Lies Without Reflections

3. Chapter

I awoke to an unquenchable thirst. Groping about the blankets I found unfamiliar landscape of duvet under my fingertips. My parents' bedroom.

I stumbled down the stairs as quietly as I could, grabbed my big mug and filled it to the brink. Bracing myself on the counter I guzzled it down like an animal.

Only to retch it up into the sink. It squirted out my nose, my mouth right onto the unwashed dishes.

I frowned and refilled to numb the acrid singe in my throat. My stomach gurgled made a sickening wet sound twisted and I belched all the same. As a rule throwing up makes you all the thirstier so it was a vicious cycle.

The third attempt had identical results. The hoarse feeling only increased.

Then I tired of it and in my sleepy-drunken fatigue went on to lean on the counter and listen to the dripping.

As the clock ticked away I found myself gazing at the tap my thirst developing into a hunger than into a need. I wasn't just thirsty anymore. I was addicted to the sound, sight and taste of water. The more I listened to the dripping plink-plink of the drops the farther sleep fled from my eyes and muscles.

My body tensed, a puppet on a coil ready to spring, taut and wrung up.

I was lucky. So lucky that I came to my senses before the inevitable.

I had no recollection of how I got into my sister's room, of how long I was there; staring at the softness of her sleeping figure, drowned in sweet dreams before I realized the rhythm I concentrated on wasn't the regular drip and splash of the water.

The morning lights coloured her an inky blue-grey, her sunny curls a mesh of silver-wire and all I comprehended of that peaceful scene was the steady beat of pulsing skin where it was thinner and how it made the inside of my throat raw with pain.

Alert of sounds and smells I backed away. She sighed in her sleep and turned, the blankets hurling a cascade of child scent at me. My mouth was an inch away from her serene face. My breath blew a light strand of hair rhythmically. Up, down. Up, down.

Up.

Down.

That was when I ran and locked myself out in the garden.

I pressed my hands against my ears, blocking the sound but I heard it still. It resonated through my skull. It made me manic, frantic, a captive of my nonexistent thoughts. It replaced any coherence trying to form in my brain.

By the time the shadows radically shifted my body had become a crude mass of sinews plait with strain. Her heart placed into my head ,ticking away like a clock until it maddened me. I heard everything; the little catches, the gasps, the sighs.

My skin ached, my fingertips sang, my chest was abuzz.

The memory of the eyes swam into my field of vision.

He did this. He was waiting for this. He said he wanted to help.

This isn't help. This is torture. This is need.

I waited. Waited for the fatal moment when she woke up and didn't find me. Waited for when her world would collapse because although I was still here I ran away in my mind. Abandonment would destroy her. Like it was destroying me.

Why aren't you here? Why did you have to die? Why aren't you here so I could pour everything at you so you would not rest in f*****g piece?! And I was furious because in fact they didn't have to go.

Slowly I raised my hand one finger pointing languidly at indeterminacy and touched the first ray of sun.

White hot pain shot up my arm a bolt of slick lightning.

I fumbled for my keys. Dropped them. Picked them up. Fumbled again.

I violently pushed it into the keyhole feeling the light's fiery lips kiss my elbow. Crunching my teeth I turned the keys and let myself in. Hurried into the living room to get the blinders. The living room with the windows facing East, staring square at the sun.

The thump-thump-thump mixed with the treading of her feet.

Following the shadows I lunged for the strings and pulled the blinders shut. I breathed out infinitesimally relaxing then threw myself at the living room door.

I sniffed at the wood inhaling her scent combined with the wet sound of the muscle sending liquid into every diminutive part of her little system. I was fire.

She called out my name.

I heaved.

Listened. Licked my aching lips.

Rustle of paper. She found my note. I heard it fell softly on the tablecloth as she let it go.

I trembled with thirst at the thought of her chubby baby-fingers touching the paper.

Thump-thump-thump.

I was fixing the doorknob.

Saving everyone my back-pocket buzzed. A text from him. I grabbed hope by the throat and throttled it relentlessly.

I don't remember typing the words. I shoved my request at his face and he obeyed without question. Because I had wound him around not my index but little finger one, two, three; as many times as I needed and he'd done whatever obediently. Because Mallory Piper was a user and couldn't live without the people she thought she wasn't reliant on.

“Let me in”

Swallowed. Swallowed hard. Bit my tongue so hard I tasted metal. The iron in my blood, the strongest thing reminded me not to give in.Thump-thump. Ta-thump.Ta-thump.

Saliva dribbled down the side of my mouth. I snivelled like a rabid starving dog.

“Can't” I managed “Get dressed. You'll find money in my bag just take it. All of it”

“But mum always packs me sandwiches”

“And you never eat them” my teeth ached. She pressed her ear against the living room door. I swallowed agony.

“But I want packed lunch”

“Take the money you can buy chocolate and whatever you want with it”

My tongue knotted. I knew if I kept talking I would lose my ability to speak. It was hard not to snarl with all the drool water-falling out of my mouth, pooling on the carpet in a dirty beige circle.

I heard the knock on the door and relief flooded me.

She left with him. He didn't even ask just took her.

That's when I ventured out of the living room, crawled on the floor, up the stairs and gathered the blankets and draperies and towels to block all the light.

The air filled with the rumble of the fabrics and the deafening silence.

The knocker thundered after half an hour of dark tranquility.

Ta--thump.

A different, bigger, heavier rhythm. It was him.

“Mallory?” The glass should've muffled his voice but I heard him crystal clearly. Just as if his lips moved ride beside my ear, almost brushing them.

