The Woman Who Made Me Feel Strange Read online

  “What in the world is Zoleplax?”

  “Sleeping pills. You ate a whole bottle before you jumped from the fifth floor, remember?”

  Oh, that. But no, that was not what I remembered. Not at all. My memory was still of me falling off the roof. “So you’re saying I’ve gone crazy?”

  Dr Clark adjusted his glasses and smiled. Again. “We don’t use that word here, Miss Thompson. We just think you might benefit from some help. Everyone here just wants to help you get better. To fix you up when you hurt yourself.” His eyes darted to the bandage over my thigh and there was a ridiculous amount of sympathy on his face when he looked back at me.

  I stared back at him for a really long time afterward and struggled to accept what his look truly meant.

  Did I… really? But I had no recollection of doing anything as horrible as that to myself... Or did I?

  “You seem to be blocking out the most unpleasant of memories,” Dr Clark said. “Why?”

  How the hell was I supposed to know? The smell of his cologne was starting to give me a headache again and my body felt heavier than usual. The sense of control I remembered having while on the roof in my dream was certainly not with me at Wonderdrug.

  “That’s okay. That’s why you’re here, isn’t it? You just need a little help.” He extended his pill box towards my face and jiggled it lightly.

  Those cheery pink pills in the open compartment bounced around and looked very much like candy, even though I knew, from experience, that they weren’t sweet-tasting at all.

  “Medication can help you cope emotionally, Miss Thompson. You don’t need to tough it out all by yourself. We can help you. We are here just to help you, in fact.”

  I took one look at his outfit and believed him.

  Chapter 4

  May-June 2033

  At age 33, I looked almost exactly as I did at age 30. My skin was still flawless and wrinkle-free, my jaw still sharp. My hair had gotten a great deal thinner, for some reason, but because there were prickly coin-sized sections of new hair growing out of various parts of my scalp, I wasn’t all that worried about it.

  My body was the only part of me I worried about. Despite my religious intake of pink pills, I didn’t stop mutilating myself in my sleep. One morning, I woke and found sharp edges of bone sticking out of my right forearm like spears. The bones had been completely severed down the middle; my forearm broken into two. The week after that, my entire left arm turned black. It had been so banged up over the course of the night, not an inch of it was spared from bruises. Another time, I dug another thick clump of flesh right out of my right calf.

  Good thing I was already in a hospital. They had injections to take away the pain and bandages to save me from having to look at my grotesque wounds. Dr Clark added two baby blue pills to the little plastic cup of two pink pills that came on the tray with every meal. Painkillers, he said they were. And indeed, they did the job. I ended up looking like the victim of a bad accident—three limbs fully wrapped in cloth bandages, one arm in a cast—but didn’t feel one ounce of pain, thanks to his pills.

  Dr Clark visited me twice every weekday. After breakfast, he would come in with a nurse to take my blood pressure, temperature, weight and height, and sometimes some blood or pee as well. After lunch, he would come in alone for an hour of therapy, during which he would run through the usual gamut of questions—How are you feeling, Miss Thompson? How did you sleep? Do you feel like hurting yourself? Do you feel any pain or unusual sensations around your body?—before jumping into a topic centred around my past—Tell me about school? When did you first fall in love? What was your first job? I no longer remember exactly what I told him during those sessions—my brain seemed to be shrouded in some kind of fog most afternoons when I was there—but I remember keeping it simple, making it sound as if all I ever did with women was peck them on the lips and hold their hands. I didn’t mention Arden Villeneuve, of course. The first time we slept together, she made me swear never to tell another soul about us and I thought it right to honour my promise to her.

  Three times a day, like clockwork, hot meals, pink and blue pills, and clean drinking glasses would come out of the wall above the bar table on that attached, immovable drawer-like tray. That tray would go back into the wall sometime after so you could put your used plates and glasses on it when you wanted to get them cleared.

  The bed was also connected to the wall and some mechanism would remove it entirely from the ward the moment I opened the bathroom door in the morning and bring it back—fully made, with fresh sheets—the moment I opened the bathroom door after dinner. A fresh gown and fresh towels would always be on the bed in the evenings and I soon figured that leaving my used gown and towels on the bed in the morning was the way to get them out of the ward as well.

  I thought the entire room was ingeniously designed and phenomenally hassle-free but its design wasn’t what I loved most about it. The VRM entertainment system, which you could access by touching the built-in TV screen on the wall across the couch, was, hands down, what I loved the most. VRM contained over a billion movies, games, and music tracks—its loading screen always said—and came with a headset that allowed you to experience all its content in virtual reality. Virtual reality headsets were crazy expensive items I never could afford so I spent all my free time at Wonderdrug—late afternoons, evenings and whole weekends—with the VRM headset plastered over my eyes.

