Denial

Her voice clings to my skin. Not melodious, and even raspier than usual, it actively drags me lower to the floor. I do not need to hear any more.

“You were great, really. You played fantastically. I enjoyed everything about tonight.” She says this and I know she is lying. Her voice grates its way through her big and solid, white teeth. Lies scratch through the cracks between, I am surprised there are no ridges left behind. I am getting too familiar with imagining finger nails scraping cement every time her vocal cords vibrate; I can even start to taste the blood, but it doesn’t phase me. After all, I am used to this.

“Why aren’t you saying anything? Do you not agree with me? Tell me what’s wrong this time. Sometimes I could just kill you for your indifference.” She says this and possibly she’s realized that I stopped caring about her phony compliments.

“Rachel, nothing is wrong. C’mon. Just stop and breathe and walk with me. Tonight was fine. I played a good gig; We ate a good meal.” My reassurance might have worked, but I doubt it. All the same, she stops talking. Thank you, god.

Life never used to be like this. I didn’t always have to shut her up to save my sanity. Sanity. What a strange concept. Could I even declare sanity in our first years together? Even so, it was a different form of mental instability. It was a mental instability of passion and fire and happiness. Bliss without worry. She always was a little “off,” but I didn’t realize that our lives would spiral so desperately out of control. I was suffering a brain lapse of idealism, surrealism, anything but the truth.

Even our first true date, a night out at what happened to be both of our favorite bars, Charlie’s. Yes, that was a fond memory; uneventful and yet ever so comfortably different from our current lack luster relationship. She wore that red shirt. That shirt that pulled around each button ever so slightly, to prove to you that she could eat what she ordered, but she could still take your breath away. Rachel was younger then, but no less mature. She spoke about ideas and politics and philosophy in ways that would make a college professor proud. She had a strange passion for dark things, an attribute that never really fit with her personality; I admired it. She had a way of manipulating words into a trance, until each one at precise pitch and intensity would circle and dance about my head and swim through my ears; back then, I thrived on the way I would drown in her words. The dark lighting of the bar restaurant made the random glimmers of gold in her hair complement the flecks in her eyes perfectly. I could not imagine not being next to her. I had just met her.

On that first night, about five years ago, her will power and determination were overpoweringly attractive. I was drawn to her like a sailor to a siren, her vivacious personality drug me in. We had met up at Charlie’s after a gig I had, and we talked there until there was no one left in the whole place. I was mesmerized. Looking back on it now, that might have been the only honest conversation we ever had.

As we now walk through our familiar city, I can see that she isn’t happy. She’s never happy. We walk closer to our apartment’s block, I see her nostrils flair under the pale yellow and foretelling street lamp beams. I just played for a great place and a great group of people; I do not need this psycho bitch to bring me down and just pick a fight the second we are behind our door and out of sight from the street walkers. We are finally out of the rotten, run down part of town that I so desperately love, with the street-people I’d more than likely be living with if it wasn’t for Rachel.

She used to love that I was her “hippy-dippy” musician. I loved that she knew everything; she taught me everything. We held hands. We went out all the time. She would go to every single one of my shows. Rachel consumed my every thought and wish. Her opinions mattered; her thoughts were gladly welcomed and usually heeded. When Rachel and I were together, we could do anything. We were an unstoppable team for almost two years, until I asked her to marry me. I can’t understand now why I had even asked her; I shouldn’t have been blinded by her beauty and brain. I missed her instability completely.

When I woke up that day, the air smelled differently. My usual stale cigarette aroma wasn’t as pungent, because all I could smell were swirls of eagerness, of the essence of what the day would bring. I was nervous, sure. But I knew, or thought I knew, in the deepest places of who I was that Rachel was the girl I was going to spend my life with.

I jumped out of my sheets and picked up the ring in the tiny box. My entire future fit in the palm of my hand. I turned and folded it over in my hands as I got dressed and ran out the door without breakfast. I kept the box in my pocket, but I didn’t let my hand leave it. I stopped to get her favorite flowers: calla lilies. I had my guitar in hand and my back pack filled with what I needed for her surprise picnic lunch.

I practically ran through the city to her office; she was already settled into her desk at the publishing firm.

As I came up on her building, my heartbeat was far from regular. I knew what people said about hearts skipping beats, but I had never experienced it first hand quite like on that morning. I went up to the twenty third floor; breathing carefully. In. Out. Whooosh. My heart was pounding, thumping in my ears. I’ve performed in front of huge audiences, but this. I had to calm myself down or I wouldn’t have been able to go through with it. But it wasn’t like me to give up. I marched off that elevator, with ring in hand and heart in throat. I walked over to her office and knocked on the door.

