Chapter 11
Ophelia
WHO AM I IN THE EYE OF ANOTHER? Am I whole enough to hold? Soft enough to stomach? Was I ever fairly real for anything other than the valley of the dead?
Bent at the waist while braiding my hair, my grandmother used to tell me I was the sweetest of poisons mixed with moon water. 'The lemonade of the desperate', she would murmur to herself in the flickering light of the lamp with that ever-present knowing smile covering her oiled lips. Yet there was always a bittersweet undertone in her otherwise melodic voice every time she spoke these words.
Looking back, that widowed imagery she alluded to, still affects the woman I have become just as much, if not more, than the young girl I once was under her clear sighted guidance.
Beyond anything else, she was a woman fond of the stirring symbolism of the spoken word – seemingly uttered with fleeting nonchalance, when in reality not a single one of them was intended for deaf ears.
I am aware that she had been well intentioned, at least where I was concerned. However, her tongue was sharp as a whip, and the truth hidden in plain sight, which no one dared speak about, was her greatest weapon; kept proudly on our table while others stuffed it under the floorboards of their abandoned attics.
As time passed, I came to wonder, how hungry one must be to covet the heavy weight of my heart in their hands. Whose soul could ever go dark enough to follow mine into the deepest night and choose to stay?
Of course, one could pretend for a season or two, if their ideal image of me created in their mind was promising enough. They could saw their way into the four rooms of my heart, paint the walls in the lightest shade of peach and replace my creaky floors with the silent kind.
I can’t even call the selfish act a beautiful lie, since those forced substitutes are in my eyes the sickest of illusions.
There is only the metallic taste of blood in the mouth and a familiar torment painting the aged wallpaper – what they guard within being by no means what those transients were seeking in the first place. But how they tried to put my inner walls to rest and how they all failed.
Naturally, they tried to drown the fire, kill the intensity, attempting to domesticate me to the point of numbness in the name of appurtenance to a society that never truly acknowledged me as something other than an instrument used as a last resort.
That has been my life until he entered it.
Like a man who wasn’t looking for a roof to rest his head under, but rather one with a blanket made of impenetrable dark matter, created for my ancient body to hide in as he held me to his chest.
Dante. Last night he chewed me up, both slowly and chaotically, with the reverence of someone who has known no other taste than bread soaked in water and has now savored his ultimate indulgence.
He was ravenous. Raw. True to his nature.
Under him, my body has become more than a mere carcass confining my soul. In his hands I was pliable, my spirit running like a homesick ghost towards the unholy land of his fingers.
He made of me something that has no name, no translation, no interpretation for the outside world.
Ardor, devotion, an entity beyond hunger has grown inside my womb; leaving me feeling like a childless mother who somehow feels phantom feet pounding her inner walls. That’s how I miss him.
Whether at night or in the middle of the day, I lay stuck between worlds, with fingers barely gripping the canopy as I dream half-asleep on the floor of him. But he’s not there.
He’s everywhere.
He reminds me of a memory I can’t remember living, even though I feel his darkened ramifications gripping me like a vice, from two places at once. The past and the future meet and link fingers while I remain both standing and on stinging knees, watching them merge like blood and wine.
He’s inside me.
Now everything appears glaringly obvious. He has been there that horrid night and somehow got hurt in the process of trying to catch that man whose teeth are now a mere ornament on my vanity.
The thought that he was the one who held my hand throughout that night, offering me tenderness and comfort when a handful of hours earlier, the bones in my wrists had almost been broken, is the greatest of epiphanies.
I can envision his eyes as I close my own, bathing in the moonlight like blades kissed by the flame of a forgotten candelabra. Two bottomless irises shadowed by curls resembling a crow's feather, watching me, always taunting me with their unveiled danger.
The memory of his mouth on my heated skin is a visceral feeling soaked morrow deep in my troubled mind; a clearer sight than the one of my own hand gripping the sheets as I torture myself with what had unfolded on the ledge a few nights back. I had been reminiscing it unceasingly with masochistic fervor, but nothing can compare.
