TheRapist (22 page)

Frankie

Tired, grey buildings and smoky tower blocks gradually petered out, giving way to an open, endless patchwork of green counterpanes and vast blue skies. Frankie always thought how much more sky there seemed to be in the country. There was nothing in the way, other than the odd pylon. How quickly her life had changed. She had been unfulfilled for so long, trailing from job to job, finally settling as a nanny, though always knowing it was a temporary space she was in, drifting from one unsuitable guy to the next, never really able to find the place where she was supposed to be. And then came Manny and their exquisitely, brief affair and her thoughts and dreams of what they might share, thoughts she almost dared not to dream, as they had come so suddenly before being ripped away and now Manny gone from this world as her world growing within. She felt as though she were leaving all she had ever known behind her, to begin her life anew.

Four hours had passed when Frankie opened her eyes to see the platform at Exeter St. David’s. She clambered off the train, dragging her wheelie bin behind her, and made her way to the exit. And there she was, dressed in baggy jeans and a grey and yellow flannel shirt, the edges of her light brown hair grazed by the sunlight, waiting beside her muddy blue Land Rover with Rodney, the yellow lab, drooling by her side. Tears sprang to Frankie’s eyes as she walked towards her mother’s open arms.

The smell of violets and fresh laundry encased her senses as her mother took her into her arms and whispered to her twenty-six year old daughter, ‘it’s alright baby, you’re home.’

Rodney nudged the backs of her knees with his warm, wet nose as Frankie let the tears flow free.

*

Devon

When Devon awoke, the sky was as black as the curtain of a final performance and the pier was pulsating out streams and slashes of vibrant color. The constant pounding pulsated through the planks and along the boardwalk, the waves curled themselves around the struts of the pier and the rhythm of the night seeped into Devon’s bones, assaulting her unconscious state and forcing her awake.

Her head was thumping behind her left ear and her right arm was still asleep, having been squashed beneath her back.

Astonishingly, her Blackberry was still beside her, winking at her with its solitary red beady eye, two tiny yellow envelopes reporting that her email to Adrian was undeliverable and delivering the news about Manny’s death.

Thoughts began to flow and gush through her mind like a raging river. Torrential feelings.

Manny was dead.

Adrian was unresponsive.

Mary was lost.

She had no way of knowing that Manny had left life on this earth. That somewhere, in the depths of the English south western countryside, his child was growing inside a woman he had barely known.

And where was Adrian? Even when he was traveling, her messages to him were held within some giant conglomerate of a huge Blackberry waiting room. He had never been unresponsive. Not ever.

Mary. Where was she? Their exquisitely brief encounter had shown Devon what true passion was all about and she had never been able to forget it.

Devon moved slowly along the boardwalk, as if captured in some slow, relentless dream.

She suddenly, piercingly, missed her father. He had died when Devon was four, so her memories of him were faded and fragmented and possibly even made up. Her mother was another story. She had been good and kind but had committed suicide when Devon was eight. Which was how she and Adrian found each other. After spending years in a multitude of foster homes, some good experiences, some too terrible to recollect, they were eventually both placed in the same foster home and there, they had found slivers of solace in each other, even through their abuse by Birdman, both too terrified to tell a soul. Had been like brothers,

Until they fell in love.

Which was the first reason that Devon decided to become a woman.

Adrian and David.

Adrian and the Devil.

Adrian and Devon.

Satan and the Devil.

A perfect match.

Looking back, accompanied by that beautiful, belated friend also known as hindsight, Devon knew that she had spent her youth yearning for love, wanting to fit in, needing something that, until she met Adrian, had seemed unobtainable. They comforted each other whilst reliving the trauma of their young lives and the concurrent abuse that Birdman inflicted upon them.

So she crushed all previous existence of her former self, only taking Adrian along into her new life. As soon as he had saved enough money, from washing cars, stacking shelves at the local Londis and performing quick blow jobs in back alleys, David bought a one way ticket to Los Angeles.

Adrian stayed in London, forging a career in fashion whilst David went through every surgical and non surgical procedure to emerge as Devon.

In California, he began the end of his life as a man working as a rent boy in West Hollywood. He was so popular, with his skinny whit
e body and English accent,
that the dollars kept on rolling in. One client, a high powered attorney, worked out all of the necessary paperwork for David’s new life. This was payment for him performing every conceivable, unspeakable act the attorney wanted of him, until the time of the augmentation, castration and manipulation (whether physical, hormonal or mind altering
therapies
) when he was finally transformed into a woman and the attorney was no longer interested.

David Caine was dead and Devon Cage, a beautiful, confident woman, had taken his place.

And then, Devon began to take out her revenge.

Now, decades later, as she stood, still and solitary on the boardwalk, looking out to the black waters of the Pacific, she knew the time had come to stop.

She was alive and the rest of her life was for living.

