He looked down on me, his towering six foot four height no longer scaring me like it once had. “Thank you.”
Shaking my head, I directed him to the doors and pushed them open, leading him onto a paved area where he slowly lowered himself into a chair.
Some other residents were mulling around the vast landscaped grounds. Apprehension crossed Anderson’s face when he spotted the others.
“It’s okay. No one will bother you, not until you’re ready to mix. That choice is yours entirely.”
He nodded, relaxing a little as I took the chair beside him.
Leaning back, I regarded him. “Can I ask you a question, Anderson?”
Nervousness made him tense but he nodded.
“I need to know how much you want.”
He shook his head in puzzlement and I leaned forward, resting my elbows on my knees.
“I’m so proud of the progress you’ve made already. Not fourteen days ago you were repressed, scared, violent, angry and fearful, yet you’ve taken everything I’ve thrown at you and you’ve handled it. And that takes strength. Strength I know you have in abundance.”
He listened, his gaze softening with every word.
“Your acceptance has astounded me. Yes, we’ve had some lows, but many more highs. Highs I hope will continue every day.”
He smiled then, timidly, but it was definitely a smile. Another one that broke my heart with its devastating sadness. He opened his mouth to speak, then closed it.
“It’s okay,” I urged. “Tell me.”
Wetting his lips, he pondered how to voice his question. But then he asked it and for the longest moment I couldn’t breathe. “Your low makes me sad today.”
He blinked when he saw the shock on my face and cowered a little. “I’m sorry,” he rushed out.
Shit.
Clearing my throat and making myself snap out of my shock, I nodded. “You’re very intuitive, Anderson.”
“In..tuitive?”
“Very good at reading me, my emotions.”
He thought about my words then frowned. “I had to be… in...tuitive. It helped me understand… what …” he chewed on his lips for a moment, trying to once again figure out how to say something. I gave him my patience. “…I needed to do.”
I nodded in understanding. “Reading the people you lived with helped you to understand how to react?”
“Yes.”
“I get that. It’s kind of like an animal’s instincts. Whether something is friend or foe. Good or bad.”
He sighed, his eyes lifting to the large tree overlooking his room. “There was no good. But many bads.”
My heart clenched.
“But your sad makes me sad.”
“I’m okay.” I smiled.
He shook his head a little. “No. You are hurting today. I see it in your eyes. In your smile.”
The only thing I could do was nod. He was no fool and that pleased me. However, I wasn’t sure I liked the way he saw me. Even Ben had never seen that far inside me. Or so I had thought until last night.
A shiver rocked me and I shuddered. “You ever want to talk about those bads then I’m here, Anderson. I will listen and I’ll never judge you.”
For the first time acceptance lit his eyes and he nodded. “Soon, Kloe.”
Giving him a grin, I stood up. “Come on. I ordered us popcorn and ice-cream.”
His eyes widened.
“You, my friend, are going to experience television and all its magical glory.”
And while the darkness crept in outside as Anderson and I laid on his bed laughing at stupid TV shows, there was a light that slowly crept in. In our hearts. In our souls. And the very parts of us that united us in more ways than one that night.
And before my eyes closed beside him, his soft snores lulling my body into a tranquillity I had never felt before, there was a niggling voice in the back of my head. A voice that wouldn’t shut up. A voice that warned me. A voice I didn’t listen to.
And I should have. I really should have.
“TAMSIN CAME WHEN I WAS a boy.”
It was a rainy day; each drop that hit the window of Anderson’s room soothing to the heartache in the air around us, its rhythm bringing with it a delicate respite to the weight in the silence.
Anderson had been at Seven Oaks for just nine days when he started to open up to me. I’d expected his story to be tragic but it turned out to be so much more than that. So much more.
“Was she a puppy?” I asked from where I sat on the sofa, my feet tucked underneath me. He sat in the chair by the window, staring out at the rain as if he felt its sorrow. He traced each rivulet on the window with his finger, each chase along the glass bringing with it a memory he voiced, and each drop of water a crack in his armour.