I pressed my burning cheek against the wall cooling that side letting the other smolder with heat and pain. Squeezing my eyes shut I willed him to leave. I willed him not to be my damnation and salvation in one living package that drummed out the rhythm of temptation with every breath.

“I was thinking whether to come back. But I had to. You never...” small pause, beating of heart, contraction of lungs “I think I'll need an explanation.”

I sank my nails into my palm. I grabbed the bannister.

“Come on. I know you're there. I can see you”

Can you? Can you see me? Can you see Me?

“I don't have one”

“This is irresponsible. It's not you” he scratched the back of his neck“ s**t. Can I- can I at least come in ? I feel a bit stupid standing on the porch talking to a door”

He worked the lock.

I stared at it. Hypnotized it.

I knew how to open it. If he took one more step ta--thump ta--thump will be nothing but ---

I nailed my ears and screamed.

I saw him dead in the doorway, his head lolling bloody to the side, the life escaping him into a gathering scarlet pool at his feet. The grey eyes blank, voice hollow asking me, accusing me.

And I scream back at him that I had no choice I needed help. I still needed help.

He left.

My ears bled from the little half-moons my nails dug into them.

I went to stare at my reflection and realized it left me too. The bloody bastard escaped. I was the only one trapped.

The worst part was remembering everything.

The maddening pain, how I wiggled on the floor for hours on end without a second of relief, dragging myself on the ground in angles I thought would snap my bones. My mind was in splinters, protruding from my head, spiked in every direction by the time dusk set its murky foot in the garden and the golden light receded back to its warm deadly home.

The call loudened. The volume rolled up.

With one swing I jumped through the fence that was taller than I am. All I had to do was swing. My bare feet made no noisy thud on the concrete.

They were watching something. British pastime - Jeremy Kyle probably. A long-faced, goggled gaunt woman with wispy, fine hair dressed in what my grandmother would never have worn. Her companion a wrecking ball shaped humanoid, with the fur of a gorilla protruding from every orifice of his body. Their rhythm, the gallop of two horses, dissonant, a jumble of sounds. My aching body flared up to the thought of them. Drool escaped the corner of my mouth and hang onto it with a long filmy rivulet.

Something, something carnal and feral drew me to the glass door of the garden. Although I craved to push my flagrant cheeks, my pounding blood against the cool surface but instinct rendered me motionless.

Lifting a hand I knocked with a single fingertip.

The mousy woman looked up. The sight of me - a quickening, a stumble of the regular tick of the clockwork.

Her dull, soggy eyes widened, her scrawny fingers cut into her husband's meaty arm to raise his awareness as well.

When he looked he got up surprisingly fast, in his striped underpants tucked under a bulbous belly ,comically oversized on his bony legs and vest once white only mocked the colour then.

“You all right, darling?” he asked in a raspy smoker drawl. I saw his greasy pores, all clogged, the way his hair was combed over his shiny bald head to cover up the stretching plane of a forehead.

I suddenly had the urge to tell him that the next time he shaved he should probably make a wig out of the residue. With this much wool I was surprised that never occurred to him. The irony, that is.

I didn't need to reply because his pole of a wife peeped out above his shoulder, saving the day.

I listened to their jumbled rhythm and squeezed my lips shut to prevent from further salivating.

“Come on in. Don't let her stand there in the cold” her eyes were of true horrification.

“Yeah sure”

The hairy hog subsided to let me in. I got a knitted blanket around my shoulders. It smelled of the woman. I bit my lurid tongue. Soon.

They asked me questions. I nodded, shook my head, looked as desperate and fallible as I could. Then I singled them out. The woman went to make me tea. I followed.

I was sure by that time my mouth was visibly glowing, my whole body ablaze with the NEED.

“Are you hungry?”

I almost chuckled.

I was. Yes, I was actually.

Took a step closer. Two. A half.

I put my hand on her shoulder to make her turn toward me. The wool of the knitted shawl scratched the lines of my palm. Her unassuming face froze into a grimace as I did what I had to.

Then her gorilla husband followed.

I went home and they were there.

I heard the ta-thump and the ta---thump of their hearts, the disharmonious labor of their breathing too. It was there, it was beating— in the stead of mine.

She was downright nasty and I sent her to her room. She shoved all the things that hurt the most at my head. That they left because I was unbearable, that she doesn't have parents for a week because I'm a horrible child to them. I knew her words meant to quench her own yawning feeling of absence and had nothing to do with me even if she hadn't known it.

My sister gladly slammed the door into my face which was exactly like a slap. I still couldn't tell her.

He waited for me. Not because he wanted to, no. Not after how I treated him this morning.

He stayed because I asked him to. And it broke my pride. That I needed him. That I had to be weak and bend my ever-resilient spine. Articulating the need for assistance was not something I did. That's how I knew that things changed irreversibly.

He witnessed all of the argument and stood at the foot of the stairs.

I lumbered down listening to the heartbeats of the house then concentrated on my silence.

I stared into his eyes all the way downstairs. My lips were glued together with the miriads of things I wanted to say. I flung my arms around him bereft of spokesmanship. Squeezing him meant thanking him, many, many times. I heard how his heartbeat accelerated, hammering a beat into my chest, drawing a pattern. My fingertips ached at the closeness of him. My insides gurgled and snaked though I was satisfied. I was and would always be a hairbreadth away from leaving him breathless, sightless, senseless on the carpet like I left the couple; one on the cold tiles of the kitchen, one on the sofa, legs, arms spread like a fat black spider. Devoid of remorse. Full of duty.