Phantom Limb: A Gripping Psychological Thriller

by Lucinda Berry

  “I hate Mother,” Emily whispered as she curled up next to me.

  I sat up, shocked. It was the first time she’d said it. I said it all the time, but not her. She didn’t hate Mother like I did. She sat up next to me with an odd smile on her face. It was one I’d never seen before and I thought I’d seen them all. She pulled up her pajama leg.

  “Lookit.” She pointed in the dark.

  I leaned closer to her leg, squinting. There were scratches on the side like a cat might’ve clawed her. “What’d you do that on? Where’d you fall?”

  She giggled. “I did it myself. Tonight, before I brushed my teeth. I was in my room and a tack fell off my bulletin board. I just picked it up and did it.” She giggled again.

  I stared back at her. “Did it hurt?”

  She shook her head. “It felt good.” She smiled as if she’d just won an award.

  “Why’d you do it?”

  She shrugged. “I wanted to see if I’d bleed. I tasted it. It tastes funny.” A huge smile spread across her face, but her smile quickly turned to a look of concern. “Bethy, don’t tell anyone. They’ll think I’m a weirdo. Promise you won’t tell anyone. Promise, Bethy?”

  “Course not,” I replied.

  And I didn’t. And I hadn’t. And I wouldn’t.

  2

  “When? Just tell me when.” The frustration in Thomas’s voice bordered on begging. You could only have the same argument so many times before running out of patience, and we’d reached that limit a long time ago.

  I sighed. I was as tired of the argument as he was. “You don’t understand. You don’t get it.”

  “Yes, I do. I get it. I mean, as much as I can. You don’t even have to tell her I’m your boyfriend. You can just introduce me as your friend.”

  “She’ll know.”

  I shot him down like I always did. He thought he understood, but he didn’t. Nobody understood our relationship or why it functioned like it did. Even Bob and Dalila didn’t, and if they couldn’t get it, I was sure he wouldn’t either.

  We sat in silence as I played with the string hanging off the bottom of my shirt. I could feel him staring at me with hot intensity and even though I didn’t look up, I felt the heat boring into the side of my face. I didn’t know how he could be so patient with me. Tears welled in my eyes and I pulled them back before they had a chance to slide down my cheeks.

  “Honey.”

  I loved when he called me honey.

  His voice softened and he wrapped his arms around me, pulling me close. The frustration in his voice was gone. “Everything’s going to be all right.”

  I breathed in his scent. He smelled like a forest even though he spent all of his time inside, locked behind a cubicle at work or the library on campus with his head buried in a book. I liked being in his arms and wanted to kiss him, but still hadn’t kissed him first. I couldn’t initiate. I waited for him to kiss me and then kissed him back.

  I looked up at him, trying to understand how he cared about me so deeply when there was still so much I couldn’t tell him. I’d shared who I was more than I’d shared with anybody else, but there were lots of things I hadn’t told him yet. He saw me as a strong, focused, and independent woman who was determined to make a better life for herself. I was afraid his image would change if he got closer to me, but I longed to be more intimate despite my fears because I wanted to be with him. I was beginning to need him, and I was going to have to take risks if I wanted our relationship to work.

  I spat the words out as fast as I could before I changed my mind or lost my courage. “Okay. I’m going to tell her about us.”

  He pushed me back to arm’s length with a huge smile on his face and looked me in the eyes. “You sure? I don’t want to pressure you, but it’s been a long time. We’ve been together for almost a year, and I still haven’t been able to meet the most important person in your life. I care about you. Whoever is important to you is important to me too.”

  I’d never met anyone like Thomas. He was kind and patient. Unlike most people, who only professed not to care about what other people thought of them, he really didn’t. I didn’t either, outside of Emily. Emily’s opinion was important to me, but I didn’t spend much time worrying about other people’s opinion of me. Thomas told me this was what attracted him to me, too.