Dante made sure my pulse has become familiar with his hands, my limbs growing to crave them like a pillow gripped close to the chest before the imminence of a nightmare; while my skin drips with longing for the texture of his uncovered mouth, which is a mystery in itself, much like his sudden appearance in my life.
It’s apparent he’s an absorbed man. Stuck in his own shadowed cage, yet somehow present here, when I least expect it. When I need him most.
Last night, he killed and revived me. His hand around my neck – a choker adorned with bloodied gems.
My opium pleasured me with pain, so intense that at the mere memory I squeeze my legs as I chant his name while tears coated in his essence cloud my eyes.
I allow my fingers to try, albeit in vein, to emulate his touch as I rub away into nothing, seeking him in the crevices of a body that is no longer mine. The sharp tips of my nails do nothing but scratch at the barely healed wound left by his mouth on my heaving breast, with the intoxicating perfume of smoke and absence, still stuck under their beds.
Naked and cold to the world, I touch the necklace resting on my chest, placing the smooth glass of the pendant on my tongue and sucking at the pointed tip as if it were his tongue – a part of him I desperately crave and have yet to taste as my fingers search bare flesh absently.
What has he done to me?
Somehow, this enigma of a man has sunk into the farthest corners of my mind and changed the chemistry of my darkened dreams while licking at my ailing conscience at three in the morning. Once there, he clawed at my inner walls with gloved hands, demanding to possess something I have no control over when it comes to him.
I can’t help but wonder, whose demonic appetite have I attracted without knowing? I can't abstain; I can't force myself to pray for his disappearance either, since I would only be deceiving myself.
The echo of him follows. His eyes are ghosts crawling behind my eyelids as I wash my feet in black salt water. His fingers in my scalp are a whisper as I lay motionless on the hardwood floor.
Remnant traces of his teeth mark my pillow before I sink my own into it as I think of him obsessing over me. Only the thought is an aphrodisiac in itself.
I have become inconsolable, mad for and because of him.
I can't forget, coiled deep inside me, like a dormant snake, lies the essence of those forsaken coal eyes and their promise to taint me when I least foresee it.
He frightens me. He fascinates me.
Dante appeared like an omen of doom promising things no man should pledge to a woman like me. Hope buds at my back like wings with sharpened tips, making me fear that I’ll fall when they’ll inevitably fail me, for my yearning is a smoke cage, keeping me trapped in my own fear of allowing myself to reach the sky.
Life is not what we desire or imagine it to be, but the raw thing we hide in the back of the closet. As the years pass, it perfumes our home with the inconsolable scent of decay, making its presence known whether we accept it for what it is or not.
We all long for an escape but in the end no matter how far we run or hide, it always grabs us by the elbow and compels us to watch it straight in the eye. Do not fear , it says but I do…I do.
Even now, I feel his lingering presence following me through the shadows over which he reigns over, waiting for me to offer myself without question.
I used to think no man could ever go dark enough for me, yet here he is, gifting me the teeth of another who dared put his hands on me. His dead flowers live a second life on my table, needing no water or light while his words are safely tucked under a scrap of velvet in my nightstand, permeating my dreams.
Trust. What a rare notion, what a natural state of being when he brushes his lips over my temple.
Now I’ve come to know, or rather feel that he chose to conceal his face in order to hide the pain buried underneath ; the burns, the cuts, the cruelty others had inflicted on him. The thought alone makes my teeth sink into the inside of my cheek in an effort to contain the tears.
I take the necklace out of my mouth, the long chain swinging hypnotically back and forth, his thick blood coating the inside walls of the glass in waves and I wait…all red and starved.
In essence, I have always been somewhat detached, cold to the world in the way a piano’s keys are when left abandoned in the heart of a forest in an unforgiving winter. I'm merely a result of the things I've seen; the people I've helped navigate through them, and enduring, simply enduring when nothing else is left.
At last, I learned to drink my wine, smoke my cigarette and close my eyes, patiently listening to the haunting screams that have stolen my nights for most of my life instead of banishing them.
We will always need each other, even in death and its variable course.
