A person simply could not have been more Irish than Kelly was. Red hair, a strong thin body covered with scars like I think a fisherman would have, a love of drink, and arrogance that would never stop. We were both only about twenty, but I was much more mature, since I had supported myself by work or scavenging and he had always eaten with the silver spoon he was born with. Kelly never scavenged for anything. Kelly and Wills and I were all enrolled in school at Whitewater. I can't remember how I met the two of them, but on that first day I cooked for them at Wills's place. I made spaghetti with mushrooms and butter and cheese, which we ate out of coffee cups. After that I guess we were friends.
Wills was definitely the smarter and prettier one, but Kelly I felt I already knew. I loved to look at him. I loved to listen to him. I loved to watch him do his knife routine-- he'd pull out a large folding knife and play with it. He'd show it, open and close it, cut his food with it. I think he must have seen that in some Eastwood movie or something. Wills said he was pretentious. I knew it was bullshit but I liked watching him do it. It was sexy.
Wills said Kelly was still in love with a woman who had left him, and that I looked a little like her. He said Kelly used me. Maybe he did use me to punish her-- he kept bruises on my thighs that whole precious time-- but if he did I was grateful for it. Sometimes he wouldn't speak, but gesture what he wanted me to do, and laugh when I got it wrong. The more I bumbled, the more he laughed, and the more he laughed, the longer he'd make love with me. My own pleasure overwhelmed me. This lasted a few short months, until he gave me to Wills. I never understood that. I would rather have stayed with Kelly.
Wills was a considerate lover, though. Even though my mind was usually elsewhere, my body would respond. He was generous. And he'd talk and talk to me, mostly about Kelly. I learned more about Kelly from Wills than I ever did from Kelly. For instance, the great scar on his upper arm was a bite from the woman who left him. I also learned what perfume the woman wore, and I started perfuming my own hair with it. I had long wavy light brown hair. It was really my only good feature. I imagined Kelly looked at me more after I started using her perfume. He would touch my hair, just barely. I liked that.
Sometimes the three of us would just be kids together. We'd have a beer or two and get silly, and then go roll down the hill near the cemetery. After we rolled down a few times we'd be all itchy from the grass and dizzy. Then we'd walk through the cemetery. It was like some kind of ritual; we did it all the time. We were friends.
The college had grown up around the cemetery, which was in the middle of the campus. It was old, but there were still new burials in it from time to time. Kelly loved to go and lie on the graves and look up into the sky and tree branches. I would lie on them too, because I got to be near Kelly. I could smell him and remember. Wills and Kelly would talk about all sorts of things, but everything would come back to death, I guess because we were in the cemetery. A lot of it was crazy, didn't make much sense, so I would mostly listen.
One spring afternoon, after most of the snow had melted, Kelly and I were lying on the graves and Wills was walking around, reading the stones for the thousandth time. It was just getting dark when Wills said he had to go study, and told me not to come to his place that night. I was glad of that, because I had to study, too, and besides, I hadn't been alone with Kelly for a long time.
After Wills left, I followed Kelly around for a while, lying on the graves next to him. He watched me. I am forever optimistic. I asked. He didn't speak, but he nodded, I think. It was late, and no one was around, so I took off my clothes and lay next to him. He watched me shiver, watched me way too long. He looked so intense, I knew better than to move, so I waited, barely able to breathe in the cold. After I waited what seemed like years, he stood and pulled me up to join him. He was muttering something, something rhythmic like a song maybe, too low for me to understand. He rubbed his face on mine, like some kind of blessing. I took it as an invitation, and knelt and reached for the buttons of his jeans. He yanked me back up fast, and started wrestling with his coat and shirt with one hand while keeping hold of my neck with the other. He got one arm bare, then pulled my mouth to his shoulder. His blue eyes seemed black.
"Bite. Hard. Take away some flesh."
I bit as hard as I could. I bit and yanked at his flesh so hard I thought we would fall, but Kelly managed to keep us on our feet. I finally tore away a piece of his shoulder. I took it from my mouth and offered it to him. Kelly took my hand, closed it on his piece of flesh, and came closer.
"Why did you do it, Sara?" he whispered.
My head was buzzing. I was shivering blue. "Because you told me to."
