Shuttered Soul

For once she is looking outwards. The swirling mist plays hide and seek with all the objects beyond. Now you see them, now you don’t. Sometimes, when the mist thins and parts, the light of the gibbous moon makes them shine: white and bonelike; or a gleaming black like viscous oil. Rows and rows of pale slabstones. Black shapes writhing atop. The phantasmal landscape conjures up the ghosts and all the horror which she had managed to quell. Had succeeded in locking it up safely in a room in her mind. So it would threaten her no more, frighten her no longer. But now, at the thought that it might escape, panic engulfs her. She shivers and shakes as she takes erratic, choking breaths. And, all at once, she pulls back, quickly shutting the window.

And, just like that, the shutters came down. Once again. He could have sworn he had seen a flicker of dull light, howsoever briefly. In that moment of illumination, he had glimpsed the shadows. In a frozen tableau from an eerie, totemic dance: a slight figure cowering in the centre, dwarfed by the monstrous shapes surrounding it.

He had been trying to reach her, just as he had been attempting to do for the last many months. Tonight, standing here, he was sure he was about to make a breakthrough, make contact. Momentarily defeated, he turned away sighing. “Well, no doubt very soon”, he thought as he walked away.

Behind the shutters, her mind spins in fear. Disjointed thoughts float around in the ether, like bits of tissue preserved in a jar swirling in a pungent liquid.

She is hard-pressed to grasp even one thought coherently. There, that one. “Nn-n-a-na-mme”.

“What’s your name?” “What’s your name?” The question hammers down on her, in an endless loop.

She doesn’t know. She wants to know. Will she feel better if she knows? If she can tell them more about her life? If she can provide the details she has time and again been asked for? But her brain has been feeling like a soft marsh for some time. She doesn’t know for how long. She only knows that her thoughts keep getting bogged down every time she tries to recall them; her mind sinking in the squelchy, sucking swampland, every time she tries to reach them.  

Today is another day. Today, the thoughts have been given up by the bog. They are floating around. Hands extended, her fingers attempt to curl around one. The one that could set her free, once she has it grasped in her hands. But, it is as if her fingers are trying to hold on to a misty miasma. Insubstantial. Ethereal.

Again, must try again, a disembodied voice blares at her. A voice that she knows well. One that makes her cringe and cower.

This time she wills the thought to stand still. As still as it can, while still floating around. And faint contours of a shape appear. Now it's not a bit of protoplasm or tissue. Now it’s a tadpole. Now it's an embryo. Now it’s a froglet. No, it’s a foetus! A large turbulent wave of sorrow rises from the bottomless well of grief within her. Crashes over her head, engulfs her and she is reduced to a gibbering mass of flesh. Not human. Not even animal. Just pure primeval matter.

And the disparate thoughts, the bits of protoplasm and tissue crash and merge to form the tapestry of her life. Shredded. Torn. Mangled.

Many weeks later, from the red fiery mists, another image rises. Of HIM who is HIMSELF.

No, no. Not the him outside the shutters trying to peep in. Trying to connect. He looks gentle. Concerned. How many times has he said, “I only want to help”, “Please help me to help you”? His voice laced with genuine warmth. She has lost count of the times. She has no track of time.

He was back at his post, trying once more to connect with her. Something about her would just not allow him to give up. The first time he had seen her all those months ago, she was little more than a bundle of rags covering some fragile bones. Her skin bearing the signs of what she had borne. Welts, burns, and sores. Her hair filthy and straggly. Pulled out in clumps. In parts, chewed by her. Her large dark eyes were glazed. And not a word had she spoken since he had first seen her.  

He knew his care and that of his helpers had done much to heal her body. Just the other day he had seen her in the garden looking down upon the sea. The sun glinted off her dark brown hair which was now trimmed, shaped and washed regularly and falling in waves to her shoulders. Her skin, the colour of honey, had lost its waxen sallow appearance. He knew that the marks on her back and arms and legs had faded. But what went on in her mind? What feelings were locked in her heart? What ideas and ideals gripped her soul? That, he could not say.

He thought of Michelangelo’s painting on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, which he had seen innumerable times in books. And on that one unforgettable occasion stood beneath it and gasped in awe. The Creation of Adam. God’s finger almost touching Adam’s. He didn’t know whether the painting was supposed to depict the before or the after of the spark of life being imparted. Right now, he felt that he was trying to ignite a similar spark in Eve. Whose real name he did not know. Whose large luminous eyes had lost the glazed look. But rarely did they show any spark of actual feeling. Except that one time late that night, when he had thought she was ready to respond to him. To give up her demons.

After several months she was feeling stronger. Her mind was gradually clearing.

She knew she was safe behind the shutters. As long no one knew who she was and where she had come from. What she had left behind. Yes, no matter what, she must never tell them. Never reveal her thoughts. Never speak of HIM.  

HE who never smiles. HIS thin lips which only curl in a cruel grimace. Always. All the time. When HE berates her because HE can't find a clean pair of socks. When HE shouts at her because the soup is too salty. Or the roast too tough, or too melty. Or she has worn a dress which is too nice, or not good enough. Or she has smiled too much or not at all. Or the house is not spick and span. Or the ...or the...or the…..her mind spins in a dizzying endless plunge into a fiery pit. There is no end to what she has never been able to get right. Her flaws are many. Also endless. Like his excuses to berate her. Like her sorrow.

What does it take? For the anger to be unleashed? For the belt to be brought out, for the fists to fly, for flesh to be torn, for bones to be crunched? Not much. Really, any excuse will do.