Carrying a graveyard within the tight confines of my chest along childhood haunts and habitual burials is anything but a serene way to live a life. Be that as it may, in time I had learned through tear soaked sheets and dirt under my nails after countless diggings in the wet ground in search of meaning, that I can make a home out of it. Be it just a cemetery.
Living this way is not a choice, but it’s the sole one if I want to remain sane and standing on my own two feet.
Since I was a young girl, I was dragged until I learned to let go. I’ve come to understand, through my own flesh and blood, that the ones causing me pain aren’t always what they seem to the bare eye. Some have been at the end of a knife themselves, be it the forged kind or a mental rod; in the end choosing to abandon and destroy themselves or become the replica of their tormentor.
Pain, rejection, abandonment and an endless palette of trauma shaped their claws; the ridges on their backs, painting the outline of someone that may seem human, but in reality having forsaken that ideology long ago alongside their compassion. Even towards themselves.
In a glum way I sympathize with their pain, with the latent infection underneath the scar tissue gradually thickening the soul. But it doesn’t justify their deeds, the way they mirror what has been done to them like a loop of torment with no end.
As lost as I have been and still am within the walls of my own maze of anguish, I have to do my part by choosing to sacrifice my peace. To give a fraction back to those who are no more and to their loved ones left behind.
But now that my enigma has invaded the temples of my world, I could envision a reality in which breathing is an afterthought – where I wouldn't think of the worst when someone brushes past me on the sidewalk or where the knife is only used to cut the sourdough into smaller chunks while the oven heats up and the world continues burning.
I open my eyes slowly, spent in all the ways that matter but far from satisfied, passively gazing at my reflection in the mirror fixed above the canopy ceiling. My hands are resting on the headboard as I study my naked body marked with his bruising kisses and teeth marks; a map I want to immortalize for eternity, so the memory of him will never fade away.
The sound of my phone vibrating wakes me from my reverie and I am both grateful for the break from my spiraling thoughts and overwhelmed with pressure at the reason behind the call.
My fears are proven right when Detective Logan’s name appears on the screen.
"Miss Grimes, we received a package and its contents are an urgent matter. Would it be possible for us to meet today?"
* * *
For the past six days since the funeral, Penelope remained stark silent, in spite of my continuous efforts to contact her again. It is not unusual, considering the freshly departed take their time to linger and grieve their own life and death along the ones who beg for their return. More often than not, the period of time taken to say their goodbyes is a lengthy one, capturing their sparse attention fully.
Nonetheless, her silence and inactivity unsettles me.
"That man you’ve mentioned at the gravesite was a dead end. He disappeared long before we reached the exit at the back of the cemetery," Detective Logan reports in a preoccupied voice while pouring me a cup of coffee with trembling wrists covered in a sheen of sweat.
"That’s unfortunate. If it helps, I can provide additional details to your forensic sketch artist," I offer, averting my eyes from his obvious anxiety out of respect as I take a sip from the weak, lukewarm brew.
"Don’t bother. We have more pressing matters on our hands. This morning, at the entrance of the station we found this package, with no address or clue to what might be inside," he says distractedly, pointing his chin towards it while sifting through a pile of files.
"He sent you something, didn’t he?" I ask, gripping the mug tighter, even though I already know the answer considering my presence here.
"We thought he'd be cautious enough to take a break considering we publicly linked him with two other murders. Instead, he chose the narcissistic route, taunting us even more and, predictably, getting bolder now that he's made headlines," he says on a long sigh, his tattered leather chair groaning when he finally takes a seat.
"Well? Is it a warning, an ego driven vendetta, a detailed account of the crimes he committed out of guilt?" I ask, resting my chin in my hand, already feeling a migraine cresting in my temples.
"I wish. Look for yourself," he counters, passing along the desk a lone envelope, appearing to be in pristine condition. Not a good sign, given that in most instances a single fingerprint would swiftly close the case.
