PSYCHOPHILIA: A Disturbing Psychological Thriller

by Michelle Muckley

  ...stood in the shower, still wearing my pants so that I didn’t have to think about the blood still pooled in my groin and my arms gripped tightly around my waist over the tiny swelling and I am crying and my eyes are blinking out tears and my throat is swollen from my desperation not to cry aloud and I think of him downstairs wondering where his brandy had gone and Ishiko finishing the venison or pheasant and the guests who would be wrapping their expensive birthday gifts and putting on their pearls and suits and ensuring that they had good wine and cigars to bring to the host and that they had read up on the daily news so that they had a good conversation in them even once they were drunk and of Ishiko downstairs and Gregory downstairs and of him in the guest bedroom pulling at himself and her lying there whilst he sits over her fucking her and then afterwards in the face and them downstairs together and I am hitting my head with my knuckles of the right hand and the left is picking at the scar and there is blood and it is flowing and I wince as I pull the loosened tag of skin as good flesh rips and more blood pours and then I can see it on my shoulder and the knuckle hitting has stopped and I have turned the water off and before long I am lying on my bed in a towel feeling better and I know that...

  I polished my face with a hint of make-up, a spread of foundation, mascara, lipstick, and a dot of blush because it’s the evening and the lighting permits it. I dressed in the black dress that is suitable for a wedding or a funeral, or for tonight a dinner party that should feel more like the former but in reality would feel like the latter. As I went downstairs the first of the guests had already arrived, and they were milling around the drawing room laughing at Gregory’s jokes which to me just sounded like mumbles. My hair was swept to the side to hide the scar and the headache that had threatened at the hospital was still there. The Sedgwicks were sipping an aperitif, and then I noticed Mr. Wexley and Marianne, canoodling in the corner until they saw me at the door. He made some grand gestures with his arms out wide and she slapped him playfully because she is like a teenager in love and I smiled as expected in return and looked happy.

  “So before he could offer his apologies for being so rude, the young woman says to him, ‘I'll do anything you want me to do, no matter how kinky, for one hundred pounds.'" They all start laughing with him, knowing something funny is building, even though the women are trying not to. “‘With one condition,’ she says. Oh darling, you have arrived.” Gregory spots me at the entrance to the drawing room. He is in full swing for his role of Entertainer. He extends an arm and smiling, I fall into it, safe and happy in my darling husband’s embrace. He kisses my cheek. Happy fucking birthday. “So, where was I?” he continues.

  “One condition,” Wexley says from across the room whilst Marianne is clearly paying more attention to his ear, nibbling up to it like a feeding kitten. I look at the stool where I was sat earlier. It is no longer by the chair. Somebody moved it. Ishiko hands me a glass of champagne and I sip it pathetically.

  “Oh, right. Yes, so one condition.”

  “Get on with it,” Somebody shouts. I think it was Sedgwick. I want desperately for him to just get on with it so I can laugh and it can all just be over and done with and the facade which is beginning to hurt my cheeks can end.

  “‘You have to tell me what you want me to do in just three words. Just three, she says to him." Gregory is starting back up with his joke.

  “Suck my.....”

  “John!” Marianne shouts at him as she slaps his arm and looks at the rest of us to apologise on his behalf. I notice that her wrist is adorned with a new pearl bracelet. She has a mock horrified look on her face, her mouth hanging open and her shoulders hunched but she doesn’t seem genuinely offended and so I assume she will do exactly as his three worded request suggests later on when they get home as long as he isn’t too drunk. Which he will be. We all laugh, me included, although I am privately disgusted.

  “Paint my house!” says Gregory. Almost doubling over in laughter, slapping his hand against his thigh, pulling me over with him. He is looking to me and his face looks like he wants to say yeah, I’m good at this. “Can you believe it!” he says to them all. “Paint my house!” They are all laughing and Gregory is congratulating himself on playing the perfect host, laughing so heartily at his ridiculous joke that the vein that runs down his right temple is swollen and blue. He is stroking my arm with the offending hand and I think how he smells like sex and his own genitals. "I've got another one. Sam and Sarah are identical twins."

