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08 May 2008

59. Kidman’s Gift – Part Six

I sneaked out of the bed and away from him. After all, who was he? What did I know of him? He was a stranger, lying large and heavy and heaving with unknown life, right there beside me, and I had to get away from him.

My mouth was horribly dry and distasteful, my stomach queasy, and my head felt bruised inside. How much exactly did I drink? I had absolutely no idea!

But that was not the question that I really needed an answer to. That was not why I had to get out of bed. Yes, I needed to get away from this ‘James’ person, but I also had something else to do. I threw a dressing gown on and a pair of slippers and went out of my suite of rooms and into the main hallway of Mordan House. I looked everywhere, it seemed. Everywhere logical, at least. No sign. Then I glanced out of a window to the front of the house. There she was: close to the trees on the other side of the driveway. Kidman.

I walked over to her, my arms folded, not indignantly but self-consciously, only just holding together the great fragility I felt inside. Soon, I was standing behind her and she stayed with her back to me.

“How could you do that? Why did I let you do that? That was my moment. My moment to be me. And it became your moment. It shouldn’t have been your moment. How could you do it to me.”

I said the words in a slow and measured manner. The emotion in my voice was restrained. The words were conceived and executed so as to get an answer, not a response.

But Kidman responded and answered in a way I had not anticipated. She spun round so quick that I found myself stepping back. Her voice had that sing-song quality that it took on from time to time, jovial, but laced with sparks that could ignite at any moment. In her eyes, something demonic smouldered.

“Well, what exactly could I do? When I entered the room, there it was, extended like a pirate’s plank – he wanted action, and action was what he needed from you. But you weren’t exactly going to give it to him, Steph, were you? No man wants to be screwed as if he’s in a Walt Doesn’t film …"

“Doesn’t? Oh, yes. Disney.” Disney. This threw me. She’d mentioned this to me when she first appeared. As a homage to the Scots using ‘disnae’ to say ‘doesn’t’, she would refer to Walt Disney as Walt Doesn’t. It put me on the back-foot though, and I felt my mind was racing to catch-up with what she was saying.

“… and did I feel like a hungry shark as I circled below that plank waiting for food! Here’s what we did in bed, Steph. Listen, you’ll like this. I started off by giving him a minky, but it went a bit wrong and he ended up with sneek all over his polty. Should have used the Hepelpfaft technique! Then we did the Auntie’s Hoover. Oh, oddly he likes a bit of General Lee on his face – never sure of that in a man! Also – now, this will interest you – he liked giving my schubin a right good dose of milp by using his linny-loo on the bossa-mobleys! You might want to remember that, but keep your bossa-mobleys pretty tight or the wenf goes everywhere! Jeez, show me a woman who doesn’t despise getting a  face full of wenf! Then we finished up doing the Poor Man’s Tractor! One of my personal favourites! You should thank me for it. I gave him a good time.”

To my mind, she just didn’t seem to stop. Endless descriptions of her sexual exploits with my man. I felt as if I was somewhere, but I wasn’t sure where. Birds flew overhead and the trees swayed behind Kidman, and I wasn’t sure where they ended and I began.

“… Oh, of course, you do understand that he’ll never date you, don’t you.”

I looked at her quizzically. I didn’t understand.

“Oh, Steph! You had sex with him straight away! Okay you were drunk, but he’ll not want anything to do with you. He shouldn’t have had sex with you, really. Not in your condition. But I don’t see you complaining. But as a strategy to win a man over, it’s about as appealing as a face full of wenf!”

She was right. It was all ridiculous. What had I done? How was any of this a foundation for a relationship? And I felt love for him too. Actual love.  But what would he feel for me now? Actual contempt and disgust.

I said it again, this time though I wanted a reaction: “How could you do this to me?”

Yes, I felt it was all Kidman’s fault. All I could feel was my own position. My own shame and my own uncertainty, and her role in it all. I looked at her. I know my face was pathetic. Full of self-pity. Full of empty scratching, clawing for help from someone, anyone. No, not anyone. Clawing for help from Kidman. As, it seemed, I had been doing for so long. So long.