“Come in.” She said it absent-mindedly, like she wasn’t sure who was coming in, but she wasn’t busy to the point of bother.

“Hey. I wanted to surprise you with these flowers. I hope you like them.” Wow, I sounded cheesy and shy. Great.

“Aww. Thanks, you’re too sweet, you know that? I love you.” She sounded genuine. She sounded like she meant it. I thought she meant it.

“Can you take lunch?” When I said this, I knew she would say yes. I knew that we were going to eat that meal no matter what. The part that was supposed to happen after the meal is what made me cringe from nerves.

“Sure, I just have to..get..my..purse… Okay! Let’s go.” She had no idea. As she reached to grab her bag, I so desperately had to hold my tongue and focus most of my energy on not spontaneously vomiting.

We walked to the park; I was in pain trying to keep the walk brisk but casual. I quite clearly could not contain the nerves that were bouncing off my skin. When we got to the perfect site under a tree, I took all of the essentials out of my back pack. We had a blanket, champagne, cheese, fruit. Everything.

“Wow. Matt, this is incredible. What’s the occasion?” She said this in a sarcastic way, with her light hearted laugh with just a glimmer of craze in her eyes.

“Oh, I just wanted to give you something special. I hope you like it.” And I meant that. I flexed and relaxed the muscles in my tongue. I had never been this nervous. I knew she would say yes. She had to say yes. “So, wanna hear a song?”

She said, “Of course. I love what you do.” And I played her an original. Made especially for her. It was cheesy and lame. She loved it.

“That was amazing. Do you really feel that way, Matt?” She said this and I knew she didn’t understand what I was about to do. I ignored her question on purpose.

“Can I ask you something?” This was it. The moment. It all rested on that moment.

“Anything.” She had the biggest smile on her face. I was ready. I had to ignore the thumps in my ears and focus only on that one beautiful face that I would be with for the rest of my existence. And as I kneeled and reached into my pocket, her face contorted into a strange image of happiness that I never thought I would ever experience.

“Rachel Rose Gyles, will you marry me?”

Well, that was it. I had done it. The most irrevocable act there was, to ask for a woman’s hand in marriage. It entailed all of that for better or for worse garbage that didn’t really seem to apply any longer. She had said yes, and she had cried. Rachel melted in my arms and basically died of joy in her office. There was a lot of screaming on that day, a lot of squealing and crying and just happy. The rest of time before the wedding was kind of a blur. I grouped it all together in this wispy nostalgic cloud of times when I was told what to do regarding the “big day” that was the “beginning of forever.” I wasn’t afraid during that time; I let her pick everything out and decide flowers and food the way she wanted. I didn’t mind her taking over. I had done my part and then I just needed to show up on.

Our wedding day feels like so far away now. It was five years ago. That’s so little time, yet I have grown to practically loathe the woman that I share my bed with. I don’t want to sleep next to her. And as we are about to walk into the gate of our apartment building, Rachel seems tense. More aware of my hate than usual. I don’t know what to do anymore.

February 14, 2000. That was it. People came, we made promises for better or worse. People left, people drank, we went to Hawaii. It was all picturesque and ordinary. I never would have dreamed that me, the roamer, the musician would be married in the mundane, in the big and in the white. I didn’t really understand my feelings at the time, but I guess I kind of hated it. As a matter of fact, it went against everything that I’ve ever stood for. I’ll never be able to take it back.

We were in love. Our honeymoon consisted of the usual amounts of listless and feignly passionate sex. We went to the beach and we had lots of sex. Then we came home. When we arrived, there were roses and other Hawaiian plants in the room, but after that it was short of anything specifically romantic.

After we were married a few months, our love didn’t fade. We had routines and we were happy. But after awhile, I don’t know what happened specifically. Nothing monumentally changed. We were doing the same things we had always been doing. But now I think that that could have been the major problem all along. We did the same things we had always been doing. I was bored; she was crazy. I loved Rachel for her structure and rules and face and hands and attitude. But quite honestly, it was those very things that after only a year or two together, made me despise her. She needed everything her way all the fucking time.

She was too perfect. She made perfect eggs. Once, I had tried surprising her with breakfast, maybe rekindling some of our lost love or something like that. She yelled at me for hours because I made the scrambled eggs too runny and too spicy and too everything. But of course when she made eggs, they were fluffy and well seasoned and perfect. Because, well, Rachel never made mistakes. How was that supposed to make me feel? I made enough mistakes for all of our unborn children and Rachel put together. I felt subpar and undervalued. It wasn’t that she didn’t appreciate me, I didn’t think, but she was degrading. I just didn’t feel good enough, in a way.

