Under Purple Sheets

by Coco Houston

  “GET OUT NOW! I CAN LIVE WITHOUT YOU! I DON’T NEED YOU ANYMORE!” the words are spoken softly, in a cold voice that registers as full of deep hatred, hurt and anger. He understands all too clearly that I mean every single fucking word, as still I hold that door open.

  He lifts his hand and belts me so hard across the face that he knocks me into the tall American-style cooler. I put my hand to my cheek, my face is stinging, burning red hot with the slap, my eyes begin watering and I lose my balance with the force of the blow. I regained my composure, then slowly move back towards the door, as I struggle in pain, I hold it open once more, repeating the request.

  “GET TO FUCK OUT MY LIFE!” I demand from him. This time he goes. As he stumbles down the steps, my legs also give away, after banging the door shut behind him; I lock the door just before I collapse to the floor.

  No tears. No fucking tears this time for me. I unsteadily head upstairs to bathe my face, my eye hurts and I feel physically sick. I throw up down the toilet, realising my whole body is trembling in shock. I go to my bedroom, where I sit on the bed wondering why I had just wasted the last five years of my life with that bastard.

  I come back down a while later, astonished to find him standing in my kitchen. I had no idea he was there, I never even heard him enter back into the house, I must have been so lost in thought I forgot he has keys.

  “Brad,” I say; he has his back to me, filling the kettle with water. I notify him with all the dignity I have left, “I can’t do this anymore. I just can’t handle the pain of this relationship; I don’t need this or want you in my life now.” I stop talking. Sighing, I sit down at the table, holding my head in my hands as he continues to make tea as normal, as if he never heard a word of it.

  “Coco please, Coco, I’m so sorry for all the hurt I’ve caused you, but I can’t bear the thought that you don’t need me anymore. Please, Coco, I need you to need me because I need you darling. I need you,” Brad cries in an anguished voice as tears roll down his face. This time it is him that stands breaking his heart, begging me to reconsider giving him another chance. He stops crying after some time, I look up as he is wiping his eyes and he starts to smile over at me; the big hard man, the hard coal miner he portrays himself to be now stands whimpering like a baby in tears over me. Pish! In tears at what he’d done to himself is more the case. I glare right through him. Revenge is sweet so they say. I just felt washed out as I remembered all those times he threatened to leave me, including the time he called saying he was at the airport and never coming back. As I pushed my pants with fright and fell to the floor hysterically, he sat right outside my house in his car. BASTARD! I take my coffee from him; I just sit thinking, watching him, I say nothing. He speaks first.

  “Besides, Coco, you have to stay with me because I bought us a donkey. You a donkey. As back at Christmas time, I asked you what you wanted and you were told you could have anything you wanted, preferably something you didn’t have. You chose a donkey. I couldn’t get you one then, but I have one now for you. It’s in a field just outside of his hometown. It can’t stay there much longer, so tomorrow it’s moving to live on a farm out by the holiday park just past Dunure. I will come for you and take you to see it. Okay?” he asks, smiling through his tears. He wins again. How can I resist? I get up, going over to where he is, holding him close to me, I try not to cry. I reach my hand up, wiping away his tears as he covers my swollen face in tender kisses.

  “Coco, you’re so beautiful, and I love you so much, so much more than you will ever know,” he whispers into my hair. Shortly afterwards, with my face still smarting, swollen and bruised, he leaves me as usual to go back to his wife. I shut the door on his back and enter the kitchen again. The loneliness I feel is awful once more. His presence is still felt and I can still smell his cologne. I turn around to find that on the kitchen table, beside my one of my spell books, he had left an old-fashioned book with an inscription on the inside page. It was also signed and dated the 8th of March, the fucking date he left me. Why, I wonder, would he sign that date, maybe to show me he done it that night and was thinking about me and was alone in the back bedroom after all. The memory of that time still haunts me. As I hold the book, I remember how on walking around the bookshop the other day, I was touching all the covers of the books and thinking of my own manuscript. I sat down with a coffee in the bookshop and was determined that despite everything, I was going to do my very best to have my story published.