"What could I ask that you wouldn't do?"
I was surprised he could ask such a question. "Nothing."
Kelly covered his face with his hands. Then he reached out and twisted his hand into my hair, turned and walked very fast, pulling and shoving me along. He hauled me over to an open grave ready for a new burial, drew out his knife and started cutting my hair very short all over my head. He yanked it so hard when he cut it I would fall, and he would jerk me to my feet again. As he cut it off he threw the hanks of my hair into the open grave. He didn't speak.
I probably could have left at any time-- I don't think he would have stopped me-- but I stayed. I stayed because it was wonderful. He was like some demi-god, his eyes so black, his mouth so still. I don't know what I expected, but felt it was too important to interrupt.
When my hair was gone he pulled my face up to his and looked at me with his strange dark eyes. "You're a child, an innocent. You understand nothing." His voice was a low whisper. "Or maybe you're just a whore."
"No, I'm your Ophelia, Kelly."
He turned away and left. He just walked down the hill, very fast, and then he was gone.
My feet were numb. I was bleeding on my head where some pieces of scalp had been pulled out. I was so cold. I still had the piece of Kelly in my hand and didn't know what to do with it-- finally I threw it in the grave with my hair. I put on my coat and boots and went home.
I took a long long shower to warm up and get all the blood off. My scalp stung. I cut off the few strands of hair that were left and wrapped a wool scarf around my head. I made a nest of all the blankets I could find and sat on my bed, rocking.
I didn't hear from either of them, and I was afraid for a while to contact them, it was all so strange, but after about a week I went to see Wills. I waited on the stoop until he got home and let me in. He sat with me on the floor and unwrapped my head. He asked me how I could let it happen. I guess he meant getting my hair cut off. I didn't know what to say, so I just rocked with him. We sat for a while, I don't remember how long. Finally he spoke without looking at me.
"You know, Sara, Kelly's not the only one in the world. I offered. You just don't hear."
It was true of course, but no use thinking of it now. We didn't talk any more.
The cemetery caretaker found the blood and hair in the grave, and some of my clothes I hadn't collected, and informed the college. The cemetery was locked at night from then on, and the college threatened expulsion for anyone caught desecrating the graveyard. It was never meant as desecration.
I left school after that term, but stayed in Whitewater. Wills stayed at school and graduated. I saw him around from time to time, and sometimes he'd acknowledge me, if he was alone. Kelly disappeared. I never saw him again. I heard his parents sent him to Ireland for a while. I like to think of him as a modern Cuchulain, wandering Ireland, a hero.
That was long ago, but I still look twice whenever I see red hair. For a long time I imagined I saw Kelly in crowds. I married a gentle man who makes no demands of me, nor does he expect any demands to be made of him. We've woven a comfortable life together. We have three daughters who have grown up well. I guess I have no complaints, but there's nothing in my life now that has to do with passion. I'll never be Ophelia again.
Kelly and I were friends since kindergarten. I think I was at his house more than mine through high school. Of course, the fact that he lived in a fucking mansion with a cook and a live-in housekeeper made it an appealing place to be. His folks were gone a lot, and by the time he was sixteen Kelly had mastered the art of finessing the housekeeper, Betty. I teased him that he serviced the old bag; she was that crazy for him. Anyway, we usually had anything we wanted and did whatever we pleased at his parents' place.
After high school we went to a college in our home state. Kelly's grades and money were enough that he could have gone anywhere, but I couldn't. Going to Whitewater just somehow happened. We never discussed it; we just went. After the freshman year in the dorm that was obligatory in those days, we got a place together off campus. It was great until Kelly met Catharine.
What can I say about that crazy bitch. Kelly met her by calling her number accidentally, and then talking to her. Worst case of wrong number ever. I'll never know what possessed him to go over and meet her, but that same night there she was, moaning and crying and generally making an ass of herself.
She kept saying she was going to kill herself. It couldn't have happened soon enough for me, but Kelly decided to comfort her. He continued to comfort her damn near every night, and not quietly, either, until I could stand no more. I moved out and she moved in.
Kelly paid for everything. He stayed home with her, because she wouldn't go out. Once I came over and caught him writing a damn paper for her. Guess she was too stupid or drugged up to do it herself. Or maybe she just knew his would be better, so why not take everything she could get.