But Kidman’s face was different. Physically, she loomed larger and her face was piercing: her eyes, her nose, her eyebrows, they seemed to be leaning towards me with sharpness and a sense of intent.

“How could I do it to you?” she asked.

There was something she was intent on saying. I could feel it rising to the surface. What was it? Whatever it was, it was coming. And I think it had always been there. These words, just under the surface of her. What were they? I could vaguely remember something. Something about Kidman. What was it? What were the words? What did she want to know? A bird swooped by and a branch dived down in the wind. Which was me? The bird? The branch? This empty thing standing here before the looming presence of Kidman?

Then she asked it: “How could you stand outside my house everyday for months?”

House? House? Yes, there had been a house. Sometime. Somewhere. I seemed to remember a house. Whose house was it?

"How could you stand there, day after day? How could you follow my car? How could you follow every step I made? How could you send those letters? How could you send those emails? How could you terrify me? How could you terrify my family? Even when we travelled to another country, you would still be there! How could you be so crazy? How could you let yourself get so damned crazy?”

Yes, I was remembering some of this. I could see me standing outside of a house. Was that Kidman’s house? And flights. I remembered those. And I think I remembered the driving too.

“How could you make my life a misery? Why did I have to get lawyers involved? Why did I have to get a restraining order? Why did I have to stand up in court and tell them how you scared me? Why did you scare me? Why would you do that?”

The answer came before I’d even thought if what I was saying was true. “I was sick. I was unhappy. I thought you could help. I got help eventually. From a doctor. I’m much better now. Much better. All of that is … not even a memory, quite, now.”

Yes, my words were all true. But the truth came from some deep place inside that I wasn’t aware of. Memories were speaking without me being able to quite see them.

“Yes,” I said quietly. “I’m much better now.”

And I found myself starting to walk away, in the direction of the Clansman, still hugging my sides, my face looking at the ground, my mind making great turns but as if turning on a pinhead. The last thing I saw though was Kidman’s face, the anger and venom in it, the indignation, the horror that she felt towards me. I could walk away, but that wasn’t the same as getting away.

“Well, good for you! Good for you! Am I better? Will I ever be better? How do I recover from being stalked by someone like you? Yes, Stephanie Fey, stalked! You stalked someone who doesn’t exist! It was just a flattened image of a person – just an illusion – and you followed me and haunted me and demanded that I be what I can never be, what I don’t want to be! An idea of a person! I’m not responsible for that idea! It’s just bits of a person joined together. Because I sleep under a quilt, does that make me a quilt? Am I not still a complex, multi-faceted human being? The world doesn’t want me to be real! People can barely handle reality within the people they know and love! They don’t want it from their stars! And then you pursue me demanding that I be what you’ve created! Because you, in your sickness, need me to be it! If you want an ideal, Stephanie Fey, you be it! Accept responsibility for your own dreams and your own inadequacies! And leave me and my family alone! Leave my life alone! Accept you don’t know it, you’ll never know it, and you’ll never be a part of it! Because it only exists for me! Do you hear me, you sick, untitled bitch? Do you? Get your own life! Get your own name!”

Did I hear her? I certainly heard something. It was a car. James’s car. And it was leaving. Kidman was right. I stopped to watch him leave and then I turned away to continue walking, trying to get away from Kidman. Or perhaps from myself. Who knows!

“I’m asking if you hear me? When will people like you ever hear?”

I heard and I saw. Yes, there had been a house and me standing outside of it. That was after Philip. I wasn’t quite myself then. I wasn’t right. I knew I wasn’t right. I needed a friend. I needed someone strong to help me through it. Someone who had been through so much and come out the other side. Someone who was like a goddess. Not me. I couldn’t be that for myself. But Kidman, I thought, could be it for me. Yes, there had been a house, and a car, and journeys overseas, letters, emails, a court appearance and a restraint order. No, I hadn’t quite been myself. Had I really done all of that? Did I really plague her like that? Was that really me?