  He was his own person and I found myself drawn to him in a way I’d never been drawn to a man before because I had Emily—my other half. She was the only person I needed or wanted to be close to, but as she was getting sicker, a small part of me had begun to wonder what it would be like to be attached to someone other than her. I’d started to question if it was possible to be close to someone who didn’t already know everything about me or if I could develop a bond with someone if I hadn’t gone through traumatic events with them.

  I’d pushed away the longings to get close to someone else. Until Thomas. Thomas was different. I couldn’t push away my feelings. There was nothing striking or exceptional about his appearance. He looked like an average college kid, with skinny jeans and red Converse that were so worn you could see his socks through the holes in the fabric. If you passed him in the mall, you wouldn’t look twice. His confidence and strong sense of self attracted me. He was sure of himself without being arrogant. I didn’t know how someone could be so sure of themselves without someone else defining them. I didn’t know what it was like to just be “me” and not an “us.”

  We worked together doing telemarketing for a catalog company selling cheap towels that fell apart after the second wash and candles advertised to smell like flowers but really smelled like cheap soap. It was boring and a four-hour shift felt like twelve. The callers on the other end of the line were as annoyed by the call as you were at making it, and they usually took it as an opportunity to unleash all their pent-up anger and call you names they’d never say to your face. Thomas was never bothered by the rude comments like the rest of us were. He didn’t get upset about them, and unlike most of us, who’d give back equally rude responses, he’d smile, say “thank you,” and go on to his next caller.

  Telemarketing wasn’t anybody’s first career choice. Everyone had a reason for being there and it wasn’t to become rich or successful. Most of us did it to get by or because we couldn’t get a job anywhere else. Our shift was mostly college students because of the flexible schedule and short shifts. Thomas started a few months before me and was there to put himself through seminary school. Unlike me, who still couldn’t decide which career I wanted, Thomas had known since he was eight that he wanted to be a youth pastor.

  He was a born-again Christian and his religion was a badge he wore proudly. His parents were Christians and he’d made the decision to follow Christ when he was three. He talked about God like God was his friend, and even though Bob and Dalila brought us to church for a while when we were young, I’d never felt God in the way he described. I didn’t believe in God, but it didn’t bother him. I often wondered if there would come a day when it became an issue and he tried to convert me to Christianity, but it hadn’t happened yet. It used to worry me in the beginning, but I was becoming more and more willing to try his religion if he wanted me to.

  Our coworkers teased and made fun of him constantly about his religious convictions. It was partly his fault because he didn’t make any secret about being a Christian. He wasn’t the least bit embarrassed about saving himself for marriage, which only made the other college guys on our shift work that much harder to get a reaction out of him. They accused him of being gay or taunted him by taping naked pictures of women all over his cubicle. But no matter what they tried, he stayed strong and never gave them the reaction they wanted. It was after one of their teasing sessions that we spoke for the first time.

  “What a bunch of jerks,” I said, putting my call on hold and turning to look at him in his cubicle—two down from mine.

  He punched his hold button and shifted his mouthpiece. “Ah, who cares? They don’t know any better. They’re jus
t being guys.”

  I refrained from stating the obvious fact that he was a guy too.

  “I’m Elizabeth.”

  He smiled at me. His smile was warm and inviting, immediately putting me at ease. “I’m Thomas. Please, whatever you do, don’t call me Tom.”

  I laughed. “As long as you promise not to call me Liz or Beth.”

  “Deal.”

  It was easy for us to talk in between taking calls because he was only two cubicles down from me. You weren’t allowed to put your calls on hold for longer than two minutes without permission from your supervisor, so our initial conversations were short and clipped. He made me laugh with his funny descriptions about our customers.

  “She definitely isn’t going to remember making that order. I’m pretty sure she was talking in her sleep,” he’d say. “I could’ve sold her every towel we have.”