I saw Kelly from time to time, but seldom without the bitch around, for months. Then he started showing up again. He'd come to the frame shop where I worked and hang around just to talk. The owner was cool and didn't care when I worked or who was there as long as the frames were done on time. So sometimes I'd do a marathon, working through the night to make up for not working all week. I'd have a big stack of framing to do: all the bad paintings and watercolors people did, and photographs of their children. Most of the time my frames were closer to art than what was in them. I'd call Kelly and he'd come and hang out and smoke while I worked, and that made it more bearable.
Then damn if he didn't start whining all the time, just like Catharine. He'd go on and on about how she was too sensitive, too fragile for the world, and he needed to take care of her. Shit. And it got worse. He started telling me about their sex life. He claimed the bitch was a virgin. A virgin. Having heard their sessions of comforting, I hardly believed him.
"It's all oral, all hands, never really sex. I'm hoping one day she'll trust me enough." He acted a little embarrassed when he said it, but dead serious. I was floored.
"Jesus Christ, man, she's got you so whipped-- you listen to her whining and crying, damn near support her, write her fucking papers for her, and all this for......Tell me again, `cause I don't believe it. What is the story here? You're smart, you're rich, you're not that ugly. Why her?"
Kelly just grinned and looked into the air. "She has a poet's soul. She has great hands and beautiful hair. Everything else I can fix."
Oh, well, it's his business, I thought. As long as I didn't have to be around her. Then he quit coming to my all-nighters. He said he was afraid to leave her alone. She was having a "bad patch", he said.
A few weeks later he called me and said she had gone home to her parents in Racine. I can't say I was sorry to hear this. He said -How about some beers-- and I thought --Good, things will get back to normal. But I was wrong. Kelly looked bad, sick or something. We talked about classes and crap, nothing substantial, while I waited for him to tell me what happened.
I laughed. "There's got to be more to that story, man."
Kelly wasn't laughing though. "We made love, finally. We were lying together afterwards and she just turned her head and bit me. Hard. It got infected. I had to go to a doctor."
He showed me the wound. It was bad. "Well, she's gone now. Good riddance. You'll get over it."
We tried to act like it was a joke, and that he didn't care, like she was someone he made a pass at and got shot down by. But it wasn't a joke. My idiot friend still went to see her every weekend. To be a friend, I tried to remember to ask after her. He'd say, "Doing better. Probably be home soon." To be a friend, I'd try to pretend that was good news.
Then he came and got me out of class one day to tell me about her death. I was surprised. She was always threatening suicide but I never thought we'd get that lucky. He asked me to drive him to Racine to see her-- he was too shook up to drive himself and didn't want to go alone. I drove him; we saw her. She still had her long hair, and Kelly had to touch it a couple times. It was a little creepy. I felt sorry for him.
We went back to campus the next day. Kelly finished the term, though it was far from his best work, and then sat out the summer doing nothing but drink and watch me work. Maybe it's not so good to be rich-- makes it too easy to be a drunk.
That still wasn't the end of it. The next school term we met Sara. I though she was ok, but for some reason known only to her and God, she preferred Kelly to me from the start. Too bad for her, because Kelly used her shamelessly. She was nothing like Catharine, really, except for the hair, but that's all that mattered. When we first saw her in the grocery store, we only saw her head of hair, and I thought it was Catharine for a split second, so there's no telling how it hit Kelly. Anyway, he picked her up, and had her cooking for us within an hour. He handled her just like he handled his old housekeeper Betty. It was a kick. The man was a genius at the pickup.
Sara was stupid, that much was clear. She fancied herself some kind of scholar or poet, but she always got her references wrong. She was always saying she was like Portia or Cordelia, or some other character, but she got it all wrong. She'd have Cordelia plunging a knife in her thigh, or Portia caring for an aging father. She knew the names but not the plays. We'd laugh; she never knew at what. Kelly mocked her relentlessly when she wasn't around. He really went too far, but I let it slide because it was good to see him laughing. And at least Sara seemed to be making up for all the sexless months with Catharine.
