Under Purple Sheets
Page 27
I just continue to sit on the sofa drinking the wine lost in thought. Soon it would be Christmas. A black Christmas for me. All the Christmas tree fairy lights will twinkle all over the world but where is my light in the eclipse? What will the sparkling lights of Christmas hold for me? Then there will be the New Year bells to come, bringing in with them hundreds of women in new affairs with married men and vice versa. Fuck me, God love them all and let the devil take care of his own! Maybe in the coming New Year my manuscript will be published, as without hope of the book, what else is there left for me.
"What about Brad Blake? What do you think the future holds for you and him, Coco?" I don’t think there is one. Do you follow your heart or your head or your instincts? I still question this, making no sense of the conclusion I reach each time, which is that I still don’t make the right choice. I still don’t know the answer. I do know this though that in this life there two things you can be certain of. One which is death, it must come to us all. The other is to love. To love is to hurt. To love is to suffer loss. A world with no love would be no world at all. A life with no love would be no life at all. A life in which we suffer loss we must learn to survive. I must know how to survive. Do you, Mr Wolf? I wonder. I consider writing the last chapter of my book, knowing that will be another sad part of my life closed. I wonder if my book would go to print and if people read my story, who would they claim my enemy to be?
Every single day now I feel ugly, deformed and incomplete. Brad has told me so many times now that I am not a real woman. I believe him. Was it him that really made me feel this way, or was it me that put that in my head, I wonder for the umpteenth time. I am ashamed of my legs and my breasts now, but why? Is that a woman thing? I just don’t feel good enough anymore as a woman or a person for that matter. I hang my head in public; I hardly smile, or sing and dance; besides I can’t remember the last time I really laughed. The world is once my playground yet now I hide away, my confidence has just slowly disappeared. I lived with, in the end, his constant abuse most days. He called me names, kept shouting and swearing, then ultimately hitting me. He continued to threaten me with her. Threaten to leave me for good to go back to her. Eventually, unknown to him, in the end it was no longer a threat to me as deep down I silently fucking begged God that he would. She could have him back.
The voicemails he leaves me now are soul-destroying. The abuse continues. It breaks my heart. No matter what I did or how hard I tried, nothing seemed to be good enough for him in the end. This mental torture I had suffered daily, did I really do this to myself, and am I really mentally ill? Perhaps! It can make you feel that way, all the abuse, make you blame yourself. No perhaps about it, that is exactly how it works. Illogically, you question you.
I just wanted to be in a relationship, what with a husband of my own or someone else’s husband? Fuck knows. I chose to have an affair with someone else’s husband so I guess the latter. The love, all that love shit with him was not supposed to be part of the deal. I want it now. I want to be loved. Sometimes I still want him, I want to be pretty and just perfect for him; I’m not asking for a lot, then again perhaps I am. Maybe someday I can have it all though, everything I ever wanted, but for the present I shall just exist. I live my life the only way I know how. I PRETEND. I sure am one helluva actress and if nothing else, I am a survivor. I smile sadly in the dark at the fond memories of Versace, as I feel the loss of his presence, tears stream down my face. I look down at the other little dogs beside me, it’s comforting to feel the heat coming from their bodies against my leg, and I must have been sitting there for a while in an alcohol mist dreaming, as the second wine bottle is empty. The little dogs look up at me with all their adoration for me showing in their eyes; I realise I am rich in love; the little dogs’ love is unconditional. FUCK BRAD BLAKE!
I will manage without him, although I am almost penniless, I shall have peace at last. If tears were pennies, I would be a millionaire. Brad’s love once upon a time made me feel like a billionaire. Once he made me feel like the most precious thing in the world. Once I was that happy, lucky, confident, classed as a beautiful woman. THE COCO! is what they used to call me. It seems to me that had happened a very long time ago now. Tonight, I am only a shadow of the person I was a way back then. Well, why is that now? Was that all his fault or was it mine?
I go to the kitchen for more wine. As I lift down another bottle, I notice that I am staggering. “Fuck me!” I say to the broom, as clumsily I try to put the unopened bottle back into the wine rack above my head. No more alcohol tonight. I have lost Versace. I have lost his love; along with him, I also lost love in the name of Brad Blake. It’s very sad but I have always lost everything I’ve ever really loved in this world. I looked down at Rio and Solo, wishing I could keep them for the rest of my life but thinking, knowing nothing lasts forever.
I sit down on the cold floor crying, back to where I began, back to where I have been many times before. I better get myself up, perhaps go to bed. As I leave the kitchen I order my witches’ broom, “Clean the fucking house for me and brush every bit of hurt out my life!” The fire and the candles will burn themselves out just like me. Yule, Winter Solstice will be here soon. No doubt I won’t celebrate it. I lost a lot of my white witchcraft along the way. I have lost a lot of things, some I will never replace. I hardly do my spells anymore, I have lost part of my soul on losing my witchcraft. I climb the stairs, thinking I need to go now to face my enemies. The facts of your life that you fight with in your head. The thoughts, the voices, the memories of the past that all come back to haunt you as you lie alone awake from dusk to dawn in awareness, just listening to that fucking music box playing over and over, hearing that beautiful haunting voice singing to the notes, He loves me? He loves me not?! wishing for amnesia, sometimes alcohol stupor will hold blankness, not for me in the dead of this night!
“Face your enemies as I go to do now, I also tell you, to keep the wind on your back and to always remember that I told you so!”
Maybe tomorrow Brad will come back. Maybe tomorrow he will love me like he used to do. Tomorrow never comes. I wonder where he sleeps tonight. I wonder what he thinks about, who wakens him, arousing him sexually, from that land of untold dreams. It wouldn’t be me. Maybe it was love we shared or maybe it was just sex. You need to be prepared to let something or someone you love go free, if it belonged to you, then it would come back, and if it didn’t, it was never meant to be. I let Bradford Riley Blake go free. I climb into the cold bed as I go now to try to sleep alone. I think I hear the back door open and close again. I left the door unlocked in case Brad returns. I am sure I can hear soft yet heavy footprints on the carpet coming up the stairs. Was it my imagination; was it River or him? Tears are running down my face in the witching hour of this lacklustre night, my bedroom door creaks slowly open as I wonder what or who is moving in the shadows. The wolf in my head distracts me, interrupting my thoughts as he confirms to me, "It was love, Coco! Maybe conceivably it was love; perhaps though it was sex living with the enemy! Or simply just sex under purple sheet!"
The end perhaps!