“Is it?” he asked deliriously, feeling his plan slip away. What am I doing? I just want to sleep...
She leaned down, her lips close to his ear, her breath hot on his cheek. “Unless you love them first.”
The pain upon waking this time was significant, so much so that he cried out involuntarily, wrapping his arms around his body to try and hold himself together. He felt as if his skin had been stripped away, leaving red hot lines of fire across his chest.
The realisation that his arms were free was at least a comfort, as were the dressings that were covering the wounds, though they were stained brown with dried blood where it had started to seep through. He wondered if she had attempted stitches, which he would no doubt need.
When the pain began to finally subside, he was finally able to lift his head a little. He registered the darkness in the room and the night outside the open curtains, before light washed over him. Sandrine stood in the doorway, carrying a bottle of water and a small packet of pills. She was wearing a crisply ironed business suit cinched in at her waist to accentuate her large hourglass shape. The dreadlocks had been discarded (Roman had always suspected they were extensions) and she was now wearing a shorter cropped hairstyle – black hair held back with pins – and a pair of black rimmed glasses, potentially just a fashion accessory although with the amount of her life that she kept hidden they could have equally been a necessity. He knew that he had often seen her in different coloured contact lenses in the past, but he'd assumed they were just for fashion... and you know what assuming leads to.
“Baby, I'm so glad you're awake. Don't ever worry me like that again,” she said, as if he had simply been ill as opposed to the victim of a sustained and violent torture, though in some masochistic way he felt a small weight of guilt had been lifted... some punishment at last had been received.
She sat down on one side of the bed and held the bottle out for him, waiting patiently. He tentatively reached out to take it, wincing with every contraction of his chest muscles. He held it for a few seconds as he tried to bring his other hand around, but it was too painful. Sandrine suddenly tutted at herself and gently took the bottle from him, unscrewing the top before handing it back.
“Sorry baby, I know it hurts. Let's never hurt each other again, hmm? Promise?”
She tilted her head to one side, her lips pushed into a teenage pout that still somehow seemed to fit her late thirties features. Roman nodded slowly, pushing the rim of the bottle to his lips and taking a few slow sips. His lips were parched from dehydration; perhaps he'd been unconscious for over a day.
Sandrine pulled a blister pack out of the pill packet and pushed a couple of painkillers out onto the palm of her hand.
“The strongest I could get without prescription. I hope they do the trick,” she said as she handed them to him, before leaning in and softly planting a kiss on his forehead. Part of Roman wanted to rear away as if it were an attack but his sense of self-preservation prevailed and he stayed where he was, feeling the lipstick tackiness against his skin.
“How long was I... asleep?” he asked, looking out of the window at the winking lights of the city that was still running like clockwork around his microcosm of torture. He wondered if anyone could see them, or had seen them in here. How sweet the scene must look from the outside, the caring girlfriend nursing her dearest back to health. Little would they know of the knife edge that he was walking, the dangerous game he was playing in defusing her feelings.
“Too long, but I suppose you were exhausted,” she said with a smile that was filled with manic warmth.
“I'm hungry,” he whispered, in the least demanding tone that he could manage. A small respite was the best that he could hope for at the moment. He was in no state to escape and needed to heal up.
Sandrine nodded. She lifted the sheet from its tangle at the foot of the bed and laid it out over him. “I'll get you some soup. You can sleep again, if you'd like. I'll wake you when it's ready.
Roman nodded, letting his eyes shut even though his mind was alive with machinations. He felt the bed shift as she stood up, and didn't open his eyes until he heard the gentle click of the door behind her.
He opened his eyes again to the darkness of the room. This was his torture chamber, a barbarous and bloody fish tank. He shifted his body across the water bed in a series of painful hops – which was a feat in itself as the bed sloshed and shifted under him – until he finally reached the edge of the bed and tumbled over, mercifully landing on the pile of his own clothes. He gave out a yelp of pain as his wounds twisted with his body's movement.
He guided himself using a hand on the bedside table. It was scattered with more photographs of his face, interspersed with dried rose petals. He pulled himself to his feet using his legs and thighs more than his arms so as not to use his chest muscles.
When he was upright he padded over to the door as quietly as he could manage under and reached out to try the door handle. It was locked, as he had suspected it might be. She still didn't trust him a hundred percent, which he could understand given the strangeness of the situation. If anything she should have mistrusted him a hundred percent, as he had no intention of staying here any longer than he needed to.
He worked his way across the floor. It was covered with Sandrine's clothes, magazines, papers and strange tubes of light that seemed the snake around everything, winking on and off in a constantly changing pattern of purple that made his head swim. Finally he was able to reach the window and stare down at the vast city below. The glass was so clear that he could imagine that he was standing on the edge of building, ready to fly into the night across the moving carnival of blurring, brightening, fading advertising slogans and the traffic snarled arteries of the city. He waved his arms to gesture for help but had no idea what he expected to happen. Anyone who could see him would be so far away that there would be nothing they could do even if they did suspect he was in trouble.
