I turned to the taxi driver who had been a shadow puppet in my reality. “Take me to 15 Red Sands Road, St Helen’s mental institution,” I barked my orders at him.
He looked at me in his rear-view mirror and nodded. “Very well,” he said as he diverted away from his original direction. Instead of taking me home, he veered off and took a very dark, narrow back road. The trees on either side were overgrown and had created a natural tunnel which deflected most of the daylight. The leaves were dancing slightly with the wind, which lived through the branches; it was, in my mind, almost poetic.
In no time at all he had pulled the taxi to a stop. “Here we are, St Helens.”
I paid him quickly and gave him a slight grin as I got out of his car. The less conversation I can have with people the better I thought, as people were such a waste of space.
I walked up to the huge building that was substantially larger than the one I had once been forced to reside in. I think the architecture was Edwardian in style. It was mostly painted in white and the alcoves were subtle shades of grey.
I opened the huge double doors to find the main reception area ahead of me. The smell of disinfectant and cleanliness resided in these walls. Amazingly, I felt quite content and at home here.
I walked up to the main desk to find a woman sitting behind it. She was broadly built with autumn red hair tied up in a high ponytail. Just as I took a step closer to the desk she held up her hand.
“One moment please, let me just finish this and I’ll be right with you,” she said. She produced the regulation smile, one of those fake overly pronounced smiles that looked like she had slept with a hanger in her mouth all night.
I waited for her to fill out some stupid form. She chewed off most of her pen top while doing it, then turned her attention to me. “Now then, how can I help you today?”
‘Today,’ I thought, how slow can she be? I’ve never been here before! “I am here to find my mother and, and…,” I stuttered to a halt. Okay. Slowly. I calmed myself down by taking several deep breaths. She obviously had no idea why I was here. I needed to take a couple of steps back in my head and try desperately not to go mad. “Well, it’s like this, Miss. I am here to find Georgia Clemont. She is my mother and was a resident in this institution some years ago. Would it be possible for you to tell me if she is still here?” I asked as politely as I could, possibly sounding vocally younger than my age, which was, er…, come to think of it, I had no idea what my age was at that moment.
“Sorry sir. I know who you mean. She was here for a short time just after I started working here, a long time ago. You could say she was somewhat of a celebrity; a female escape artist in fact. She would come and go from the hospital whenever she pleased and no one knew how she did it. Then one day she left and never came back. No forwarding address I heard. You said you were related to her?” she asked with a small, sadistic, crooked smile creeping over her face.
“Yes, well, sort of. Thank you for your time, and the valuable information, bye,” I said.
I left St. Helen’s feeling pissed off and confused. It was a shame there wasn’t a lot of homeless people in Dawn Vines. I could do with some stress relief.
I’d come here to get answers only to find that my sick, murderess, wannabe mother was the latest Houdini. She had an obvious gift for getting in and out of places without getting caught. The information that woman had told me was absolutely useless, I had uncovered no leads as to her whereabouts. Was she even alive? I gave up at that point and walked the long trek home with a static mind. Seeing the stupid, common people walking past me just made me hate them even more. I made my vision stay on course and blurred out anything past the lines of my direct sight.
Walking up the steps to my house seemed dreamlike. I saw the curtain of my living room flapping in the harsh wind. I couldn’t feel the cold on my skin as my heart was colder than it could ever try to be. I looked around my house, something I hadn’t managed to do since I’d gotten back.
I went into the kitchen. I had originally decorated it with dark brown tiles which had a light brown lining around the edges. That’s it I thought, it’s about time for a change! I was going to paint it all in white, as a base coat of course, and then pick what kind of style I wanted later.
I always kept paint round the back of my house in the shed. I wondered if there was any left that was still okay to use. I rushed over to the shed like a little boy on a mission and in all the excitement I nearly locked the front door behind me.
As I got to the old wooden shed, spider webs were all over the front of the door. The wood was falling apart as the damp had made the wooden slats warp and bend. It took a bit of force to get it open, the door had sealed into itself. I decided the best way to open it was to just kick it in. I took two steps back and forced it open, cracking the door frame in the process.
I stepped into the shed. The smells emanating from it reminded me of the odours from childhood that had belonged in father’s shed, it tingled my senses. I spotted a couple a large tins of white paint on the lower shelf. I grabbed them along with a couple of brushes. Yes, I thought, now I can start.
When I used the flathead screwdriver to pry the lid open, I realised the paint had become rock solid. It was useless I thought as I poked at it a bit with the screwdriver to make sure. I was getting frustrated, why is everything so ludicrously complicated? I left the cans of dried up paint by the dustbins. I had no choice now, I had to go to the hardware shop and buy some more. The thought of being around people invoked my anger but I decided to pretend they didn’t exist and just get what I needed quickly.
I walked down to a nearby store that had a stupid slogan saying, ‘You want it, and we’ve got it.’ I briefly wondered if they had a gun as several people walked slowly in front of me, making my patience slip. I barged past them to take a quick look around and instantly spotted an offer on ten litre tins of white paint. The bright fluorescent lights above me burned my sleep deprived eyes as I bent down to grab several tins. The place stank of turpentine and paint and was starting to give me a headache. I hated these shops and the people you found in them but it was better than having strangers invade your home to do what could easily be done myself. Perfect I thought as I paid and got out of there.