What is more, he has drummed it into her again and again over the years, through words and deeds and so many acts of commission and omission, that her virtues are non-existent. She has none. And what can one say about that which does not exist?

Yet, even when her mind had become a marshy bog, her sense of self pounded to pulp, she had known there was something else. Her mind conjured up glimpses of a beautiful woman with gleaming rippling hair falling to her waist, bright lustrous eyes echoing the smile on her lips that lit up her face. That woman was gifted and talented. She saw flashes of her sitting at a desk.  Planning an ad campaign. Going for a shoot. Putting it all together. Exulting in the response to her work. She had glimpses of that woman walking up on stage and receiving awards, while the audience applauded her victory.

She saw HIM as she was stepping off the stage. Sitting in the audience. Watching her intently with a strange look in his eyes. He was a looker, that she would admit. And a charmer, as she soon found out.

What took her longer to understand was that he was a misogynist, a sadist and something of a psychopath as well. A toxic cocktail if ever there was one. A potent one, as well. It was a drink she had quaffed too many times before she realised just how toxic it was. By then, it was too late.

The rest was a textbook case of abuse. Every incident, every blow doesn’t need repeating. Enough to say that after five years and seven months with him, she rarely if at all stepped out of the house. Her body was always hurting, her mind had dulled and had gotten addled. There was no sign left of the bright young woman, no signs of the popular co-worker who was adored by her colleagues. No friends left. The only person left in her life was HIM.

That had been bad enough. But it was his pet collection which had been the last straw.

A few months into the relationship and HIS real face had come to the fore. Like a real, live – as opposed to the painting -- Dorian Gray, HIS handsome mask began to dissolve into the ugly face that it really was, a process which would soon be completed.

She had sensed a new life stirring within her. Her heart lifted in joy, despite the beating she had endured just that morning. She hugged her secret within her for a few days, but eventually, she had to tell him. To beg him to consider the child. But he wanted none of it and she was marched off to a shady clinic where her last hope for joy was torn out of her. But that was not the end of it. It happened again and yet again. A total of five times more. He refused to take any precautions. And it was as if he willed her to get pregnant as he relentlessly thrust into her. Again and again. Whether she wanted to have sex with HIM or not – which in fact she did not. She had long since stopped desiring him. Could not bear even his slightest touch.

But that was not all.

She remembered the day that he fell ill. Consumed by a terrible attack of the flu. His body wracked with fever, he had stumbled into bed. Delirious, incoherent. The door left open for a change.

She had eyed the door for a long while. Should she, could she trust herself to leave the room? And then a bigger thought struck her. Leave the house even? Would he get better soon and follow her? Or would it take time for him to realise she was gone? She didn’t know. Didn’t have the strength or the clarity of mind to figure out. But instinctively she crept to the door. Her window to freedom. The first opportunity she had had in five years and more.

She stepped out and looking back saw that he hadn’t moved at all or even been conscious that she had gone out. He had fallen in a deep delirium.

She walked further and she saw that his study door was open. She had never stepped foot in it after the initial few months. When the honeymoon period was still on. But then, she had barely been allowed to leave their bedroom, after that initial time. Let out to do the housework under his watchful eye, she was led back and locked up so he could do whatever he needed to in the outside world.

Stepping into the study she looked around her curiously. There was HIS desk, there was HIS laptop open on it. She turned her gaze on the wall at the side and that is when she sighted it. The shelf with six jars. Six jars filled with a liquid the pungent smell of which had just begun to penetrate her consciousness. Six jars with foetuses floating around inside, in varying stages of development. She had tried to resist telling him after the first time. Stretching the time when the inevitable would happen. But eventually he always found out. And the process would begin all over again.

It took a few moments for the full impact of what HE had done to register. The sheer horror of it seared like molten lava through her marshy mind. The lava washed over her, suffusing her entire being. Anger. Burning, raging anger took hold of her. With a strength and determination she did not know she possessed, she walked into the kitchen. Picked up her largest knife, rushed to the bedroom and plunged it into him. Again and again. Letting the pain and suffering flow out of her. As the blood flowed out of him. Eventually, spent and trembling she rushed into the shower trying to calm herself. Trying to wash off his blood, which was tainting her, burning her as if he was still torturing her.

Once dressed, she rushed out into the night, unaware of what to do next. Her mind freezing once again, ice forming a scab over a wound which had briefly been exposed. She didn’t know how many days, or weeks or months she had wandered. She didn’t think, didn’t talk just moved from place to place, standing mutely, begging for food at stalls. Crawling into spaces to sleep. Till she had been picked up at a railway station by a kind lady who had brought her to this place. Where the others had nurtured her, sheltered her, healed her body.

He quickens his pace as he comes to the door. He glances down at the newspaper in his hands, as he enters. Then looks at her. Yes, unmistakable. “Natasha,” he begins, looking at her.

And just like that, the shutters came down. This time he thought he had glimpsed a beam of sunlight in her eyes. A ray of hope. But it had been extinguished in a moment. Her eyes were shuttered once more. Revealing nothing.

Behind the shutters her mind, for once had been in a bright airy place after a long time, begins the journey back, back down to hell. She had hoped to reclaim her life – well, at least a life, some semblance of life. But she couldn’t now, could she? They knew who she was. They knew what she had done. They knew what she had left behind when she had run. She had been planning to talk to him today. Tell him some bit of the truth. To begin the trek out of the shadows towards the sun. She couldn’t now, could she?

Or could she?

The END