"As long as you can get her to keep her mouth shut she's ok," he told me. "I've invented a pantomime game where I act out lascivious acts and she tries to figure out what I want. She thinks it's great and it keeps her quiet. She's a joke. She thinks she's poetic because she slept with some poet when he read here. She can fuck, I'll give her that, but she's no poet."
Now I really kind of liked Sara. It's true that she was no match for Kelly intellectually and way beneath me in mind power, but she wasn't a mean whiny self-centered bitch either. What I did next, I did with the best intentions. See, I worked quite a few hours a week, and took a full load of classes, and didn't really have time for a lot of romancing of women, but I could use some sex. And I didn't think Sara deserved to be treated so badly.
"If she's such a joke, Kelly, give her to me. I like a good joke."
Kelly found this tremendously amusing. "But wouldn't you rather have a sweater?" He tossed me one of the sweaters Betty was always sending him.
"No, man. You don't really want her. I know she looks a little like Catharine, but she's not Catharine, not even near. Give her to me. It's time for you to get over Catharine anyway."
For a minute I thought he was mad at me, that I'd gone too far, but I guess he was just considering it. He looked at the floor. "You might be right about that. It is time. But there's more to it than that, a lot more than you know."
I was sorry I'd brought it up, and thought I should leave, when he suddenly laughed again. "Sure, I'll send her over. If I keep her God knows what I'll do to her. I'll send her to you. Wonder if she'll go. You think so, Wills?"
He laughed and laughed, a little too much I thought. Kelly could be a little weird. Too much poetry reading.
The next night, after classes, damned if Sara didn't come over. She told me Kelly had asked her to, and wanted to know what she could do for me. I told her to clean the kitchen and cook dinner, so she did it. Amazing. After dinner I started kissing her and then undressing her and then fucking her. She was incredibly docile that first night. She seemed innocent, somehow. She was really a sweet girl.
She came over whenever I told her to after that. We got to be friends, and I was fond of her the way you become fond of a faithful dog. And Kelly was right, she could fuck. She could be anything I wanted her to be. If I was in the mood for a whore, she was a whore. If I needed a loving wife, she could be that, too. It's too bad she was too stupid to learn lines, or she could have been an actress. She always wanted to hear about Kelly, though. So I lied to her. I told her innocuous stories from our childhood, and I told her he cared for her, in his fashion. I can be kind when the situation calls for it.
The three of us would go out together sometimes. This amused Kelly and made Sara happy. She was still nuts for him for God knows what reason. He was such a bastard to her, and I was really pretty good to her. Who knows what women want.
One of those nights when the three of us were together we were just walking around campus and the cemetery, as we often did. Kelly was being more of a bastard than usual, and Sara was doing her doe-eyed worshipper act again, and I was just sick of it. I told them I needed to study and went home to watch TV alone.
About an hour later Kelly came over all bloody and crazy.
"Look what she did to me, Wills." He had what looked like Catharine's bite on him again. Seeing that bite, and the look on his face, I was scared for Sara.
"Where is she? Did you hurt her?"
"Did I hurt her? Does she feel pain? She was lying naked in the snow, making some kind of an offering. God, it was horrible. Her hair on the snow was so blinding, it was almost as though she'd come back. God. I told her to bite me, and she did. Sara bit me because I told her to. I was so angry that she could do that, so angry to see that hair on Sara, I had to cut it off. I cut off her fucking hair, all of it, and she didn't even stop me. She let me cut it all off, all of it, all the hair is buried now."
He pushed at his wound, making it bleed again, and started to cry. I'd known him a long time but I'd never seen him cry. Maybe when we were kids. Maybe. Teary eyed for Catharine, sure, but this was weeping. Sobbing. I was sorry for him, but I wasn't.
"She's not Catharine," I said. "Whatever happened, you did."
I left him there and went to the cemetery. No one was there. I didn't try to find Sara. When I got back home Kelly was gone. I certainly didn't try to find Kelly. I just went on as if nothing had happened and they'd never existed.
I think Kelly left Whitewater soon after that. He didn't say goodbye, but I didn't see him around campus.
Sara came over a week or so later. She was just sitting on the stoop like a faithful dog, so I let her in. She seemed innocent again, like that first night. I looked at her torn up scalp, and rocked her on the floor for a while. She felt so small in my arms. I considered taking up our old routine, but it seemed spoiled now.
