‘Not with your back to me you won’t. Go on you idiot, keep looking out that window – dreamer – loser. All that money for your education, and for what? Do you think you would have had any of it, if it hadn’t been for me?’
He pulled the window down, clicked the latch over and closed both curtains. Turning, he waited in the dark, listening to her chiding him, the room becoming clammier with the passing of time. She never stopped, it was relentless. It had always been relentless, for as long as he could remember. He walked over to her bed once more and stood over her, smelling the sweat from her body, her hair wet with moisture, her breath foul. Inside him, a savage mixture of old memories and hate churned.
‘Why don’t you tell me your side of the story, Mother? I am sure it will be very insightful.’
‘Tell you what, you little shit?’
‘Come on, you know you want to. Let’s hear it from the whore’s mouth.’
She stared at him, eyes wide open, her hands balled up into useless fists. ‘You’re mad.’
‘I guess that makes two of us.’
‘I want my pills. Give me my pills.’
‘Not in the storytelling mood, are we?’ He had left the bedroom door open so he could hear the sound of the Napoleon clock from downstairs. It swooned up the stairwell, the way low sounds can move in near silence. Tick tock, tick tock.
Her arms were already badly bruised from injections and blood tests, a few more marks from tying up her hands would go unseen. He knew now that she might never tell him, just as he knew everything the old bishop had said was true. He had wasted enough time – a lifetime – trying to get her to explain things. No more.
She screeched like a wounded animal before he pressed the pillow down hard, but he held firm. Beneath his hands her frail body resisted, thrashed and writhed with a strength he hadn’t expected. He viewed it all clinically, objectively, like he wasn’t even involved. He was glad she put up a good fight, though. The kill, in the end, was all the better for it.
Six Months Later …
Ellie
I KNOCK ON THE DOOR. WELL, ISN’T THAT WHAT YOU’RE supposed to do with doors? That, and open and shut them. I hear a man inside the room cough, the sound muffled by the wooden divide. Maybe if I stand here long enough, I can disappear, sink into the ground or evaporate into the air. I wouldn’t mind that. I am wearing some other person’s clothes, an unbecoming grey blouse and faded jeans. By now, I am used to these things. Everything I have belonged to someone else at one time or another, everything, that is, except the bits that matter. Sadly, the bits that matter are all mine. My short, brown hair is washed and tucked, childlike, behind my ears. I wear neither make-up nor jewellery. There is no need for such things here. I have no need for such things.
Moments earlier, on the way to this door, I had caught sight of myself in the gold ornate mirror in the corridor. Unlike me, it is beautiful. It has an intricate frame and hangs on the wall past the sign for Female Rooms. The mirror does not discriminate. It welcomes all of us on our daily walkabouts. Of course, there are those of us who have looked in the mirror who are no longer here – some of us are no longer alive. Apart from the tiny black spots around the glass edges, it is perfect, and never fails to greet us. We cannot avoid it as it hangs in the walkway leading to the kitchen and Living Room 1 and Living Room 2. I wonder which genius decided on that: to hang a large mirror where we are forced to look into it, and be looked at by it; confirming the nothings we have all become.
Why today, of all the days, did I stop and allow my image to puzzle me? It certainly wasn’t because I expected to see the vibrant Ellie Brady who used to live in my body. I had expected someone else, the grey ghost she has become. For a time I stood there, staring. In this place, you do a lot of that kind of thing, ‘nothing things’. There is no pressure to be anywhere else, to do anything other than the daily routine, which is so embedded in your mind that you can catch yourself doing things without remembering how you got to the place in which you are doing them.
At the mirror, I tilted my head as if the woman in the glass would become more recognisable. It wasn’t just the shabby clothes or the childish hairstyle, it was her face. For it was in this that my truth was hidden, buried beneath skin, behind eyes and burrowed into the wrinkled stress lines that cover my brow. My shoulders leaned inwards, stooping my back as if every part of me was worn down. I took a second to stand up straight, fixing my clothes as best I could. I had never done that before, and again I asked myself why I felt so differently today. I even opened my eyes wide, staring, daring me to see the person I remembered from so long before. But all I saw was a ragged person, in matching ragged clothes.
I think all this as I stand at the door waiting for the good doctor to answer my knock. I knock again, harder. The sound of his footsteps tells me my peace will now be broken.