The Woman Hidden

by Lucas Mattias

  She laughed at the irony and took the pot from the stove, also taking with her the two large mugs from the sink.

  Barefoot and only wearing a light shirt and the capri pants she adored, but had never had the opportunity to wear living in such a cold place her whole life, Clarice crossed the kitchen and placed both mugs onto the table, where the basked of fruits indicated her laziness into preparing a more elaborate meal for the end of the afternoon – she would save her energies for a more well-done dinner, later on the night.

  As Clarice poured the hot water into the mugs, already garnished with the herbal bags, and the scent of wild strawberries invaded the kitchen, she heard the noise of keys and the sound of the main door sliding open, showing someone was there.

  Laura.

  In the room, with its glass walls and clear décor, Laura tossed the car and house keys onto the sofa and also placed there the innumerous shopping bags she’d brought along. They needed a new wardrobe and Laura was more than willing to do that.

  “Next time, you come with me. I already think it’s horribly hard to choose shoes for myself, let alone someone else.”

  Clarice smile, stirring the tea in her hands so that the sugar would melt away.

  “Had fun?”

  “A lot. How fun are the people around here!” Laura replied, already heading to the kitchen while removing her sunglasses. “I just got a little late because I got held on by these two yummy surfers who wanted to share some drinks.”

  Clarice smiled and watched as Laura reached for her own mug and started sweetening her tea.

  “Monday we go after some schools, I’ve already called some of them and I think you’re gonna like them.”

  “I don’t know. It’s weird.”

  “You get used to it.”

  “I’m not talking about the different last name or the different ID. How do you make friends when you need to hide your past?”

  Clarice shrugged while sipping her tea. It was still too hot, she could wait a little longer.

  “You aim to the future.”

  The past, Clarice realized, no longer mattered. Those dark snakes that crawled around her neck disappeared right when she noticed she no longer needed them. Nothing that happened before would matter if she were focused into building a new future, with new memories, new recollections; no longer she had to be the woman hidden beneath the lies, scars and tears, no longer would she hide that woman within herself, who screamed, scratched and tried to fight her way out and have the world see her, the force to be reckoned with that she was, trying to live and not just survive.

  Laura took the mug and Clarice showed the way already known so that, together, they could enjoy their private haven. They crossed the kitchen and Laura opened the sliding door to the back porch, with its wooden deck and the rustic, yet charming swing, that gave them a beautiful view to the shore and the beach, a few yards ahead.

  The waves broke in a smooth, comforting symphony, while the birds screamed in the background as the sun moved away, touching the ocean in an explosion of colors and burned shades.

  That was the present. The moment in which the then touched the now, gently burning it and leaving that flickering expanse that whispered, deep within, that whatever about to come would be brighter, lighter, warmer and calmer. A dusk that left behind the promise of a tomorrow to soon arrive, an eternal tomorrow, a metaphor for the moment of them, in which the glimmer didn’t blind or obfuscate, but flooded their souls and gently renewed them, warming the frozen core and abandoning all the snow away.

  Clarice sighed as she sat down and felt embraced by herself. By Michelle.

  The past no longer mattered. She didn’t have to live that toxic and oppressive life anymore, there was no need to grind the stones she had found and the deep aches. The scars had already faded and, along with them, all the pain that had been carved there, as if branded by iron and fire. No more.

  She wouldn’t dwell on the violence, the bitterness, the oppression or depression. And she wouldn’t let Laura do that either.

  For the first time in a long time, she had the chance of being whoever she wanted to be, whoever she really was.

  And she could be Clarice.

  Simply Clarice.

  Final Acknowledgements

  First and foremost, I’d like to thank you, Elizabete. You were the first person I met to show me literature in a different way and to motivate me into writing, even though I was only eleven or twelve back then, even though it was not part of your job as a public school teacher, even though your job wouldn’t be taken as seriously by many others. This vote of trust allowed me to discover one of my greatest passions in life and also that we can change the world through words.

  I’d also like to thank the people who made the creation, development and finishing of this book possible. A huge thanks to the people who listened to me, motivated me, put up with my frustration throughout the rushed writing of the past couple of months, who also had the patience to deal with my moments of exaltation when I believed I was writing the masterpiece of my not even existent career. You know who you are and I don’t want to be unfair writing names down and risking forgetting some.

  This book is special to me, because it was through this book I learned that writing drama and psychological thrillers can be an amazing experience. Through this book I came to a self-analysis, coming across things there were deep inside here and that needed to come out, just like thinks that happen in our lives and that bear a huge meaning. This book was a project abandoned in development hell since 2007, when I only sketched the baseline of the story and never took it further, leaving it to exist only in memory until now, when I finally decided to carry it on.

