Safe

Regina Adams

The dark silence of the night surrounded me, threatening. Only thing breaking it was the ticking of an old oakwood grandfather clock on the wall above my bed. It was a family treasure. However, it had not chimed once in the past few decades even though it was seemingly working as it should and I kept winding it. I did not want to pay a fortune to someone so they would come and look at it, fix it maybe, so I was completely fine with it staying silent. Actually, I was already sleeping light, so I needed no more noises to keep me on my toes at night. Not even sleeping pills worked anymore. I stayed up mainly because of the fear. You see, years ago I was told that this would be the age I die at and so, I was terrified that the prediction could come true.

 “When you turn 83, that is when you will die.” That was what the gypsy woman had assured me. It had been five months now since my 83th birthday. Five months that I had lived in fear. But even though I waited for my demise, at the same time I had been readying myself for the battle. I was not going to die, that I had decided. I was in good medical condition, both physically and mentally, regardless of the fact that I was currently living in a one-room apartment of a row-house meant for elderly and on my kitchen counter there was a plastic container full of all kinds of prescription medication, vitamins, lactic acid bacteria and so on. I had no idea which one should be taken when and what pills were for what, I just took something if I ever felt bad somehow. But I never had any severe illnesses or disorders. However, I feared death anyway, it was almost a phobia to me. I was not sure why. 

So, I had stopped going out or even opening the door for anyone else but the housekeepers and food service workers who visited me regularly and even with them I had agreed on precise days and times they needed to come at. Out of those times, I opened my door to no one. I had no family alive and no friends, I had never kept many anyway. And I had heard that there were thieves going around from door to door, robbing helpless, elderly people who invited them in. The old man next-door had been robbed twice but well, he had a bad memory anyway, so he probably forgot to be more careful after the first time.

I never opened the curtains covering the view from my only window, either. The view was not worth it as I did not care to stare at the house facing this one and the muddy, plain yard between the two. Also, I felt a lot safer when I was hiding from everything and everyone. I had put rugs all over my bathroom floor, you see, many old people died when they slipped while taking a shower and I wanted to eliminate that possibility. I also used slippers everywhere in the apartment so I would not slip anywhere else either. Food came to me from the food service as I dared not to use my oven or the stove in order to cook. I might cause a fire, after all. So I just microwaved all my food, even though I was not too keen on using that either. Then, I smashed or diced all the food so there were no possibility for me to choke on it. Hard candy and such, I did not eat at all.

I used any electronics carefully. I had a television, that I sometimes watched the news on, but normally I kept that unplugged. I had also an old radio I loved to listen to, and a mobile phone in case of an emergency but that was all. All the pointy corners of tables and other furniture I had covered with cloths, so I could not hurt myself on them if I somehow were to fall. By the years, I had hunched over, losing height, so I asked the janitor to lower down my hat rack and some cabinets so that I never had to reach too high as that could be dangerous too. I was prepared in every possible way and saw no chance for the gypsy’s prediction to come true. Unless, I would have a stroke of some kind, and that was the very reason why I could not sleep at nights. I had called an ambulance so many times the medics were getting fed up with me.

“I think you are just having some digestion problems,” they said. Maybe, but you can never be too careful, I thought.

The smell of cigarettes and lilac perfume haunted me at nights. Something had convinced me years ago that the prediction was not to be taken lightly. Perhaps, it had been the alcohol or the dim lighting in the caravan and all the golden linen around me. I had felt dizzy, I remembered, scared. Last week I asked the janitor to put another lock on my door, just in case. All the silverware I had hidden under my mattress and I used only dispensable cutlery as I could not accidentally cut myself with those. In addition to all that, I kept a mug full of water on a counter all times so I remembered to drink enough. The summer had been dry and hot, after all. The mug was at least 50-years-old and had painted lilies on it.

Five months later

I was dreaming that a cold wind was brushing against my face and the evening sun was setting. Suddenly, I woke up and realized, I was standing in the middle of the room. It was dark, the curtains were closed and it was winter, so I could not tell if it was day or night. I had an unexplainable feeling that I had dreamed of the old grandfather clock. In my dream it had been chiming. I blinked my eyes and waited for them to adjust to the darkness. I did not have my glasses on.

Then I saw something. Right in front of me, there was a tall man dressed in black. He stood there with his fingers crossed. His face was unmoving. I was frightened. He had broken in, I thought.