*

Jezzy

Jezzy
never heard from Adrian again. She realized that he was, undoubtedly, the shallowest of men, only spouting false promises and conditional, faux love. She had thought that she was bewitched by him, unable to set herself free, entangled by his realms and declarations of supposed devotion. She wasn’t even sure what had finally brought her to her senses, but the relief she felt from it was palpable, so much so that she could feel it embracing her wherever she went.

She missed Frankie, but loved the thought of being a ‘chosen’ auntie. Escaping to the country would be good for her soul and she relished the idea of weekends in Devon. Maybe one day she would meet a man who was right for her, but right now she needed to rest from anything remotely sociable, at least temporarily. She would buy cosy, fleecy socks in warm colours and lots of different bath gels laced with essential oils, indulge in the full range of new nail colours from
OPI
and Rimmel and splash out on a box set of a great TV series, maybe CSI in every possible location and some prime seventies sit-com and definitely the entire collection of Sex and the City, spend
ing
her nights living a spa-like existence. She would cook frequently with garlic and red onions, instead of avoiding anything that might leave an aftertaste. She would go to Chinatown and find a little supermarket on Newport Street that sold yellow paste and beans and buy herself a wok and try to make her own Chinese sticky ribs! She’d buy trashy novels and read them with impunity on the train to
the country
. These thoughts flooded through her mind and she welcomed every one with joyful anticipation.

Jezzy
felt so good and so free. For the first time she knew where she was going and thrilled with anticipation, she couldn’t wait to get on the ride.

*

Adrian

In his agonized state of turmoil, Adrian had thrown his

state of the art Samsung phone into the Thames. Just another

piece of jetsam that laced the already turgid dank waters as they grappled from a wet, virtual prison, flowing evermore towards easterly and westerly estuaries, forever calling, taunting, falsely being led to believe that they could make their way to freedom where the waters run deep and pure.

Adrian stood on Blackfriars bridge, staring into the dark vortex beneath. He felt as if his entire life had been unraveling since he was a boy and now this was the last thread, barely hanging, suspended between life and something else something that seemed to welcome him, promising him a
refuge
where he could heal.

His face felt as though it was caving in on itself as his features began to crumple and wince. He had nothing in the world. He thought
Jezzy
could save him, but he had been wrong, she had merely been just a series of momentary blips in his radar.
He felt as though the
solace he had given and received with Devon had been cut and there was no way back. Rain began to shift above the swollen, grey clouds, falling heavily from the sky. At first, they were small, slight drips that poked at his face and his clothes, niggling him for a response, then turning into bigger, harder drops that pounded at his meager mind and soulful soul. He couldn’t run anymore. His mind was shot. Too many years of physical and mental abuse followed by emotionally abusive therapy, of countless shrinks always trying to make him go back to the past, retrace his steps, find out the cause of why he had ended up on a used leather chair in the blank office of a
faceless, stoic
stranger. How could you escape your past if all they ever tried to do was force you to go back there and remember, constantly telling you that you couldn’t move on unless you went back? How was a person ever expected to find joy if they were always making you regress into the depths of the cause? He had run for too long. His pain forever etched into his psyche, leaving him with nothing more than depleted strength and a torn mind. He was done
. Finished. Adrian was drained, harmed, self harmed, he had turned into an anagram of his name.
He turned and looked longingly at the bright red bus, battling along the bridge, through the piercing rain.
I
n one swift movement, almost graceful in its execution, Adrian’s mind threw his body from the bridge
, where the Thames engulfed him, withdrawing
the torment of his life.  

*

Devon

Devon was lying on a smooth hot slab of dark green marble in the steam room of a Hollywood spa. Her thoughts drifted in and out as she lay with her eyes closed. If she opened them, hot droplets of water, created by the steam, fell from the sparkling ceiling into her eyes
, mixing with the salt from her own tears
. Tiny lights of blue, green and pink winked intermittently from above. Her mind wandered backwards and forwards in time to a man she had either known long ago or had yet to meet. He was tall and broad and blonde. His eyes were blue, the color of a rockpool in the midst of summer, deep and thoughtful and he was looking at her knowingly, whether present or past. Was this the man who could truly understand her? Was there such a person on this earth? Her skin was perspiring and throbbing in the intense heat, perfumed with sage and juniper and mint. Was he imaginary, someone she had known or a man she had yet to meet?

Manny was gone, Adrian had disappeared, Mary was lost, but     Devon was here, beside herself, inside herself.

*

Mary & Edie

The helper, in her white stained apron and yellow mob cap, was mopping the floor of the brown and grey chequered linoleum that ran the length of the hallway between the lounge and the lavatory. Someone hadn’t made it to the toilet in time and the floor was wet. She cleaned and scrubbed, her blonde hair bobbing beneath her white cotton cap, mopping methodically until the urine had been replaced with disinfectant that smelt like pine needles.