  The next day I go with him out to Dunure to meet my donkey. It is a bastard of a thing and it hates me from the moment it set eyes on me. I call it Gucci. It chases me through the field, and then it bites me. I have to run like fuck in my wellie boots, and I get stuck in the mud while I am running and it nips at my arse through my jeans. I go home with my bottom sore and all black and blue, matching my face, and that is that and this is my donkey.

  For the rest of the week I decide that I shall go to visit and feed my donkey myself rather than the farmer who has agreed to do it on a daily basis and check up on him if notified nobody is going to be around. I go the following day and on him seeing me coming in the gate, he runs at me, chases me, and then bites me. It breaks my nails and tears my clothes, while Blake continues to stay up in that house with her, breaking and tearing everything else that is left of me after Gucci is done. That is the relationship I have with him and with my donkey, which he fucking bought. I go back and forth twice a day to the farm to visit Gucci, which results in me getting hurt. Then Blake comes back and forth to visit me at my house, with ditto results; I get hurt.

  21st March

  Date is of one of the Witches celebrations. A lesser Sabbat known as Vernal or Spring Equinox. There are many ways to celebrate this, as with all Sabbats.

  Today I celebrated the flowers coming out of the ground, the weather getting warmer and thanked Ostara, pronounced Ost-ara the Goddess of Dawn, also known as Spring Maiden. I thank her for the beautiful blossoms growing on the cherry trees in my garden. We witches celebrate the season of rebirth and renewal. I bake poppy seed bread and poppy seed cheese biscuits which I have with fresh green salad. Later today, I took some of both the salad leaves and the poppy seed biscuits to Gucci. He loved them. When they were finished though, once again I had to run like fuck for the gate as he chased me back out the field. That’s what I get, after fucking baking biscuits for him all morning.

  A few days later when Brad comes down to visit me, a row starts between us over money. He felt I spent too much on clothes. He tells me I need to be more responsible with my income. I tell him that my finances are none of his business, yet he still argues on, causing things to escalate to the point of him breaking my temper.

  “Listen you, what have I to do exactly? Are you suggesting that I take financial advice from you? Big, sensible, reliable, responsible, financially sorted Brad. Who bought a fucking donkey, by the way, not just any donkey, but a donkey with a fucking personality disorder, which is costing a fortune to keep, and like you, does what the fuck it wants to me!” I scream in temper. He bangs out the door. Argument over. He has no answer for me. Case closed. He lost.

  26th March

  It is raining very heavily and almost midnight. I can’t sleep, so I get out of bed and go downstairs to make some coffee. I seem to be doing this a lot lately, I realise, getting up late, just sitting in the dark lounge watching the last glowing embers of the fire dying. I light a candle as I consider whether to add more logs to the small flickering flames. The log basket is empty, the logs are stored outside, but not only is the weather wild out, the stove needs to be cleaned, which I had planned to do in the morning, so I just decide to leave the fire as it is tonight. Drinking the strong coffee, I look around the room, this time though its décor takes on a different form as I make pictures in my head out of the shadows on the wall. I create some fairies out of the shapes, and then see one which can be considered to look like the silhouette of a wolf, strange how this image made me think of Brad. I begin to wonder wh
ere he is sleeping now. In her bed or in the spare room?

  In the silence of the night, there is only the lone noise of the wind whistling through the trees in the garden. The storm is becoming worse with the winds getting up, at that there is a huge crashing noise coming from outside at the front of the building. I recognise it to be the sound of something breaking. It had to be a plant pot breaking, getting blown from the step. I sigh at the mess that would be left behind, as this has happened on a few occasions in the past. Luckily, all my other pots which grow the delicate herbs which I need to use in my spells are in the kitchen or my shed, so at least they are safe from these gales; well, if the old rickety shed doesn’t get blown over the rainbow that is. I smile at this thought, reminding myself there is a wicked witch over there too and that perhaps she can probably find use for them. My mood changes to one of gratitude, as I love being inside on a night like this; when the weather outside is untamed, it makes you very humble to have shelter from it. I feel there is something magical in the power of storms, as dangerous as they can be, I am fascinated by them. I have not been tired at all this evening, I find it hard to unwind; I am mentally tortured all over again on him being up the road in that house with her. I have all this shit in my head once more. My friends try to talk to me but I’ve managed to shut them out of my head completely tonight, for the time being anyway.

