Ellipsis

by Nikki Dudley

  “I know you don’t want to hear this but I can understand how you feel”.

  “Oh, you can?” Thom sneers, clearly unimpressed by my empathy. “I can’t believe you’re trying to liken yourself to me. After everything…”

  “We’re not so different, Thom. Daniel fooled me too”, I say quietly. Thom’s face instantly softens as he digests this.

  “You’re right”, he croaks. “He changed your life forever. You can never go back”. Thom pauses briefly, finishing, “just like me”.

  When he moves, I think he may be coming to embrace me but he brushes past me. I don’t move, too drained to really think of doing so. What’s the point? I know I can’t leave him here. But I should be out of this house, since I tried to escape it for months and have been so close…

  Thom’s presence arrives behind me. I turn towards him. His eyes are bloodshot, his body straight like a nail sticking out of the floor trying to catch my toe and drag me down, his arms bulging with veins, the knife sparkling in the light from the half-opened blind.

  I open my mouth but he grabs me roughly with his free hand before I can protest, plead or even utter a syllable. His mouth is wet with spit, a few specks on his beard. I am frozen for a moment, staring at the knife in his hand.

  Mum, I know I said I’d stop talking to you but I’m really afraid…

  “Sarah”, he whispers, looking down at the knife himself. He moves it between them and pulls me even closer. I can feel it through my top, like a vein throbbing beneath the skin; subtle but something that cannot be ignored. I meet his gaze, wondering what has happened behind his eyes. What has happened to the man I can trust? What has happened to his hope?

  “Thom, you don’t have to do this”, I tell him firmly.

  He shakes his head. “I have to do something”, he insists, pulling me even closer. My stomach leaps at the thought of it being punctured, but the pressure of the blade only increases, although doesn’t draw blood yet. Our foreheads are touching, and from afar, I imagine we look like lovers.

  Thom begins to shake, his unrealised tears making his whole body shudder. I want to grab hold of him, keep him still but the knife lingers between us and I’m afraid I will push it into one of us, or both of us. Instead, I reach up and touch his face. I move my fingers across his bristly beard, the softness of his lips amongst it, his clammy skin.

  His body slowly stills again. He nuzzles his head against mine, moaning gently. Yet all I feel is his grip on the knife, which doesn’t falter. My wrist is still clamped in his other hand, drawing me closer to his body and perhaps closer to death.

  As I move over the back of his neck, he jolts suddenly. His body shoots up straight, his expression darkening. I feel the knife press harder into my stomach, the pressure beginning to mark the skin underneath. His eyes are wet but his mouth is hardened by his clenched teeth.

  “While I’ve been standing here…” He speaks in a throaty voice, as though he has been screaming for hours. “All I can think about is two things”, he pauses, “kissing you and… killing you”. The space between us is now non-existent; there is only the knife to separate us. His face is close. I can feel his breath on my lips and as he moves his head a millimetre forward, his beard scratches at my skin.

  “You can’t let him do this to us”, I insist. I don’t want to plead with him. I don’t want to be the murderer who can’t face up to death. If anything, he should’ve killed me as soon as he found out.

  Thom finally lets his tears throb out of him like lava pulsing out of a volcano. His face flashes with sadness and anger each millisecond. It seems like I am watching him through a kaleidoscope. Then he moves a millimetre forward and presses his lips against mine. They are shivering and cracked.

  I see the red before I feel it. But it’s the sudden push backwards and a thrust that really occur first. It punctures the skin violently, delving inside where no one can see what’s been ruptured. It is seconds later that the blood actually begins to swell out of the hole. Yet, after the initial swell, the blood spreads like a fire tearing through the material. The shock follows. Neither of us moves. Our eyes are locked, our mouths gasping for air.

  Still locked together, we fall to the floor.

  The door bursts open as we land. The blood covers my arms. I’m holding onto the knife so hard that my hands are sliced open. “Alice, no…” a voice says. I realise Michael is pulling me up, leaning me against him. He is searching for the wound, flailing his jacket around, ready to plug the hole. I have forgotten he had been waiting for me at all.

