The Stage

It has been four hours since his last visit. Even when surrounded by all this darkness the thing that frightens me most, is the noise. As the switch is flicked and the light floods in, all I can see in every direction is the stage that is set. His co-stars are completely oblivious to the facade, they start to line up and give a really convincing performance but it’s always the same every time. He is meticulous, everything is in place,

the bath mat cleaned,

the shower curtain swept aside for easy access,

the sink covered in a very thin layer of cling wrap.

 His stage is set hours before he brings anyone in, I know every inch of what he has planned and every move that he makes is imbedded into my memory but he can only show me all the fun he has when he turns the light on.

In this prison that surrounds me, all I can do is sit here and wait until he enters the room. Once he does there isn’t anywhere I can move or look that will hide me from the grotesque display that floods my world.  He performs only for me, going through the same motions every night, putting on the same fake smile, they laugh at his fake jokes and giggle at his fake charm. The only change that occurs is when the girls fight back and he has to improvise. That’s what the bath is for; you can’t run when someone smashes your head hard against the rim of a porcelain bathtub. He carries out every dark thought trapped in that warped mind of his, on their bodies and on their souls. He caresses their fear through his rubber gloves and looks up at me, slicks his hair back and gives me a look of pure smugness as he gloats over the broken bird in his hand. He always looks at me with desire; he’s doing this for me because it excites him to know that I’m watching, his eyes are full of lust when they meet mine, as he drags the poor girl by her hair to the basin.

Spread out over the cleverly disguised cling wrap he offers her neck to the slaughter. When his hands are thoroughly covered with blood he wipes them all over the screen in front of me, obscuring my view of everything in a veil of red. It is only us now, face to face, his dripping with sweat and satisfaction and mine fixed with no emotion. I feel numb to what I have seen; there have been at least twenty girls this month alone. Each time he washes his hands and his face, looks up directly into my eyes and asks me

Why

Once he looked at me with hope in his eyes, he would stare deep into me and I would see sorrow and a pain that has him by the throat, squeezing. I comforted him and tried to reflect that little glimmer in his eye that proved that his soul was still trying to hang on. Every day, when he looked deeper into me than he would allow me to him, I saw the star diminish, fade into the darkness and become poisonous until it turned into a cancer that kills him a bit every day. That is when I broke away; I drifted further into the other side until he didn’t recognize himself anymore. He always asks me why I have forsaken him.

I never answer him. He wouldn't like the answer I give him; he wouldn’t like all the darkness I could reflect back to him from the other side. He sobs and shakes and drools, he tries to cut his arm to get all the poison that runs through his body to spill out onto the floor. He yells and screams and punches the screen in front of me. Then he stops and looks me in the eye again and smirks, brushes his hair and walks out of the bathroom. The light turns off and the performance is over for another night. The fear that I felt the whole time finally leaves my bold restrain and I weep. How cold and lonely it is in this room I’m trapped in but how I long for its comfort,

its silence.

its shelter from the madness on the other side of the mirror.

Tiffany Douglas April 2014

Silence

I have watched as loneliness shook the world I lived in. Frightened of the mere thought of company I grew a hand from the center of me that pushed all away. The comfort was a mistress I kept secret, a dirty pleasure. I lied to everyone told them that life was my love and they weren’t welcome among us. They weren’t to know that loneliness is the one who caresses me, whispers to me and makes love to me. My true love is silence.

All those false prophets who come to my door, proclaiming that my habits are companions of death and despair, that they care for my well being as they poke their noses through my windows and through my belongings, trying to find evidence of my mental instability. My diamonds shining in their eyes, they confuse their need for intrusion with their love for me. They would praise the man I was, they would raise their hands up offering themselves, I would have welcomed such an admirer if only by their words I didn’t crave silence.

The darkness holds many secrets; most I have found pose no real threat to me. I have studied them; the drift of the curtain is not a ghoul for my blood. The shadows made by the outside light dance throughout my house, in the darkness they create a stage; they perform for me every night amongst my journals and copious wealth. Eyes on the ground I sit in my grand chair, with no fire in the fireplace, in the cold damp depression of this room I wait. What do I when the lights of the day go down? I sit and wait for the silence.

