Photo by Raghavendra V. Konkathi on Unsplash
I can hear them whispering outside my door. Why do they have to screech like that right outside? Do they think I have lost my hearing as well as my mind? I know she does it on purpose, in some sick effort to torment me. I imagine the doctor pulling her away from the door and my wife standing firm, saying here’s fine, and then the two of them talk there - just outside. I screamed at them once, when I couldn’t stand it any longer, when their whispers started sounding like witches chanting, speaking in tongues I wanted to cut from their mouths and then my own was filled with blood and they did this to me, why are they doing to this to me and I am screaming then, despite the crimson coloring my lips, I am screaming for them to shut their fucking mouths, to shut their fucking mouths and I swear they just laughed and kept on cursing me. After that their whispers got louder - like feral cats hissing. It sounds evil and awful.
***
My wife was not always my enemy, but the doctor was. I hated the bitch the first time I saw her, hated how she dressed like a man but whispered like a woman - still hungry for gossip, of which I was the subject. She’s been wearing my wife’s clothes as of late and I don’t like it. Her short, boyish bob has grown out too and now her brown hair hangs long like hers. Witchcraft, I think, because I haven’t been locked in here long enough for it to grow like that. Unless, maybe I have. They’ve taken the calendar out of the room. I heard them say it would be better for me, for my health, if I was not counting the days. Early on, when willpower was still pulsing through me, I tried to keep track of the days by picking away at the wood of the bed frame, etching a small gash into its surface with my thumb nail everytime the sun rose. When my wife noticed the marks she seemed disappointed. She had come back later with a large paintbrush and a can of something thick and dark. A chemical smell filled the room before I fell asleep and by the time I woke my wife was gone and there was a dried coating on the frame’s wood and despite my best attempts it became nearly impossible to pick away at. The new wax layer held tight and my wife seemed pleased, proud even, of her handy work. She had pulled the doctor over eagerly, pointing to the side of the bed I had scratched, showing her exactly how she had solved the problem. I am almost certain they are screwing, my wife and the doctor. She’s done it before, caught her in bed with her editor once and my overreaction, according to my wife, is the reason I’m in here - like a goddamn toddler in time out. She loves this, I think, probably what she wanted from the start, to control me, to curse me. And why did she even marry me, if she knew she was a dyke? She is a cruel and cold woman.
***
The issue is, according to her, my lack of restraint. She had not wanted to go to the police and oddly, neither had the editor. My wife showed me many pictures, making sure I knew what I had done, during that moment of what she calls blind rage. I don’t tell her that I remember it all. The way the woman’s nose had cracked when it met my fist. The bones shattered so easily it had shocked me. I tried it again, a couple more times, listening for the same crunch in her cheeks. My wife screamed as it was happening. She looked dumb and deranged, shrieking in the center of the bedroom, her naked flesh still pink with pleasure, her eyes wild and so scared it made me sick in an excited sort of way and I looked at her as I hit the woman and there must have been a moment when she saw it, through the tears tumbling down her red face, because something in her shifted and she stopped screaming. It confused me and my punches began to slow and the woman groaned beneath me and then something shattered against my skull and I felt myself fall onto the woman, felt the disgusting pulp of her face against mine before the room went dark.
I woke sometime later, head heavy and arms surely shackled by something because I could not lift them, not even an inch, but when I finally summoned the strength to move my head, I looked down and saw that nothing, in fact, held my arms down. They lay limp at my sides, rendered useless for reasons I could not understand. Sickness rose inside of me and I thought to swing my legs out of bed and make a run for the bathroom but no action followed the impulse and soon I was spewing on the sheets, sour liquid leaking from my mouth and I felt like an infant, getting sick on myself like that. The doctor must have heard me choking because she barged in and my wife followed, watching with furiously unchanging expression as I gagged. The doctor poked me with a needle I hadn’t noticed nearing my arm and for the sole sake of my own shame I welcomed the speed of the sedative.
