Imperfect Strangers

by David Staniforth

“Here, come and look.” Keith drags me from the bed, across the velvet plush carpet to the wardrobe.

  When he flings open the doors I gasp. For a moment, I have trouble believing my eyes. “How…? When did you get my clothes?” Maybe he went to my house while I was on my way here and, somehow, got back before me. Oh my god, maybe he has killed Kerry. No, don’t be stupid; he didn’t know I was coming.

  Running his hand over the hangers Keith turns to face me, the smile as broad on his face as any I have ever seen. “These aren’t yours, Sally. Well they are, but they’re not… They’re yours now; they’re all new. The bedside cabinet is full too. I bought them for you.”

  Keith bounds across the room, dragging me by the wrist. “Open it,” he says, pointing to the bedside cabinet.

  After seeing the wardrobe’s contents, I am reluctant. After seeing the contents of the wardrobe, I know that he has been in my bedroom. I know that he has rummaged through all of my things – he must have – he couldn’t have duplicated them otherwise. The implication, as I stare at the closed bedside-cabinet-drawer, is that he has also rummaged through the drawer that is full of my knickers: everyday cotton at the top, posh silk in the middle, and grubby time-of-the-month ones at the bottom. The embarrassment of knowing he’s been in there is only worsened by the vivid image of the silver and black vibrator beneath them all. I hold my breath, lean forward, and pull open the top-drawer. Despite the expectancy that’s wound with jack-in-a-box-like tension – the contents still make me gasp.

  “What I couldn’t replace exactly, I bettered.” Keith says this matter-of-factly, like he’s some kind of loss-adjuster for an insurance claim. “I bought silk in place of satin. Some at the bottom looked very old. Some had holes in them and elastic breaking free. These are all new. I want you to have the best, Sally. I couldn’t replace the thing in the bottom of the drawer though; I didn’t know what it was.”

  I don’t believe what my eyes are showing me. I close them and hold them shut for a moment, then look once more. It’s like a bad dream, one from which I can’t wake. It’s like looking into the very same drawer in my bedroom at home. Home: where I should be safe. Home: the place that he has violated. Fearing that my legs will fail me, I sit on the edge of the bed. Not only has he been in my room. That much was obvious the moment I stepped in here. But he has rifled through all my things, the clothes in my wardrobe, my underwear. It’s tantamount to rape; I’ve been psychologically raped. I fear it will not be long before that rape is physical. All I can think, and I know it’s getting in the way of rational thought, is that I may even be killed. Unless I can bend him to my will, that is. Desperately, I try to keep calm, to butter a smile over a burnt expression of dread.

  “What was it Sally?”

  I’m in a daze. His words enter my ears, but melt in my head without comprehension. “What?”

  “The thing that was beneath your underwear, what was it?”

  He doesn’t have the slightest inkling that what he has done is inappropriate. He’s like a child blundering along in an adult body, struggling to cope in an adult world. “It’s just a torch,” I say, my thoughts spiralling.

  “Strange. I didn’t see a bulb, and it vibrated.”

  “It’s... It’s just a torch.” Keith really is like an innocent child. I think I could turn that to my advantage. Somehow. Think, Sally, think. “Keith, the underwear is lovely,” I say. “Thank you. I always wanted silk,” I add, hoping the tremble in my voice isn’t too obvious. “Steve was too tight to buy me silk.”

  Keith’s smile broadens. “You don’t need to worry about him anymore. You’re with me now. I got you some different things, too. Surprises.” From a shelf in the wardrobe, Keith selects a skimpy nightdress. He holds it before his face, a thumb hooked into each slender strap. It is short, wispy, its floatiness evident in the way it shimmers. The fabric catches the glow of the light and accentuates every nervous twitch of his arms. His face is visible through it, but the gauzy fabric masks his features, like a robber wearing tights. As he speaks, his breath creates a little flutter down its length. “I like this one,” he says, with obvious relish. “It looks like the one worn by the fairy on your desk.”

  He drapes it on the bed by the side of me. I look down at it. Steve once bought me something similar, though even that one would have left more to the imagination. He’d taken it to Florence, secreted in his own suitcase. I refused to wear it even then, thinking it somehow more revealing than actual nakedness.

