. You’ll think I’m an idiot. I know what a succubus is, but that doesn’t seem to fit with what we’re talking about. You usually just repeat what I’ve already said, so it must mean…Company? Comfort? Or is it the opposite? Does it mean loneliness?

“My moods are the same. I can’t change them, I know that, but that doesn’t mean I can’t focus on something beautiful while enduring something ugly and destructive.” Enduring myself. I always imagined that child as your favourite patient. It was a beautiful image in my mind. A man made beautiful by taking joy in the presence of a child. The ending of that relationship feels premature. I don’t feel better anymore.

“But you don’t have to endure it, you can overcome it.”

“I don’t see how that’s possible.”

“Don’t you remember what I said last week?” I wouldn’t have thought you would remember, but yes, I believe you said I was a power-tripping whore who lived without worry of the consequences my behaviour might affect in other people.

“I forget sometimes. I listen to the sounds and I forget to listen to the words. But then words aren’t always the most important thing being said, are they?” When I am finally able to speak, the words come out muddled and wrong and completely indescriptive of what I was thinking. I need you to listen. I need you to decipher what I’ve encoded. I need you to pay attention.

“What do you mean?”

“There are spaces between words, spaces between letters. Silences. People never say what they mean. You have to listen to the in between.”

“What you are saying is beginning to sound poetic and I have to admit my shortcomings when it comes to poetic comprehension.”

“Do you listen to music?”

“Yes.”

“Then it’s like listening to great classical music. You can’t just listen to the notes. You have to listen to the notes that come before and the silences in between in order to fully capture the image of the piece.”

“Usually when I listen to music, I am listening to the different notes. But I believe I am still capable of appreciating the quality of the song being played.” You can appreciate. But you will only ever experience half.

“Then you’re missing out.”

“I don’t think that’s true.” Which is exactly why you don’t understand, will never understand.

“I’m still depressed.”

“You said earlier you were feeling better.” Earlier I was.

“I was mistaken.”

“Do you want to feel better?”

“No, I guess not. I don’t even believe there is a better to feel so there’s no point in trying to feel it.”

“This is an aspect of depression that reminds me of a movie where a man is making an escape from prison and he has to crawl through a pipe full of sewage in order to reach his freedom.” I’ve seen that movie. It’s something we have in common, you and I, us and three billion other people. “What can happen with people suffering from depression is that when they are in the tunnel, covered in muck and surrounded by darkness, instead of continuing to move forward and out of the tunnel, they return to the prison. They perceive the end of the tunnel to be unreachable, when in fact they are just as near to freedom as they are to their old prison cell, and so they end up climbing through the same amount of contaminate as they would have had to in order to reach the outside anyway.”

“The outside is just a more brightly lit prison.”

“Even if that were true, and I’m not saying it is because it isn’t, wouldn’t it still better than a dark prison.”

“I suppose.” You make it sound so easy, crawl through the tunnel towards the light. Only I don’t even know which way is out. The tunnel is black and there is no light visible, even faintly, at either end. I’ve been walking through the wet muck for so long, turning around and around again, that now I’m completely disoriented and have no idea which way is out. Tired of searching for an exit, I just want to sit down and drown in the fermented shit. I’m afraid, confused, and alone. Nobody knows where I am, except you, maybe, but you won’t come looking for me. You don’t care about me enough to get your hands dirty. “No, it wouldn’t, because at least in a dark prison you can forget where you are, you don’t have to look at your punishment.” You don’t have to look at yourself and you don’t have to see others seeing you for the delinquent you are.

“Do you think you are being punished?”

“No. It’s more like I’ve been wrongly accused.” Like the movie. “Suffering a punishment, but not for anything I’ve done.” That’s why I can’t escape. I have no defence against a prosecutor who has permanently deemed me guilty. The castigation is endless because there is nothing to correct.

“Who sentenced you to this ordeal?” I think the correct answer to that is myself, but why would I, why would anybody, inflict suffering upon themselves? No, the answer is not as simple as the question. The answer has to include every person I’ve come into contact with who did hurt me, on purpose. But that sounds so cliché. Not any less cliché than blaming myself, but it’s an answer that would take too long to explain and the little black clock says I don’t have time.

“I don’t know.” Knowing who put me in prison isn’t going to get me out.

“Well, it’s time to stop for now, but that’s a question you can think about and answer for next time. Have a good week.”

“Thanks.”

……….

It was early afternoon when I arrived home and I was feeling oddly jubilant, if not exhausted as I had skipped my morning coffee. I put a pot on to brew and then I walked into the bathroom where there was a very large man waiting for me.