  “No”, I push away, as he realises what has happened. I scramble towards Thom, lying on his side, staring towards the blank TV screen. I lift his head onto my lap. Michael belatedly presses his jacket against Thom’s stomach, causing Thom to groan and recoil. Yet after a few moments, he doesn’t seem to notice anymore.

  “Why did you do it?” I shake him. He looks dazed so I slap him gently on the cheek until he focuses on my face. He smiles gently, as though he has forgotten everything. Perhaps this is exactly what he wanted – numbness, oblivion. Yet I don’t want to let him go. I start to sob as Michael calls an ambulance.

  For once, I don’t find blood beautiful. It makes my head dizzy. It makes my chest tighten and spasm. It makes my stomach twist as if the knife is actually stuck inside me, ripping my organs apart.

  “I had to”, Thom says quietly. “You’re getting better...” He whispers, leaning his head into my chest. Does he mean that only one of us can survive? That he thinks he will never ‘get better’?

  He closes his eyes but I refuse to let him leave me. I shake him awake. He drowsily reopens his eyes, and I think he will start telling me how he is cold or numb. Yet he doesn’t need to. His body is shivering in my hold and he seems unaware.

  “Don’t die”, I tell him. Thom barely responds. He is going limp.

  And all I see is you, Mum. I am holding you in the hallway. The line of blood is drawn down your chin as though you have misapplied lipstick. I can’t feel a heartbeat as I lay my head against your chest. You are still. The world is still. Yet somewhere in my mind, I refused to accept it.

  I rest my head against Thom’s chest and hear his heart beating, slowly, slower, slower, slow. I think I hear the ambulance wail somewhere in the street. Yet I can’t be sure I haven’t imagined it. All I know is this time; they will need the sirens. He isn’t dead. Not like you or Daniel. We can get out of the tunnel. We aren’t paused forever.

  Still beating, beating, beating, beating, it still beats.

  51 Red Fingerprints

  Michael pulls me closer. I let myself flop onto his shoulder, not knowing what else to do with my body. My arms are covered with Thom’s blood, now dry. Somehow I believe this is the blood that should’ve marked me after I pushed Daniel. After all, they were made of the same bloodline.

  Even though all the information is before me, I can barely draw faint lines to connect them. I know I pushed Daniel. I know he planned it. I know he left clues for Thom. I know Thom and he were actually brothers. And I know that Thom uncovered my secret.

  Losing a relative is enough to break anyone, I completely understand. But finding out your whole life is a fabrication… that is enough to destroy someone. And Thom knows this now. Everything he trusted has twisted out of familiarity and transformed into something else. No wonder Thom has responded to everything as he has.

  Destroying a person takes time. And Daniel had had that time. Creating questions and doubts through his clues, bringing unfamiliar people into Thom’s life to unbalance him and distract him, holding back the vital clues to keep Thom chasing him, making Thom’s whole life flip upside down until his head was so full of blood it needed to explode. He’d been clever and perceptive and, most of all, evil.

  Even now, I can’t recall the hospital properly. I have faint flashes of him sitting on a bed, perhaps holding my hand? Yet I can’t trust my thoughts. I have the letters now and they give me enough ideas to create something. It makes me
shudder thinking about what he must’ve said to me, how he influenced me, how he somehow knew me better than I did. However, I guess a fragile mind is easy to manipulate.

  As I followed Thom down to the ambulance, I saw the DVD lying on the floor. Picking it up, it seemed to scream in my hand. I didn’t need to put it on to know what I would see. I shoved it into my coat pocket and it is still hiding there now. I wonder what I should do with it.

  The moment I pushed Daniel seems like a dream. I have rehearsed the simple action in my head but it never seems to be real. The only thing that makes me believe I will live with the guilt is the fact that he led me there.

  It is then that I realise Michael has fallen asleep beside me. I slowly lift myself off him, only making him stir for a moment before I slip away. I have to wash off this blood. Looking for the nearest toilets, I see they are down the hallway. I shuffle towards them, clamber inside and rush straight to the sink. I pull the taps on to full and let the spray lash at my clothes. My torso is instantly soaked and I imagine it is me that was stabbed, not Thom. Yet there is no pain for me.

