Perspective - previously published in Vortex

Her room was dark, but it was not dark enough.  Shadows flickered upon white emulsion walls.  A streak of sunlight had evaded the blackout curtains and she was powerless against this glimmer of light.  Her day was in motion; it could not be stopped.

One.  And two.  And three.  And four.

She rubbed gloved fingers against her drooping eyes and glanced around at the narrow bed, the washbasin, the worn sofa, alert to their presence.

And five.

Ignore them.  This was what they wanted.

And six.

Her chest tightened as if an anaconda had coiled its length around her body, trying to extract all remaining life from its prey.  Her breath came in short, rasping gasps against the screeching silence.

And seven… seven.  And… eight.

Air battled to reach her lungs, stinging as it inched through her bronchial passages.  If only, if only she could have stood and moved across to the window to straighten the heavy black material when the sun rose earlier.  But it had not been possible.  Far too risky being so close to the light.

And nine.

The shadows had loitered, biding their time.  Now they could smell her weakening; could taste her fear.

And ten.

What harm if she looked for a few seconds; checked just once?  It would calm her.  No, too dangerous.

And eleven.  And twelve.

What if she… No.  Dr Entwistle said last Friday she must not give in.

‘Recovery will take time, Isabelle and you need to fight the panic attacks.’

He didn’t know what he was asking her to do.  Dr Entwistle did not understand the power, the devious ways of the shadows.  No one could.  Andrew certainly had not and they had been married for twenty years.  In that time he had never understood them or even believed they existed.  In the end, he had simply divorced her and married someone else.

‘How,’ she’d asked, adjusting dark shades to sit high upon the bridge of her nose, ‘How am I supposed to fight them?’

And thirteen.

The anaconda loosened its grip a fraction and she inhaled stale air from the room.  It rushed to her head, leaving her as dizzy as if she’d downed too much champagne.  Not that she’d had a drink for some time; she rarely went out.  The risks now were too high to contemplate.  The sun was so powerful, what with climate changes, and everyone’s skin showing the damaging effects.  Blemishes and moles all over the place, and people taking silly chances with their own lives, wearing t-shirts and shorts, summer dresses with no backs to them.  Builders who worked outside, wearing no protection at all.  Each week, she struggled to attend her appointment with Dr Entwistle, whose practice was only six minutes and eighteen seconds from her bedsit when you walked briskly; a total of 1,136 steps, if you counted.

Isabelle glanced at the alarm clock on the mantelpiece.  In seventeen minutes it would be time for the next section of her day.  In the meantime, there were seventeen minutes to get through…

And fourteen.  And fifteen.  And sixteen.

Her eyelids wilted.

And seventeen.

Seventeen had been her age when she first met Andrew.  The shadows were mere background murmurs then.  He’d been at the beach with friends and he teased her for being dressed in so many layers of clothes, sitting beneath an umbrella on the sunniest bank holiday of the year.  He’d worn navy trunks, his shoulders red with sunburn and splattered with freckles; far too many to count.

And eighteen.  And nineteen.  And twenty.  And twenty-one.  And twenty-two.

They married and she began to count them, memorizing the decorative patterns on his skin.  Soon she began to hate them, to fear them, believing she could see them change and develop beyond her control.

‘Of course, it’s foolish to believe that we ever control such matters,’ Dr Entwistle had told her during their initial appointment.

But she could, she did; she had to.  Skin should be clear, and smooth and pure, and safe.

And twenty-three.

The appointment had been her last hope of rescuing her marriage.

‘Too little, too late,’ Andrew had said.  He had moved in with his new fiancée and she had rented this room.  Still, even now she could draw from memory the map of his skin; his scars, his moles, his freckles and yet… yet, she could no longer remember how his face transformed when he smiled.

And twenty-four.

The urge to inspect her body was increasing.  Six minutes remained.  When the alarm finally went off she would have one minute to collect her sunglasses from the plant stand beside the door, place them on, count to twenty and then it would be time to…

Isabelle jumped, startled by the loud bang upon her door.  Her heart began to thump.  Her head spun, vision blurring when she learned forward to glance at the clock.  No, she wasn’t mistaken, she wasn’t.  Still over five minutes to go.  Why had someone banged on her door in that way?  It couldn’t be Beryl; she knew to tap once, and lightly.

It was bad news.  It had to be.  Bad, bad news.  She rocked back and forth on the sofa.  Pressure was building in her head.  It felt as if her brain was being compressed in a vice, tighter and tighter and tighter.