  I watched all of Arden Villeneuve’s movies multiple times, in a chronological fashion. I watched her grow from a cherubic toddler into a pretty kid, a charming lanky teenager into a worldly sex bomb, and then I did it all over again. And again. Many times.

  With the headset on, she always looked as if she were right in front of me. So close, I sometimes imagined myself smelling her perfume again. I always found myself trying to touch her virtual face and body, longing to be close to her the way we used to be all those years ago, and I always found myself solemnly wistful afterwards, knowing she wasn’t at all close to me any longer.

  I didn’t think I would ever be able to forget or even stop loving Arden Villeneuve. I really didn’t think that would be possible.

  Chapter 5

  ? June 2033

  “We need to talk about your uncle and aunt,” Dr Clark said during therapy one afternoon.

  I didn’t reply. I simply peeled the tip of one of my fingernails away from its nail bed and kept my eyes on the carpet.

  “Miss Thompson, talking about your past, however unpleasant, is the only way you’re ever going to get better. Why not just get it over with now?”

  Because thinking about my uncle always made me feel as if ants were going wild under my bandages and cast? Fidgeting wouldn’t stop the crawly sensation, no. Not thinking about him was the only way. I refused to say a word.

  “Alright. What if I gave you a special treat afterwards? Something you don’t normally get? Cigarettes, maybe? And a chance to leave your ward?”

  The cigarettes were of interest—God knows how much I had been craving the taste of nicotine in my lungs the whole time I had been there—but leaving the ward, not so much. “I just want the cigarettes. Super Menthols, and I want them permanently in the ward from now on.”

  “Deal. Now can we talk about what you were doing the night Uncle Tim died?”

  I sighed for it felt as if the number of ants scampering underneath my bandages had tripled. “I was fast asleep on the living room couch. Didn’t wake when he hit his head and fell. Didn’t wake till Aunt Mary got home from her shift and found him on the kitchen floor.”

  Dr Clark nodded and scribbled into his tablet as he always did. “Why hadn’t you gone to bed?”

  “The couch was my bed. Aunt Mary’s apartment had one bedroom only. None for me.”

  “I see. So, what happened to Uncle Tim?”

  I shrugged. “The police said he tripped and hit his head on the kitchen counter. He was very drunk apparently.”

 
“You believe that?”

  “It’s what the police said.”

  Dr Clark looked up at me. “But not what Aunt Mary thinks. She told the police you murdered her husband, didn’t she?”

  My heart skipped a beat. How would Dr Clark have known about that? Were medical records fused with police records now? “Well, that’s untrue. I swear.”

  Dr Clark nodded and looked like he believed me. “Aunt Mary also told the police you might have been responsible for the gas leak that killed your parents. She said you were dangerous, probably not your father’s daughter, and that you, I quote, ‘should be kept locked up’. Why would she say all those things about you?”

  Because the persecutory fat bitch hated me? Because her husband liked to ogle at my body way more than he did hers? She said it to get me out of her house and life for good, I bet. “I don’t know. But I was five when my parents died so I doubt I would have known how to start a gas leak then. And I have no idea why I looked as ethnic as I do but legally, I am my father’s daughter. I know of no other father.”

  “What were you doing the night your parents died then?”

  I shrugged again. “Lost all memories when I saw them dead. Shock and PTSD, the investigating psychiatrist said. Even now, I remember nothing before the day they died. No birthdays. No family dinners. No childhood. Nothing. It’s like I didn’t even exist before that day.”

  That made his eyebrows go up. “Seriously?”

  “Seriously.”

  There was only blackness and nothingness before my memory of the two purple dead bodies on the couch. I tried a million times and a million ways to see past the blackness but never once saw anything different.

  “Hmm. How about you and I work on unlocking those memories next? What do you say?”

  I said thank you.

  Chapter 6

  ? June 2033

  Dr Clark arrived for therapy the next afternoon with one of his nurses who had a basket of all sorts of items—a bowl of potato chips, a bowl of gummy worms, a bottle of whisky, some glasses, some napkins, an ashtray, a box of Super Menthols, a lighter and a box that contained a board game—in her hands and what looked like a picnic mat under her arm. He and she were both all smiles.

  “Ready for your treat?” he asked.

  “Sure.”

  The nurse with the basket went to the empty space right in the middle of my ward—where the bed would be at night—and lay the mat over the carpet. She put the items in the basket on the picnic mat as if setting up for a picnic—the bowls of snacks, glasses, whiskey bottle and cigarettes all neatly laid out around the sides and the board game right in the middle.

  “It comes with a surprise,” he said.

  “What sort?”