“Hello Regina, I'm here for you.”

“What do you mean? Go away or I will call the police!”

“Regina… Look behind you”, the man said inside my head. He did not open his mouth. I turned and faced my bed. To my horror, there was someone lying in it. It was me. The oakwood grandfather clock on the wall above my bed had fallen on me. It had crushed my head and face, I was bleeding.

“It's not possible...” I whispered.

“Regina, we all have our time, it is predestined. Your time is up. Come with me”, the man said and offered his hand to me. I shook my head.

“I was so careful. I thought of everything, there was nothing that could happen in the safety of my own home. The clock… I never thought of that, though.”

“When you refused to give up, I had to be more creative. I am sorry, Regina, but we need to leave now. It's gonna be three days before the food service comes, your body will have to wait before it is found.”

I stared at my face that had caved into my broken skull and was covered in blood and pieces of wood. I was scared. I felt pain and terror like never before. There was no white light. I did not know where I was going. Slowly, the room around me disappeared. In my dream, the grandfather clock chimed but had it been a dream or reality? 

Who were you?

Brigit

I sat on the floor and stared at the dead body lying lifelessly there. The face was familiar yet not. This is what I looked like when I was alive? I could see wrinkles and deep lines on the skin I did not remember and the glare in the eyes was empty. I had never thought myself as particularly beautiful but I never thought I was this ugly either. This was the first time seeing myself with an outsider’s eye. I snorted and lifted my head. The clock on the wall was ticking loudly. Two hours it was now. I had died two hours ago and no one else was aware yet. Outside the sky was beautifully clear and the air was vibrating hot. There were great tits and bullfinches singing as they flew in and out of the bird feeder gathering seeds. The small window in the corner of the kitchen had been left open and the smell of my corpse invited flies and fleas inside. I had not eaten anything that day but death had taken away the hunger. And the thirst too. I had grabbed the glass full of white wine with me as I went down and the wine had dried out all over the cabinet door and the floor. There was a big piece broken from the glass but it was otherwise intact, to my surprise.

Long five hours had passed before I heard someone coming through the front door. I stood up and waited until a familiar figure emerged into the kitchen. As soon as Nana saw me she screamed and dropped her purse, she always carried her working clothes in, on the floor. Nana was still working as a nurse in a nearby hospital even though she had already reached the retirement age four years ago. She was wearing her work shoes, you know, the big and bulky health shoes that looked like little, black boats. Her old knees made a crack as she went down to tend my corpse. She acted as a professional but it was too late, obviously. She called 911 and I was listening to her sobbing. I rested my hand gently on her shoulder but she could not feel it. She did not know I was still there.

Finally the police and the ambulance arrived and I was eavesdropping on their conversation. Someone made a claim that it had probably been some kind of a seizure. I wanted to scream that he was wrong but they could not hear me anyway. I would just have to wait until the autopsy results came in as at that point it would became apparent I had been poisoned. Someone had poisoned me, but who? I really wanted to know. It would have been possible to anyone to poison my wine especially when everyone knew I was the only one in the house who drank Pinot Grigio. The perpetrator could be anyone close to me. That felt so painful I could not leave before I knew who it had been.

That meant, unfortunately, that I was stuck in the house. It was not too long that every suspect had gathered in that house. Those were the people I had loved the most: Nana, my sister and my brother, my best friend, my psychologist and even the old man living next-door who I used to help with chores and gardening. I was standing at the living-room doorway overseeing them. Which one of you is my Judas? Who could have murdered me? Instead of sorrow I felt anger and disappointment. I think it was due to my new form as I could feel a difference in my soul. It felt empty in a way it never had before.

Nana was sitting on the cream-colored couch, her face buried into her hands, she was sobbing. The next-door neighbor sat on her right side and gently brushed her back. Beth, my sister, sat on Nana’s left side, staring emotionless with a wineglass on her hand. We had both loved our alcohol but as I drank white she preferred red. My brother Paul was standing in the middle of the room and pacing nervously around from time to time. He had always been emotionally reserved. I knew he would feel uncomfortable as he did not know how to cry or comfort others. My psychologist, Mr. Allen, or to me just Thomas, sat alone in the corner on a dark-green armchair observing others. That was his job, after all. Helen, who was my best friend, was the dearest to me. We had been friends since childhood. We had both been over thirty and unmarried before I died. That had made us even closer, we were like an old couple the two of us, I wanted to think. Helen was sitting on the floor with her legs crossed. She reminded me a lot of myself. Her hair was blond like mine but longer and had a warmer tone in it. She had tied it up on a loose bun and her make up was running down her face as she cried. Helen was smaller than me, and prettier. I did not feel jealousy about that though as I admired her so. I felt suddenly so cold when I thought of her as a suspect. I would not believe that. I was sure, that it had not been Helen.