The knock came again.

‘Hello?’  It was a man’s voice.  ‘Hello?’ he repeated.

The shadows were playing tricks on her.  No one knocked on her door.  There was a sign which clearly requested that no one, NO ONE touch her door under any circumstance.

‘Isabelle?’

The man knew her name.

This was not in her schedule.  Her day was drifting from its carefully managed segments of time and that meant, that meant anything could happen.

‘Isabelle?’ the man’s voice continued.  ‘I understand you don’t know me, and that you don’t accept visitors.   Only Beryl sent me.  I’m Simon, her son.  She may have mentioned me?’

Had Beryl mentioned Simon?  She couldn’t be sure.  Her mind wandered when Beryl spoke.

Isabelle took another look at her alarm clock.  Two minutes to go until Beryl knocked to deliver her daily shopping and jug of fresh water from the kitchen.  That meant in fifteen minutes she would be allowed her morning cup of tea.

‘Can you hear me?’

She rocked back and forth.

‘You’re early,’ she said.  ‘Beryl comes at 10.30.’

‘That’s what my watch says, 10.30 on the dot,’ Simon told her.  ‘It’s why I knocked when I did.’

She shook her head.

‘There’s one more minute,’ she called.  Ripples of nausea were coursing up from her stomach.  She was going to be sick.

And twenty-five.  And twenty-six.  And twenty-seven.

‘Isabelle, what should I do?’

‘Knock again,’ she said.  ‘Knock again.’

‘Now?’

‘No, not now!  In forty-five seconds.’

And twenty-eight.  And twenty-nine.  And thirty.

The alarm clock buzzed and Simon rapped his knuckles against her door once again.  She rested back in the chair, closing her eyes.  She was safe.  It was time to stand, to move.  Her legs wobbled beneath the weight of her body as she shuffled towards the door, snatched her shades, put them on and began to count.  Only when she grasped the handle did she remember that Beryl would not be waiting on the other side.

‘Is there a problem?’ asked Simon eventually.

‘You’re not Beryl,’ she said.

‘No.’

‘You… you’re not in my schedule.’

‘I’m sorry about that, but Mum insisted I come instead of her.  She fell yesterday afternoon, she’s sprained her ankle.’

No Beryl…

‘Mum wasn’t sure if you had anyone else to deliver…’ he faltered, ‘…well, your daily supplies.’

‘But I don’t need anyone.  Beryl comes.’

‘The trouble is she won’t be able to, not for a few days.’

Isabelle frowned.

‘She has to.  Beryl always comes.’  She turned, resting her back against the door, gradually allowing the rubbery muscles of her legs to give way so that she slid down into a sitting position on the floor.  Beryl was always there when she needed her.  She had taken care of her since she and Andrew were married, after they advertised for a housekeeper when the panic attacks began to overshadow her life.  After the divorce she’d continued to come each morning at the same time without fail.

‘I don’t want to speak out of turn,’ Simon continued, ‘or distress you further.’  He coughed and waited a few seconds.  ‘Only my brother and I are concerned about Mum.  She’s getting on you know, and we worry it’s too much for her, taking two buses to get over to this side of town each day.’

Isabelle rested her head upon her knees, aware of her heartbeat reverberating through her chest.  She put two fingers to her neck to check her pulse.  It was racing.  Sweat bubbled up across her forehead.  Why couldn’t he stop talking and go so that she could open the door, collect her shopping and get on with her day?

And thirty-one.  And thirty-two.  And thirty-three.  And thirty-four.  And thirty-five.  And…

‘She doesn’t like to mention it herself but she’s really ready to retire.’

The anaconda slithered towards her again and wound its way around her body, squeezing out any remaining breath.  Her toes tingled, then her shins and her thighs, then the tingling pressure moved up through her stomach.  She gasped for air, choking on the saliva that hit the back of her mouth.

‘Are you okay in there?’  Simon called.

‘Go,’ she panted.

‘What about your food and water?’

‘Just…’ she wheezed, ‘just go.’

And… and thirty-five.  And…

‘Can I call anyone?  Your doctor?’

Thirty-six.

It felt as if she were no longer in her own body but floating high above it.

‘Please,’ she said.

andthirty-seven.andthirty-seven.andthirty-seven.andthirty-seven.andthirty-seven…

Isabelle’s legs were numb.  She lay paralyzed on the floor.  She was dying.  Would die here, alone.  She closed her eyes, allowing herself to drift downwards, surrendering herself to the shadows who cradled her within the icy warmth of their embrace, whispering to her all the while.