  Splashing the water up my arms, I scratch at the stained skin until the blood grudgingly re-moistens and slides off. The sink water turns pink and eventually drinks it all. I only stop when the water turns clear again.

  I switch off the taps but as I do, catch myself in the mirror. My hair, my left cheek, and the bottom of my neck are speckled with blood. I grab some paper towels, dropping a pile of them in the process, and hurriedly rub at the stains until all that is left are red tension marks. I douse my hair and hope it has caught most of it; but I will have to wash it several times when I get home.

  Although, this will never truly wash off.

  As I leave the toilets, water dripping onto the dusty floor from my hair and the bandages on my hands, I see them. Richard and Val are standing in the corridor, holding hands. Richard has his head down and even from here; I can see him holding onto Val so tightly that his arms are bulging with muscles. He squeezes her and lets go of her. I begin to duck but thankfully he walks in the opposite direction, digging into his pocket as he walks, filling his hand with coins.

  I watch Val for a moment. She is looking around as though she is lost. I can already see the withered tissue peeking out of her sleeve. I am taken back to the first time I saw her, leaving the house I’d been watching for days, her eyes sore and a tissue flapping behind her. I consider turning away and even take a step backwards but in the end, I walk straight towards her.

  She barely notices me approach. She only looks up when a drop of water lands on her arm. She lifts her face up with great effort, her wrinkles appearing deeper with each movement she is forced to make. She stares at me for several seconds before she nods in recognition. “Sarah…” she says in a raspy whisper. Her cheeks are raw with tears, her lips cracked. She reminds me of the last time I saw Thom. The only difference is a purple bruise making a small bulge on her lower lip. Where did that come from?

  Considering her now, I see the similarities with Thom. She has the same shaped face; a slightly rounded nose, long eyelashes (although hers are glued together in clumps by the mascara and her sobbing), the same downturn of the mouth that makes a smile even harder.

  “How is Thom?” I ask. She instantly begins to sob as though I have flipped a switch. I hesitate but finally draw her into a hug, wondering if by being this close she will be able to feel that I am a murderer. She doesn’t seem to flinch though. She simply buries her head in my curls.

  “How is he?” I repeat, more urgently. She says something into my hair. I have to push her backwards slightly, yet her words are still muffled like she is speaking through a pillow. “Val, please”. I shake her gently.

  “He’s not good”, she finally manages.

  “What did they say?”

  “They say he’s struggling. He’s lost a lot of blood”, she tells me shakily, digging her fingers into my arms. “What will I do?” she asks me desperately. I deliberate on how to answer the question: “you’ll cope, we all do”, “he’ll be okay, I’m sure of it”, “don’t think about that now, let’s wait”. I can’t help thinking I am the last person who should be comforting her. If Thom had punished the right person, he wouldn’t be ‘struggling’ to stay alive.

  “Let’s see what happens first”. I choose a variation on one of them to comfort her. She nods but her face is still twisted in anguish.

  “The only thing is; it’s all I can think about”, she admits.

  People are filtering by but she doesn’t seem to notice that they are staring at her, wondering if we know each other and wondering if there is somewhere they can move her, so they don’t have to see her pain.

  “It must be horrible for you”, I tell her. I feel terrible imagining how I would respond at the possibility of losing two children within a few months; especially as one has only just found out he is her child.

  “I don’t think I can cope with this again…”

  “I know”. I squeeze her.

  I imagine she is you, Mum, alive again. I let her warmth smother me. Her salty tears sting my cheeks. If only you hadn’t left me, maybe I wouldn’t need to drain this poor woman of her last drips of energy.

  “You were with him”, she says, easing away from my hold. “Did he say anything about me?”

  I remember every word that Thom said in the bedsit. I could’ve recited every word and every intonation to her. Yet now I have begun to feel normal again, I recall that the truth doesn’t always help. If I tell her how angry he’d been, how confused and desolate he felt, would it really make her happier?