  I rise from my comfy seat, passing by the shadow fairies as I dally to the kitchen with a little of the bitter coffee left in the bottom of the cup. The air is cooler in here, with the tiles on the floor below my bare feet also stone cold. Ironic choice of word, Coco. I reach up to the rack overhead, lifting down a bottle of wine from it, contemplating with surprise at how many full bottles are still there; usually it would be half empty. On opening it a smell of fruity red berries rises from the bottle as I pour the red liquid into a champagne glass, not a wine glass, before taking it to my lips to down the glass in one go. I let the sweet spicy liquid run down my throat, and then shake my head, one at the strength of it, then at the pleasure of the taste. I take a swig from the bottle then refill the glass, lifting it along with the bottle; I hurry back to my lounge. Passing into the hall you feel the temperature rising in here, as the warmth of the lounge walks out the open door into the hall, with the scent from the vanilla candle following behind it. I put the bottle on the table; plonking myself back down on the soft leather sofa, I empty the glass for a second time. This time the strength seems milder and the taste of the fruit softer. I play with the smooth stem of the empty glass as I sit holding it for a while, as I try to look once more for the picture of my wolf in the shifting shadows. On finding it, I think of Brad once again. In a shadow of a wolf he haunts me, why? Sitting staring at it, I find no answer. I put the glass down beside the now almost empty bottle I acknowledge before leaving the room. This time I am going to change into my robes. I have told myself quite reassuringly now is the right time to cast another spell. Perform a magic ritual to make Brad Blake very uncomfortable, make him uneasy inside, causing him to feel he is losing me.

  On returning downstairs and whilst during the preparation for the spell, I realise that one of the herbs required for recipe is locked up outside in the shed. Fuck! I do need this ingredient, so I will just have to go out to the shed for it. I pull on my boots, rushing out into the night in the rain. I struggle to open the rusty lock on the old door, but after a few attempts, I manage it eventually, but only just. On entering the dark shed, the musty smell of damp hits me, the door bangs closed behind me, leaving me in total blackness. I search about, feeling along the shelf as I try to find the shape of the jar I’m looking for, my fingers touch it, just before the door, catching in the wind, and flies open again. In the grey light now filtering in, I notice a spider out of the corner of my eye running for cover. Eww! Yuck! I don’t like those horrible things. Oh gads! They make me shudder in disgust at them having eight eyes. Ohhhhh! Turning back towards the shelf, I grab the jar I want, and then get my arse quickly out of there. I have no knickers on, what if the spider went up my fucking robe? I let out a scream in the night at the thought of it as I grapple to lock the door with as much difficulty as I had in opening the thing. Angrily, I turn the key, and then also flee for cover, just as did the spider. Back inside, shaking myself down, I shiver thinking witches are supposed to like spiders; well this one, she does not. I wouldn’t harm them but sure as fuck couldn’t be friends with them. I finish my mix, then lay my table as per spell indicates before lighting all the coloured candles required. I then proceed to cast my spell over Brad Blake; I finish my chant with, “AN HARM IT NONE, DO WHAT THOU WILT.” Now with no evil done, I convince myself that I’m just teaching him a lesson in love. I bring my spell to a closure with

  “MAY THE GOD AND GODDESS PRESERVE THE CRAFT, SO MOTE BE IT.” Now my work is done. I open my eyes, on rising from the floor; I snuff out all the candles. As I do, I put away all the fairies, along with the wolf, as now I have put all the shadows down to sleep. I just sit in my robes by the depraved fire flames; slowly the glow from the dying embers of the fire disappears. I drink the last of the wine, smirking to myself. As I wait for the spell to take hold of him, sheets of rain hit off the windows, with the wind howling loudly in the night. It shall be my only witness that Brad Blake shall be waking shortly from his sleep. Very soon he will be looking out his window at the wind, which will confirm to whoever listens to it that she has awoken him. Very sorely tonight he will be missing the person he loves most. The one whom he now feels he doesn’t want to be or rather now thinks he can’t live without. I am satisfied at the feeling of a soothing peace inside me as the anxiety I felt earlier now belongs to him. Finishing off the wine, the alcohol takes effect, relaxing me further, making me feel sleepy as I curl up on the sofa, pulling my wolf skin throw over me, I feel the soft warm fur of it on my cool body, I think of the shadow of the wolf again. I snuggle deep down under it thinking of the wolf and it’s comparison I make to Blake. Then whispering to the moon, I say, “Goodnight, Brad Blake, may you have sweet dreams in the time that is left of your night. In the light of the morning, may you be desperate in your haste to come to me.” Glancing at the clock, taking note of the time before closing my eyes, I have my final pleasurable thought of the red roses he shall bring. As the sand man comes for me, Brad Blake should be just getting up out of bed, whichever one he is in.

