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