  “I’d like you to wear that.”

  Despite the voice in my head, a voice that is telling me to comply, to do anything that will bring the next day closer without any harm befalling me, I feel an overwhelming refusal boiling inside. “No. Keith. Just stop this, now.” I stand defiantly.

  Keith slams my shoulders, pushing me back onto the bed. “PUT IT ON! NOW!”

  He sounds all at once like a demanding child. I don’t recall ever having been struck so forcefully in my life. Keeping on the right side of Keith, I realise is like walking upon a lake of fracturing, frozen ice. My neck throbs. I realise tears are flowing down my cheeks, even my nose is streaming. Keith is hanging over me his face a picture of fury. My bottom lip begins to quiver as I try to stop the tears. I can’t stop it. Any attempt to try results in sucking loud gasps of upset.

  “Stop that. This is supposed to be a nice time. Stop that crying.” He raises a clenched fist before my face. “You’re spoiling it. Stop it or I’ll... I’ll giyersommatercryfer.”

  On the fork of a dilemma now, choosing between resist or comply, I decide to take the compliant route. Both paths are likely to take me to the same place. Rape. One of them though, the route of resistance, more than likely has a beating en route, possibly death at its end. Unable to believe that I am being so rational, I unfasten my belt buckle. Ever so slowly, I draw the leather-strap from the waistband of my jeans. Normally I would leave it there, ready for quick dressing the following morning, but I’m thinking all the time. Removed from my jeans the belt might serve as a weapon. A weapon he could just as easily use as me, but too late now. I reach over my head and place it by the pillow. Compliancy is giving me more time to think than resistance would; it is giving Keith time to calm down; it’s giving him time to become less angry with me. Perhaps I will get chance to reason with him, to get him to feel an ounce of guilt, or a smidgen of compassion. He needs to be calm, though, if I’m going to get him to think straight. The more sexually excited he seems to get, the less rational he appears to be. I lie back, pressing my shoulders into the mattress, raising my bottom. I’m extra careful not to drag down my knickers with the jeans, realising the effect it could have on Keith, and draw the jeans down my legs.

  Keith’s breathing is notably heavier. Tremulous. His eyes are wide and unblinking, travelling the length of my naked thighs, settling momentarily, I think, on the white V of my knickers. His hands are gripping the loose material of his trousers. Twisting it, drawing it tight over his thighs. He’s hard, and his hand hovers towards his cock. He doesn’t touch it though, and it’s as if the gripping of his trousers is a way of distracting himself from his arousal. Perhaps that’s a good sign.

  I keep having to remind myself to draw breath, as well as reminding myself to force a smile. He either does not see the smile or he no longer cares whether I am happy or not, for he does not respond in kind. His sexual excitement seems to be preventing him from seeing me as someone he claims to care about, from seeing me as someone who has shown him kindness. I know I must next remove my blouse, leaving me in only my bra and knickers. I know that will make him more excited still. It will be even less likely that I can reason with him then. There will be less chance of getting him to change his mind. My hands are shaking. They can hardly grip the buttons to push them through the holes. I start at the bottom, hoping he will have a change of heart before my bra is revealed. Being realistic, I know that is increasingly unlikely to happen. At what point, I begin to wonder, should I leap from the path of complia
nce and begin to fight. Do all women think this way, I question? It’s as if I have sectioned my mind. One part is screaming like a hysterical lunatic, while the other part is rationally considering all available options.

  There are only two buttons left. When they are unfastened I will have no alternative other than to remove the blouse. That will leave me in only my underwear. Exposed. Vulnerable. My throat is dry and refuses to swallow. My eyes feel sore and the tears have run dry. My muscles ache with tension. Keith now seems to be even more excited, his eyes, still unblinking, locked onto those last two buttons. I begin to wonder if I chose the wrong path. Maybe I should have refused to remove my clothes. I should have made him do it. Make me, I should have said. Maybe he wouldn’t have been able to. Maybe the act of physically forcing me would have brought him to his senses; maybe it would have made him see what it was that he was doing to me. Maybe he is seeing this compliance as acceptance, even a willingness to take part in his sick alternative view of reality.

