If Only

I tapped oh so gently to begin with. Muffled voices sounded all around, a trickle of inspired laughter, a grunt of appreciation, strangers talking outside of my muffled world. I stopped tapping, I stopped moving all together, stayed silent and unnoticed as always. Now I could see shadows moving against pale coloured lights, looming shadows bearing down on me, grey hands reaching across, claws outstretched. I shuddered. A crack appeared.

They’d spy on me through the air con. At least that’s what I thought. Paranoia encroaching upon my every thought. Like they’re watching me now, forever staring, boring holes into my soul, never letting me be alone. I feel safe hiding inside myself. They’re like cheeky little mice, dying to get in, wanting to nibble away at that mouth-watering cheese, except they’re nibbling away at me.

I see you, watching me inside my glass room.

If only…

If only I’d been born inside another skin. It’s never enough to be simply intelligent or simply beautiful or simply goddamn anything. I always had to exceed expectation. Whether it was at work, in my personal life, the way I looked or even in the way I thought people saw me. Expectations that were realistic and expectations that were laughable. But I wasn’t laughing.

I don’t falter any longer as the needle slips into my arm, puncturing the same bruise the last needle had made and the needle before that… My eyes glaze over as the latex gloved hand pulls away and the usual trickle of warm blood snakes down the length of my sorry arm. An absurd acknowledgement that I’m still alive. Just.

I’d like to have been born in a different era. My Grandparents had everything, everything that I envied, everything that my parents never had. If only you could capture that spirit and bottle it. I loved hearing Grandma’s vivid stories about the hope she had held at the start of the 21st Century and my god did she have an enviable life. Stories I’d heard countless times, yet was never bored with. I could see the literal sparkle in her eyes when she talked about her life. Love, ambition and happiness fulfilled. She died an old and satisfied woman. I just want to die a young and selfish one.

I think I’m going to blame my downfall on the pressures placed on me at the end of the goddam century. Selfish I know, I guess I could blame myself, but what’s the point in that, all it would achieve is more misery and I don’t think I’d be able to handle that. For where I am now nothing and everything is my fault. I have no life to lead and so no sins to be forgiven. Every wrong I have done happened in the past, now I’m living by the second and not even daring to think what lies in the future. A future that spies on me and greedily awaits my mistakes.

Success breeds downfall, kills hope, frowns upon sanity. Or is that just me?

My inner monologue plaguing my every waking moment that drones like a faulty engine, spluttering ever onwards until it finally falls apart into crumbling rust. I mean, let me give you an example of what my life was like. My apartment was an empty shell of a home. Widescreen TV, cinema surround sound, all mod-cons, voice activated lighting, music. Rich materials, abstract art that I never understood and failed to appreciate, a fancy cooker that had barely been touched, empty colours soaking the walls and a million emails I never had the time, or inclination to reply to. I was the archetypal cliché of a modern, successful woman.

But despite an empty façade of a life I still had love and that was truly the icing on the cake, I would put up with anything for love. Anything for that intense warm feeling bubbling away at the pit of my stomach, the pair of us giggling like school-kids at the fair attempting to untangle candyfloss from each other, tickling, fighting, playing, teasing, laughing, loving; that was what it had been all about, pure happiness spread across my face.

Hurting, defending, crying, demanding, depending, hating, loving, suffocating.

If only I hadn’t had the unresolved desire to be the best. Allowing the pressures of work to spill throughout my personal life. Perhaps it was due to the nature of my work, designing clothes for the rich and influential that forced me to become so wrapped up in their selfishly tainted world. Maybe, just maybe if I was a stronger person inside I could have been happy? Who knows?

“I tried too hard; I was always wanting, always needing…” I tried to explain to them as they stuck probes into my arms and gave me those empty smiles as their heads nodded in unison.

“Whatever.” That’s what they were thinking, I could see it in their faces carelessly hidden behind absurd masks. What the hell was I? Some kind of creature they didn’t dare to touch? What the hell did they think they were going to catch? A broken soul? Oh no, that was all mine, they weren’t going to steal that. They might have got my dignity, my confidence but there was more to me than a cracked shell. I was still drowning beneath my guilty conscience. Why should they give a shit?

Artificial light fades into artificial night, a bluish glow permeating through my eyelids. Sleeping in the pure darkness of space and I could be anywhere, my dreams reaching out for lost times and a wasted life. What I wouldn’t give for the chance to live life again, to lap up the sweet smell of summer, to move through the hot crush on a dance floor, to be kissed by someone I loved, to feel that tingling sensation of complete happiness. I had all of that with Justin, then he made one fatal mistake. I’d do anything to have him back, tight in my arms. Memories are a constant torture I cannot escape from. I try to forget but the dull wall I stare at night after night merely numbs me towards a fitful sleep. I might as well be holed up inside one huge test-tube. Oh I forgot my mistake I already am.

I’d always wanted to go into space, the ultimate ‘adventure of a lifetime’, but not like this. I could afford to. I mean I ate at the most exquisite restaurants, wore my own designer clothes. Classy bitch wasn’t I? Saving for the ultimate thrill. Never saw it coming, strapped down in the loony bin in the sky. Room with a view? Don’t make me choke.

