Fragments (23 page)

He smiled as he
tucked under once more, kicking softly against the edge, unwilling
to allow his strength to gain him advantage. The victory would be
his fairly; there was the joy. The only pain was that it would soon
be time to move on, find new territory. Few accepted the silent
challenge anymore, too much defeat etched in their faces. A new
club with a well sheltered pool would have to be found. New meat to
be taunted with his pale and slender body. New muscle bound fools
to pitch against him, to be fired up by his feet kicking dust in
their eyes as he passed. He mused on the pleasures in his life as
he dried, aware that today’s prize had been bought for him by his
sleeping playmate. The joys had once more begun to drain out of his
life, slowly, almost unnoticed. The taste of her defeat had
awakened him, brought life back to a jaded palate. A few days off
work to play, to sport: that was just what he needed. What a gift
he would give her, letting her final days serve his greater
needs.

The first thing
she was truly aware of was a cramp, low in her back. She wasn’t
sure exactly when she became aware of it, how long she’d been
listening to her body groan, but slowly, carefully, the awareness
that this was real, her back was hurting, she was asleep, or had
been, settled in her mind. It was dark, too dark; that wasn’t
helping. Where was it, that it was this dark? Not her own bedroom
for sure. Not her lumpy bed and rickety windowsill, traffic noises
seeping through with the streetlights. The bed beneath her was
straight, even with her weight on it. The dark around her,
absolute. She closed her eyes and tried to concentrate on waking
up. Her mouth was dry and filthy, caked with gunge. As she
struggled to push her body awake, to sit up, make sense of the
confusion, she flitted her tongue round and round, desperately
seeking moisture. The pain from her back was sharp and fresh as she
pulled forward, making her wince. What on earth had happened that
her back hurt so? The question sat in her mind, trying to make some
sense to her. She fumbled around, feeling the soft bed that
surrounded her. How big could a bed be? She leaned to the side,
reaching for an unseen edge, trying to find an end to this
smothering softness. Her head spun, dizziness almost overwhelming
her. A nausea rose within her, she gagged. She wasn’t going to
throw up, she wasn’t going to throw up. She certainly wasn’t going
to throw up until she had worked out where she was. She dropped
back on the bed, closing her eyes. She’d moved too fast, the
dizziness got worse not better. She groaned, which turned out to be
a worse move than flopping back on the bed. Her throat felt awful,
like she’d swallowed crushed glass. Hot and dry and raw all at the
same time. As she lay there, trying to control her panic, her
breathing, her dry mouth, her head began a wicked beating. Thrum,
thrum, thrum. If this was a hangover, she didn’t want to think
about what she’d been drinking. Her back had eased slightly on
lying back, but when she tried to move upwards, it screamed protest
once more. Fear started to edge out panic: what had she been doing
that had hurt her back? Whatever the answer was, she wasn’t sure
she wanted to know about it, not yet.

Gritting her
teeth she forced herself to sit up, sitting straight up on the bed.
The wave of nausea hit again, as did the dizziness. She rode it
out, clutching a sheet to her face, concentrating on not throwing
up, not passing out and not going back down into the bed. The
thrumming threatened to split her head open, but she kept on in
there. The feeling of sickness passed, as did the dizziness. Her
back stayed raw and sharp, but got no worse. As the thrumming
finally started to ease off, she became aware of a harsh rasping
breath in the room beside her: laboured, dangerous. She almost
screamed, clamping her hand over her own mouth, the noise stopped.
Fear froze down her spine, blocking out all thoughts of her back,
her pain, her headache. She clutched herself tightly, knees
automatically raised to tuck under her chin. The rasping breath
started again. She scrunched her eyes tight shut, tears squeezing
out of the edges, and once more clamped her hand over her mouth,
anything to make herself disappear. The noise stopped again. She
held her breath, better to hear the darkness: nothing. The moment
stretched and broke. She let the trapped air in her lungs out, the
movement forcing more pain from her throat, her back, her head. The
rasping started again. A whimper fled from her throat and was out
into the darkness before she could help it. She again held her
breath, this time her hands flying up to cover her head, her chin
tucking down, seeking protection from her knees. The rasping
stopped. As she lay there, tight and curled, awaiting whatever
monster was in the room with her, she thought this through. An idea
occurred to her. Lifting her head, she gasped in some air, once
more releasing the bottled up feeling in her lungs. The rasping
started once more. She held her breath. The rasping stopped. She
breathed out. The rasping started up again. Relief flooded through
her, limbs turning liquid; she crumpled once more back onto the
bed. It was her! The noise she’d heard, that awful rasping breath,
it was her own. The darkness, the silence in the room, it had
fooled her.