I entered my living room and placed the tins of paint down on the floor. My hands stung, red and angry from the weight of the tins. The handles had been pulling and rubbing against my skin, blistering the soft flesh.
I let out a deep sigh and tried to put all the pending questions I had behind me. All I wanted was to feel like my house was white and clean, like the white hell! I pulled the brushes from their covers and opened the tins. I remembered mother’s favourite colour for walls being white, father was always the one challenging her interior design skills. No, this has nothing to do with her, I want this because I like it! I began to paint, focusing all my anger and energy into what I would create.
The next couple of days were a blur, I barely slept or had any urge to eat. All I wanted to do was paint! I painted the whole house room by room. I didn’t stop to rest, only when I needed to pee or quickly drink some water to keep me going. I painted until the brush became a part of me. Every inch of wall space had been covered over with white paint. When I was finally done, I roamed around the house admiring how clean it felt. I absorbed the feeling, which relaxed me down to the core. I felt like I was back in control and my obsessive urges had been somewhat satisfied.
I got the mop bucket next and filled it to the brim with boiling water, bleach and tons of disinfectant. I mopped the entire house from top to bottom and it made me feel cleaner with each passing moment. The white hell I’d once lived in was just like my home, except now it felt just right. I decided not to paint the walls with colour, instead they would stay white, yes, all white. I no longer craved colour in my world, only sterile white to cleanse my tormented mind. It gave me clarity to think clearly, to concentrate on the madness that was my life and what I needed to do. I needed an
swers about who I was and what stalked me so mercilessly, relentlessly. I wanted to hunt them down and rip them apart, piece by piece and I wouldn’t rest until I had accomplished that.
Once all the painting was finished I spent an hour in the shower, freeing my suffocated pores of the paint that had splattered on my skin. I realized how hungry I had become and raided the fridge and cupboards to satisfy my body’s needs. The shadows along the hallway pulled me forward into my bedroom. I looked at the bed remembering Sally and all the arguments that took place in that room. Suddenly I felt completely drained, I just wanted to rest my aching soul.
I wrapped the soft white sheets around me and allowed my body to start drifting off to sleep. Little did I know that my mind had no intention of resting. I dozed off into an unsettled kind of sleep and as I approached REM I began to dream.
I saw a lady who was hugging me tightly. I felt everything so strongly. The woman was very large in comparison to me so I gathered that I must have been a baby. She held me close and whispered something in my ear.
She said, “Don’t worry my love, I‘ll love you forever and if anyone gets in the way of that, I will kill them.”
Her cackling laugh scared me and woke me from my agitated sleep. I turned over in the bed and saw a woman. In my dream I could only assume that she was my biological mother, Georgia. She was looking right at me, her face was less than a meter away from mine. Suddenly she changed. She had a knife in her hand and was screaming, “You never loved me. I did so much for you, but you never cared; now you can die!”
She raised the butcher’s knife into the darkened air and was about to stab me with it when I really woke up. I found myself entangled in the white sheets. It was morning, the sun’s rays shone into my room invading my dark, scary world of nightmares with light. I convinced myself that it was just one nasty dream. I got up and headed downstairs, I had to ease my muscles that had cramped in the night. I wondered when these dreams would end, it already felt like a lifetime of nightmares I had to deal with.
I got myself dressed and decided to call Shawn. “Hello Shawn, it’s me, Khedlar. I was wondering if you would like to come over for dinner tonight with your wife. I have loads to tell you,” I said, trying to sound charming and intriguing all at the same time.
The line went silent for a moment and then he spoke, “Erm… yeah, I am sure Alison would love to see you again and I never say no to food.”
“Brilliant, then come over at about eight o’clock, see you then,” I said and hung up the phone.
Okay, I thought, I needed to make this work. I needed people around me I knew so I could process out loud all I had learned since leaving hospital. I needed a reliable sounding board, not just my own thoughts. I hoped they might have an idea of who was stalking my reality or insanity, I couldn’t distinguish between what was real or not any more. It dawned on me that I would need to play host in order to achieve this, why didn’t I just ask them to come around for drinks? I had made this so much more complicated that it needed to be.
What shall I make? Something that looks good enough to be impressive but that looks clean. I thumbed for a while through some old cooking books I had and decided to go modern and make Sushi for the main course, accompanied with a lovely bottle of white wine to compliment the fish. Vanilla ice cream for dessert would be a perfect way to cool down from the wasabi.
As I washed my hands I quickly noticed the cuts and blood-filled bruises on my knuckles. This was bad, so bad that ‘I fell,’ as an explanation would never be believed. What would be a convincing excuse if they asked about how I had hurt myself? I decided I would make them feel sorry for me and play with their emotions. I would tell them that I had woken up in the middle of the night punching the walls, as all that had happened to Sally and Sue had destroyed me. I couldn’t afford to be sociably awkward any more, I needed to try to learn how to manipulate people around me. No one was important to me any more. I had only one goal and that was to ascertain the answers to the multiplying questions that wouldn’t allow my mind to rest.
