I shouldn’t have got into his car. I didn’t know him.
We’d exchanged a few messages on a dating app for the over 50’s. When I saw his picture, I thought he had an honest face, with a nice smile, normal, not flashy. I hoped he would be patient and not want too much from me. A companion. I didn’t make friends easily and I thought, well, if he’s on here then maybe he doesn’t either. But I’d had that sick feeling all day, that one where your sixth sense kicks in. But I’d shoved it away and taken a leap of faith.
We are stationary, with the car engine running. He’s in the driver’s seat staring straight ahead at the crashing waves. He’s not speaking. Intermittently the windscreen wipers sweep foamy spit off the glass. The sound amplifies in my head, colliding with the hammering of my heart. I am locked inside my body, unable to move. My head’s a melon, heavy and mushy inside. What’s he done to me? I can’t get out; he’s locked the passenger door and my hands are trapped inside my pockets where he’d seat belted my arms in. I don’t remember when he did that.
He had messaged a couple of days ago; Lets drive out to the beach and watch the sunset. And I thought, no, I hate the sea and all it’s done to me but then I thought, break the cycle, Marion, live your life.
Sounds lovely, I typed back. And then I worried about things I would say and hoped we’d talk about the future and not the past because my ‘before’ is another life about someone else. Information flattened and filed in manila folders and locked away.
He doesn’t know anything about me.
When he picked me up, I was still in two minds, but I could see that his shirt was new. It had packet creases like tram lines down his chest, and I was happy he’d made an effort and sad that he had no one at home to iron them out. He was ordinary. Like me. He must have noticed my hesitation because he waved aloft a flask of coffee and behind his seat, I could see a wicker basket and a tartan rug. We were going to watch the sunset over the sea. And so, I got in the car, sat on top of my doubt.
The same flask of coffee is slotted between my knees. We didn’t share. I drank it earlier, when my arms were free. It tasted strange, but I didn’t like to say because that would have spoilt the mood and made me seem fussy, but now my tongue is too big for my mouth, words won’t form, and all my limbs are numb. How could I have been so stupid, so trusting? He must have done this before. In the distance I hear his voice and turn my head towards him. My vision swims.
“I was just saying, Marion, not long now until the sun drops.” I can’t speak but hear a guttural sound push from my lips. He cocks his head to one side, “are you okay Marion?” A smile extends across his face, a slash of open flesh. I close my eyes and listen to the roar of the waves. The power. The strength. The rage.
He doesn’t know anything about me.
We built sandcastles, me and Maisie, when I was twelve and she was four. Watch your sister will you, love…Take your sister with you…Can you give your sister her tea? Bath your sister…Read to your sister…Sister…Sister…Sister. I felt like her bloody Mother until that day at the beach when the fair arrived, and I wanted to be free. To just be me.
I had held her by her small shoulders and said, “Maisie, you need to be a big girl and wait here, by the blue rock, build castles but don’t go near the water. I’ll only be 20 minutes and then we can share an ice-cream.”
She nodded but held on to my fingertips as I walked away. When I got back, she had gone. I ran up and down the sand, shouting her name into the rolling waves, over and over again. Panic spiralled. I had never felt such pain. My insides twisted in despair; fear scraped me hollow. I prayed out loud to a God I didn’t know, sacrificed myself to him. And then suddenly I saw her, running across the sand.
“I’ve been hiding,” she said, breathless with excitement, pushing her tongue through the gap in her teeth. And the cold terror that rattled my bones began to thaw and there was a moment of relief before pure rage ignited flames of fury that ripped through my core. Satan came then, took my hand and showed me the way. He led me into the water. The next thing I felt was the icy teeth of the sea biting at my waist and Maisie’s hair was wrapped around my wrists like seaweed. My hands gripped her throat and held her under. Her face beneath the water looked pale and blue. In the distance my mother screamed and screamed for the three of us.
Soon after, police and medics came to the beach to take me away. They wanted Maisie, but I had let her go, fed her to the sea, so that the salt could heal her, and the tide could bring her back another day. I remember being wrapped in blankets and carried across the sand. In my fist I hid a shard of shell, sharp enough to cut breathing holes in my skin. I never saw my mother again, but Maisie came at night. “Play with me Lucy. Please play with me.”
“Shush,” I’d say, “I’m Marion now.”
‘Diminished Responsibility,’ twelve strangers decided. All I remembered was the red mist, anger poisoning my mind, making a monster. Once a monster always a monster. I never told of Satan.
There’s a loud click and the sound jolts my eyes open. He’s outside of the car, taking things from the boot. In the wing mirror I see a pile on the floor. Rope, tape, black bin bags. He’s whistling and unbuttoning his new shirt. Terror sharpens my focus. He’s going to strip me and do terrible things and somehow this feels worse than being stabbed or shot or strangled. I start to choke, gulping for air. My throat isn’t working. There’s something in my mouth. He wrenches open my door. ‘No Marion, not yet. Not yet.’
His fingers are on my face and he’s pulling wads of cotton wool from the inside of my cheeks.
“I’m taking it out but you must promise to be quiet. Do you Marion? Do you promise?”
I try to nod but instead my chin falls to my chest, which is rising, so I know that I am alive, that I am breathing. There’s a dark patch in my groin and I don’t know if it’s hot coffee or cold pee. I squeeze my eye shut. Hopelessness scratches the edges of me. I want to cry but the tears stopped forty years ago when the salty waves drenched me in evil.
“It’s time to go now Marion, look the sun’s about to set.” He’s using a sing-song tone as if I am a child. As he leans across me to unclip my seatbelt, I notice he is wearing latex gloves and a black sweatshirt that has a delicate scent of fabric softener, perhaps there is someone at home after all. He lifts my feet out of the footwell, causing me to twist in the seat. My legs are blancmange, my arms spaghetti and I am aware that my hands are still rammed inside my coat pockets. I am a ventriloquist dummy, mute and controlled by this man. He grunts at the weight of me as he hauls me to my feet.
In the distance I hear a cacophony of beats and shrieks, what is it? There’s a niggle in a corner of my brain clawing through the fug. The breeze taunts me with sickly smells of onion and candy floss. Then the pieces slot together. I realise that it’s the fair. And suddenly I am back there flirting with the boy on the Dodgem Car, lifting my skirt so I can get a kiss while all the time my precious little Maisie built sandcastles on her own. The angry lion begins to rattle my ribcage, why did she have to hide? Why couldn’t she have just stayed put? Always pushing and pushing and pushing. Selfish sister. All her fault.
Let’s play. Let’s play. Let’s play. I hear her voice over and over. But now it’s not her its him, the man with the latex gloves and the black sweatshirt. He’s got rope over his shoulder and black bin bags under his arm.
“Let’s play Marion. Let’s play.”
His face is too close to mine, his features blurred, his breath hot. I am shaking but not with fear. The rage is here, waking up my body, melting my brain. Soon the red mist will come and then the fury and the flames and I will go wherever it leads me.
There are pins and needles in my right hand as I try to move my clenched-up fingers. Inside my fist are my house keys. One for the front door and one for the back. They are bound together on a metal ring with a talisman, a shard of shell, sharp enough to cut breathing holes in your skin.
He doesn’t know anything about me.