  There is still much laughter, but Mr. Wexley says, "No more jokes. I can't take another. Especially about twins." He knocks back his champagne and the laughter subsides. There is a moment of uneasiness as The Entertainer is prevented from telling his second joke, but it is soon forgotten when I hear the doorbell ringing and the shuffle of feet in the hallway over the din of the diminishing laughter. Ishiko opens the door and I hear the Calthorpes and the Lovells arrive.

  After we finished with the champagne and congratulations for Gregory’s hilarious wit, Ishiko served a round of gin and tonic and everybody commented on how lucky we were to have such a marvellous housemaid. They spoke about her as if she were not in the room with us, perhaps a presumption that she couldn’t understand based on her eastern appearance even though they all know perfectly well that the bitch speaks English. She remained unaffected by their compliments and continued with her tasks in a delightful fashion as Gregory described it, and as Wexley and Jemima Calthorpe agreed but for entirely different reasons. Jemima seemed especially impressed and asked me if perhaps I might lend her to her, as if she were an object or commodity to be shared around and enjoyed. She would be satisfied with the odd afternoon here and there, and of course she would pay her. I would gladly give her away as I would much prefer her to be fucking Gordon Calthorpe, although as predicted, Gregory wasn’t supportive of this sort this arrangement. He scoffed and joked about how I would need her even more now, and I thought for a moment he was going to tell them about the baby, but instead he broke the good news, that I was leaving my job and finally giving in. He had broken me down, as he put it and I found his comment strangely accurate. He laughed along with the rest of them, celebrating and cheering at his conquest. The ladies congratulated me and the men congratulated Gregory. I could imagine them later, sat in the drawing room with the brandy and cigars like gentlemen of yesteryear. I am sure they would all chose to live the lives of their fathers if they could, when ladies knew their places and women like me towed the line and didn’t need breaking down.

  They congratulated him on his achievement, sympathised at the duration of play, that it had taken two difficult years to finally get me to concede. Each of the ladies suggested a different charity with which I may wish to become involved but that I just simply had to join The Ladies of Windermere, a mundane charity that helps schools and holds baking days. Marianne stayed quiet, not a fully signed up member of the group, and for her silence I was grateful. I thought for a moment that I may have heard somebody mention that it would be a good time to start a family, but I had zoned out by this point and Gregory had already moved the conversation along by the time I had registered it.

  We sat at the table, boy girl boy girl. There are flowers in the centre, deep red roses from the garden scattered with a bit of evergreen. Ishiko’s work. Jemima compliments me on the flowers and Dana Sedgwick who arrived in her obnoxious black Range Rover as predicted, driven by Mr. Sedgwick as predicted, tells me that the quality of the linen which covers the table and matches the napkins in evident and asked me where I got it from. I told her Collings and Rawlings in the centre of town which is a shop known to sell expensive linen, but this is a lie because I don't really know where it came from. It doesn’t take long before Ishiko brings in a tray of tiny dishes which are so small they could never contain anything of substance. She serves them to us on matching saucers with tiny matching spoons which I had no idea that we owned. It is an amuse bouche. Something fancy and certainly something that Gregory has requested. It looked
decidedly Japanese and I am concerned at the direction the food is taking, but eat it anyway and praise its balance and delicacy without any prompting. Afterwards I fumble at the scar on my head and find that it stings to touch and I feel relieved. Shortly after taking the flowers away, Ishiko returns with a large central platter which she places on the table to surround sound applause. I see the rice and raw fish, and the pieces of sushi that I had specifically stated we should not eat.

  “Ishiko,” Gregory says, without looking at her, “bring more of this red. Fill up the glasses.” She does so. She is filling up empty glasses and holding empty bottles. “Ishiko, would you please serve Dana.” He turns to pat Dana’s arm and I can see Ishiko blush in the cheeks.

  “Oh Gregory, it’s a delight to try something new,” says Marianne, who is encouraging Wexley to eat the morsel she has put on his plate. He looks uncertain, and is swallowing so hard and stroking at his neck and pulling at his tie. Almost everybody has food on their plate. Only my plate remains empty. Wexley would have loved the venison. He flicks a piece of raw fish which I think is tuna off the top of a ball of rice and gently separates it into bearable bite-sized pieces.