Things went pretty well for me after that, professionally, at least, probably because all I did was work. I started to get some commissions for sculpture and a few paintings. Mostly what I called "yuppie yard ornaments," but it was work. I spent way too long on some of these pieces, but I wanted to. It kept me occupied and out of messy relationships.
I've kept it that way, by design or accident, ever since. By living frugally and working a lot, I support myself with art. I have young women assistants who think I'm bohemian, and come on to me fairly regularly. I've been known to take them up on it. I can do that because I feel things less. Kelly, Catharine and Sara anesthetized me. It's a blessing, I suppose.
School is such a waste of time. Busywork. It's depressing. Every day it's sinking sinking sinking stinking boredom. I don't need it. I can't sleep.
I haven't gone to class in almost two weeks. I don't want to go out. I don't want to eat. I'm starting to feel a little less angst, though. I've started reading again. Mostly poetry. The post-moderns. The confessionals. What a joke. Shall I keep a journal? Dare I eat a peach? Who cares. Maybe I should try pornography.
I was thinking about how I wish I could just not wake up sometime. Not do anything, just go to sleep and not wake up. Then my phone rang. It never rings. It was a wrong number but I wanted to talk anyway. He seemed less stupid than most others. I decided to see if he could handle thinking. I decided to let him come and get me and take me to his place. It will be entertaining. We'll see if he can play Mephistopheles. His name is Kelly.
It is strangely complete, talking with Kelly. He hears the truth I hide behind my words. He returns it to me, and I'm not hollow. I must take care; he may be my serpent.
He takes me like a cub into a den where it is safe. He rubs fragrant oil in my hair and spreads it out in rivers. He smooths the hair against his arms and the poetry flows out of my head and finally I can sleep. It is too alluring. I must resist it.
Staying with Kelly always now. We are like stray wolves in a den, safe from the pack. But Kelly wants too much of me. It can't be given, that's all. It's absurd to think of it. Talk talk talk talk is all. And then Wills over and over telling me do this, do more, go out. I need quiet. What a waste it all is. As if I could benefit from going to class, or writing a paper, or eating, or any of it.
Writing and writing and writing. It's all empty but he likes to see me do it. Do I do it to please him? Am I fading away? I must think less. I can't sleep, I mustn't be lured, I shake my head when he rivers my hair. There's too much thinking.
It's a siren song from deep in the brain, singing hard and strong at the old refrain. The whisper is calm, "Come, dear, test the pond."
Kelly continues to press for my defloration. He doesn't like to call it that, but what else is it? If love can exist, this may be love. But still I must have myself. He can't have me. He would fill me with Kelly and soon there would be no Catharine. But the body would still be animate, that's the horror of it. Animate and moving, like an insect with its head off that lives until it starves. Swarming and dark and physical with no soul and no anticipation.
I walk as a ghost in my own life.
Strength displaced by obligation.
Color erased a kiss at a time.
Why must love be such a vampire?
Oh, when the bite cuts it's fair enough.
Giddy even.
But then the slow intolerable sucking
Pulls and pulls until all that remains
is a daguerreotype
haunting
and hunger
I wanted to buy Kelly a birthday present. But what? Shall I clothe him in imperial purple? He has drawers of cashmere. Something engraved, but even setting words to paper is impossible, I could hardly set them to metal. I couldn't walk downtown, anyway. It's so shiny, all that glazed snow. Too bright. Too much air. I found the pawnshop near, and it was interesting, dark. Everything with a history. The knife is good. Closed it's pretty, like a fancy comb or mirror for a Victorian woman. Open it's sharp, strong, and dangerous, obviously a man's. He'll like it.
He was pleased with the knife. He kept it with him, admiring. We lay naked together, kissing and stroking, and the knife was in the bed. He opened it and laid it between us. He said it was a symbol of abstinence, like in a 14th century French romance. But Tristan laid his sword between himself and Iseult, and there was no abstinence there. Still, it was a gesture, I suppose.