After years of this mediocre life together, we have ended up here. Walking home from another dinner down in the city after work, a ways from our apartment. She’s talking and I’m not listening. She’s questioning my distance, and I’m trying to maintain it. Her voice just irks me in ways that are simply indescribable. She has this madness of needing to know every little thought inside my head, when quite honestly, it’s in my head for a reason.

We turn onto our street in silence and walk up into our building. Our apartment, 14B is on the second floor. We go up in the elevator; it’s painful. I don’t know what to do or say to fix this between us, but I needed to change it. To make us more aware of the fake love that has always been between us. The perfect barrier that has sheltered us from ever being completely and deeply in tune with the other. I know everything about Rachel except for the intrinsic little pieces of who she has been and will be. I don’t know what inner gifts she keeps hidden from me. I don’t know why she looks at me with such intense… obsession. She is an enigma. I don’t know what ultimate acts of the universe create a twang of sadness and pulls down at the corners of her mouth.

            As we move into the house, the look in her eyes turns wild. There is a sense of familiarity in those eyes- I’ve seen them so many times before and brushed it away. Maybe we can rekindle a love we never really experienced. She takes me by the hair and pulls me in. In the kitchen, I feel as though maybe we have a chance at happiness, a glimmer of hope. But as she reaches my hair and my lips barely graze hers, she moves her head and slams mine down onto the granite counter top.

I’m awake, but I can’t move. I don’t know exactly what has happened since I blacked out, but I’m pretty sure that my wife knocked me out. What? Is that a fucking joke?

I don’t see her, but I can’t turn my head. I’m in an awkward state of paralysis. My arm stings and I’m tied to a chair. I’m tied to a chair in my own apartment! The ropes around my wrists and ankles are slicing into my skin with little slivers. I can’t move but I can feel everything, from the hardness of the chair to the dead limpness in my muscles.

“Rachel?   Rachel?” She appears out of no where with that same look in her eyes. Like all these years of marriage was humped into solid heaping hatred, or even just plain insanity. I don’t understand what she’s going to do to me. I don’t know what is happening. I don’t know what to do. What can I do?

“Hi, honey. You haven’t been a very good husband lately.” She was right. I didn’t like to admit being wrong, but she is going, eh, gone completely crazy. Dangerous, even. I am panicked.

“Rachel, we’ve just been in a rough patch. It could be okay. Come on, untie me. This is ridiculous.” I am trying to be rational.

“No. You had plenty of time to fix things. And you didn’t. Now you can pay attention, and we can talk now. Maybe you’ll listen if I force you to listen. Maybe you’ll understand how hard it is to get someone to listen to you.” She won’t hurt me. She’s just frustrated. It’s going to be okay.

But as she moves closer, I can see one of our steak knives behind her back. Now I’m freaking the hell out. She’s nuts; the woman is completely crazy. I’m going to die right now in my own fucking apartment. My wife is crazy. My wife, I don’t even know who this woman is.

“Aww, honey. We’ve needed to have this conversation for a long time.” She was wild and rabid and scary. She is coming at me with this knife, and she knelt down at my lap. She took her knife and sliced the back of my right Achilles tendon.

Shit! Oh my god! What the fuck?! “RA…FUCKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKK…AHHHHHHHHHH?!” I was bleeding everywhere. I was in so much pain—I can’t even describe it. Was she messed up in the fucking head?

“Oh, now you’re going to talk to me. I’m making you talk to me. That’s not really fair, now is it?” I don’t understand. What have I done to her for all these years that has built up this much anger and this much hate that she’s hurting me?! I am the one dissatisfied in our relationship.

She sliced my other ankle.

 “Help!!!! Somebody, Help me!! Fire!!” I needed to do something because honestly, I could die in this chair. I was losing so much blood, and she was watching me die. She loved it.

“Don’t worry, baby. Everything will be okay. No one is going to hear you.” She has this quiet silken voice that was high and feverish. She dropped the knife and pet my head. She cried and cried and cried. She hugged me as I bled everywhere onto the floor.

“Honey, I didn’t want to hurt you like this.” Really? What the hell is going on?

“Rachel! What…fuck?”

“Baby, you’re going to love me. Do you understand?” Her voice was raging. She was crying. Tears streaking her make up. I didn’t understand why she was killing me, torturing me. I just don’t know what to do.

This relationship has consumed my life for the past five years and it was going to end in a state of chaos and bloodshed. I was never going to get closure with Rachel. I was being tortured to death, literally.

“Rachel… please… Call… an… ambu…lance.”

“No. I’m sorry.”