  27th March

  I sleep late this morning as it is three minutes to noon when I wake. I have slept all night on the sofa down stairs. As I wander to the kitchen I find that Brad has been and gone. On my table, wrapped in tissue paper, lie the red roses. Beside them there is a handwritten note done in childish writing, mostly with capitals, saying, MiSS YOU CoCO Blake, LOVE brAD. ‘MiSS YOU, COCO, Blake LOVE, brAD. Xxx’. I lift the roses from the table; smelling them, I lay them by the sink; lifting my black vase, I fill it with slightly warm water then add brown sugar to help preserve the flowers before neatly arranging the flowers in it. I put them on display in the lounge, and then go outside to the garden, where I sit on a garden chair in the rain drinking my coffee. As the raindrops land on my face, they blend with the fallen tears, as two become one, they run down my cheeks, landing on the already soaking wet grass but I hardly notice. I reprimand myself for not requesting chocolates and perfume to be included in my spell. Smiling sadly, I decide I shall remember to do so next time. The conclusion I come to is no matter what presents he brings, without them I still love him. I sit crying for ages in the still pouring rain, which has been fallen now for three days non-stop.

  The bad weather continues as the weatherman informs me floods are everywhere. The television is on low in the background, so I don’t take much notice. But I look up once again when the presenter talking catches my attention as he mentions donkeys. I turn up the volume to hear him ask for money for the donkey sanctuary as they are apparently among, if not the most, neglected animals on the planet. I am shocked by this news. I think of Gucci out in the storm and for the
first time I wonder if he is all right. Penitent and crying I phone a taxi, grab my mobile, pulling the quilt cover from my bed in a panic. Into a polythene bag I fling some carrots with dark chocolate mints to take with me for him. I cuddle my little dogs down for the night into their baskets before leaving the house. I have my wellies on, with my pyjamas and my thick winter jacket. Behind me I’m trailing the huge quilt. Fuck knows what the taxi driver thinks, especially when he drops me at a barn with a quilt in the middle of nowhere on a wild, dark night.

  I enter the barn, finding much to my surprise it is quite warm inside. Gucci is comfortable in a bed of clean straw, looking very cosy indeed. He looks up at me as I enter the pen as if considering to get up and nip at me. I wait before venturing further in, he doesn’t get up. “Don’t even fucking think about it,” I warn him loudly. For the very first time ever, he doesn’t move. I lie on the quilt near him, feeding him the carrots and mints, telling him stories. He gets up and wanders off after a bit, bored listening to me, I presume, so I just lie quietly on the straw under my quilt, wondering about Brad Blake.

  28th March

  I must have fallen asleep. Daylight had appeared when I open my eyes to find Gucci standing above me, gently nudging me awake. Slightly disorientated at first with my whereabouts, my memory returns, whereupon I try to get up as quickly as I can before Gucci kills me. As I do, his ears go back and he runs, I run fucking faster, just getting my arse over the pen in time but with the quilt left inside. I decide not to chance trying to get it, so I will just leave it there for now, I confirm to Gucci. I phone a taxi to take me home. It’s the same cab driver who took me to the barn late at night that comes to pick me up; he is just finishing night shift, I am his last hire. He looks at the state of my clothes. He is calculating my scenario. His beady eyes take in the mess of and, unknown to me at the time, the straw in my hair. He asks just one question or rather makes a statement of the obvious. “No quilt!” the driver says.