I have been able to read again. I don't sleep and I don't eat because I don't need to. There is no end to my energy. I'm flying through thoughts and I can read and understand what I did not understand before. The horror of it. The horror of life and fecundity and animation. The rush of tiny spiders, in the hundreds, when the egg opens. Swarming, flying in little clouds of their own making, like sperm into the wind.
City in the rain, all shiny bright and black, high contrast realism. Like black blood on white sheets. Astounding beauty. The bitter soul, suspended in the damp dark brain, festering.
If I could only express the dread and fear everywhere I could control it. Has everyone else seen it all along, and just chosen not to comprehend it?
It's a siren song from deep in the brain, singing hard and strong at the old refrain. The whisper is calm, "Come, dear, test the pond." I find in the deep my nest of grey down and sleep with no dream no memory to pound. Irresistible chime: "Now, dear, it's your time."
Nam yo ho ren ghe kyo, nam yo ho ren ghe kyo. We chant it while we touch. It's intoxicating and rhythmic and takes away fear. He was strong on my belly. I felt the pulse and it pulled me into living. Then he was in me and it was not pain. We swayed and kissed and I didn't retreat. Then he shuddered and I was filled. It was not pain. He rested.
He had taken myself away from me. He took my flesh, so I had to take his. I had to take his. I must become the serpent or be swallowed by the serpent-- Take my will, Take my flesh, Take my name. Swallow or be swallowed. It would all be Kelly, Kelly in my belly, in my mouth, in my words, all Kelly. No Catharine. None.
It's so absurd it makes me laugh. Who wouldn't want it? But it's Barbie and Ken, not Tristan and Iseult. And after all of it to send me home. I shouldn't have let him. I was tired of arguing. But after it all I needed something back. You would think that one little bite was the world. He grew the token into a creature.
Bring me back to the forest where the wild wolves prowl and let me howl with them. We'll live as Tristan and Iseult in the wood. The wolves will tear our flesh from our bodies and make us whole again, perfectly tuned to true north.
I cannot stay here. There is no pounding here, no pulse. Strange that that is a trouble and not a comfort. But I see finally. I'm a young woman or an old man, it doesn't matter. He should not have sent me away. Not in this cruelest month. There is lilac here, in my father's dooryard, and I cannot bear the horror of blooming.
I can no longer smell the river or the wolf. It's time. Reds. Reds will do. It's peaceful to think of it. Kelly will do what I ask. He'll do what I ask if I ask the way he wants to hear it. I'll chant it to him. I'll rub my head on his and chant it. Chanting is peaceful. It's past time for peace.
It's been over twenty years since I left Whitewater, but as the old cliché goes, I think of that time nearly every day. I wish I could stop thinking of it. I'm not going to try to justify what I did. It was unforgivable, I know. Be content to know I am punished.
For me Whitewater was Catharine. What can I say about Catharine? My Cat. She was a gossamer beauty, a sprite, too fragile to survive in the world, too vicious for the world to survive her. I was unprepared for the sublime pinnacles of joy she brought to me, and more unprepared for the abyss of self-loathing into which she plunged, dragging me along.
I met her quite by accident. I dialed a wrong number, and the voice that answered was angelic. I know now the devil comes so disguised. We talked for a while and I convinced her to meet me. What a beauty. Long shining chestnut hair, skin like cream, eyes that shone her madness, though at the time I thought it was only the tears. I lost my soul in those mad eyes.
We lived together for a while, and I gloried in caring for her. At first it was wonderful. She was open, and affectionate in her way. She would create huge nests of blankets and quilts, and draw me in. She loved to have her long hair stroked, purring like a delightful kitten. She needed a lot of care, though. Like a soul new to the world, she could not cope with the simplest things, but she had an innate understanding of deeper things. She liked to chant. Nam yo ho ren ghe kyo, nam yo ho ren ghe kyo. She would chant to me and I would be transported to another place, floating on the passion I felt for her. Nam yo ho ren ghe kyo, nam yo ho ren ghe kyo. I can hear it still. She enchanted me--that is my excuse. But still what happened should not have happened.
It was the knife, you see. She gave me an odd little knife for my birthday, and I was overjoyed she would do anything to try to please me. I thought this act of giving, and the knife itself, was a symbol, an invitation, a surrender. I thought perhaps she was healing from whatever demon fever had her in its grip. So, one night, when all seemed so calm, after many months of coddling her, of yearning for her, I made love to her. This act transformed her: she became the demon that possessed her. She became feral, howling like a wolf, crouching in corners. She tore a great swath of flesh from my body, as retribution she said. Retribution for love.
