Turned Tables

Some things are a long time coming. Jane clung onto those words as she clung onto all the truths. She needed them. They were her strength and her shield. In a way, she was building herself with these truths. Rebuilding having been demolished from the inside out.

Life was tough, she knew that. She’d felt it’s abrasions often enough. This wasn’t life that had done this to her though and it certainly wasn’t self-inflicted, however much her rebellious thoughts told her this.

If not you, then who?

Angry wasp questions assailed her. Their stings were mean and cruel. The queen of the swarm was why? Jane knew that this question was a trick. There was no why. Shit happened. It was what it was. All the same, she was going to ask her questions. More importantly, she was going to give her own, definitive answer and take back at least a little of what was hers.

From the outside, her marriage to John was solid and deemed good. This was how most marriages were. From the outside looking in. A parked car that promised much, but the proof was in the driving of it and only two people would ever drive that car. Sometimes it was only one.

Jane considered the driving seat of her marriage and her head span with the reality of the ride she’d been taken on. John was in that seat and yet she’d carried him all the way. He was a passenger in his own life. She’d bought the car and run it with her blood, sweat and tears. Her husband was a cruel two year old. Stunted and callous. Hidden under layer after layer of delusion and lies.

Some of what hurt was that John’s outer layer was smoke and mirrors. In effect, she’d fallen in love with herself. Paralysed herself with the false promise of her own hopes and dreams so that she slept walked into the spiderweb John had prepared for her. She’d even rolled over again and again, cocooning herself in the lie that he was. Excusing him with her denial and drab lies that were a pale imitation of his.

She’d swallowed so much of his poison that she accepted the blame that he heaped upon her. Questioned her self-worth and whether she was the pathological narcissistic. Only now did she see that she’d been induced into behaviours that mimicked John’s true nature. She’d been given precious little else by John, all he’d done was take from her, and this gift of his was a death of a thousand recurring cuts.

Jane couldn’t recall how she’d awoken from the nightmare that was John and the painful existence he’d inflicted upon her. She had to remember to be grateful for that painful truth and the barefoot journey over eggshells turned to broken glass. Some never escaped. After all, John hadn’t.

Having been tricked and trapped, Jane swallowed down her indignation and self-righteousness and considered how it was that she would leave John and this hell that he’d created especially for her. The obvious move was to skulk away like a thief in the night, but she wanted a hand in the karma that was due to John. She wanted him to know. And so she smiled sweetly and went through the motions and routines of their so-called life together as she hatched her plan.

The plan was sweet in its simplicity. Jane needed it to be. She’d been steeped in so much confusion that it was difficult to think straight these days. The easy steps of the plan made sense to Jane in such a way as to illicit a rare smile. It saddened Jane to realise that smiling was a thing of the past, never mind dance and laughter. She barely listened to music anymore. The joys of life had shrunk away from the darkness that was eating away at her very soul. She wondered whether the plan would allow her to reclaim at least some of her former life. She hoped it would.

It was the day of execution. Of the plan. It amused Jane to use this shorthand, as she was going to execute the plan, and with it a little of the madness that had reigned supreme in what she’d once thought of as her home. John was at work and Jane had taken the day off without telling him. Her little secret. There was something special about that. It made her smile.

She smiled all the more as she put some music on and began cooking. The meal was as simple as the plan. A lasagne recipe she’d learnt from her Mum. One of many positives passed down from the previous generation. As should be the case. Jane couldn’t help but reflect upon the crap that also came cascading down from all the people who had gone before. A landfill of rubbish that vomited into the lives of innocents, fucking them up and ensuring they’d do the exact same thing to their children, but with interest. Jane was glad she hadn’t had children with John. He would have corrupted and broken them. Made them emissaries of his brand of darkness. The world was getting worse and he exemplified the poison that was rotting and distorting humanity. He had none. He was a meat machine with corrupted programming. Out for himself and his twisted wants.

Dispelling thoughts of John and how he’d hurt her was always a challenge. Those thoughts were flies around shit and he’d given her so much of that shit. She found that busying herself helped, and as she made the sponge mix for the Battenburg she drifted off to lighter and more peaceful pastures.

Later, she went for a drive and stopped off at a store to buy John’s favourite beer. A cheap lager that had no depth of flavour. You are what you drink, she thought to herself as she bagged the cans up at the checkout.