I take two rubber gloves from the box nearby in order to preserve the evidence, carefully turning it in my hands and taking out a photo of a young girl in her late teens; with sandy blonde hair and pale blue eyes her resemblance to Penelope is sinisterly uncanny, although her gaze appears to hold some roguishness in contrast.
When I turn it over, I am confronted by a short message written on a pink post-it note attached to it, which reads in inconsistent handwriting:
Quite the fighter, this on e
Wish me luck – the Grave Digger
"Riley Foster – barely turned seventeen a month ago. She was returning home on foot after she finished an hour long detention following her regular classes. Neither her parents, friends or colleagues had seen or heard anything from her since last week," he states, finishing his coffee in one gulp before loosening his tie.
"How come you hadn’t linked her disappearance considering the similarities and timeline of events?" I ask while trying to find the slightest crack in the door that Penelope has sealed shut from me and the rest of the world.
The tangible aspects of her disappearance are imperative for the police investigation, but in my case what matters most is working around the logistics and finding the core of the problem. If this child has any chance of survival, is by building a bridge with the last victim and seeing the bigger picture.
"Riley is the rebellious kind. She has a history of running away when her parents get too restrictive with her curfew and social circle. In the past, she ran away to a friend's house in the neighboring city for two days. This time around, when two and a half passed with no sign from her, a report was made."
"And this photo is your only lead?"
"Yes. At least we now know the circumstances of her disappearance. Given the current evidence, we are not certain she is still alive considering the photo has been stolen from Riley’s own home. This confirms our concerns that he has been after her for a while and started invading the lives of his victims long before taking them."
At the statement I can’t help but think of Dante and the way he took my own by storm ; of his smoky perfume coating my walls, our first meeting in my kitchen, the bath he has drawn for me.
It goes without saying that what he has done is far from moral or legal. But in comparison with that man from the cemetery, whom I know with cemented certainty is the one behind those atrocious crimes, Dante is fundamentally different. I knew it long before I was in his vicinity and now as I feel his absence marrow deep.
He has no malicious intent when it comes to me, on the contrary. I had never felt this protected in the arms of another man, this cherished. The way I see it is that my enigma is a malice when it comes to conformity and abiding by the rules of what is majorly considered to be normal or conventional. And it suits the pariah in me just fine.
"How can I help?" I ask, carefully placing the photo back in its envelope.
"Frankly, at this point, we have nothing. I was hoping you could work your magic and let us know if you find anything," he says, surprising me with that understated compliment.
"Of course, but as always, I can't promise anything. However I will try my best," I say, smoothing a crease in my pencil skirt and standing up.
"In this folder you will find some photos and additional details. Don’t hesitate to give me a call if anything comes up," he says as he gets up and opens the door on my way out.
"I will," I confirm in an effort to calm his evident nerves considering the circumstances. "Oh, and Detective Logan," I add, pausing in the doorway.
"Yes, Miss Grimes?" he swallows nervously, his unwarranted fear of me apparently still intact.
"Replace the caffeine with black tea, your anxiety will be thanking you" I say, not waiting for a response as I make my way towards the elevator and call Caroline.
"Ophi, I swear I was about to call you right this second," she says, the sound of her bubblegum popping putting a smile on my face in spite of the grim conversation I just had minutes ago.
"Telepathy or mere coincidence?" I ask, enjoying the way she’s so opinionated from the smallest of things to political and global matters.
"Neither, I was having coffee with my walking dead lover and I saw you entering the police station. He just left for a last minute thing I was wondering if you wanted to meet for an early brunch," she replies, amid the blaring traffic noise.
"I would love to, but I am stuck on the case of Penelope Graham. There is a new development and I want to help as much as I can in the short window of time we have," I say while climbing down the steps of the station and spotting her bohemian figure across the street.
"Wait up, I’m coming your way," she says before the line goes dead and she zig zags through cars, the little stunt earning her several honks from seasoned cab drivers.
"Man, why can’t they let a girl live? I’m telling you, they secretly love the drama," she says out of breath.
"And you sure live for it," I say indulgently, her antics putting a tired smile on my face.
"You better know it, sister. So, where to?" she asks, adjusting a silk scarf around her sandy waves, the early November air intensifying as the first signs of rain hit her blush coat and my austere cape.