  The harsh slap on my thigh shocks me. I didn’t see it coming. A second slap makes me realise that he would have forced me to undress. Whatever path I had taken, I would likely still be where I am now. I would still be undressed, but suspect that if I had fought from the beginning, that I would by now have no control at all.

  “What was that for,” I ask, elevating the upset in my voice in the hope that it will arouse his sympathy rather than his anger.

  “I’ll giyerwhatfer. Now get on or you’ll find yersen sleepinintcupboard.” He makes the demand in the same elderly style voice that he used earlier, raspy and shrill, and the words spill from his mouth so fast that they wind up merging into one long string of barely decipherable sound.

  “Don’t hurt me, Keith. Please don’t.”

  A puzzled expression crosses his brow. “Best hurry up,” he tells me, “or she’ll get angry. We will both be in bother then.”

  I wonder if Keith is perhaps unaware of the ramifications of what he is doing. He is socially inept at the best of times. Maybe he never meant for it to go this way. If so, there is a chance yet that this will not end in rape. If I can only get him to see what he is doing, that this is not how people in proper relationships behave. It was my initial shock, my reaction, my wandering from the route of his make-believe world that caused him to behave this way. He was happy about the fact that I was simply going to stay, at first. If only I could have disguised my horror, then perhaps he would now be sleeping contentedly in the spare room instead of this. I will not take responsibility for the predicament I find myself in, but I suspect I could have avoided it coming to this.

  Quickly, then, as normal seeming as I can force myself to be under the glare of his unblinking eyes, hoping he’s not going to insist I take off my bra and knickers, I pick up the sheer dress and pull it over my head. As I suspected, as I had suspected when Steve gave me something similar, I somehow feel more vulnerable with it on than I did with only my underwear. I realise it’s not actually a nightdress, but a top: the kind of thing that one would combine with a vest of a similar colour, giving a multi-layer effect. Bizarrely, I find myself imagining what the complete ensemble would have looked like and hear Poppy’s voice saying beauty and the freak, and look good naked.

  “Lovely,” Keith says, reaching forward and brushing my naked shoulder with the back of his fingers, his other hand reaching out and brushing loose strands of hair from my tear glued cheeks. “Blow a kiss to the ceiling, like the angel. Do it standing up, like the angel.”

  “She didn’t take the bra off,” Keith blurts in the third voice I’ve heard him use, the one that sounds child-like. “Make her show her boobies.”

  In his own everyday voice Keith says “No she can leave that on.”

  Weird, it really feels like there’s another person in the room.

  “Her panties then, take off the panties.”

  Keith pauses as if considering the request.

  “No. Only if she wants to.” He smiles at me, twitching his head as if inviting a response.

  I bite my lower lip and subtly shake my head.

  “I want to see it.”

  “Please,” I whisper, as if trying to prevent the younger Keith from hearing, as if trying to get the older version on my side.

  “No. Sally’s going to show you the angel in her instead.”

  I don’t want to, but I stand in readiness. Raising my arms will cause the sheer thing to ride up. As it is it only just covers my buttocks. Raising my arms to blow a kiss to the ceiling will show everything I’ve got. Keith is looking at my face though. I realise then that his eyes have not left my face since I stripped to my bra and knickers. I do as he requested: look to the ceiling, pucker my lips and throw the imaginary kiss with raised hands. The hem of the frail garment strokes my skin as it rides up, but Keith’s eyes do not deviate from my face. I lower my arms and, folding them in front of my breasts, force a smile to my lips.

  “Lovely,” Keith says, his voice all whispery and light and creepy. “I’m going to switch the light off now, and then I want you to do it again.”

  Shit. What’s he going to do to me in the dark while I do that?

  Keith turns off the light. Some orange streetlight filters into the room around the edge the curtains, but it’s hard to make out anything in the room, especially at the far side near the door where Keith is standing.

  “Go on, then,” he says, patiently. “Do it.”

  I guess my silhouette is quite defined against the curtains. I raise my arms and blow a kiss to the ceiling.

  “Hold it like that,” he says.