Nerves almost got the better of her as the time of John’s return approached. She felt the familiar tightening in her stomach and a wave of nausea. The pain in her stomach felt alive. She wished away the possibility of it being cancer, but she knew that wishes were wasted when it came to the Big C. John was cancer made flesh, eating away at her and intent on taking everything from her. She hadn’t realised what he’d been doing to her until it was far too late and even then she’d made excuses for him and denied her could be so cruel. Aided and abetted him in his abuse of her.

When she heard his car pull up on the drive she could have cried. She was shaking with anxiety. Wanted to run away. From him and this travesty of a life he’d made for her. Smiling at him and greeting him as though this was a normal life and her prison a home was more than a struggle. He’d made a liar of her. Too afraid to speak the truth of him. Doubting the truth of her. She should have been excited with anticipation, but instead she was depressed and tragically lonely. He brought that loneliness with him. She preferred being alone.

John seemed to sense that Jane had made an effort. He resented her for it, and this made him compensate negatively. “Lasagne? I don’t fancy that tonight.”

“I could make something else, and we could eat it later in the week?” ventured Jane.

“No, it’ll only taste worse if we leave it,” he sighed theatrically, “I just wish you’d asked me.”

She nodded automatically, he’d specifically told her not to bother him with texts at work. Ignored them in any case. He was the master of the lose-lose.

“Do you want a beer?” she asked him as casually as she was able.

“We haven’t got any,” he stated.

“I bought some,” she told him.

He rolled his eyes. A message of derision. She interpreted it as a green light and poured him one anyway. He raised the beer and tutted. Seeing invisible dirt on the glass, but drinking the beer all the same.

She dished up and ate in silence. Which was to say she was silent as he criticised the food and her. She liked to think that it was all water off a duck’s back these days, but it wasn’t. It always hurt. His appreciation of dessert was underwhelming. His favourite, but only ever if it was store bought. And he’d bought it.

This meal was different though, and Jane eyed her husband after he’d finished eating. Usually, he would note her attention and have a go at her for it. Castigating her for the way she looked at him.

“I feel tired,” he said.

She noted the slurring of his words.

“Maybe head up to bed for a lie down then,” she suggested. Regretting it as the words slipped out. He wouldn’t do anything if it came from her. Sod it, she thought to herself, in for a penny, in for a pound. She got up and taking him by the arm, she guided him from his chair and up to the bedroom. For once in his life with her, John was compliant. It amused her as she thought that she should drug him more often, if this was the effect it had. She was amused all the way into the bedroom, right up to the point that John was stood next to the bed. Then he melted to the floor like a candle placed in front of an open fire.

“Shit!” she gasped as she looked down upon her prone husband. Once again she’d fallen short. Typical of her luck and the broken narrative of her life. Lifting him wouldn’t be easy. He was a dead weight. Turned out that he always had been.

She took a moment before going about the task of getting him on the bed. Not thinking of an alternative. This was her moment and it had to be done the way she wanted. She wouldn’t compromise. It would feel like letting him win yet again.

Manoeuvring him up onto the bed was an obstacle course of a task. He was slippery in his unconsciousness. Gravity fought her all the way and as it threatened to triumph, she lost her grip. Not on John, but on her sanity. It began with a laughter that wasn’t her own. The sound of it shocked and paralysed her until the sobbing began. An uncontrollable series of spasms that threatened to undo her. To make her life even worse. She broke the spell with her anger. A long dormant fire that she at long last released. She took that anger out on John. Slapping him again and again in his helplessness. Inflicting undeserved shame upon herself.

“I can’t do this!” she shrieked at the man slumped before her. Hearing her own pathetic words galvanised her in a way nothing else could. In a fluid movement she was on the bed and harnessing all of the fire she had in her, she dragged her husband onto the bed. When it was done, she wasn’t quite sure how it had been done. So she sent a silent prayer to a god who had made it his business to ignore her and her plight. At last he’d relented and come to her aid and she gave thanks for that tardy help.

Spent, she lay down next to John in their marital bed. Turning her head to look at him, words she couldn’t have said before now spilt out. They began with, “you ruin everything!” This prompted different tears now. She cried her sadness out into the world and felt better for it.

Something made her roll towards him and lay her head on his chest. Hearing the beating of a heart he used only to pump blood around his body further soothed her and she began talking to the man she’d met all those years ago. The mirage she’d fallen in love with. She talked about her hopes and dreams and the love she’d had for him. Had her first heart to heart with him since those initial, romantic weeks together when he’d drowned her in the pretence of love and promised her a world he’d no intention of ever giving her.

