Here's January's White Rabbit Story:
HITTING
“You
hit me,” Lisa said softly, with tears in her eyes and a note of disbelief in
her voice.
“What?” I stepped away from the
sink, drying my hands on a tea towel. “What did you say?”
“You hit me.” She raised one hand
and rubbed at her cheek. The skin there was red.
“I’ve been washing the dishes. I
have no idea what you’re talking about.”
Her bottom lip was trembling; she was
on the verge of breaking down. I could see it in her eyes.
“Tell me what happened?”
“Just then,” she said. “When I was
walking into the hall, you hit me across the face, for no reason.”
I took a step towards her; she took
a step backwards, moving away from me, keeping the distance between us the same.
“I…”
“Just keep away, Brian. Keep back.”
She raised both her hands in a defensive gesture.
“Come on, Lisa. What’s going on?” I
moved my own hands so that the palms were up: what I thought was a nonthreatening gesture.
Suddenly, without warning, she
slapped herself across the face. The sound was hard and flat, how I imagined a
gunshot might be.
I stood there in the bright little
kitchen, staring at her and wondering if she’d gone insane. Thinking about what
I should do next. The moment seemed to stretch beyond breaking point.
“Bastard! Stop hitting me!” She
turned away and ran out of the room.
I followed her, unsure of what else I
was supposed to do.
Lisa stumbled and fell, going down heavily
at the bottom of the stairs.
“Stop it!” She was screaming. “Get
off me!”
I stood above her, my hands waving
slowly in the air, making little circles in front of me. “Please…stop doing this.”
She kept hitting herself about the
face and neck, slapping and punching and scratching. Then, slowly and deliberately,
she began to slam her face into the bottom step. There was blood on her mouth.
I saw a couple of teeth on the carpet. She kept doing it, smashing her face
against the edge of the step, turning her beautiful features into a bloody ruin.
I was too afraid to touch her.
Before long, the violence was reduced
to a small, tired movement as she raised her head repeatedly and let it fall,
smearing the damage against the step. Then, finally, it stopped altogether.
I hadn’t raised a hand to help her;
my confusion had rendered me immobile, useless. I fell to my knees and cradled
her broken face in my lap.
“You…hit…me.”
The words were barely words at all, just a series of gargled sounds pushed through
her shattered teeth. Her eyes were empty. No, not empty: they were dead. There
was nothing left alive in there. Briefly, something brushed against me; it felt
like a light breeze ruffling me hair and tickling my skin. It passed into me
and through me, leaving a trace of something behind. The air smelled of honeysuckle.
After gently setting Lisa back down
on the floor, I went and phoned an ambulance. I didn’t know what to tell them,
so I said she’d suffered a bad fall. My mind felt as if it had been squeezed
into a small box; my body was a suit of clothing that I’d borrowed from someone
else. Everything felt wrong. I sat next to her until I heard the siren, and then
a rapid, insistent knocking at the front door.
The paramedics stood on the
doorstep, looking at me. Two of them: a man and a woman. “What’s the trouble?”
said the man, stepping forward. He had kind eyes. His face wore a look of genuine
concern.
Something clicked into place, a tiny
mechanism I hadn’t even known existed. We never know what’s missing until it
appears.
He was the one. It was him; I knew
it was. The bastard.
He spoke again, confirming his guilt:
“What’s happened here, sir?”
I knew what to say. What needed to
be done.
“You hit me,” I said, rubbing my
cheek where the pain was already burning through the shell of my skin, ready to
hatch.
Then, as hard as I possibly could, I
punched myself in the face.
© Gary McMahon 2019
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