“Mary and Hank’s dog. It had puppies. It was a nasty dog, always biting and snapping at me. It didn’t like me very much. But I didn’t care for it either. It would steal the food they threw down – if I didn’t get to it first.”
I’d hired an expert speech therapist and even after such a short amount of time I was amazed with her results. Anderson’s words were more pronounced, his conversational skills much more fluent. She told me she’d never met someone so eager to learn, to persevere like Anderson. He was greedy for information and help, thankfully.
“The dog lived in the basement with you?”
He nodded. “In the day it went up, outside. But at night it came down with me. I remember its smell. In one way I could smell the air it brought back with it, but it also stank like the shit corner.”
I grimaced, presuming the ‘shit corner’ was Anderson’s toilet area.
“Tamsin was poorly. So tiny. I rubbed at her with my shirt, whispering into her ear to take a breath. And she did.” His smile was blinding, a rare happy memory. One of few, I supposed. “She took that breath and wriggled in my hand. It was funny. The bitch, for the first time, didn’t snap at me. Her eyes were large, like she was frightened when I put Tamsin to her teat.”
“I would imagine she was,” I offered. “I think we all are when we have a child.”
Anderson put his thumb to his lips, chewing rapidly on a tiny piece of skin to the edge of his nail as a frown creased his brow.
“After a few weeks, Mary and Hank took the bitch up and I never saw her again. Or the pups. But they couldn’t sell Tamsin. She was still so small and frail. Her ribs stuck through her chest and her legs were like skinny little twigs.” His eyes moved to find me, the darkening room making him squint to focus on my face. “She was like me.”
I smiled at that. The connection he made with a runt giving me hope that he hadn’t been so alone during all those twenty-one years. That even a dog could be a friend. Dave was very much my friend, and I knew how animals could connect with us more than we realised, their instincts to our feelings making them the most loyal creatures anyone could have in their lives.
“So,” he continued, looking back to the window, “she came to live with me.”
“In the basement?”
Nodding, he smiled. “I fed her bits of what they gave me. It wasn’t much but she grew. She loved bread soaked in milk.”
I smiled with him. “Dave adores bread and milk too.”
“And cheese.” He laughed. “She’d always knock it out of my hand. It was her favourite.”
“Cheese is a delicacy to dogs.”
“Delicacy?”
“Uhh, luxury, very yummy. Like chocolate for us.”
“For you.” Anderson laughed after referring to one of our previous movie nights. I’d brought in chocolate but it had been too rich for him, so of course I had to take it off his hands.
“Yes.” I laughed. “You got me.”
His eyes lit up when I laughed, a twinkle reflected back at me as a grin tugged his smile higher.
We were quiet for a moment, and not wanting to risk losing direction, I asked quietly, “What happened to Tamsin?”
Grief dimmed his sparklin
g eyes. “She loved me.” He swallowed heavily, lowering his eyes as if he was in physical pain. “Hank… he would…”
“It’s okay Anderson. It’s okay.”
I moved from the sofa and sat on the floor by his feet. The horror and shame that poured from his eyes made my stomach twist. Resting my hand on his knee, he focussed on it. “I’m here to help you, Anderson. Please trust me. Whatever you tell me will stay with me only. I won’t judge you. All I will do is listen to you. But I need you to trust me.”
Keeping his gaze on my hand, he slowly placed his own hand over mine. I turned mine over and his fingers threaded through mine. Sweat coated his palm and his hold was shaky.
“Hank, he would… do things that… that hurt me.”
I nodded, praying to God that I could keep my emotions in check. “To your heart, or your body?”
“Both.”
“Okay. And how did you feel about that?” It was always a stupid question. Anyone in their right mind would know how it would fucking feel. But it was a question that opened up so many possibilities, and hopefully gained an insight to the mind-set of the patient, as cold as that sounded.