  “He told me what happened. But he didn’t say too much”.

  “Then why did he do that to himself?”

  “I’m not sure. He didn’t make much sense”. I shrug, hoping she is as confused as she looks. She shivers as though I have thrust an icicle into her chest and wraps her hands around herself.

  “Did he do it because of me?” she asks quietly, unable to meet my gaze. I think about this carefully before even thinking of opening my mouth. It’s definite that she has some weight in his anger and pain, but is it because of her? I decide the answer is safely no. Without Daniel and myself, he wouldn’t have done it. Under normal circumstances, I believe he may have even reconciled with her one day, despite the years of lies.

  “It wasn’t you”, I say, bending towards her lowered gaze to emphasise this.

  She nods weakly and says, “I’m his real mother, you know”.

  “He told me”. I nod. She seems satisfied, looking away to compose herself.

  “Do you want to see him?”

  “Yes”, I answer instantly. Since I’d been forced to let the paramedics take him away, I have only thought about the moment I can see him again. I want to see how they have repaired him, fixed the gaping hole in his skin. She takes my arm, the broken leading the broken; towards the person we both love.

  As we approach the cubicle, with the curtains drawn around the bed, I try to catch my breath. I can’t believe I will actually see him again.

  Unlike you Mum, I won’t be losing him forever. I won’t have to stand at a funeral and feel my mind float up above my body, never quite able to reconnect.

  Val peeks through the curtain discreetly, as I hop on my feet. She lets out a small yelp. I push her aside and tear the curtains apart. Before us, the sheets are dishevelled and twisted, alarmingly empty, like a robbed grave. The machines beside the bed are dead. I bend down and see the plugs have been pulled out. The wires connected to the machine are tossed on the bed like haphazard veins leading to nothing. There are a few bloody finger marks on the sheets, on the bedside table, on the curtain to the left.

  I follow the blood marks, chasing them into the next cubicle where a surprised family turn to face me. I run around the bed and keep following the marks, diminishing with each gauzy curtain, becoming more elusive with each bed. There are three I pass before I reach the corridor at the end. I check all the doorways for signs o
f him and after several, I find the faintest mark on the door to the stairway. I fling the door open and fly down the stairs.

  I imagine I am a policewoman in pursuit, only a whisper behind. Yet, when I reach the bottom, the door is firmly closed. No one has been here recently. I open it anyway, feeling the cold night rushing towards me. I think about Thom’s clothes and how the knife has torn them, how he could be shivering in an alleyway, or worse, dying.

  I step out into the night, looking to both sides. Ambulances are pulling in, a few people loitering in the car park, a few nurses smoking near the corner, but no Thom. I focus my eyes on each spot in my sight but see nothing unusual. I somehow believe that if he is out here, I will find him, despite the darkness and the stinging wind.

  Checking the floor for blood, I pace up and down. I look in doorways. I walk in between the cars and search for bloodied fingerprints or smashed windows. I walk to the street and search for movement or a group of people huddled over a body. Yet I find nothing.

  I can’t find Thom.

  Wrapping my arms around myself, I let myself sink against a car. I look at my arms and remember the stains of his blood and now can’t believe I ever washed it off. This was my last link to him. I may never see him again and I have washed him away out of guilt.

  “Thom”, I call into the wind. “Thom!” I scream. The only response I get is from a fox that is slinking across the road which casually glances over and, after a long stare, continues padding onwards. I slide further down the car, leaning my cheek against its cold body.

  I know he can’t hear me, wherever he is. Yet I hope he knows I came looking for him, that I called for him, that I am frozen by the heartbreak. This is all I can do for him now. Unlike me, I hope he knows that someone is thinking about him and believes in his ability to heal.

  Oh Mum, what should I do with myself now?

  Several minutes later, when I drag my body from the floor, I wonder if wherever he is, he will think about me too. And when he does, will he think of me as a lover or a murderer? No matter what I do in the future, there will still be a person who knows what I am.