Tears came.

Years ago, she had lain on the floor with her sister, Maria.  She had cried then, too; small, stifled sobs against the sound of her parents arguing in the next room.  She could hear the thump of her father’s fist against the door, the wall, and her mother.

‘They’ll divorce you know,’ Maria had said.  She was four years older and knew everything about life.

‘Really?’  Isabelle hadn’t known what divorce was, but Maria’s serious face told her it was not good.

‘We’ll probably be sent to an orphanage.’

‘What’s that?’

‘A home for kids with no parents.  It’ll be horrid.  I bet we’ll be separated from each other.’

Worry wormed its way through her young body.  Maria was everything to her; she relied on her.

‘I don’t want to go,’ she said, her face crumpling.

‘Sssh… we don’t want to disturb Mummy and Daddy…’

‘I’m scared.’

‘You’re always scared.’

They both rested their cheeks flat against the hessian carpet and stared at one another.

‘Tell me a story, Ma…’

Maria groaned.

‘Okay, I’ve a really good one for you today.  It’s about a woman who died on the toilet.’

‘Died?’

‘Yeah, remember last week when I pretended to die, and lay on the floor and didn’t move for an hour?  Well, that’s dying, only you never move,’ she leaned her face closer, ‘ever again.’

‘I don’t like this story.’  Isabelle had had a nightmare after Maria died, and Mummy had shouted at her for waking Daddy.

‘It’s a funny story, you will.  This woman…’

‘What woman?’

Maria pulled a face.

‘It’s not important.  Just shut up and listen.  This woman is really old, she’s sort of thirty or forty-ish and has like a million freckles all over her body and she goes to the bathroom one day, sits down on the toilet –’ She stopped and sat up.

‘What happens?’

‘She scratches a big brown freckle on her shoulder and she pees and… she dies.’

Isabelle sat upright too and pulled her knees beneath her chin.

‘She pee’d and died?’

‘Cos she touched her big, hairy freckle,’ said Maria, ‘and now she’s dead forever.  No one found her for days and she was stuck on the toilet still scratching it, only her body had turned cold and hard.’

'So you die if you scratch freckles?’

‘Yep.’

‘What if you touch by accident?’

Maria grinned.

‘You still die.’

Isabelle had glanced down at her arms and legs, at her own freckles.

‘You’d better be careful, Izzie,’ Maria laughed.  ‘Really careful.’

She did.  She did have to be careful.  But she hadn’t been.  Dr Entwistle had tried to put a stop to it and she should never have trusted him.  Her mouth was dry when she swallowed, her body heavy as she gingerly moved her legs to test them.  They were working again, and she slowly eased herself on to her feet and ripped off her gloves, her hands clammy as air touched skin.

Adrenaline coursed through her now and in a single swift tug she pulled her roll neck jumper over her head and crouched beside her bed.  She reached beneath it and pulled out her box, her mahogany security box.  She took the chain form her neck and pushed the key into the lock and opened it.  With careful movements she lifted out her magnifying glass, her head torch, her scissors, tweezers and nail clippers and positioned them on the bed.  She removed her notebook from the base of the box and flicked through the pages and pages of patterns.  Charts of people’s skin; her own throughout the years, then Andrew’s, Beryl’s, Dr Entwistle’s, Maria as a child and adult and other people who had wandered in and out of her life.

Isabelle turned to a fresh sheet, wiped the magnifier with her jumper, pulled down her tracksuit bottoms and inch by inch inspected and measured each freckle, each blemish, scar and mole on her body, recording the details with a diagram sketched in her notebook.

Two freckles would need to be removed today.  An offering to the shadows.  She dabbed on tea tree oil and punctured her forearm with the nail clippers, blood spurting as she gouged layers of skin to destroy the circular brown stain; ripping it apart, removing all trace.  Blood trickled along her arm and she covered it with a plaster before she began the removal of a freckle from the top of her right thigh.

She breathed deeply once the surgeries were complete, and smiled.  Her body was clear and smooth, pure and safe once more.  She felt drained but calm as she cleared away and got dressed again in her black roll neck jumper, tracksuit bottoms, socks and cotton gloves and tugged the sheets on the single bed from their tidy corners.  And then for the first time in two weeks, three days and nineteen hours she flopped down into bed, body spent, and lay still beneath the covers.