I called a taxi, it seemed to take forever. The food was the last thing I wanted to have to spend my time on. I wanted to prepare myself for tonight to gain their trust and learn how to work with people’s emotions to get what I wanted. The taxi driver came and he was a short, fat man who had a cross earring hanging from his left ear.
“To town,” I sharply instructed. I had to conserve my energy. Taxi drivers are mere servants and I was playing a game of chess. We lived in two different worlds so far apart that conversing with them was pointless and beneath me.
“Okay,” he answered but his words fell on deaf ears.
When we entered town he bothered me again with his voice. “Where would you like me to drop you off?” he asked.
“Here,” I replied trying to hide the disgust I had for his caricature-like face from my voice. I paid him and got out of his car.
The market on Claire Street had everything that I needed to buy. I braced myself as I joined the hordes of people walking the main street. I made myself look at their body language, listen to their tone of voice when talking to each other and how they made eye contact. I could tell who was being truthful and who was lying in an instant. This might not be so hard after all I thought to myself. People fall for lies all the time. In order to make a lie believable all I have to do is throw in an element of truth, that’s the key.
The market came into sight and I bought all that I needed to create the main sushi dish as well as freshly made ice-cream. I passed by Wineglass and picked up a nice white wine. I decided to walk back, it was only a thirty minute walk and it gave me time to sift through all the possible scenarios of tonight.
I was just becoming confident with myself, feeling that I could pull tonight off without a hitch when I reached the front door of my house. I went inside, headed into the kitchen and began to prepare the meal. It had already gone seven, they will be here soon I thought. I laid down the seaweed wraps, placed a layer of sticky rice over it and added the smoked salmon with just a touch of hot wasabi. I rolled then up carefully as each one had to be exactly the same. It took a couple of goes but in the end they were ready. I laid the table and got changed. I felt numb, emotionless and ready for what I was about to do, my experiment, on my unsuspecting neighbours. Just as I was coming down the stairs I heard a knock at the door.
“Come in, thank you for coming,” I said as I took their coats. I gave them a broad smile, trying to seem human.
“Wow, doing some changes Khedlar?” Shawn asked as he raised both his eyebrows in surprise at the walls he was staring at.
“Yes, as a matter of fact I needed a new, clean start,” I confessed. “Come on; don’t stand here in the hallway, please come into the dining room and take a seat. I’ll go get the Sushi.” I walked confidently away, chuckling. What suckers they were, I never knew I was such a convincing host.
They walked into the room while I got the plates I’d prepared from the kitchen.
“Here we are Alison, this one is yours, enjoy,” I said as I placed it in front of her. She had a nice smile, not a fake one as I had unfortunately become accustomed to. “And here’s yours Shawn.”
“Thank you,” he said as I sat down. His eyes devoured the perfectly symmetrical sushi.
“I hope white wine is okay for you two?” I asked. I reached over to pour the wine, I really didn’t care what they thought. It was just words spoken that were expected.
“That fine,” Alison said. She nodded, encouraging Shawn to agree with her.
“Great,” he said in agreement as he took a large gulp of the wine.
We talked about normal things; the weather, the traffic, the exorbitant increase in prices, but I didn’t want to tell them what I had found out until we had finished desert. My Aunt Morgan’s ideas must have rubbed off of on me, I thought.
I did get a bit uncomfortable when Alison kept on using her fingers to eat the sushi but she told us she was useless at using chopsticks. Her d
irty hands were moving from her plate to her mouth where she was ingesting all the germs in the room and then placing them on the wineglass. My stomach turned at the thought of having to wash her dishes later, how disgusting people could be. When we’d finished I served some ice cream and topped up their glasses; we were already on the third bottle.
I excused myself briefly to go wash up. I hated seeing dirt, the plates had to be clean right now and the thought of the germs multiplying was making my skin crawl. The wine glass was the hardest thing to clean as an image of her wet mouth with bits of rice stuck to her lips flashed back into my mind. So I decided to throw it away in the bin, who would want that disgusting mess in their house, no one civilized or in their right mind anyway.
I returned to the dining room, their desert bowls were empty so I told them to go into the sitting room while I finished the washing up. Thank goodness I thought, I will never be inviting that cavewoman to eat again, it was traumatic to watch and now I had a wineglass to replace.
“Well then, Khedlar, what’s all this news you wanted to tell us?” Shawn asked.
I could see he was wondering in his head what it could be, but on the other hand Alison looked like she had drunk too much and was sitting comfortably on the coach with a glazed look in her eyes.
“Let me explain. It all started when I got back here and I decided to take a look in the cabin by the old farmhouse that my parents used to own…,” I told them everything that had happened, all that my Aunt Morgan had told me and that the hospital said my real mother was missing, not to mention the dreams I’d had.
“That is amazing,” Alison slurred, looking a bit more awake and intrigued by the conversation.
Shawn was perched on his chair with his mouth open when he suddenly spoke “So are you trying to find her now?”
Psycho-Analysis: The Beginning Page 16