Any further investigation was halted when heard the sound of footsteps in the hallway. He turned back towards the bed and climbed in as quickly as he could manage, wincing as he pulled the blankets back over his body.
The door opened again and he was greeted by the sight of Sandrine entering with a tray holding a bowl of soup, a couple of slices of soy flour bread and a small vase containing what seemed to be a real flower – a violet of course.
“That looks wonderful,” said Roman, actually meaning it as he looked at the thick orange soup. He hadn't realised how hungry he was. “Is that real vegetables in there?” he asked, looking at the consistency. After years of genetically modified algae derivatives you could always tell a real vegetable by its texture.
“Only the best for you,” said Sandrine. She smiled as he started to eat.
The soup was full of flavour and warming, making him feel more comfortable in the situation than he knew he should be. He looked up at the flower and raised his eyebrows at it meaningfully.
“What, you don't like it?” said Sandrine suddenly, the smile evaporating as quickly as steam in a furnace. Rage started to crease her features. He could see her whole body tense, her fingers working the air.
Roman quickly swallowed, babbling out the true meaning of his gesture. “No, I meant... the same as the vegetables... I meant, it's real. It is, isn't it?”
In a heartbeat she was back, her expression softening as she ran a finger over the petals of the flower.
“Yes, it's real. I cultivate them in the other room, propagating them with my distilled water ration. It's a worthwhile sacrifice, I think.”
Roman hastily nodded his head, swallowing hard. He ate more slowly but with great exaggeration of the genuinely good taste he was enjoying, trying to avoid any more conversational traps. It was like walking a field of land mines.
Just as he was finishing and placing his spoon on the tray, he felt an urge that he hoped wouldn't be denied him.
“The... ah... the boy's room?” he asked, watching her expression carefully for an
y change that would indicate that he was on the verge of setting her off again. She remained smiling, to his considerable relief.
“Of course. Come on.”
She pushed an arm behind his back and helped him to his feet, before leading him out into the hallway.
He had to shield his eyes from the light as she led him down the corridor and opened another door that led into a dingy bathroom. Roman managed to glance left and right as he went, surreptitiously learning the layout of her new apartment. There was a kitchen at one end of the hallway where it opened out, and he could hear a television from somewhere, though it was so quiet it could have been from another apartment. Perhaps if he were to cry out they would hear him and investigate, although he had to admit the more likely outcome would be them banging the wall in an effort to shut him up.
Apparently her messiness wasn't confined to the bedroom/torture chamber as there were empty shampoo bottles, clothes and wet towels all over the floor of the combined toilet and bathroom. Roman was careful to try and pick his way through the various scattered items but Sandrine simply ploughed onwards unawares. He was sure she hadn't been like this before, as there had been times when he had visited her house before the life changing meal and he had no recollection of it being such a tip. It must have been a side effect, a symptom of the rest of her life turning to grey.
Oh please, please let this request not be too much for her to handle. “Thanks. I’ll take it from here.”
For a second he thought he could sense a small twitch in her eye, but a smile suddenly flitted across his features and with a rush of relief he realised he was safe with that request, for now.
“I'll be just outside. You'll need helping to the bed, won't you?”
It wasn't really a question and Roman recognised the inferred command. He nodded mutely.
Sandrine turned and walked out, looking back with a maniacal grin as she closed the door. The situation would have made him laugh if it didn't carry the threat of such acute, palpable pain.
He made an audible show of the event, banging the toilet seat louder than necessary when he moved it as he looked around. No windows. That would be too much to hope for. A quick glance inside the medicine cabinet – the door of which creaked a little, making him tense in fear before he carried on – revealed nothing of use, simply a few hair bands and cosmetic sprays. He had no idea what he was looking for in any case. If there had been a large pair of scissors, would he have used them on her to escape? Part of him embraced the thought, but it was only the sense of freedom that excited him. To get there, he'd have to lose a lot of himself and he wasn't sure if the price would be worth paying.
I did this though, I did this.
The inner monologue swam around in his head but he knew better than to embrace it. While it was true, dwelling on it would simply drag him down into a life of bondage, and there was no way he was going to eke out the rest of his days in this grubby den.
“Everything all right in there?” came Sandrine's voice, making him grit his teeth in annoyance. He hated being controlled.
As I controlled others.
True, of course, but he couldn't afford to think like that or he'd be lost. He washed his hands and picked his way back to the door. He just needed to stay patient a little longer and come up with a plan. There had to be a way out, he just needed to take his time and think logically.
He opened the door to the smiling face of Sandrine. She put her arm around him and led him back to his room, which from the outside he could see was lockable from two bolts, one on the top and one on the bottom. There would be no picking the lock then, the only way out would be to physically destroy the door itself, a feat well beyond his means.
He was led back to the bed whilst trying to keep the growing despondency in his stomach in check, along with the increasing urge to resign himself to his fate. Such a strange mix... is this what my 'patients' have felt in the past? Did they feel a slave to their own emotions?