***
When I opened my eyes my wife was seated on the edge of the bed. Her hair hung loose around her shoulders and it looked much longer than it had that day I found her with the editor. To my relief, some of the feeling had returned to my arms. I looked at my wife, unsure whether to stroke or strangle her but before I could decide she placed her hand on mine and told me, very calmly, that I could swing my fists if I felt like it but it seemed like a moot point since my legs still did not work. I thought about lunging at her anyway but the idea of falling off the bed in front of her and that damned doctor made me want to vomit again so I sat still and listened as she told me I was in here for my own good, my own health. She said it was best not to involve the police, that with the launch of the book it really wasn’t the time for negative press. Not good for her image, she’d said, being married to a man who beats women. Why couldn’t she have fucked a man? It was the fact of her lover being a woman that made the punishing so shameful, in her eyes. In my eyes it’s all the same. I see no difference. Maybe I’m more progressive than my wife. And didn’t dykes want to be treated like men? Freud had something to say about it and on the subject of envy, my wife says that’s what set me off and of course it set me off, I’d screamed, you were screwing her! My wife had wiped a speck of spit off her cheek and stared at me. Not the affair, she said, the book. Always the fucking book, I thought, she’s obsessed with her success and frankly, it’s off putting. The editor is no different. They’re perfect for each other, really. If only she would admit that luck had something to do with it - luck and looks, I had told her. She acts like it’s irrelevant but it’s not. Publishing, I tried to explain, was a business, and she was, for the time being, good for business. If I had been born a writer in any other other decade it would be her in this fucking room, going mad from something like boredom and rage and why do they have to whisper like that my god it sounds like screaming but I know they are not. Perhaps my ears have just adapted to a dreadful environment where theirs are the only voices I hear. And how thin must the walls be, if I can hear them this well? Thin enough, surely, to smash through if only my damned legs worked. I could punch right through, right through, I’m certain of it. And if I did I would see them, startled and stunned on the other side. I would keep punching until the wall fell apart around me and then I would step out slowly, showing my wife that I can, in fact, control myself. I will not fly into another blind rage, will not give her the satisfaction and really I have no desire to bash another face in, to feel that pulp on my hands again. It left a horrible stick on my skin that made me feel sick to my stomach. See darling! I would say, stomping past the plaster, your rehabilitation worked! Then I would make for the front door and I don’t think I would look back, not at my wife and certainly not at that fucking doctor. I hated the way the woman looked at me, like I was some sort of pet project, poking at me with her needle like a stubborn wasp with its stinger. I can’t even be sure she’s a doctor. Of course I never saw any credentials, I woke up one day and she was there. I thought maybe I recognized her, when her face first loomed over me. A familiar face, I thought, the more I looked. But as her dark hair grew longer I began to think that maybe, she just reminded me of my wife. I hate the sight of them together. The way they huddle, pressed tight against each other as they watch me, so close, it seems, that they take on the form of a two headed monster, a medusa, multiplied.
***
It occurred to me recently, to listen for the front door closing. I know I am upstairs because the sound is a distant one, but when I hear it I also listen for footsteps, and I have become quite adept at noting the number of feet going in and out of the house. The other day, while both of them were gone, I swung myself over the side of the bed - something I’d tried to prepare for but still had landed me in a pathetic heap on the floor, pain soaring through my shoulder as I dragged myself up to a seated position. I knew my plan was impractical. I may not get far today and any progress made would reset if they returned home before my successful, unlikely escape. I thought of James Caan and how much worse things got when he tried to get away but then I remembered his triumph, the way he bashes the crazy bitch until she’s dead and doesn’t it end with him writing again? I smiled and stretched and shot my fist through the drywall. The dent was smaller than I’d hoped but it was a start. As I punched the plaster a calm satisfaction fell over me, knowing that if I did not make it out, I will have, at least, caused some damage. At some point my knuckles must have bled because when I woke up I had gauze bandages wrapped around both fists and I could see spots of red seeping up towards the surface of the fabric. I’m not sure how far I’d gotten by the time they returned but the wall was already repaired, as though nothing had happened at all. It made me sad, looking at the mended plaster, my hurt hands the only proof that anything had even been achieved. I wanted to see what I had done to my skin, but I thought it best to leave the bandages wrapped tight. There was still a faint smell of paint in the air and I could see, if I looked very closely, that the patch of wall I’d pounded through was slightly discolored. That would bother her.
