33. Nicola
Nicola
Minutes in the darkness feel like days, days like weeks, weeks like months, and so forth. The agony of nothing is difficult to bear.
All I have here are memories. The incessant blankness of my own mind spewing forth version after version of the past, as if nothing and everything happened, as if each instance of it were somehow true.
No wonder it is easy to lose oneself in here.
You cannot know yourself truly without the existence of others.
But here in the darkness, you have only yourself.
“Are you angry at your father for dying?”
I look up, and Dr. Constance is staring at me, floating amid the darkness. Her messy desk appears, her papers sprawled across the surface. She writes something about me in the files, something untrue, something harmful.
“You mean, am I angry he killed himself? No.”
“Are you sure?”
“Of course, I’m sure. He was supposed to die. Everyone dies.”
Constance smiles, her face a picture of sympathy. “Yes, but not every person takes their own life. You didn’t feel he was suffering?”
I remember now. I’ve been here before. This conversation is just a memory—an echo of sorts. Her words feel tired and worn, like a road that people drive on but never repair. I keep stepping into the potholes.
“I told you this before. My father wasn’t a good man. I’m sure he was suffering. But we were suffering, too. It was his time.”
Her eyes grow wide. “What makes you say this?”
I shrug. There are things you don’t say in places like this, with people like Dr. Constance listening.
I know that now, but on the first day I’d met Constance, I had been given a psychological test that consisted of a series of statements that I could only answer true or false.
Question number one stated, “I hear voices in my head sometimes.” I answered “False,” of course.
You’re denying me already, Martha whispered.
Great job. I wanted to hit her and shut her up.
It always came to this point with Martha, but finding the way to make her quiet was never easy.
There are things you don’t say. I also answered “False” to the statement, “I sometimes have the urge to hurt myself or others.” The fact that I’d imagined numerous ways of doing both—a knife at my wrist, cold steel, the weight of a gun in my unsteady hands, the feeling of speeding past a stop sign and hitting the person who’d hit us, just because I could—I left that out.
Another thing: I can’t tell Dr. Constance that I knew my father was going to die that particular day.
That I knew his time was drawing near, that I sensed it closing in on him like a snare.
I can’t tell her that I knew it was coming weeks before and that I was glad for it, that I welcomed it like a long-lost friend that you’ve been aching to see.
I especially can’t tell her how I enjoyed the particular sense of relief washing over me as the moment approached, how I whispered to the darkness time and time again to take him from us.
“What makes you say that it was his time, Nicola?” Constance repeats.
The walls disappear. Only the infinite black surrounds us.
I still know where I am and have no delusions.
I’m somehow actually living this moment, but it doesn’t matter.
I still have to be careful. You never know who is listening. The darkness plays tricks.
This is the answer that counts, that will be recorded. “Nothing, just I could tell he was unhappy, that he couldn’t go on much longer. We were all suffering. It had to stop. I had to make it stop.”
She nods and begins writing. “But how did it make you feel, seeing your father, his head in pieces on the floor of your basement?”
“Excuse me?”
Something is wrong. My gut hums as Constance smiles, her teeth too big and yellow, her lipstick smudged and running at the sides, melting beneath heat—a sad clown, frowning.
Her eyes sink back in her head, and her entire face begins to smear and drip, watercolors on canvas.
“I said, how did it make you feel? Were you happy? Were you celebrating inside, eager to know that the man who had been hurting you was dead?” She giggles unnaturally, her eyes growing larger and larger in her skull until I think it might explode.
“Did you remember that moment for years to come, the sudden wave of relief that washed through you?” Her voice deepens into a low growl, her eyes blacken, the pupils filling until the whites disappear.
“Did it fuel you throughout your life, recalling the power you claimed, the gift you had to end him? How you wished him gone, Nicola, and watched happily as we took him for you? Did it give you strength and courage to live, knowing what you commanded?”
The darkness consumes her, erasing everything until her voice is a scream, vibrating in the empty air.
The scream is mine. The vision is gone, but the voice is still there, thick and low in my ears. I recognize it instantly. It’s all around me. The thing I spoke to. The thing that answered me once long ago.
“Is it time again, Nicola?”
What are you talking about?
“Is it time to feel that feeling again? That wave of relief you felt? The momentary glimpse of power. It would be good, wouldn’t it, to let yourself feel that way again?”
I don’t know what you’re talking about.
“Yes, you do. You’ve known for a while. That’s why you asked for help. And we brought her back.”
How long have I been here?
“Be patient, Nicola. Remember? These things take time.”
I don’t want to be patient. I want to see my daughter. I want to get out!
“Not yet. Not quite yet.”
A hand comes down on me. In the emptiness, I’m flat on my back.
I feel cold tiles under my bare skin and smell the scent of steam perfumed with soap.
Another hand swats my back, and I hit something hard and unforgiving in the absolute dark.
My arm punches the air, my legs kick, but there’s only emptiness, and I realize they are doing this to me.
It’s nothing more than a glimpse, a reminder.
I scream for Ben, even though I know the version of him in this place isn’t real.
None of this is. And yet I lay quietly, smelling the soap as the steam hits my bare body, the cold tiles pressing into my skin.
The sound of him breathing in the quiet makes me start.
I feel him all around me. I can’t escape.
I know he’s here, too, waiting, watching.
Daddy? I whisper. Is that you?