PSYCHOPHILIA: A Disturbing Psychological Thriller
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Authors: Michelle Muckley
PSYCHOPHILIA
Michelle
Muckley
Copyright ©
2014 Michelle Muckley
British English Edition
First Edition
All rights
reserved.
This
is a work of fiction. Any similarity to actual people, places, or events is in
every respect coincidental.
This
work is licensed for your personal enjoyment, but may be lent and copied
without prior permission. These permissions extend to your personal use only,
and do not intend to cover the copying of the material for distribution to the
general public.
For
extra copies, and further information about the author, please visit:
All rights
reserved.
For print copies:
ISBN:
1497578116
ISBN-13:
978-1497578111
Dear Reader,
Thank you so much for taking the time to
purchase and read Psychophilia. First and foremost, I hope that you enjoy this
book. I was inspired to write this story following a period of illness and a
stay in ITU. The sense of claustrophobia that I experienced during the recovery
was at times worse than the illness itself. Whilst this is a work of fiction,
the story is born from that time.
If you enjoy this book, I would love you to
sign up to my mailing list. You can do that
HERE
, and I will let you know about
offers and future work.
In the meantime, I leave you with
Charlotte.....
For Stasinos,
for making the impossible possible
There is no reality except the one
contained within us. That is why so many people live such an unreal life. They
take the images outside of them for reality and never allow the world within to
assert itself.
Hermann Hesse (1877-1962)
The monster was the best friend I
ever had.
Boris Karloff (1887-1969)
Everybody
around me celebrated. Everybody except me. They said it was the point in time
when the balance tipped, when I finally agreed to let them help me. They told
me on that day I woke up with red eyes, red as the Devil’s, Gregory said, like
fire might burst through them, my pupils the craters of two angry volcanoes.
Their description of me sounded like something rabid, wild, as if I had been
set loose. For a time afterwards I imagined myself as a snarling dog, lips
foaming and teeth on show. I imagined them holding me down to stop me biting
those who were unlucky enough to get close. If I had been an animal I would
have been euthanized or shot, put down out of my misery. But human misery is
tolerated. It is allowed. It is necessary. Humans have a mandate to suffer
their pain and work through it. We cannot be killed like dogs.
They
used to discuss this moment with a reminiscent smile, sort of like,
oh how
it was back then.
They would talk whilst I sat, inanimate like a discarded
slipper tossed to the floor. They would discuss me idly, like they might deliberate
a good wine or movie, the chatter chirruping around my head like birds in a
spring sky. They would recall how willing I was back then when life was simple
and good, before anybody had tried to die.
Now their heads stay dipped,
heavy with sadness at how far we have really fallen. At how far I have sunk. Now
they see how pointless it all was.
I
do not remember this moment in time. There was no light bulb moment or eureka
as I came to understand the solution to the problem. To their problem. But I
can imagine it. I can imagine what it must have been like. The words leaving
my mouth at a rate so fast, that I would forget the meaning of the sentence
before I had finished saying it. My heart beating me in the chest like a
jackhammer, a rhythmical reminder that life was a punishment. I know my hair
felt electrified and my skin crawled with bugs that felt like a million static
shocks. Even the wind against my skin must have felt like an enemy, there only
to break me into submission, to push me backwards. I know because I am
starting to feel this same energy again. I believe that in my proximity to
death, I had never felt so alive.
When
there are things that I can’t remember they tell me what they want me to
believe and they omit what they want me to forget. You see, the past is rather
blurry now and I don’t remember clearly. It doesn’t make a whole lot of sense
to me anymore. Now it just feels like déjà vu, something there
but not tangible in the real world. Most of what I will tell you about the
past is based on other people’s experiences, their memories. I have learnt the
recent past through their eyes, which is ultimately how they wanted me to see
the world all along. Their own view of it has been forced upon me because
there is no viable alternative. Like the Nazi party of pre-war Germany. It
worked for a while. But now their version of the truth doesn’t always feel
like it agrees with what I feel inside. Their truth is like a square shape that
they bang repeatedly at a round hole in a child’s toy. Somehow it just doesn’t
fit. It never will, no matter how many times you push it.
But
the cruel trick of my amnesia is that I remember a lot about the distant past.
I even remember my first day of school. I remember the blue plastic mattress
that I sat on to listen to stories about princesses, and I remember the blond
girl who sat next to me and seemed innately more perfect than I was, or could
ever hope to be. I was chubby, and mousy, and even with only four years of
life experience I was aware of my inadequacies, evident in my hand-me-down
clothes and frizzy hair. The blond girl came to my birthday party that year
and my father announced that she would be a heartbreaker when she was older.
By way of omission, I assumed that I would not be.