I was afraid of her. Can't you see how I would be? She was a demon, sucking my life away. I called her father and he came for her. It seemed best at the time. Still, I felt responsible for her madness. I went to see her often, sometimes eager and sometimes dreading. Then she began to demand her own death. I should never have given her the drugs she begged me for. Never. Never. But she chanted to me Nam yo ho ren ghe kyo, nam yo ho ren ghe kyo. Is it ridiculous to say I was bewitched?
I gave her what she asked for, telling myself it was only to help her. I knew better. I knew better but I did it anyway. God forgive me, I wanted rid of her.
When her father told me of her death I was relieved and destroyed. My old friend Wills took me to see her one last time. It was the only time I ever saw her at peace. One last time I stroked her hair.
I told myself that would be the end of it. She was at peace and I would heal and my life would be mine again. As I said, I was young. Forgive me my foolishness.
The next school year I was numb, but functioning. Wills and I were friends again, and from time to time I felt alive. Then we saw the doppelganger, moving through, of all places, the grocery aisles. The shining hair. The graceful walk. I tell you it was an electric shock.
It turned out to be a trusting little girl named Sara, not very bright, but sweet in her way, docile and easily manipulated. What I did to Sara was worse than what I did to Catharine. Catharine was a lost soul, and probably nothing could have saved her. But Sara was just a child. I used her. I fucked her violently, trying to drive the ghost of Catharine from the world. I laughed at her. I mocked her to Wills and called her a whore.
In my defense, I must say I tried to stop myself. When I realized that, amazingly, Wills was attracted to her, I gave her to him. Can you believe she would go? But go she did. Good, I thought, he'll be good to her. And it did go well for a time.
Then the night at the cemetery. I was just lying about on some old grave, as I often did, thinking. Since Catharine's death I liked to think in the cemetery. It had been the three of us, but Wills had left us. Inexplicably, she stripped and lay shivering on the grave next to me. I was dumbfounded. I pulled her up to her feet, and she knelt and went for my crotch. It was disgusting, profane, and my rage burned any intellect I had away from me. There she was, the doppelganger, with Catharine's hair, come back to haunt me. She was Catharine, Catharine come back from hell, a succubus from hell. I tried to make amends to the demon by offering my flesh again. I bared my shoulder so she could renew her bite, a blood sacrifice to quiet the demon.
"Go ahead. Take your retribution, take your flesh again. Bite. Hard."
She did. The pain of the bite was nothing to the pain of the memory, and both together brought me back from hell to earth again and I saw simple Sara, not Catharine.
I could barely speak. I mumbled, more to myself than her, "Why, why."
She just looked back at me with her child's eyes and said "I thought you told me to."
I never wanted such obedience. "Is there nothing you will not do, if I ask it, Sara? Nothing?"
Her child eyes got wider and she answered, "Nothing."
I knew then that I was lost, lost to the doppelganger as surely as I had been lost to Catharine. I had very little grip on sanity at this point, so I sought to take away her power by taking away the Catharine in her, her hair. I slashed it away with Catharine's knife and threw it in an open grave to bury Catharine for good, and set myself free from Catharine's reproach and Sara's blind devotion. I was a monster. That was how I sought to bury Catharine for good.
You will know, of course, that it didn't work. Catharine is with me still. And now also with me is the ruined Sara. I am a monster still.
I told Wills what happened, hoping I suppose for absolution, but he saw the monster in me. He gave me neither absolution nor pity. I left Whitewater that very night and never went back. I abandoned all intent to lead any kind of fruitful life, and have lived off my family's money, touring Europe, whoring, and drinking. I only want to stay unconscious as much as possible.
They're always with me though, the three of them. Catharine bewitching me, Wills damning me, Sara loving me with that terrible unquestioning love. I think it is Sara that troubles me most.
I should be over it by now. It's way past time for peace, but peace eludes me still. I know now, with my old man's mind, that peace was buried in the cemetery at Whitewater all these years ago.