At first, I could not believe anyone of them had murdered me but as I started to ponder on it I realized that everyone of them, surprisingly, had a motive. Nana had blamed me for grandpa’s death. That was kind of true since I had gotten myself in so much debt they needed to take care of me. They had took me in and used all their savings to pay out my debt, but it was not enough. My grandpa had to return to work from his retirement to earn more money. And soon it got too much for him and he had suffered a heart attack. I knew Nana had blamed me even though she was still nice to me. At times I could sense the hostility in her voice. Beth had the very same reason to hate me and she was brutally open about it. She had told me I was a burden to anyone who loved me. I had not taken that too seriously though, as she was an alcoholic and had recently gone through a divorce. Beth was angry with everyone in her life.

Paul, on the other hand, had stayed out of everything going on in our family. After our parents had died he became a hermit. But I knew he had a reason to hate me as well. When we were kids I had bullied my brother so much that that was probably the reason he was such a socially awkward loner right now. I had not done that on purpose, we were children and children bully each other, but I had been too mean, I guess, and he had been such a sensitive child. I had apologized of course but I knew it was because of me that he feared people even as an adult.

My psychologist, Thomas, what about him then. I was convinced that he was some sort of a sociopath himself. He was constantly trying to scare me and provoke me on purpose to get a reaction out of me. He seemed to enjoy my pain. Even though, I did open up to him, I did not trust him. Some instinct told me not to. Thomas thought it was just my imagination. He said it was convenient to me to not wholly trust him as that way I would not have to be totally honest with myself.

Lastly, there was old Otto, our lovely neighbor. No one could think anything bad about the man if they had not seen him get angry. He was conservative beyond belief, extremely racist and potty-mouthed when challenged into a political debate. If someone had a differing opinion he got real scary. Person with such strong believes was impossible to live with without getting into a fight with him now and then. I had fought with him sometimes. They say though, that a barking dog does not bite, but I was not sure about that.

One of you? Who was it? Show yourself.

Helen

I murdered my best friend. I had felt as if the space was getting too tiny for the two of us. One of us had to go or neither of us would get forward. We had both known our relationship was not a healthy one and was preventing us both living our life normally. Brigit had been positive that we should stay together but she did not convince me. Mr. Allen had told Brigit that she would need to cut contact with me because I was bad influence to her. What kind of a psychologist would say that, I did not know, but I thought he was right about going our separate ways. I had everything better in my life than she did, though. I was more beautiful than Brigit, and more successful and I had once gotten engaged but Brigit had ruined it for me. That was when I started to get bitter.

I solved the problem by poisoning her. Now I was sitting on a living-room floor and watched everyone around me. They did not know I was finally free.

Brigit

The days went by and I roamed the house restlessly. I knew that if I stayed too long I would not be able to move forward. I would get angrier and more bitter as the days passed by, until I would forget who I had been when I was alive. The human in me would wear off and I would became a creature of nightmares. I could feel it was already happening. But I could not leave before I knew who had murdered me.

At last, the police came back. Thomas came with them. What is happening? They told Nana to sit down and then started to talk. I was standing right next to them but they did not notice.

“We could confirm that Brigit had poisoned her wine herself earlier that day. I'm so sorry Mrs. Hayden”, one of the police explained. I could not understand. Big tears were running down Nana’s face.

“Excuse me, I have to say, that I don't believe it was Brigit per se but rather that it was Helen”, Thomas said. Nana looked at him straight in his eyes and answered:

“I think so too.”

I still did not get it. How could my best friend had done something like that.

“I think”, Thomas started saying, “Brigit never knew Helen was not real. She could never admit that she had invented Helen herself.”

That is when I saw Helen standing beside me. She told me:

 “Do you get it now? We were two souls trapped in one body. I always knew but you didn't want to see. But now we are free. No I can be with you and you don't have to go away when I come out.”