***
My wife is softer with me when she comes alone. Rarely does she visit without the horrid doctor by her side but when she does she sits close to me and speaks sweetly, always so calm and clear in her words. Now, she takes my bandaged hands in hers and stares at them, shaking her head slowly, as though very, very disappointed. Have you ever wondered what you did to her? She asks, not waiting for my answer. You broke so many bones in her face that she had an entirely new one made. The doctors worked as quickly as they could but the poor thing spent months in that terribly mangled state. She stares at me for a long while, her eyes unblinking and masterfully unkind. You really are a fucking animal, she tells me, adjusting herself on the edge of the bed. I couldn’t stand seeing her like that, after your fists rendered her faceless. She goes quiet again and presses a firm finger into the raw, tender wounds on my knuckle. She scowls when I flinch and presses down harder. You are so much weaker than her. Do you know what it took to rebuild herself after what you did? It makes me sick to think of her during that time, hurting like that over something as pathetic as your rage. But she’s stronger than I am. Smarter too. And so much sweeter than you ever were. She always told me how much she loved my lips. Have you noticed anything familiar about her? There is a giddiness blooming behind her words that makes my stomach sour. My body knows where she is going before she gets there. I don’t mind her using them. A low groan escapes from my mouth. She took my nose too. My bones burn hot with dread. Eerie, isn’t it? Confusing for you, I’m sure. Honestly, I think that’s why she did it. Your disorientation seems to delight her. I feel familiar bile rising in my throat, try to swallow it down but soon I am spewing and my wife is standing, stepping away from the bed, watching me with such apathy it makes me ache. I want, so badly, to see her, for a single second, show any ounce of feeling but she’s become so cold since her success and I swear all the care has been drained out of her by that bloodsucking cunt of an editor, I know it, that damned woman, not a doctor at all and how could I have been so stupid! It was not as though she had walked in wearing a white coat and even if she had, would that have been all it took to trick me? The fucking dyke had copied my wife’s face and still I had not noticed. Too busy convincing myself that the wicked woman with the needle was hired help, someone my wife had summoned because she could not cope, could not control me all on her own. My stomach sinks into itself as she waves the other woman in and hot tears trickle down my cheeks. I let my head fall back hard against the bed and shut my eyes tight before the needle reaches my arm, certain I am better off asleep.
***
When I wake I catch the room in a rare moment of darkness. I cannot remember the last time I’ve seen night and all the quiet makes me quiver. I lay still, thinking that if I listen hard enough I will hear their horrible whispers through the wall. I drop my arm and run my bandaged hand along the bed frame, feeling for any memory of the marks I’d made but it is as smooth as the night is silent and both make me want to break in half. I don’t know when exactly my fingers wrap themselves into a fist and begin pounding, if I’d known, maybe I would have stopped and I understand what she means now, blind rage and all that. I know what she is talking about because I am there again, body severed from brain, pounding still as the bones in my hand crumble like drywall and blood blends with waxed wood. The pulp is back but I am not sick over it and here they are, they’ve come running now and my wife is not whispering anymore but screaming and I am pummeling and the three of us are back in the bedroom and I am still surprised by how easily bones break. My wife’s composure is coming apart at the seams and I’m sure I smile when she sees what’s left of my hand because she is the one spewing now and this time when the needle goes in I feel something like satisfaction, for just a moment, before I look at the woman plunging the poison into me and her face is too familiar and I am certain it does not belong to her because how could it, how could it and then the woman and my wife are wrapping their arms around each other and walking out of the room as one, but they do not go far, they stand right outside my door and whisper until the bile is back in my throat.
Elizabeth Lerman is a creative writer based in Brooklyn who loves woods, waves, horror, highways and alliteration. Through her prose and literary fiction, Elizabeth aims to examine the significance of small moments and the space they hold. Her work has been featured in Curlew Quarterly, Ruminate Magazine and Coffin Bell Journal, among others. She thinks her current novel-in-progress will be the one she finally finishes. You can find more of Elizabeth's writing on her website www.elizabethlermanwriting.com.