Chapter 5 – Reality check

The room is dark, light from the hallway only reaching the bed as my eyes become accustomed to the half-light.

I smell it before I see it. Blood.

It is unmistakable. Like a shark through water I am drawn towards the bed, not daring to turn on the light, hoping that somehow this is still the dream, extended.

My foot bumps something soft, and I catch myself from crying out. I look down. It is she. She.

Her blond hair is wrapped around her left breast like Botticelli’s ‘Birth of Venus.’ Except this Venus is missing her other breast, The breast that the au pair had laid bare. What’s the connection?

I tiptoe around her body to kneel where there is no blood, as if I could wake her if I tried, knowing that shaking her would not bring her back to this world. She was gone, as far gone as any human being could get, off in her own heaven or hell, or just the big black nothing that I feared was real even as I scoffed at the idea and practice of all religious belief.

All of this I thought as I picked strands of her hair from her forehead, trying to work out where she had fallen, how she had died, not wanting to turn and take in the spectacle of her lover, spread out on the bed, handcuffed and tied, split open from crotch to chin, entrails laid out around him as if his innards were being rune-read.

A flash of newspaper clippings, cults murdering to appease dark lords, to make the virgin sacrifice for future generations of profitability, or excess, of joy and love, to all of the gods that race around people’s minds and hearts as they go about their dirty, dastardly deeds, justifying and being justified, even though it is all still just murder, that darkest and basest of human desires, to kill, for no reason but to exercise power, to exorcise the demons inside. Like cutting for release, but with someone else it releases much more than just pressure. It releases reality, spinning off into the nothingness that makes life just about bearable, until they are caught.
And that is why all of the serial killers look so self-satisfied, and calm, when they are caught. They do not rant and rave, except for attention, because they have lived their lives true to themselves, true to their demons, feeding the evil and starving themselves, until evil is all that is left; it is what they have become, beholden to no human, no god, no one.

Their satisfaction is in their ultimate freedom.

All of this spins through my head as I bite back the burgeoning bile threatening to burst from my throat.
A cough.

She is alive.

I move quickly, fearful hands no longer worried about fingerprints or blood, of ‘contaminating the scene.’ For this is no longer a scene, but a living, dying, human being.

I must save her.

“It’s ok. I’m here.”

Her eyes flutter open and she turns to look towards the bed. Even in death she is more worried about her loved one than herself. True love to the bitter end.

She looks back at me as if responding to my own thoughts, her eyebrows arched up in a question mark. My eyes stray over her mess of a chest, the blade still sticking from between her breasts, unnoticed by her, her blood now pulsing around the mirrored metal as she gasps her last. I grasp her hand and gaze into her eyes, soothing, hoping somehow to make her passage all the more easy, knowing that she must be in immense pain, that she will die, and soon.
I dial emergency services with my free hand without realising, the handset to my ear as my mouth sounds out the address, for them to hurry, that there are two cut and bleeding, one dead, the other dying.

I try to answer the best I can, nodding, asking questions, keeping the woman awake and hopefully alive a little longer as her blood continues to pulse past the blade and down her perfect stomach to pool in her belly button, then jump and spill down her hips and between her legs in equal measure; a final nod to the life giving nature’s gift to her, final, yet not final.

She starts slipping away as I stand to gather cloth and paper, water and tourniquet, from the bathroom first aid. It is not enough, nothing is, as she slips further away, no matter how I rinse her face, or wrap her wounds. My hands press down to slow the bleeding, but I dare not remove the knife, for fear of slicing more of her deep inside. I wait, hands trembling, holding her hand, stroking her hair from her face, whispering nonsense to keep her awake, with me.

“Stay with me, dear girl. Stay. We have all the world. Stay with me. They will be here soon. You’ll see. And you’ll be fine. You’ll have your own hospital room, with handsome male nurses, and pain-killing drugs pumped inside. They’ll stitch you up nice and clean, not a scar to be seen, except one that is lovable, that no matter what, you don’t want to hide. And you will find your new love, when old wounds heal quick, and you’ll love to hold his hands, kiss his face, stroke him thick. You’ll start a new life together, from now until the end. A life you can enjoy until the end, you and your lover, and possibly me as your friend. We’ll laugh about this horror, joke until we giggle ourselves sick, and then pour another glass of wine, because we’ll be … No! Don’t go. Please. Stay with me. This is where you need to be, right here. Please. Stay. Don’t go.”

I can hear the siren screech, footsteps thundering up the stairs, paramedics rushing in to take her over, their gaze flitting over dead meat on the bed, before bending to their task. My job is done here, I want to leave, to cry, to curl up in an ice cold bath. To scrub myself clean, then scald the wounds with hot water, that’s all I want now, but instead I stand stock still, quivering in the corner, and watch them rush and move, wrapping her up, then removing the blade, the blood spraying across them not even causing a flinch, as I watch her life slip away, inch by inch. I slap myself in the face, wanting to stop the rerun rhyme, but all I can think is how she has finally run out of time.

No. I do not realise I am babbling until the police arrive, and take me into a corner to interrogate me. This is the end of my clear-day-thought. This is the end of me, I have come to naught.

I am bundled in the back of the police car, all covered in blood, shaking and crying, vomit I don’t remember spewing caked down my front. Strangers in the street looking, pointing, talking. The ‘known of’ here to watch the show. To watch me fall from ‘known’ to ‘known of’ to ‘down the row.’

And still my mind spins on, as the wheels grip the road, and I am yanked hard into the future, a future I will soon get to know.

Vomit coughs into my nose, spews from my mouth over the seat, splatters the coppers on the shoulder through the grill, pools down at my feet.

I apologise to their laugh, looking at me in the back, and they nod to one another, knowing that they having caught the killer in the act.

My heart sinks to my feet and my head tries to follow my eyes through the floor, to the caged hell that awaits when they open the door.

This is it, the end of me. I am done. To write, and dance, and sing, no more.

My mind flickers down the halls of the Hotel, and the streets I did walk.

To the waitress in the café, and the empty words we talk.

My life in a nutshell, wouldn’t fill even that.

And now all have left me, except the Cat,

In the Hat.