He shrugged. Still he kept his eyes on our joined hands, refusing to look me in the eye. He was quiet for a long time, thinking, musing. His gaze became unfocussed as he retreated inside his mind. “After a while I didn’t feel anything.”
Bile coated my throat. He’d endured so many tortures for so long that he’d become immune to them. Much like when you get so used to your own perfume that after so long you can’t smell it any longer. It wasn’t either nice or nasty. It just was.
“Pain made me feel, Kloe.”
I lifted my eyes to his. It became difficult to breathe under the intensity of his stare. Anger swirled beneath his green irises, but when his chest heaved with deep breaths, I knew there was more I was seeing in those deep pools of need and lust.
“I don’t understand.”
A small curve of his lips confounded me. His eyes hooded over and he licked his lips. “All I had were the walls, Kloe. Huge stones. That was all my eyes saw. For so long. Darkness and the cold, and the drip of some fucking cracked pipe somewhere in the room. Chains were all I felt. The cold press of steel against my skin the only touch I felt. And after so long, that same touch of metal, that constant drip, drip, drip and that forever smell of damp and mould, I couldn’t feel them anymore. I couldn’t smell it anymore. It all became life. Like breathing, you don’t feel it, you don’t notice that you’re doing it, but it’s still there, that constant inhale, exhale. Everything inside me was dead.”
He tipped his head sideways, his eyes narrowing on me. “Numbness is so much worse than pain. Numbness is nothing. You can’t feel nothing. You can’t grab hold of nothing. But you can become nothing. It grows inside you until you’re a big hole of nothing along with it. You just become a tiny insign…insignif…”
“Insignificance,” I finished quietly.
He nodded and focussed his shimmering eyes on me. “There was nothing but me. And sometimes Tamsin. And then came the pain. The pain they gave to me. It was like a gift; it made my heart beat. It made me catch a breath again. It made my body come to life. It gave me something to focus on. It made me feel, Kloe.”
My mouth was so dry that I struggled to speak. “And that’s okay, Anderson. Humans have an amazing ability to adapt, to seek comfort in the very worst…”
“You don’t see, do you?”
His temper surprised me and I reared back a little.
“This… this me,” he pointed to himself, stabbing his finger into his chest. “This me is grieving. This me is hating that I can no longer feel again.”
I bit onto my tongue to stop the vomit from tearing for freedom.
“I miss them!” he cried as if suddenly he needed me to understand.
But I did understand, all too well.
“The only thing that makes me feel is… is you.” He winced at his honesty, looking away from me as if shamed by his words. “You make my heart happy when you smile. You make me sad when you are sad. But that… that isn’t real, Kloe. Those are your emotions, not mine.”
Tears flooded his face as he gripped my hand harder.
“It’s not enough. I feel like I’m dying. There’s so much numb in me, and I can’t feel my heart beat any longer. The scream that lived in my head is gone, and it’s so quiet. It’s so fucking quiet that all these other things start hurting.”
“Anderson…”
His head shook wildly. “No.” He leaned towards me, his face full of spite and rage. “Are you going to make me feel again? Are you going to hurt me enough to make my soul cry out in joy, to make my skin bleed with pleasure? Are you, Kloe? Are you going to fuck me so hard that I can’t bear to sit on the cold slabs any longer? Are you going to bend me over and make me bleed? Are you going to be the one to give me that again?”
I was mute, staring in shock and grief at this poor, broken man. A man who thought being raped meant he was needed, loved. Because that was exactly what he was saying.
“No, you’re not,” he whispered. “And that’s what you don’t understand. By taking away my pain, you’ve taken away the only thing I have in life.” His eyes bore into me as very slowly he reached to my face. His fingers curled around my chin and he tilted my head back, making me look at him. “But I think you already know that, don’t you, Kloe?”
Unable to hold back the tears, I wiped at them, hating that he witnessed them. Because I wasn’t crying for him. I was crying for myself. And Anderson knew that. He saw that through my eyes and into the depths of my soul. The same damaged and broken soul that haunted him every day.