  He’d mute the call in the middle of it, make faces and exclaim things like, “Oh my God, I don’t want to hear about his hemorrhoids.” Unlike our other customers, our elderly customers welcomed our calls and took them as opportunities to describe in detail all of their medical issues.

  I was surprised at how normal he seemed despite his strong religious convictions. His smile and laugh started creeping into my thoughts, and I started imagining what it would be like to kiss him and feeling excited before work, knowing I’d see him. I’d never worried about what I looked like at work, but I began making sure I wore makeup and did my hair.

  He started taking his lunch break at the same time I took mine. He took his break later in the day and I liked to eat early. I was always starving by noon because even though I knew I was supposed to, I never ate a good breakfast. The first time he took his break with me, I thought it might be because he had to leave work early, but I secretly hoped it was to spend time with me. The second time it happened and he took a seat next to me at the table in the break room, it was everything I could do to contain my excitement and act nonchalant.

  “What are you reading?” he asked, noticing my open textbook. I always did homework on my lunch break.

  “Kant. My English teacher is obsessed with him.”

  “Ugh, yuck, I remember those days.”

  “You read Kant? Like in college?”

  He laughed. “Yes, we do more than just read the Bible all day.”

  I felt heat rush to my cheeks. “I’m sorry.”

  He put his hand on my shoulder. It was the first time he’d touched me. “Don’t worry about it. I was only teasing you. Everybody always assumes all we ever do is sit and talk about God, but you’d be surprised. It’s exactly like regular college. We take all of the same classes and prerequisites as you. We just take other classes that have to do with whatever field we’ve chosen in the ministry.”

  “What field of ministry did you choose?”

  “I want to be a youth pastor. What’s your major?”

  “I haven’t decided yet. I go back and forth between going into law or medicine. One day I think I want to be a doctor and I’m totally convinced it’s the right choice for me, and then a few days later I’m convinced it’s the worst decision ever and that I want to be a lawyer. It’s so much pressure and I don’t want to make the wrong decision.”

  “You’ll figure it out.” I waited for him to say more, but instead, he started digging into his reheated pasta. It looked Italian, and I loved Italian but hadn’t been to a good Italian restaurant in a long time.

  We developed our routine quickly. We had three shifts together each week and took our lunch break together at noon. I started bringing him things I’d baked. I couldn’t cook like Emily, but I was a better baker than her. I’d bring in different cookies, cakes, and brownies for us to share. After a while, I started bringing a few extra for him to take home with him. I’d just given him a slice of carrot cake to take home when he asked me out on an official date.

  “We should start eating more than lunch together. Want to see if we get along as good at dinner as we do lunch?”

  I froze. I loved our lunches and enjoyed spending time with him, but it couldn’t be anything more than that. I’d stopped dating when Emily had gotten sick. She got jealous when I spent time with anyone other than her, and I avoided upsetting her.

  I shook my head. “I can’t.”

  He shrugged his shoulders. “No worries.”

  I was afraid he’d give up on our lunches since I said no to dinner, but he didn’t. He carried on as if it had never happened and it didn’t stop him from asking me out again. Every Friday he worked in a way to subtly or not so subtly ask me out for dinner and each time I found a reason to decline. Finally, after two months, I agreed to go out with him because I enjoyed spending time with him and was starting to like him. I told Emily I’d picked up an extra shift and would be home late. I didn’t like lying to her, but I didn’t have a choice.

  We went to a small Italian restaurant after our shift. I was so nervous the only thing I dared eat was plain spaghetti. I didn’t know if it was more of me being nervous or if it simply felt good to be out with somebody else, but I couldn’t stop talking. I chatted and chatted about my classes, the books I was reading, and my favorite movies. Most of the time on dates I let the guy control the conversation while I listened, but I felt comfortable with Thomas. It felt so nice to talk to someone who wasn’t depressed. He was a great conversationalist, and I liked that he was smart because I didn’t have to pretend like I wasn’t intelligent. Most guys were intimidated by my intellect, but he enjoyed it. We talked until it was time for the restaurant to close.