I knew what was behind me. Kidman, like some furious banshee. Fiery hair blowing in the wind and her dress billowing around her. Hair like snakes and eyes like dark pits. Breasts pushed forward, indomitable and untouchable. Face set like something permanently carved in marble and protected by curators. An idea pursuing me. An idea that didn’t exist. A sprite. A nymph, a brownie. A delusion. A myth, most certainly. But one of my own design. Kidman’s haunting of me was just my own haunting of myself. Huh! Clever line! Clever notion! But it didn’t make it go away!

“Stop.”

Kidman again. But her voice was suddenly different. Not hollering and filled with frustration and rage. So I did stop. And I looked round at her. She was calm now. Still billowing, but the face was softer. I yearned for it, even as I knew it was just a mixture of a basic human template with make-up and graphics and marketing and technical wizardry and popular mythology, giving it that power and allure. Oh,  and money-spinning entrepreneurialism, of course. Huh! Mustn’t forget that!

She said: “Just remember this. When you finally come to face your demons – and maybe you will now – you don’t just do it inside, in a nebulous, vague way: one part of you questioning another part of you, like bits of cloud trying to interrogate and influence other bits of cloud.  You do it with everything that you are. Changing yourself doesn’t just happen on the inside - it’s a real, physical act! Not ethereal. Not just some inner exercise carried out in the darkness of your own mind and emotions. Real! It takes place all around you, and with everything that you are!”

This was to be the last glimpse. I felt sure of that. The last glimpse of Kidman. And it was of her giving a little kindness. Some wisdom. Advice. Like a goddess. You know goddesses, those things that don’t exist but that we all crave for! And I turned away from the beautiful concept who was like a goddess but who wasn’t really a goddess at all.

“Oh, Steph! Sorry, one last thing!” I turned back and looked once more at that face and that body of elegance and poise. For a second, there was that mischievous quality about her that I had come to know here at Mordan House.“I forgot to say that you’re mother asked me to say ‘hello’!” And she laughed, if not cackled, as she turned away. For my part, my face fell, my scowl returned and I looked after her suspiciously - in fact, long after the sound of her laughter had disappeared.

In the distance I could see Mordan House. Just me and it now – that was all there was. Yet it was so totally me, this house. Rooted to the earth. Stuck there. Empty of all ambition other than to feel differently about myself and my life. And these feelings were chilled by cold winds that found so many ways of getting inside. And all taking place within a home that had never ever been a home. And haunted by a dead presence that was intent on dragging the last embers of my life into extinguishing space. Yes, it had been a long time since I’d thought of killing myself. But, I suppose, deep inside, it had never really gone away. It had been hovering above me all the time.

And that was Kidman’s gift to me. I knew now that she wasn’t anything that concurred with my mental image of her. And, for the first time since my life had started to go horribly wrong, I could see my life – including all the things I’d tried to hide. It ached. Every bit of it. It was horrible! What a horrible life! It was so horrible I couldn’t even arouse any tears for it! And it was all so lonely! Especially without Kidman in it! How would I survive without the image of her? All I could do was fly overhead beating my wings, and rustle my leaves as another cold breeze moved me, and wonder who I am and where the hell I was.

Want to read more? Read the whole story by clicking on the first blog called Prelude and start clicking forwards using the tabs above the title.

21:10 Posted in Part Two: Getting Some Answers | Permalink | Comments (2) | Email this | Tags: haunted house, ghost story, horror story, astronaut, space, nicole kidman, journal

Comments

what? no white nun's booty drill? i'm stunned! amazed! or, as we henga girls used to say in Latin class: i'm amo, amas, amazed!

henga-hoo to you all!

susan_henga_Lipdot31

Posted by: susan_henga_Lipdot31 | 10 June 2008

i too am amo, amas, amazed! she got sneek all over his polty! poor technique, Kidman, poor technique!

henga-hoo-hoo-hoo! to you-you-you! all!

Your very own Mama Minky Heng

Posted by: mama_minky_heng | 10 June 2008