The wind stops, the birds do not sing. All is still, all the clocks in my home are broken and all that is present is the static in my own mind. I close my eyes and focus on drowning out the buzzing sound of a thousand useless thoughts. Finally within five minutes and three minutes till midnight it is gone. Every droplet of wasted audible energy vanished. My eyes are still closed, there is no strain on my face, complete relaxation envelopes me and I drift. I feel myself leaving but I delay my escape, I aim to witness all that I have created. I aim to meet those who live within the silence.

I have never been a superstitious man, never been one to believe in ghosts or spirits, no one ever had a convincing story to the contrary, they were out of their heads and only saw what their frightened minds allowed them to. They never had the patience to truly discover how far out you need to go to reach through and pull them in. So who am I that can see what is forever unseen? I am the man who sits inside the silence; I am the man who sits inside their home. Their footsteps become known to me, through the air they tip toe in silence.

Their feet hovering over the floor only inches above the carpet, wet and grotesque feet, dripping with some muddy under dwelling, moving closer to me. Their dresses are a tattered misinterpretation of the elegance they used to command, unmoved with the unnatural progression through my room. I grip my chair arm and use it with all the strength my old and feeble body can muster, to raise myself upward. With my movement the secret is broken and their feet hit the floor. I open my eyes and stare across the room. There we both stand in silence.

Two of them, female, stand at the entrance to my waiting room. I have waited so long and practiced so tirelessly to receive them. Young and sorrowful the women hold their hands out to me. “you are so alone” they say to me with their eyes. “I have made sure that loneliness is my life” I reply. All those years of waiting and planning have finally produced my longings. Knowledge of the world after is at the end of the room, if I could touch them I will know and the universe will beckon to my knowing. I step forward toward the apparitions. They move backward, clunking their heavy wet limbs against the floor with a thud. I shudder at the sound and begin to move slower. They open their mouths and a long breath is released. A wind goes past me and deafens the atmosphere with its intrusion.  In my mind I plead for silence.

One woman turns to the other and touches her face, scratching around her eyes slowly. She punctures the space in-between her skin and her eyes and water starts to fall from her. The droplet rolls down her blue facade and across her chin, onto the pink floral collar of her dress, it sits at the edge and dangles there for what seems like eternity. It falls, its ascension and inevitable demise by the ground is deafening. As though it was the only sound to have ever been heard I cover my ears with both hands. “No!” I shout as I murder the silence.

My eyes are red with anger and I look them right in theirs. They follow my stare as I gain on them. They stop at the door. On the edge of my floor mat I stand with my hand out to them. They will be mine. I know this as I have known loneliness as my mistress for so long. The smaller one smiles and her black teeth spill from her mouth with sludge of the foulest nature slowly spewing out onto my lovely floor rug, crashing with the sound of a thousand horses galloping toward me. I leap onto the mat toward them, to catch them. The floor becomes as water and I fall into a pool in disguise as a room. All my furniture falls into the depths in silence.

I struggle to grab onto the mat, which is only a reflection on the water. I try to swim and keep myself above the surface, but the water is thick like mud. I reach for them with one arm outstretched. They stand there and look on as I sink further into the swamp of my room. “Daughters!” I yell “ save me” I plead. Everything in my room crashes to the floor and they begin to float again. They hover toward me and above me. I try to reach them and grab hold of the rags they call clothing. The smallest one touches the top of my head with the tip of her toes, lovingly caressing my hair. As I bring my hand up to my head to touch them I feel the wound on my brow. Covered in blood my hand dwells in front of my eyes and I stop struggling. I sink in silence.

On the floor, face first I lay in a dark, damp room, filled with water from the storm outside my window. I lay there still and without life. After the one who proclaimed her love to me was gone, my desire became the instrument of their demise; I knew and said nothing as they drowned under the mud. All it did was create another awful insistent noise and a poisonous regret, I had to reach them to stop it, to exist in peace once more. All will never understand. Their charity would never have been enough for one who only values silence. 

Tiffany Douglas April 2014