He does this from time to time, surprise attacks me. He first came to me a little under a year ago. He wasn’t a frequent visitor, but he was a violent presence. Today though, his angry face, bald head, and shiny skin pulled tight over his biceps begging my participation in his barbaric game of dominance were too much of a drain on my imagination. Of course, he doesn’t require my active participation in conjuring the image of his fist, but when I told him I was too tired to play, he became noticeably confused, his fist is poised above his head, ready to strike but frozen with disbelief. I thought it was strange, how easy it was to stop him. Nothing had ever stopped him before, not my screaming, crying, or pleading, so I didn’t actually think my words this time would have any different effect.

He was no less present for this small victory, he didn’t disappear, but he also didn’t throw my head against the wall, an activity he took great pleasure in at the expense of both my head and my wall. For an imaginary aggressor, he possessed substantial strength made evident by the few dents in the plastered bathroom walls. He did, of course, attack in other rooms, but those walls were too heavy for my skull to leave evidence of the force of my invisible assailant.

For a moment, still having me pressed against the bathroom door and unable to escape, he regained his purpose and moved to lower his giant hand into my face, when I called out, ‘I said not now,’ at which he instantly disappeared, taking with him the small bit of energy left in me.

The encounter with the Bald Man left me too tired to pick up the coffee pot and pour the brew into a mug. So, the coffee sat in its pot, dark and still. When it grew tired of waiting to be poured, the machine turned itself off and let the coffee die. I could hear the click of the coffee machine turning itself off from my bedroom where I was lying, eyes closed, but unsleeping.

The thought occurred to me to force myself out of bed, to fight fatigue by ignoring it. When I tried to move my legs, though, my body became suddenly heavy with weight. The simple effort of trying to sit up exhausted me and I fell asleep.

It wasn’t a restful sleep, but a half sleep where I was conscious and dreaming at the same time. I could hear the traffic going by on the road outside and voices in the backyard from two houses down.

When I woke, there was still daylight pressing against the glass of the bedroom window. The light outside was hurtfully bright in contrast to the dark of my room. There was too much colour, too much shape, every line was hard and distinct, and there was too much noise. Weariness from attempting to separate each stimulus into manageable packets grew unencumbered with the futile, but compulsory, effort. The more I challenged my mind to remain cohesive, the more exhausted I became, only there could be no rest as my brain would continue to fight this invasive disorientation long after my will and my body had surrendered to sleep.

So I didn’t bother trying to sleep, but I couldn’t get up either. I lied, immobile, and watched as the sky darkened from light blue to dark blue to light grey. My head filled with the pressure of shadows, darkness that funnelled in like bees through a tinfoil tunnel into a jar, and being unable to escape became erratic and desperate. These were not tenebrous shadows, but effulgent shadows such as the shade trees make on a summer afternoon, possessing a queer luminosity that can only be sensed indirectly.

They dominated me, the dark and brilliant shadows. In the beginning, when they first appeared, I was able to make a stand against them. It was a battle I could never win, but I was at least able to hold ground, for days sometimes, until they broke through my defences. I had no weapons. I had no reinforcements. I had no allies. They would always win. Lately, they have broken through the outer walls of my head more quickly and they pour in to engage me in head-to-shadow combat, but they are tireless and, sooner or later, I submit, pusillanimously. Each battle I try to resist them for longer, with the hope that I will at least drive them back, but every time I am left weaker while they have not been affected in the least.

I was sitting in the middle of my bed, crying after another lost battle, holding in my hand a razor, the kind people use to open boxes. I had lost time again. I must have gotten out of bed, otherwise how would I have found a razor? Confused and afraid, I was shaking with violent sobs. I knew what the razor meant, it wasn’t the first time I had held one. And I was terrified of what could have happened during that lost time. I was terrified it could still happen, because, as scared as I was of the razor, I wasn’t letting it go.

And then there were two. Two of me. One inside my body and the other sitting outside of me. One crying and afraid and the other tenderly stroking my head as a mother does to soothe a frightened child. “Sssshhhhhh.....I’m here now. Everything is going to be ok.”

She didn’t come, didn’t approach, she was just there. The two of us sat on the bed, legs wrapped around each others waists, the side of her head resting lightly against the side of mine. Her skin smelled sweet and light, like a tropical fruit. Papaya. Her hand stroked the back of my neck at the hairline, the knuckle of her index finger brushing the back of my ear while she rocked me gently. She needed this, I could tell, to be the consoler, as much as I needed consolation.