She giggled, a
strange and monstrous sound on its own, forced as it was through
her aching throat, but she didn’t care. The fear that had frozen
her bones melted, leaving them molten and warm in its wake. She was
drained, shaking a little, almost shivering with the relief. A
laugh escaped her lips, god, she was a goose. What a stupid cow, to
get herself into such a fright from listening to her own breathing.
She flung her hands back, pulling air deeply into her lungs,
listening to the sound of it all around her. Her back once more
announced itself and she stretched, trying to persuade the aching
to retreat, she was okay, it was just cramp from sleeping wrong.
Her back wasn’t convinced, but she kept it up, tightening and then
flexing her spine, her legs, her arms. Her head hated it, the
thrumming increasing, but she wasn’t going to let herself get back
into the state she’d just left. As she stretched her right hand and
arm out, moving her shoulder this way, then that, her hand
connected with something solid. She leaned back, tracing the line
her hand found: the headboard. Great, with a little bit of luck,
she’d find out where she was. Following the line of the padded
board, she inched around to the edge of the bed. It seemed to be
miles away, but she got there. Left hand still touching the
headboard, right hand on the edge of the mattress. She lifted her
right hand and gingerly stretched it out, into nothingness, fingers
splayed, seeking. There was a bump, and she nearly screamed again,
but she’d found what she was looking for. Her arm had connected
with something soft, yet solid, movable. A lamp shade. Shifting
over a little, both hands examined the shade, which was your normal
round sorta-pyramid shape. The noise of her moving the cover
blotted out her breathing. She found the wooden stem it sat on, and
her fingers explored, seeking. There, under the bulb, where it
should be, there was the switch. It was stiff, and she had to
really push to get it on, something she should have thought through
a little more, for as light suddenly flooded the room, she screamed
and once more fell back onto the bed. Her eyes, shit her eyes. She
threw her arms over them, to protect them from the light, but it
was too late. Brightness danced in front of her, stabbing the backs
of her eyes, hurting more than the headache. She dug her hands into
them, rubbing hard, as if she could rub both pain and after images
away. Shit, why hadn’t she thought of that? She lay there,
convinced she should feel the light through her skin, trying to get
her breath back and her eyes back into their sockets. She turned
over, ignoring the agony this caused her back and buried her face
in a pillow. The stabbing lights slowly calmed down, although even
with her eyelids closed tight, buried in the pillow, she could see
ghostly images as she moved her head.

Anger began to
chase out her panic. Anger at her own stupidity and whoever had
gotten her here, to make such a fool of herself. She turned and sat
up, once more ignoring both back and head, and shifted back ‘til
she was leaning on the head board, her hands protecting her eyes.
She forced herself to calm down, to unwrinkle her eyes. Light was
leaking through both her fingers, and her lids, turning everything
red. The ghost of the lamp still danced in front of her. She held
this pose for what seemed like forever, forcing her pupils to
adjust, to get used to the partial light getting through to them.
Gradually, she dropped her hands ‘til only her lids protected her.
She blinked, opening her eyes and closing them again, testing their
responses. She turned her face away from the main source, away from
the light, so she could look into the shadows on the left hand side
of the bed. It wasn’t comfortable, but it was bearable. She forced
them to open, to adjust. Blinking away tears, she turned her head
slowly, making it come into contact with more of the lamp, so she
could see where she was. The scream that bounced around the walls
pierced her, made her jump, made her throat contract with the pain
and fear of it. She didn’t recognise it as her own such was the
shock.

Just by the
lamp, there was a man sitting in a chair, looking straight at
her.

He allowed
himself a small smile then pulled his face back into emptiness.
Would not do to give her too much to work with, would it?

The scream just
kept echoing, on and on; she pulled back, scuttling as far away
from him as she could. She stopped only when she knocked into the
lamp on the other side of the bed, the crash as it flew back adding
to her panic. Wedged in the corner, her body pushed as far as it
could into the soft headboard on one side, the hard edge of a
bedside table digging into her back. The scream just kept on going,
filling the room, filling her. He stared at her, not moving, doing
nothing but look. The voice stood between them, a solid, viscous
barrier, carrying her shock and fear, but it couldn’t hold up. The
already bruised and swollen muscles in her throat gave out, the
screams became less powerful, more broken, more hoarse. When they
shattered into a wretched moaning, she realised they were hers,
that she had been the one screaming, and that it wasn’t achieving
anything. She slowly wound down, a fractured organ running out of
air. Silence crashed around them, her ears ringing with the force
of it. Still, he did nothing but sit and look.