I
have spent the last few months trying to piece things back together. Gregory
was trying to help at first, and so was Dr. Abrams. The women who live in my
quiet street, the type of street that doesn’t deal with these sorts of problems,
would prefer that I was normal and so they have helped me too. It is in their
best interests. In their lives, I am the square building block and their life
is the round hole. But I am used to not really fitting in, and they perhaps do
not understand this.
The
top left side of my head still throbs from time to time, and when I touch it I
can feel it is still swollen. The hair has grown back but the scar is raised
like an itchy row of beans. For a while I did as they told me to and I left it
alone. It was easy whilst the dressing was there and I was pharmaceutically
mellow, but once they removed the bandages I was drawn to it like a magpie to
silver. It started because I found an almost undetectable flap of skin at the
edge of the wound. It was something that had surrendered and dried, preparing
to sacrifice itself for the benefit of new growth. But it was still attached when
I found it and as I picked at the edge it lifted in a sharp moment of pain, an
electric shock of relief and fresh blood. Now, unless I see blood on my fingertips
each day I convince myself that it will re-collect, manoeuvring like a stealth
army sent to drive me back to hospital, subdued by their medication with a tube
down my throat. This might be why it hasn’t healed as well as it should have.
When I wake to find blood on my pillowcase which flowed freely during the night
without any effort on my part, I know it will be a good day.
When
I first got home the routine was easier. I couldn’t do much and I was weak.
So I did as I was told. I rested. I ate. I slept when I was told it was time.
I took my tablets when prompted. But the constant following me around and over-enthusiastic
care felt as suffocating as a pillow shoved into my mouth. I was numb. After
a while I returned to work, but I found that I would get to a certain place and
have no recollection of how I had got there. I would have a conversation with
Martin or Phillipa in the morning in the office, and then when they asked me
about it later I wouldn’t remember it at all and the swelling on my head would beat
like a drum. Thump, thump, thump. I became so indifferent that I was no
longer part of life. Life was just happening to me. I was void, empty, and I
started to believe that it had to be better to feel something as opposed to
nothing. At the time I couldn’t remember what it was that I used to feel. I
couldn't remember what the truth felt like. If I had, maybe I would have felt
differently. Maybe I would have continued to put the tablets on my tongue,
rather than hide them on a shelf by my bed.
From
what he has told me I have reconstructed my last moments in my old life. I
have pieced them together like clips of old cine film so that they run in
staccato, jagged motion, those last crazy moments before I ended up in the water
in a puddle of blood like shark bait. I might remember the odd face or two as
they pulled me out of the water, but they too are distant memories that I can’t
fully recall and I wonder if it just my mind’s projection of facts I have been
told. He tells me that there were many people watching. Tourists, who came
out to feed the ducks, take a boat ride, to push children in pushchairs covered
in ice cream and raspberry sauce. They all stopped to watch, making up their
own version of events. What had I done? How had I done it? Was it an
accident?
I
realise now that people enjoy watching the misery of others. It’s the voyeur
in us. It’s the dark secret that you won’t speak of, but would love to hear from
another person. How many of us laugh when somebody trips or has food in their
teeth? How many of us rubberneck at the scene of an accident? You stop to
help even though you have no idea about first aid. Really you just want to get
a closer look, to smell the iron rich blood as it runs over the tarmac, away
from the screams. It’s the books about murder that sit behind your classics.
It’s the gambling you do that your wife doesn’t know about. It’s the man you
slept with behind his back, or the porn sites you watch once she has gone to
bed. We all like the things we shouldn’t. It’s how we are programmed. I like
to pick at my scars, bodily and mental. I liked to die, once upon a time.
Everybody has their own guilty pleasure. But where we are all united is in the
joy of another person’s suffering so that we can at least be thankful that it’s
not us. Not this time, at least.
You
might sit on the side of your bath at night and replay the good things you have
done or imagined, reminding yourself that you must be a good person. Good, and
lucky. Some people might look to their God to try to find out why bad things
happen.
Give me the answers
they might beg, as if they didn't already
know them. You’ll look in the mirror and ask
why him, why her,
when the
misery threatens close to home
.
But we allow the misery of the human
because it reminds us of our own worth. We were given misery for balance. We
enjoy the pain of others because it makes us appreciate the good in our own
lives, and so we cannot tolerate those who try to escape it. They are letting
the rest of us down. Human misery is necessary. We tell those in pain that
they must fight sorrow, work through it.
Feel your pain, understand it.
This
is what they said to me. They wouldn’t let me die. They wouldn’t let me escape.
They forced me to remember, to wake up, and now they regret it.
Thank God it’s not me,
we all say
.
But
then one day, it is.