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14. the night i went into freefall
Frazer threatened to slash my face with a knife. I became the old kitchen bench, the dry and aging piece of whittled wood. He blew smoke into my face, in order to set something alight. He got more and more drunk and violent in front of me. Always other people would mix with him as he presented his good side. They chose to socialise with him after they knew he had bashed me. Most likely in the same way that they would befriend a paedophile. I felt like shouting, 'What does he have to do? Knock down your children and fuck them before you'll understand?' It seems that only the women that have already been bashed by him avoid him, and that's not that many in the scheme of things. It was a pity that each person had to find out for themselves. Knowing it was wrong more than they did, he said, 'You didn't tell anyone did you? I'll sue you. It won't do any good. People don't care Crystal'. He laughed, 'You'll only make a fool of yourself. I'm telling you no-one gives a fuck out there'. But I didn't care about what he thought or what he said to me. I told them and I would keep telling them. I wasn't about to hide anything. Nigel's wife, Barbs, told me about a woman whose house had burnt to the ground with her cat and two dogs inside. The woman had crawled down the road on her hands and knees, knocking on no less than twenty-nine doors, before anyone would let her use a phone. She was badly burnt herself, and she could hear the sound of shut doors, above the howls of animals burning to death. On bad days she remembers each door, more vividly than she remembers those companions. I was not one of her neighbours. There was nothing I could do for her but trust the world just that little bit more, in order to let a distressed women enter my home, to use my phone to ring emergency. I could try to believe her story. I could try to believe my own. The morning after freefall, Frazer threw everything of ours around the loungeroom and screamed. I heard the objects flying and sat in his bed, with the two dogs circling and cowering around my feet. Then he was in the shower and I heard him screaming through the water. 'Arrhh, I'm going mad! I'm going mad!' Then the high-pitched shrieking, 'You're driving me! Aaarrrhhhh!' I heard him jump out of that shower and start running through the house towards me. He was naked and dripping wet, all the hair sticking to his semi-bald head. I fled down the hallway in my nightie and stood out on the street with the dogs. I looked back inside the house that exploded inside itself. Frazer ran off the tracks like a broken train, chuffing screams from room to room, tearing the walls down. In that moment he was really saying, 'I am relinquishing all responsibility, so that I can destroy you without guilt'. That is exactly what people who murder other people do. They place themselves in the situation as the victim of the real victim. They strike out without any responsibility and then claim self defense afterwards. 'She hit me first. I was temporarily insane. She drove me to it, etc.' Frazer would be no different. He would be sobbing and weeping over my body for what he had lost. He may even speak out loud into that loud silence. 'I'm so sorry Crystal, I'm so sorry.' Then suddenly his eyes would shift. He would think, I didn't do it. Who could have done that? Killing me for him would be like routine house cleaning, like dusting a windowsill and doing the ironing. The court would ask me what I was wearing to provoke the attack. But I wouldn't answer because I would be down at the morgue. For now I just stood in my nightie on the street and was calm. The leaves in the council trees carried my horror away. Later, Frazer left to go somewhere with Nigel and Stuart. I went back into the house and glided like a ghost through the devastation. A split flour bag and smashed clay vases full of cigarette butts, lay murdered on the kitchen floor. Toppled lamps stuck up like legs. Blank notes of paper with no words to describe the scene were strewn everywhere. The mouldy shower was left running, the soap old and soggy on the plughole. The dirty dishes were stacked into the sink and the bed was left unmade. The nicotine sheets were putrid. I cleared a little space on the lounge and began to ring the crisis lines. The calmness of my voice and my blow-by-blow description of what he had done, followed by my defence of his actions disguised as understanding, didn't fool the counsellors. They had heard it all before. They simply waited until I had finished then asked, 'Is he in the house with you now?' 'No.' 'Where is he?' 'Out.' 'When is he coming back?' 'I don't know.' They surprised me by saying, 'You are in a very dangerous situation. We want you to call some friends and the police. We want you to take your dogs and yourself out of that situation as soon as possible, will you do that?' 'Yes,' I said, knowing they were on the other end like distant parents, or the friends I had become too ashamed to contact. I was very confused and very tired, so I just did as I was told. Frazer always reframed the past. So I kept records in notebooks of every time he abused me. I no longer believed his words or trusted his knowledge. His perceptions were bent and spiked with poison. The tireless indoctrination became, 'Blah blah blah blahblah blah. Mumble mumble mumble', I turned to my notes for my truth. I could not deny what I had written. It forced me to remember. Often I stuck my fingers in my ears and hummed as he put me down. On more energetic days I would hum Beethoven's complete fifth symphony, and when I took my fingers out he was still going. He was really talking away at himself. No one needed to hear or would believe his fabrications or excuses apart from himself. I thought, this is a serious waste of time, his voice droning on and on and on and on. Whilst I cut out all sight and sound. So that rather than hearing his words, my mind became as silent as a desert on the verge of heavy rain. His voice was the drone of blowflies in the background. Blowflies that if given half the chance would turn you into dead flesh or shit, so they could blow their maggots through you. In the afternoon the sky became purple. The world was turning into a bruise that I breathed in. Air that touched the bruise rested in me like a fist. I stood outside Frazer's door. I wanted him to love me and just tell me that he wouldn't do me in. I was as degraded as him, now that I'd lost my dignity. He pretended that I wanted sex and that he was denying it. He said, 'Fuck off, cunt'. It was odd what happened next. The moment he said it, something snapped inside me. An immense calmness passed over me. I began to taste stars, as if drops of icy water had trickled down my cheeks into my mouth. They shone like glad flowers too far away to be picked. I had not seen a star fall as far into space as I was falling. These days it was space rubbish that flared up along the atmosphere's edge, and not falling stars as I had first thought. I didn't know whether I would live or die, as I began another great length of journey into my life. I drifted away forever from the mothership of Frazer towards distant suns. Whilst he dreamt of the cunt he would wake up next to, I was becoming smaller and smaller in his life. I would be a long time out there. Frazer's feeble calling from the distance is like fading static. All radio contact is lost. It had taken the pull of an immense universe to come in and carry me off. He lost me forever in that moment. This is when his real suffering began. Stamp out every flower in the field and you will suffer its barrenness. Kill every living thing on the earth, until you are finally confronted with yourself. You are the stupid cowardly killer, all the destruction you have caused resting in your heart. It catches up with you so that it makes you want to smoke and drink yourself to death. You will drown inside yourself in order to escape your own demons. I know he missed me, of course he did. When the eight police arrived to help me get my stuff out, Frazer opened the front door, apparently in shock. 'Where's Crystal? Is she okay?' He pretended that he thought I had committed suicide. But no one present was swayed. They all remained until I was safely out of there. Whilst I moved through his house looking for my belongings, Frazer had lurked around behind the fridge. He suddenly stepped out as I cautiously entered the kitchen to get my kettle, now as deathly fragile inside as a rat that had been let out of a trap. He said, 'Come back to me. Tell all cops to go to Hell. I'm telling you, they don't give a fuck. Where are you gonna go from here? I'm the one who truly loves you'. I turned to the knife he had stabbed into the bench. The bench that had become me in his own mind, for a moment, the night before. The knife said, 'Come back to me. I'm the one that really loves you. I'm your future'. The police stood at the front door. I followed their uniforms into the light. I went into a world that I knew didn't care about me or anything else. I made up my mind to care about something. This was the death of all I had known. It was very ugly back there. The monster that wanted to love and hate me was waiting inside that derelict house. I trusted the simple light of the doorway and walked through it. Later that afternoon, Frazer was back over at my place for the last time. |