She laughed to punctuate the end of her love soliloquy. Laughed at the absurdity of it all. Laughed at her grief for the good version of John that had never existed, other than in her tortured mind as a coping mechanism for his abuse of her. She’d heard of Stockholm Syndrome, but never understood it. Still didn’t, even as she looked upon her own version of it. Some things you lived, without ever understanding them.

When John awoke, he was groggy and confused. Jane’s face hove into view like a strange hot air balloon. Seemingly disembodied.

“I was beginning to think you’d never wake up,” she said coldly, “chance would be a fine thing.”

“What the…?” said through a gummy and wayward mouth. Sounding more like wha huh.

Jane sneered at him. That sneer inflamed John. It didn’t belong in his carefully crafted world. He wanted to wipe it from her face. At least push her out of his face. He raised his hand to do just that, but it met with resistance almost immediately. He spun his head to identify the problem and saw that his wrist was tied. Raised his other hand to free himself, but was met with the same resistance. He didn’t need to move his legs to know they were also tied. He could feel them now. And he also felt something entirely unfamiliar. Fear. Fear of the thing that was entirely his to do with as he pleased. Fear of the senselessness of the situation. This went against the grain. She was nothing. He was everything.

“What are you doing?” the words were comprehensible now, but his mouth was still not working properly.

Jane didn’t answer him, “your mouth must be dry,” she said, “here.” She poured warm water into his open mouth. The pint glass had been sitting there for an age. She laughed as he gagged and choked on the liquid as she kept on pouring.

“You bitch!” he spat the words at her together with some of the water.

She didn’t even flinch. A look of smug triumph playing across her face, “that isn’t going to help your cause, John. But then nothing is.” Those last words were ominous. So ominous that John felt a loosening in his bowels. Compounding his humiliation. Then he saw the knife and he realised just how bad things were. How bad they were going to be.

“You’ve lost your mind!” he gasped as he eyed the kitchen knife that Jane was brandishing.

“Quite the contrary,” smiled Jane, “I’m reclaiming my sanity and rejecting the madness you’ve been inflicting upon me.”

“Let me go,” snarled John, “now!”

“Oh dear,” said Jane quietly, “you really don’t get it do you?”

“Get what?”

“You’ve taken so much from me. Left me with nothing to lose. Here, let me show you.” She brought the tip of the knife slowly down until it caused an indentation on John’s chest, “they say the first cut is the hardest of all. After that…” she pressed down and drew the knife across his chest. He cried out. Jane wasn’t bothered. There was no one to hear his cries. Their neighbours were away. She’d waited until they’d gone on holiday so that they were absolutely alone. “Now, do you understand?”

John’s eyes widened as he nodded his understanding.

“They say people like you will never change. That you don’t accept that you have a problem. Quite the opposite, you believe you’re better than everyone else, so why change?” she licked John’s blood from the knife. Hadn’t thought about doing it, but the expression on his face validated her little piece of theatre. “Thing is, I’m the problem now and you’d be sensible to at least try to solve it. The alternative? Well, let’s just say that just because you don’t have a conscience doesn’t mean that you won’t be aware of the consequences of your action. And you are owed such consequences!”

“You don’t need to do this, Jane.”

“Don’t say my name,” she hissed, “I never want to hear you say my name again, you piece of shit! I’ll cut your fucking tongue out if you do!” That fire rising up within her. Speaking for her. He shrank from her anger and she almost felt sorry for him. Almost, but not quite.

“I’ll do anything… Just don’t…”

“Hurt you? You never stopped hurting me, so why should I show you mercy?” she placed the knife point against his throat. He gulped. Tears brimming in his eyes. “I’ll give you a chance. Which is more than I ever had. One chance.”

“What do I have to do?” he whispered the words, trying not to move against the pressure of the knife.

“Tell me the good things you remember in our life together. And tell me what you regret.”

His eyes betrayed him then. They told her all she needed to know. Confirming what she already knew. She withdrew the knife anyway. Giving him scope to use his treacherous, lying mouth. And he did. Did what came naturally to him.

I remember.

I regret.

As though he were back at school answering a question posed by a teacher. There was no truth there, only empty words. More confirmation of the truth of it all. Jane’s tears as she went to work with the knife weren’t for him. Never for him. They were for her and her willingness to join his betrayal. Even as she freed the darkness from him with the blade, she realised that she’d wanted him to come good. To remember a love for her that had never existed.