I’ve been given a code. That’s all I’m known by, a few numbers instead of my name. I guess it makes it easier for them to forget that I’m a living, breathing, thinking real person, instead of a slab of struggling meat. Who needs to know a name when you already know someone’s mind and the extent of their pain?

For decades there have been severe punishments for testing on animals. Quite right, what have they ever done to us? But testing new drugs on the human scum of the earth – well that’s a whole different matter. Never really pictured myself as scum…

“Hope is stronger than you will ever realise.” I had meant it when I had said that to Justin. As I watched him choking on his own blood, as he dropped to his knees on my chilly tiled floor. I swallowed my own tears, as I watched him struggle to barely breathe. He still looked so beautiful, even as he gasped his last pitifully undignified breath. I loved the bastard so much, had given him everything and he had treated me like a piece of dirt that could simply be washed away. How wrong could he have been?

I had rid myself of him, or should that be him of me…

Even now I still hope. Every repetitive day when I wake up clutching for reason and stale breath despite my miserable existence, despite everything, I still hope. I still have that minuscule feeling inside that something good may well one day emerge from all the madness I created for myself.

So this is where all the bad people go. The loony bin in the sky. It makes me smirk just thinking about it. Me! Ending up like this. I’d probably cry if I had any tears left to shed.

If only I’d behaved.

“You’re a naughty girl.” Justin had said to me as I clenched him between my legs and refused to let him go, stringing him along as I ran my finger nails up his smooth back. I still loved him despite everything that happened between us.

“And don’t you just love it!” I replied, teasing him by flicking my tongue across his neck. He grasped at my waist with his strong hands. I felt myself flinch despite myself. It’s absurd now to think little more than a month later I was sticking a kitchen knife into that pretty little neck of his.

It all but killed me to watch him kiss those rose smeared lips of hers. Killed him. Where were her bruises?

They don’t trust me, these so-called scientists. That’s why they shackled me to my bed. “You’re nothing more than sick, twisted bastards!” I screamed at them, in desperation, wrenching myself off the hard bed they were holding me down in. That was around the time that they started to sedate me.

Effected the experiments though, didn’t get true results from their human ‘guinea pig’ with all the shit they were pumping into my veins. No-one wanted to risk another ear nibbling however. I could quite get used to the crunch of human cartilage and the warmth of freshly exhumed blood. Remember that old film ‘Hannibal’? Hah! I can see where he’s coming from.

I used to be a vegetarian. Isn’t that ironic? I used to be a lot of things. Now I’m a mere lab creature, paying my debt to society. I used to have straight, blonde hair, until they shaved it all off. I was told it would fall out anyhow with the experiments, best to save me from that trauma. I used to have smooth, clear skin, hey, I lived by the cleanse, tone and moisturise rule. There are no mirrors. Anywhere. Another trauma they’re trying to save me from. Saving me from myself! It makes no difference, I can still feel the rash that spreads across my neck, the sores on my cheeks smart when they splash cold water in my face. Justin would just love to see me now,he wouldn’t recognise the hideous freak that lies dribbling onto the cold sheets that are my sad existence. He hurt me when I was beautiful, what difference is there now I’m broken and ugly? In my twisted mind he deserved everything he had coming to him.

Sentenced to life for the murder of my fiancé. Opted for the five year stretch in the Space Station Detention Laboratory. Out in a mere five years. If I survive. A risk worth taking I had figured. Now I’m not so sure. How many months has it been now? I tried to keep count, but the days and nights in space all blend in to one, wrapped in a razor blade coated quilt of never-ending pain and discomfort.

Don’t feel sorry for me – oh, I see you don’t. I deserve all of this, I understand that, I just don’t want to conform and be beaten down until I’m ground like a squashed shell. Helpless, that’s not me. Tainted, maybe.

I try to squirm away as the shadowy monster, that smothers my thoughts disturbs my prison. Liquid shoots from a needle, I feel coldness across my stomach, I try to close my eyes, but they’re already shut to the horrors of reality and are merely playing out a freakish kind of hell across my eyelids. Sweet pain as the needle slides into my arm. There are no tears left to force from my eyes, no frightened cry to expel from my cracked lips, no struggle left in my limbs, just furious thoughts embedded deep in my soul wrapped in a mound of guilt… My bony fingers weakly clutch at the invisible strings of hope.

Hah!

Nobody understood or were even aware of the aubergine coloured bruises I lived with before. I’d watch the way they’d turn from rich purple, to darkest black, then dirty yellow, to pathetic, faded brown. I’d not only lie to myself to keep sane, I’d lie to friends, because I loved him, because deep down somewhere in that bleeding heart of mine I believed he loved me. No one knew because I hid the hurt well, no-one knew because if I erased the pain from my mind, it never really happened. Jealousy is a strange emotion, I ignored the beatings; I was still a success on the outside, but another woman, a woman he couldn’t possibly love more, that I couldn’t ignore. It shouldn’t have turned out this way.

If only I was allowed to sleep now.