However, I wouldn’t let him win. I couldn’t.
“You’re wrong,” I whispered, powerless to make my voice louder. “You’re so wrong.”
Kneeling up, I mirrored his action. Taking his chin in my fingers, the feel of his skin under my touch making my bones shiver, I guided his face back to the window. The clouds had broken and the sun’s rays were creeping along the grass, drying and warming everything it breathed over.
“There is always sun after the rain, light after the dark. The morning will always be accompanied by a bird’s happy song, the spring will always burst after the cold winter, and the night will always be caressed by the light of the moon. There’s always pleasure, Anderson, always that touch of better. You just have to look for it. And find it.”
His touch left my jaw and he closed his fingers over mine that were still resting against his short beard. My heartbeat stilled when he slid our fingers up to his lips. Placing a very soft kiss to my fingertips, he held me there, both with his hold and his gaze. “And did you find the light after the dark, Kloe? Or are you still looking?”
I couldn’t help but slide my finger across his soft lip, my touch barely there but generating a soft gasp from his mouth. “I’ll always look for it, Anderson. Until the moment I take my very last breath. Because I know it’s there, waiting for me. Even if it’s in the middle of a snowstorm, a star I have to wish upon, or in the centre of a damn rainstorm. I know it waits for me. And as long as it waits, then I’ll keep looking.”
He nodded, dropping his hold on me. Once again he turned to face the outside.
“They beat her to death.” His voice was quiet, and full of grief.
Shaking my head in confusion, I stared at him, unable to look away from the sorrow. “They beat who?”
“Tamsin. They beat her to death because she bit Hank after he whipped me so hard I couldn’t move for a week.”
Closing my eyes in despair, I blew out a breath.
“So, you see…” He chuckled bitterly. “Even if the rain moves aside for the sun, the storm always comes back. And then it drowns you.”
THE MUSIC PLAYED LOUDLY, THE beat of the dance playlist Claire had chosen thumping wildly on both the floor and the walls. The alcohol and food were in full flow, drunken laughter and dancing making my new home buzz with people’s merr
iment. Every room was full of people, every inch of the garden lit with strings of lights, yet again courtesy of my best friend. Dave sat in a corner sulking as a pissed Frank told him about his wife’s new addiction to catalogue shopping.
And I was in the pantry. Panicking. And counting.
16 tins of beans.
23 tins of tomato soup.
14 packets of custard creams.
21 packets of bourbon creams.
8 multipack of crisps – variety.
6 boxes of cornflakes.
8 boxes of frosted wheat biscuits.
11 tins of ham.
5 tins of corned beef.
26 tins of macaroni cheese.
11 multipack of Mars.
16 multipack of Twix.
7 bags of sweet popcorn.
18 bags of salted popcorn.
45 sachets of hot chocolate.
….and on it went, my mind whirling as my breathing came in short, sharp pants.
18 large jars of strawberry jam.
4 jars of peanut butter – I hated peanut butter.
36 packets of part-baked bread.
9 bottles of orange squash.
28 cartons of apple juice.
19 cartons of orange juice.
16 cartons of long-life milk.
36 eggs.
I stuffed another digestive into my mouth, cramming it in beside the last one I hadn’t yet had chance to swallow.
8 15kg bags of dog meal.
19 packets of jelly.
8 cartons of custard.
19 apples.
23 bananas.
6 5kg bags of potatoes.
Another digestive. Alongside a mouthful of salted crisps.
The nothing had started to creep in that morning, tiny slivers of darkness seeping through my pores and under my skin until it had grown into the pit of despair I hadn’t seen coming.
That was the trouble with the nothing. It was invisible, void of substance and quality. You didn’t see it coming, and you were unaware of its hunger for you. Right until, wham, it had submerged itself into your lungs and tugged on every breath that you tried to pull in and blow out. It infused itself into your mind, dowsing every thought, every aspiration and every effort to keep breathing in a thick, sticky darkness that no amount of hope could scrape away.
Caged Page 5