He lay back in the bed and suddenly felt a wave of exhaustion wash over him. It could have been his body's reaction to the pain and trauma but he soon realised from the way that Sandrine was watching him – with that dangerous and intoxicating smile playing on her lips – that he had been drugged.
The next few days were a blur of waking, drifting to sleep, food, water and mercifully decreasing pain. The day and night cycle was impossible to fathom in the haze of drugs and lack of any clock. The room became his world, interspersed with brief journeys to empty his bladder or bowels. The hugs, the kisses, the caresses... his jailer and victim, aggressor and saint... Sandrine Martinez...
… the view out of the window, wide expanses of grey and neon, the people...
This room is real. This room is tangible. All that I can see out there are scratches on a circuit board, as distant as the waves are from the clouds, none of them meaning anything to the others beyond a passing resemblance.
A little too awake, a little too alert... a crossed word.
“You don't love me, you never did... the other women, you kissed them harder, hugged them longer...”
“That's not... I don't... I don't remember...”
Crack.
“You hate me!”
Blood, cut, agony.
“Love me!”
CRACK.
Awake again. Asleep again.
“You're mine. Love me.”
Alone against the world.
Ecstasy.
He had no idea how long he had sat there, cradling the vial in his hands, holding it as if it were a child, precious and pure.
His thoughts were starting to order themselves. He desperately needed the toilet and from that small method of timing he deduced that Sandrine should have been here a while ago. There was no food, no noise from outside. Has something happened to her?
The fear that gripped his gut was real, the grief that was running through his mind was vivid. He found he was pressing the still sealed vial to his lips, feeling the cool plastic against his skin. It would be so easy.
There was enough there, he was sure. One drink and he could return her love.
The cuts across his chest were almost healed, the bandages hanging loosely from his emaciated rib cage. Their life together could be perfect, isolated, insulated, give and take, a partnership built to last forever, driven by the mania of truest burning love.
Something still stopped him though, held his fingers from snapping the seal.
A few more minutes.
The pain in his bladder started to increase, along with a deep headache that pulsed from the back of his head to the front – the stress of dehydration. It also carried with it a rare and precious gift, long forgotten. Clarity.
He shoved the vial back into the compartment in his shoe and pulled himself up to stand. The room was filthy. A mess of old bandages and stained dressings covered the floor, and there were patches of wet carpet that showed where he had pissed himself in the drug addled days that had passed. The stench was ripe and raw in his nostrils. This room was a prison, rank and foul, controlled by a self-made demon.
The sound of a key in a lock grabbed his attention, but the feeling that was dredged up from inside was not the fear that he was used to, or the pitifully needy Stockholm syndrome that had also laced his thoughts since his capture. It was anger. Anger and, at last, hatred.
They were two sides of the same coin and by playing with his feelings (as he had played with hers) she had fulfilled her own prophecy, her own misguided and burning fear.
He had never hated anyone or anything to such an extent before. It was almost tiring, driving rational thoughts from his head. He had to rein it in.
He heard her footsteps on the carpet, followed by the rattling of locks. The bolts were drawn back. He stood, naked, sweating, stinking, and watched as the door was thrown open. She stood there, her face a painted mask of surprise, a kabuki horror in a suit, the public face an approximation of a person. She was a shell, driven by a singular purpose that was as
corrupt and rotten as a corpse. There was no whip, no weapon, no way of attacking... but the danger emanated from her like spores off a fungus.
There was only one choice, only one course that he could take. No, there were many that could be taken if he were to give up himself as she had been forced to give up herself, but if he truly wished to retain what little identity he had left – Roman Rasnic, flawed, broken human – then he only had one course.
“Please Sandrine, let me help you.”
The words came out, somehow cutting a swathe through the hatred, leaving it burning at the edges, watching the scene and laughing at his cowardice.
She stiffened, obviously sensing the difference in him, the ability to reason and comprehend. Perhaps she had seen his mind as an obstacle for his heart, not letting his true feelings show themselves, or perhaps she hadn't even thought of it that deeply, having lost her sense of humanity along with all other sensibilities.
What's your excuse?
He had no excuse. Had it really needed such a threatening, violent and abusive situation to awaken him to the damage that he had caused so wantonly in his past? He had to hope that he would have come to this conclusion himself, in time. The lesson was cut into his soul.
“What do I need help with exactly?” she asked, a mock playful tone to her voice that screamed with veiled aggression.
Roman continued, hoping that his message would somehow get through to whatever part of her brain could still process.
“I just need ten minutes back at my apartment, that's all. I can give you your life back. You must remember what it was like before. I mean...” he threw out his arms in desperation, “... what is this? This is life?”
“I work, I pay the bills, I shop, I come home to the man I love,” said Sandrine carefully, as if ticking off things on a mental list. She closed the door behind her, before jerking a knife out her jacket sleeve, obviously hidden there just in case of such a transgression. “Yes, I was late today, but it was the traffic, not my fault. An accident... what could I do? You were still here though, here when I returned, waiting for me as a good lover should, a good husband. I have everything I could ever ask for. I have everything I ever wanted. I have you. I've locked you in my heart.”
The Real Thing Page 7