  “Gregory what is this one?” Jemima is asking of her second selection.

  “Ishiko,” he calls who returns with a bottle of red wine, Merlot, cheeks still flushed. He gestures to Jemima to ask again, offering his hand out to present our Japanese maid. “What is this one?”

  “Oshinko Maki,” she says, her slight accent seemingly stronger. Everybody oohs and ahhs, even Wexley but I am certain that he is no longer thinking about the food. At this point Ishiko leaves and the table breaks away into smaller discussion groups, and for a moment Gregory and I are left next to each other with no other interruptions. I lean in close to him as he places a piece of Oshinko Maki on my plate.

  “What happened to the venison?” My question was genuine. Perhaps there had been an issue, that it wasn’t available, or an accident had warranted a last minute change of plan.

  “Not now, Charlotte.” It seemed I was not due an explanation and he was already turning away from me and placing another Sashimi roll in his mouth. I ate two pieces of Oshinko Maki which was nicer than I hoped it would be, and remained hungry for the rest of the night. I consoled myself with a glass of Merlot which I drank very quickly and then remembered that I was pregnant and worried about if I had just done the baby any harm to the point that I was forced to go to the toilet to make myself sick. I made a substandard effort to poke at the back of my throat, and when I failed to regurgitate the fish I settled for inspecting the wound on my head and the pink stained hairs that surround it. I washed my hands three times with the soap that promises to remove 99.9% of germs before returning to the table. The rest of the night happened without my participation, although I remained at the table in a silent world of my own. I don’t know for how long.

  They left their gifts on the table in the drawing room, and by half past eleven at night they had all left in their cars to travel the two hundred meters to their homes, except for Wexley who had walked across the garden from next door. Gregory and I stood at the door step, his arm around me and we both smiled and waved our goodbyes. We had done it.

  “I am very tired,” he said as he closed the door. “I think I will go to bed.”

  “I thought we might have announced the pregnancy tonight, Gregory.” I wasn't expecting to say this with such a sudden sting, but it slipped out without thinking, without warning.

  “There is such a thing as a time and a place, Charlotte.”

  “If tonight is neither of those things, when are we supposed to tell our friends that we are having a baby?” I almost laughed when I said the word friends, but it was good leverage. “Is it not nice to share this with our friends? You would rather tell them about me giving up work?”

  “Charlotte, I am not in the mood for an argument.” I can see Ishiko creeping around in the kitchen, waiting to see where this discussion goes. She manoeuvres her way to the door and pushes it slightly closed in an effort to appear uninterested, bless her, but she can obviously still hear us.

  “And the sushi! What happened to the fucking venison?”

  “Charlotte, you were seen today, sitting out by the lake again, running back to your car all flustered and....... weak. Anyway, I thought you wanted pheasant!” He said the word weak as if it were a disease that he might catch. As if it left a bad taste in his mouth.

  “I didn’t want pheasant! Or sushi. Venison, I asked for!” The vein is pulsating on the side of his head and his lips which are usually quite big and juicy looking have been sucked back in, revealing his teeth. My head is throbbing almost uncontrollably to the point I fear it might explode, and I am forced to wonder if the tingling in my fingers is the start of another seizure.

  “Dana Sedgwick saw you. When did this all start again?”

  “When did what start?”

  “The lake! The fucking lake, Charlotte,” he spat out. “I’m not prepared to start all of this nonsense again. I won’t. I promise you I won’t.” He is pacing now with his hands on his hips. I teeter between ashamed and obnoxious and my head is throbbing and I can feel the blood filling up underneath the scar drop by drop and I am absolutely certain that a seizure is on the way. I pull at the wound and I can feel a few drops of blood and the shame flows away with it and it is Obnoxious Charlotte that comes out of me as he bats my hand away from the scar.

  “You won’t get a choice,” I say.

  “This has to stop, Charlotte. Has to STOP, I’m warning you. I’m going to call Dr. Abrams in the morning. These tablets are not working. You are intolerable!”