"I was planning to go to the cemetery, in the hopes that I might be able to contact Penelope from a closer source. I called because I wanted to know if you would like to meet afterwards," I say as we walk through the crowd who, much like us, seeks shelter from the approaching storm.
"I know a Neo-Gothic Italian place nearby. Really quiet and sophisticated in a laid back way, you’ll love it. We can wait there until the weather settles. I have nothing scheduled for the day and cleaning the freezers is the last thing this girl wants to do on a Wednesday," Caroline says, cooing at a baby covered in layers of soft blankets passing by us in a stroller.
"Are you planning on one?" I ask quietly, with my eyes on the pavement and my heart between my teeth.
"To be honest, now that I am in a stable relationship, I want to be selfish with our connection and the time we spend together. Take a left, it’s right around the corner," she says pointing hurriedly in that direction, the fine raindrops coming down faster.
"I don’t find it selfish, but rather healthy and honest. You simply want to savor this phase in your life for the time being," I add, understanding her perfectly.
"Exactly. You know that aging has never been a pressing matter to me. I believe that at the end of the day we have no say in the face of destiny, so we might as well give up the need to predict and control every step. I want to live each day according to my authentic needs, rather than ticking clocks," she says with heartfelt emotion as we enter the darkly elegant yet understated Italian bistro.
The walls are a comforting shade of scarlet and black, covered in their entirety with framed coal sketches of people whose stories I’ll never get to know; the smell of basil, tomato sauce and freshly grounded coffee hitting my senses.
"You are barely thirty. What I find to be far more important before taking things further is to be in a relationship with a man who will respect and support you when life shows its teeth. What will follow or will avoid you is just a matter of perspective and priorities," I say, taking a seat at a secluded table in the far back.
I don’t know why, but as I smooth my fingers over a raised corner of the black tablecloth, Dante’s abyssal eyes come to mind – making my insides tremor at the sensation of their echo on my skin.
Even though I am not fluent in italian, I am well aware of his heritage and his mother tongue. Looking back I see a slight resemblance in the curve of his brows with the ones of Marizia’s, making me wonder if they are related somehow. Piece by piece, the puzzle of that day starts to settle, but the mosaic is far from being finished.
"Agreed but enough about me. How have you been sweetie? Your bruises had almost disappeared and there’s this glint in your eyes. I may not speak the language of the dead but I sure recognize a sparkle when I see it," she says just before a waiter comes by, taking our order consisting of hearty tortellini and pesto gnocchi. Which makes me wonder - has he eaten today?
"I wouldn’t call it a spark per se. I just spent more time meditating and prioritizing myself. I canceled some of my less pressing tarot readings and took a much needed break," I half lie, trying to remove myself from the conversation, because as far as my current situation stands, Dante will remain my secret for now – one that I will fiercely protect.
No matter how dear Caroline is to my soul, I do not wish to share my enigma with the outside world. Not yet at least.
In this regard, I am not afraid to admit I am one selfish woman.
"It was about time, your work…" she says, but I find it impossible to follow, the familiar and unmistakable scent of death, smelling of decay and regret engulfing all of my senses at once.
Unblinking, I focus as if caught in a trance on the dead center of Caroline’s shoulder. All goes silent as a wisp of grey-white light swirls and unravels in that very spot – a faint shade of pale gold appearing for just a second, letting me know who is trying to find me through the veil.
I extend my hand on the table with the palm up, inviting the entity of Penelope to attach herself energetically to me considering that, at the moment, she may be too weak to materialize fully on her own.
All I can see before she dissolves into thin air, as the waiter places two glasses of wine on the table, is a glimpse of her eyes filled with desperation and unexpressed turmoil. The pure emotion paralyzes the air around me, warping my vision and stilling my blood.
What was she trying to say and why did her spirit seem so troubled? I wonder if she’ll be able or even try to contact me again.
"What happened, Ophi?" Caroline asks with concerned eyes and how I wish I had a clear answer to this question nowadays.