The initial
shock was leaving, terror settling in its place. The silence
between them became charged with it, alive with it. The pains all
around her, her throat, her head, her back, became nothing in that
awful stillness, as she watched him and he, her. His gaze upon her
was terrible, frightening beyond words. She was caught between fear
of not looking at him, in case he moved, and fear of being seen by
him. In tiny, desperate movements, her eyes began to flit away from
him, to and fro, attempting to build a picture, make sense of where
she was. Behind him, in the shadows, there was the outline of a
door. The bed she was on was massive, huge. He was easily six feet
away from her, six feet of bed between them, then a few inches of
space from the bed to the chair. The light from the lamp was
actually quite low; there was no sense of colour in the room. There
was only dark and light, although she was sure the sheets were
white. She clutched them to her, they were soft, luxurious. The
touch of them was comforting, reassuring. The reassurance fled as
she thought on this, on the feel of it. For the first time her eyes
dropped to look at herself, her own state. She was naked. She was
totally naked and her right breast wasn’t covered by the sheet.
With a yelp, she cowered down more, making herself smaller, pulling
the sheet up to her chin. Her hair swung into her eyes, plastering
itself to her face. She pushed her right hand up from under the
sheet, pulling her hair back. It was soaking, soaked through. Her
hair was sodden. She looked at the hand that had touched it, it was
wet, but clear. Water, not blood. She had suddenly been afraid that
she was covered in blood. It was sweat, she was covered in her own
sweat. Around her, the sheet was staining where it touched skin.
All at once she could smell it - the stench of her own body. Sweat
and fear, that’s what she smelt of: sweat and fear.

Joanne Maitland
hadn’t known that it was possible to smell of fear.

The thought
almost broke her, almost made her close her eyes and slip under the
white sheet, not caring what happened as long as she couldn’t see
him, didn’t have to admit what was happening. It was all so wrong,
so very wrong. It was a nightmare, and something was trying to tell
her that if she just closed her eyes and slipped under the sheet,
all would be well. All she had to do was close her eyes and go back
to sleep, then she’d wake, and the nightmare would be over. She
ignored the voice, the tiny whispering in the back of her mind. The
whispering could shut the fuck up, for nothing, nothing was going
to get her to close her eyes with that man looking at her.

He watched the
tiny spark in her eye, the glowing heat. He was entranced,
delighted. Anger, such a very quick show of anger. This was turning
out to be a much better evening’s entertainment than he had hoped
for. Anger at this stage boded very well, very well indeed.

Having decided
she wasn’t going to close her eyes, wasn’t going to run away, she
returned to checking out her surroundings. Her looks away from him
gradually became more bold, sustained. A picture was starting to
build. Over in the corner, by the door, ran some sort of unit.
Dressing table perhaps, with a single shelf that ran the end of the
room. Her vision ended where a second lot of drawers began.
Carefully, she turned her head slightly, taking in the line as it
grew to become a set of wardrobe doors. It was harder for her to
sense their exact size and shape as she had to keep flitting her
eyes back to check on Him. She couldn’t follow the line all the way
through, the angle was wrong. She returned to looking at what she
could see, her captor, for that was undoubtedly what he was. Still
he sat, still he stared. As if he was made of wax. She dragged her
eyes off him, it was terrifying to keep him in her gaze. She stared
again at the doorway behind him. The door. He was between her and
it. Her and the door. The little voice whispered again. No way, no
friggin’ way. She wasn’t going to go any closer to him, not even an
inch, never mind run right past him. Her eyes moved off the door,
she didn’t even like to look at it, not while that traitorous
thought was in her mind. She flicked back to Him: no change. She
flicked away, once more examining the wall opposite the bed. On the
wall, above the shelf of what might be a vanity unit, there was a
drawing, a large one. She couldn’t see what it was, it was too
dark, murky. But she could see something, could see the glass which
protected it. How hadn’t she noticed it before? It reflected the
room back at her. Dimly in places, but clear enough to her now
adjusted eyes. In one corner, there was the lamp, his reflection.
Then, a straggle of hair framed by a ghostly image of the
headboard; herself. Next, in the nearest corner of the picture,
showing part of the room she could not see, there was a dark
rectangle. A tall dark rectangle that swallowed light utterly. Her
eyes flicked between it, and Him. It and Him. The voice was back
but this time she was listening. This time it was making sense.
Sure, she didn’t know where it led. Sure, it was a slim chance, but
it was a chance. She looked back to him, checking. He hadn’t moved,
hadn’t changed. She looked one final time at the reflection, sizing
it up. The open doorway was on the same wall as she was, just a
little over from the bed. Had to be, or it wouldn’t be in the
reflection. Seconds, that was all it would take, seconds. She
decided.