  This is not a story about revenge, nor a story that seeks to show how death is a solution to the past.

  I myself, in a past rather distant, suffered with an abusive relationship at home. The familiar violence of a toxic relationship, in the hands of a person I should actually trust. Through years, I suffered the psychological torture of an authority, the confinement, the depression, the scars that remain from a moment in which you see yourself with hands tied, just like everyone else around you, in which you find yourself unable to escape or run, because you just can’t see a way out. The exit, in the figure of someone else you should also find, is also hidden. An acid and destructive relationship that reverberates in your whole family and also reverberates from it. Two catastrophic years that rippled through my life for a good amount of time until I found the answers to those agonies in a very special person (Edimar, I’m talking about you).

  Therapy made me realize that the past does not have to be a constant thing in our lives. It also made me realize that due to that heavy, bad moment in my life I found my way to salvation in the literature. And that was the reason I started to write. So, at the end of it all, it had a positive consequence to me, despite the traumas and fears that prevail until you let them all go.

  This book is not a book for people who overcame those problems. As a writer, I believe our main roles is to help people the best way you can. Our words should proliferate and persist, modifying the world in a positive, lively way. Hence, this book is for people to realize the abusive relationships around themselves. So that they can realize, if in one, that they can get out. So that they realize that there are alternatives and support all around, and that you shouldn’t shut yourself up.

  During my whole life, I witnessed toxic relationships around me. In my family, which ended up affecting my grandma (my sweetheart) in an extremely negative way, just like my aunts and my mother. The relationship, whenever oppressive, rings for years, spreads itself and corrode people, destroying everything that there is ahead. And it must not, in any ways, be silenced. Thousands of women die every year due to domestic violence. Most of the cases of marital abuse are not even reported because of fear, humiliation, shame. Because of the non-existent dependence that is created as the years pass by, seeded by the silence and the pain. And the biggest problem is w
hen the violence is not even physical, but psychological. It destroys slowly, silently killing, muffling the pain and crumbling lives as time goes by.

  And it must come to an end.

  I’m thankful to all people that, day after day, teach me a little more about the world, the violence, about the still existent sexism that kills, about the daily oppressions.

  I thank you, Edimar, my psychologist and who, surely enough, would be really proud of me today. Thank to you, Carla and Geralda, respectively my godmother and my grandmother, women who inspire me and who inspired the creation of my characters, women who are not only worth of respect and homages, but women who taught me how to live and respect whoever it is, despite the differences and pains from the world. Women who taught me to smile in the moments of sadness, who taught me to always perseverate and move ahead, who taught me that if there’s still life, there’s motivation, there’s a future.

  I thank you, Katia who, although being my aunt and the fact we naturally moved apart from each other, has always been a great inspiration. I still want to see you publishing something in here, too, I know you’ve always been one of my inspirations in writing and I also know that you can have your own space in libraries around the world. Yes, I said world, girl.

  I’m thankful to my great girlfriends. Thank you Ana, who heard all my crazy theories during working hours and who helped me with some psychological details of the story. Thank you Romilda (Roms), who tried as best as she could to help me coming up with a name to this book and who motivated me every day into writing, even when I had my fingers bleeding and dark circles almost the size of the world.

  I thank you, Hellen, who supported me from the first moment on and who always wanted to see me succeed, though there were no promises anywhere there. That is a true friendship.

  Wesley, I’m thankful to you too. Not for this book, specifically, but for my history in writing. You’ve always been my most present reader, most desperate and most motivating of them all and you have no idea of how much it meant and will always mean to me.

  Anyway. I thank you Melissa, Melina, Laura, Laíza, Luíza, Fran, Bruna, Bia, Carol, Mari, Jaque, Paula... women who were present at my life at some point and who taught me many things, helped me with many others and who are there in the world to shine. I also thank you, Claudia, for showing me that, in spite of the darkness of the past, we can move on and learn from life, forgiving in silence since it has never been formalized into words, perhaps because of shame of what happened or maybe because of the beastly pride of human beings.

  And I’m thankful to all Clarices, Michelles, Monicas and Lauras around the world. You are the reason this book came to life, it’s for you I write.

  Thank you also, Florence Welch, for your magnificent soundtrack that embraced me during many of the chapters; Lana del Rey, too, Ultraviolence was one of the keys for my immersion and development of the story. Thank you.

  At last, I want to thank Amazon for the amazing opportunity and for having me return to writing, removing the dust from this plot and giving it a proper development. If it hadn’t been for you, probably I would have reached this ending, maybe I wouldn’t even see a future and, probably enough, Clarice’s story would remain forever hidden, deep inside the basement of some house in some distant mountain, buried under the snow.

  Lucas Mattias, November 2016.