  It’d been almost a year since our first dinner. I pulled his hand next to mine and intertwined my fingers with his, squeezing. “I care about you, too.” I felt the red filling my face and looked away. “I want you to meet Emily. I know if she gives you a chance, she’ll feel the same way I do about you.”

  The alarm on his watch sounded, signaling the end of our break. We didn’t take our lunch in the break room anymore. We brought our own and retreated to his white Honda to eat in private. We started doing it as a way to spend time together shortly after our first date and we’d been doing it ever since. We were both busy balancing school and work and cherished our alone time during lunch. We put our stuff away and headed back inside.

  I took my seat and slipped my headset over my head shifting into automatic mode. If I told Emily about Thomas, everything would change about my relationships with both of them. As much as I blamed Emily for my reluctance and hesitation to disclose our relationship to her, there was a part of me that was scared to do it. Telling Emily about Thomas would be the first step of separation between us. Even if it was a small one, once I took it there wouldn’t be any going back. Things would never be the same between Emily and me.

  It wasn’t like we hadn’t dated. Emily used to do more dating than me. Guys loved her. In high school, she had a new one attached to her every other week, but she quickly tossed them aside for the next one waiting in line as if she were just trying them on, shopping for a new pair of jeans. But neither of us had ever been serious about a guy or seen a future with one. Deep down, I knew there’d come a day when one of us would meet a man and start to build our own life without the other, but I’d assumed she’d be the one to do it first. It was clear now that it wasn’t going to happen that way. She hadn’t been on a date in years and I couldn’t remember the last time she’d left the apartment.

  The thought of building a life with someone other than Emily made my stomach flip with excitement and fear. It had always been the two of us because our survival depended on it. We were a team and couldn’t have endured our childhood without the other.

  When we lived with Mother, she’d disappeared and left us locked in our bedroom for days. Emily was the one who’d figured out how to get rid of the itchy and painful red rash all over our legs and inner thighs. The rash was a result of wearing the same urine-and-feces-soaked diapers for days, but we didn’t dare take them off. The one time we had, Mother had
been furious. She’d grabbed the wire hanger that she used to beat us and added painful welts on top of our open wounds. There was a big red plastic bucket in our room that Mother had left behind once. Emily started taking her diaper off and squatting over it to go the bathroom. I did too, and we both used the bucket as a toilet. While one of us peed, the other listened for the sound of Mother’s keys in the front door. For some reason, Mother didn’t mind when she found out we were using the bucket and she let us dump our bucket in the toilet once a week. We no longer sat in pounds of our waste, and the rashes on our legs finally went away. We still had to smell it, but at least we no longer had to sit in it.

  The hours of hunger and isolation were endless, but we filled them up with each other. We told each other stories about imaginary families and made each other laugh. But our favorite game was to take turns pretending to be the mother. When I was Emily’s mother, I knew how she liked to have her hair stroked, so she would lay on my lap and I’d stroke her hair over and over again while I hummed. When Emily was my mother, she knew I liked to have my back stroked in circles, so she would draw pictures on my back before she fell asleep. We spoke in a secret language so when Mother was around she wouldn’t know what we were saying to each other. We sang and played pretend in our crib, performing for each other. When there was nothing left to eat and we were starving, we slept cuddled close to each other like puppies trying to stay warm.

  Sleep during starvation was fitful. It was like being halfway between asleep and awake. I would slip in and out of lucid dreams. Sometimes we shared the same dream. We moved in and out of consciousness together.

  We were five when Mother started letting us out of our bedroom and into the rest of the apartment. We knew nothing of a world outside of the four walls of the bedroom and to us, the small apartment was an expansive universe. At the time, we didn’t know it would eventually imprison us in the same way our bedroom had; we were completely enraptured with it. On the other side of the living room, Mother had her own bedroom that she kept locked. She gave us strict orders for being out of our bedroom.