  I hear the click of a switch and then a whirring sound, above, in the ceiling, or the loft. Fuck, what is it. Another click sounds into the room and then a bright spotlight pains the backs of my eyes. My eyes adjust, and I realise that the source of the whirring is a disco ball; its mirrored surface is throwing bright speckles around the room. I can’t believe I didn’t see it up there. It should have stuck out like a sore-thumb; it’s the only thing, apart from a wine stain, that differs from my room back at home. It actually looks nice, and were it not for the circumstances, I would say so.

  ‘Beautiful,” Keith says. “Don’t you think?”

  Try and act cool, I tell myself. I force a smile. It’s a real effort, but I manage it. “Thank you, Keith. I didn’t think I’d like all this, but it’s really nice. Thank you.”

  “That dress looks lovely on you. Lovely. And with the sparkles, you look even more like the angel on your desk. Now blow a kiss to me.”

  I comply.

  “Lovely,” he says, rubbing his thighs.

  Maybe this is it then. Perhaps he just wants to adore me like a prize pet, like a trophy. Again, I smile. He seems to be calming, even his breathing has slowed to near normal.

  “I’ll get us a drink, okay? You get comfortable.”

  I breathe a sigh of relief when he leaves the room. This is not yet over, though. I take the opportunity to hide the belt under the pillow.

  CHAPTER

  37

  I know Keith is going to come back up – of course he is – but even so, a creak at the bottom of the stairs makes me stiffen just as much as if it were unexpected. And then I gasp at the sound of bolts sliding home. I could have got dressed while he was gone, but that might have made him angry. As it is, he might possibly be happy to have a drink, and then thinking all is fine, go off and sleep in the other room. The door opens. I press against the headboard, draw my knees tight into my chest, and pull the quilt up to my shoulders. The door is opened only partially, and a moment passes before he enters. He’s smiling broadly, obviously extremely pleased with himself, as he enters carrying a bottle of champagne in one hand and two champagne glasses in the other. He’s wearing only boxer shorts. The ones he bought when shopping with Poppy and me. The very memory of that day now sickens me. I was unaware at the time, but that was the point when this relationship began to turn from something uncomfortable to something positively dangerous. Poppy’s
good intentions, my own good intentions, and the interference of others have all been catalysts that have pushed me in a direction I would otherwise not have gone.

  “I thought we’d celebrate,” Keith says, pushing the door closed with his shoulders, his eyes fixed on mine. “We’re going to be alright now, Sally, you and me. I’ve got more money than you know about – stocks and shares – must be forty-thousand at least. I’ll quit my job, that’s what I’ll do. You too. Then we can be together all the time. I’ll look after you.”

  I simply smile, nodding as he speaks, while he is walking closer to the bed. The sight of his pale, skinny legs reminds me what vomit tastes like. The glasses clink, and I notice his hand is trembling. Is it fear or excitement or both?

  “I’ve never done this before, Sally.”

  “Never done what?”

  “I’ve never been with a woman. I’ve read books about it, so I sort of know what to do, but I might not be very good.”

  Shit. He does intend to rape me. He might not think of it as rape, but that’s what it would amount to. Fuck. He believes I’m here, in this bed, willingly. “Perhaps we should wait,” I say, quickly, a tone of concern forced into my voice. “You know, wait until you’re ready.”

  “No. I’m r-ready. I mean I’m not, b-but I don’t want to wait.”

  “It’s always better if it happens naturally.” I struggle to keep the quiver of panic from my words as he lowers himself to sit on the bed. Without real thought, I draw the quilt tighter.

  A sudden loud hammering makes me jump so hard I bang the headboard against the wall Keith jumps too, but with a gasping intake of breath. As much as I flinched it was nowhere near as much as Keith. Maybe it’s because I’m already so tightly constricted my muscles had little freedom to move. In the following silence, I begin to wonder if I imagined the banging, and only flinched because Keith did.

  Again, though, the hammering thunders through the house. It sounds like it’s coming from downstairs: the front door? Another round of hammering thunders through the house; this time it’s much louder and is driven with much more urgency. Now I’m certain, it is the front door.