“You have to make it hurt less,” I told her. So she sang me a lullaby, one I had heard as a very young child, but had forgotten. Her voice was soft. Maybe because I was imagining it. I gave myself over completely to her, too incapacitated to care for myself anymore. Her name was Laura.

“If you were my bunny
and I were your mama,
I'd pick you out from all the other bunnies
and nestle you beside me.
Then you'd close your little pink eyes
and I'd sing you a bunny song.”

While she sang, she moved her left hand on top of my right. She wanted me to give her the razor. I couldn’t give it to her, that would have required more strength of will and character than I possessed, but I didn’t resist her when she gently pulled it from out of my fist, somewhat relaxed now at the touch of her fingers. Then she laid me back on the bed so my head was resting against the pillow, before climbing in beside me and pulling the comforter all the way up to my chin, the only way I can sleep.

When I woke the next morning, there were three of us. Me and Laura and Kayla. Kayla rested on the side of the bed closest to the door, Laura was in the middle, and I, with those two layers of protection on the outside of the bed was protected by the wall on the other side. I thought I should have been confused by this, or afraid, but as far as I could tell, there was nothing odd about having two people suddenly appear in my life, in my bed, as if they hadn’t been there the entire time.

Kayla was intense. Her features were soft, as they were in all of us, but she emanated the character of one who has fought battles in a war and now carries the weight of death, of killing and watching others die, in her strong arms. Her hair was simple, short, dark and straight, but not at all the less impressive and, even though it was the colour of strong espresso, it still shimmered. Her eyes were similarly dark, the shade of dark chocolate without the tiniest imperfection of colour. Looking upon her gave me a feeling of endlessness, like looking upon the eternity of death.

Laura looked more like me, only more exemplified, my imperfections perfected in the image of her with her long curly hair, slightly darker than mine, almost the same deep shade as Kayla’s. Her eyes were green, but they were a vibrant, brilliant forest green, not like my dull, speckled hazel eyes. Her legs were longer by a couple of inches and she possessed a softer face with long, high cheekbones. Laura. She existed in purity and excellence, untainted.

The three of us shared the same body, breathed with the same lungs, were simultaneously connected and separated entities. There could be no greater intimacy and I saw no cause for concern as to what was happening.

Throughout the week, we each adapted to our different roles as protectors. Laura was maternal and comforting, Kayla was disciplinary, and I was the vinculum. Between the three of us, we were well prepared for any emotional or physical irruption, the first of which occurred only two days after our transpiration as a triploid entity.

I woke up crying. I didn’t want to get out of bed, fearing it would only exasperate the powerlessness I was feeling, but all the self-help books say getting out of bed will make you feel better, so I did get up. Only the books were wrong. Every object, every colour, every shape, every memory came together in a chaotic mix inducing nausea. Tearfully, I maundered to the bathroom to relieve myself. Laura reminded me to flush and wash my hands. She even turned on the tap for me so that it ran water at a non-confrontational temperature. When I looked up from the sink to the little shelf below the medicine cabinet above the sink, I saw the razor, a plastic, yellow case enclosing stinging, metallic relief.

I retreated, with my sharpened treasure to a corner of the living room where I sat supported by two white walls. From the first instant I caught glance of the blade, my crying ceased. There was purpose now. I cut myself. One cut, no hesitation. I was rewarded with blood on the first incision, more blood than I expected, but not a lot. It hurt less than expected as well. I was preparing myself to open the wound deeper. The blade, now warmed by my skin, rested inside the first wound.

“You should go now,” Kayla said softly. So I left. In an instant I was on the other side of the room sitting with my back against the opposite wall. But I was near enough to watch her, to watch her cut into my body. I cried again, knowing even if I went to her, I wouldn’t be able to stop her.

At the same time I watched her from across the room, I watched her from inside the body we shared. I felt and saw everything she was feeling and seeing. I felt the sting of the blade as it cut through our skin. I felt the warmth of red blood pooling in the newly created crevice. I felt the tendons being dragged along by the force of the blade as Kayla pulled it across the thin skin of our wrist. Each cut drew more blood and caused new pains beyond the first familiar sting, until a small pool of blood had gathered on the floor and I, now in repossession of my body, was awarded with relief.

And there the dichotomy began. It hurt to have my skin torn, it hurt to watch Kayla need to relieve herself this way, but there was relief from the released endorphins, and there was relief in the knowledge that the blade could, accidentally, release her, release me, from everything.

“Thank you,” I said to Kayla, who was now the one crying on the other side of the room.