  “What about you?” I screamed, not listening to him.

  “I was very pleased regarding your decision to stop working, but when Dana told me what she had seen.....”

  “What about how you are with me?” I ask. He is stood in front of me, face red, lips moving. I am not hearing him anymore. He is talking but it isn’t really to me. I am thinking about the lake and how it might feel if I let my feet rest at the edge, maybe wearing the black boots with the small heel that I was wearing today. The water would creep in slowly through the zip and the elastic, like a dripping tap. It would slowly fill until my feet were cold and sodden but.....

  “It makes me wonder where exactly we are going, Charlotte.”

  .....if we still had a boat, I think I would take it out on the lake now, take it into the centre of the water through the fog and into the dark where you can barely see your own hand and where you can feel the two tides rocking you back and forth from the east and the west shores. I would wait for a while, maybe just hanging my head over the side, feeling the occasional spray from the water. I wonder if I was there now if I would be able to stop myself. I wish so much that we had announced the pregnancy tonight. I would perhaps feel less like dying if we had.

  “Where are we going, Charlotte?” I don’t hear him at first, but then he grabs my forearm tight enough to hurt and I wake up. “Where are we going?” When I look at him and he can see that I am back with him in the land of the living he slackens his grip and in only seconds he seems to calm down. His head becomes heavy and it hangs down, moving left and right with his eyes closed before he looks back to me. “I’m going to have to call Dr. Abrams tomorrow, Charlotte. Honestly, I am. Unless you agree with me about our future, I have to call him. Do you want me to call him?” He doesn’t want to call him. He doesn’t want to go back to where we were.

  “No. I don’t.”

  “But I am scared about where we are going with all this nonsense.” He has rubbed his face twice, pulling sweat from his brow into his big hands and spreading it across his cheeks so that his face glistens. His hair has flopped forward and he looks like he just ran some sort of race.

  “Forwards,” I said robotically, as I had been programmed. “We are going forwards.”

  “I do hope so,” he says, swallowing hard, one hand on his hip, one on his chin. “I wouldn’t like t
o believe anything to the contrary. Would you?”

  “No,” I said quietly. It was over six months ago, but it was still there, still breathing like a monster in the cellar, waiting for an opportunity to rise. I can feel it inside of me like an ulcer, throbbing and gnawing at me, like acid burning at my insides. He can feel it too. He turned to walk up the stairs, and within just a breath he was gone, a flicker of a candle flame extinguished. I left my gifts on the drawing room table and followed him.

  I lay in bed that night alone. Feeling restless and not wishing to disturb my sleep after a long day, Gregory had decided to sleep alone in the guest bedroom. The reasoning behind his absence is my own, for he didn’t tell me that he would not be sleeping with me tonight. I saw him slip through the guest bedroom door as I neared the top of the stairs. I wondered for a while if he was simply using the bathroom, and that he might eventually reappear. After filling the toilet with raw fish and red wine, rinsing my mouth twice with water and once with mouthwash, I washed my hands three times and then sank into my pillows where I waited for him. After half an hour I dozed off, alone. I woke to hear the gentle closing of a door along the corridor. I turned to look at the clock. It was 1:17 AM. I had been asleep for over an hour. I could not be certain of which door it was, but it didn’t matter. All bedrooms had bathrooms, and nobody had reason to move around at night. I sat upright and turned on the lights waiting for another sound, another movement. Fifteen minutes later I heard the creak of the wooden floorboards, and I jumped out of bed and crept to the door. I waited with my fingers gripped around the handle, not knowing if I should open it or not. The passing moments slowed as I considered each option. What would I do with the information on the other side? What would I do if I saw him or her returning to their bedroom? Confront them? I couldn’t answer this question but without any conscious resolution I found myself turning the handle. As I pulled open the door I saw Ishiko, her hand turning her bedroom door handle. She heard me and turned. Through the shadows we saw each other, me coming out of my door, her going in through hers. I turned briefly and saw the light flickering under the doorframe of the guest bedroom. She smiled, mouthed goodnight, and then went into her bedroom.