  Dr Clark gestured at me to wait then opened the door he always entered from. There was a nurse outside. All smiles like the other two. Only when that nurse stepped in did I realise there was another woman behind her, clinging onto her arm and hiding behind her back. A woman who wore a blue gown just like mine, with feet that were just as bare. She looked about the same age as me, had a mess of curly red hair that travelled past her waist and wore no make up.

  A fellow patient in the same bad state as me, I realised.

  Her eyes were brown like Arden Villeneuve’s but that was where the similarity ended. She had been staring at me as she entered but looked away and kept her face hidden behind the nurse in front of her the moment I stared back.

  “Miss Thompson, meet Miss Paul Rafferty. Not Paula, just Paul.” Dr Clark said. He sounded excited, for once.

  A male name? Was she transsexual? I checked out her body and decided not. She didn’t look like she had been born a man nor did she try to behave like one. She simply looked like a timid girl child who was scared of me and was trying her very best to keep out of my line of sight.

  “Why?” I asked Dr Clark.

  “Thought you both could benefit from some company, since neither of you get any visitors. A little socialising might be a welcome change.”

  No, it wasn’t welcome at all. Not for me at least. What I wanted most at that point was to be seen by as few people as was humanly possible. I wasn’t proud of my bandages or my lack of make up or where I was in life. I wasn’t proud of who I had become. I didn’t want to have to deal with the inevitable, loathsome second in which the redhead would glance down at my body and form a likely negative opinion about me. I had seen enough of that sort of reaction on the faces of the nurses who came in with Dr Clark on some mornings and even the nurses who came in on that day. They would always try to cover up their judgement with polite smiles but there would always be that flicker of a second during which I would catch sight of their honest opinion and just know it wasn’t favourable.

  Unfortunately, there was no escaping interaction with Paul at that point, was there? The introduction had already been made and mutual acknowledgement of each other’s existence was already in order. I straightened out, put on confidence, extended my hand to the redhead and braced myself for that loathsome second.

  To my surprise, the loathsome second never happened. The redhead kept her eyes on her toes, her head shrouded by the nurse’s torso and simply refused to look at me no matter how much the nurse she hid behind tried to persuade her to. Eventually, the nurses sat her down on the picnic mat and left her there, alone and exposed, but even then she refused to look in my direction. She hugged her knees and rocked herself and looked way more awkward than I felt.

  Dr Clark went up to her and crouched down so that their eyes were on the same level. “Paul, look! It’s Snakes and Ladders!” He spoke slowly and in the sort of high-pitched manner one would only ever use when speaking to a child under the age of four. “Your favourite! And we found someone to play it with you! Isn’t that great?”

  The redhead apparently didn’t think so. She pouted and pulled a ton of hair from the back of her head down towards the front so her face could no longer be seen.

  I felt much better about having to hang out with her after that. Knowing she wasn’t all that normal made me feel much better about myself. My facial muscles relaxed and my back sank into a more natural posture.

  “We’ll be back in two hours,” Dr Clark said to me.

  Without waiting for a reply, he left the room with the nurses.

  The lock within the door latched into place right away.

  Paul the woman emerged from behind her mop of hair only after I offered her a gummy worm. Since nobody ever served gummy worms with whisky, to my knowledge, I guessed the worms had been brought to the occasion specifically for her. And I was right.

  Paul’s eyes widened like an animal’s would at the sight of a treat and she snatched the worm out of my hand shortly after. She stuffed one end of the worm into her mouth and sucked at it noisily while playfully flicking the end that stuck out of her mouth in the way only a pre-school child would.

  I couldn’t help but wonder if she was intellectually slow and if that was also the reason she had no visitors. Had her parents given up on her because she was never going to be the perfect daughter? Or had they died, like mine had, because they were intellectually slow, as she was, and failed to thrive in the world?

  Paul offered no answers. She behaved as if I didn’t even exist.

  I made up my mind to be nothing but nice to her. We were, after all, in the same boat, down in the dumps, with nobody to depend on but ourselves. Paul was now, possibly, the only person in the whole world with whom I could properly relate to, although unfortunately, she was probably never going to ever feel the same way about me.

  “Would you like some whisky to go with your worm?” I asked on a whim. I knew it was probably a dumb idea to give a person like Paul alcohol, but then, I didn’t want her to feel left out. She did have a grown up body after all and deserved the same privileges, I thought.

  To answer my question, Paul shook her head till her face was shrouded by hair and swivelled around so that all I cou
ld see of her was her back.

  After that, I decided she might actually be smarter than I previously thought. “I didn’t know doctors could prescribe alcohol,” I said as I poured myself a glass of whisky anyway. “Did you?”

  Paul wouldn’t say. She simply grabbed a fistful of gummy worms without turning around and brought it all towards her mouth.

  Likewise, I downed the entire glass of whisky in one gulp. I felt the occasion called for it. Here I was in a mental hospital with no possessions, no lovers, no mission to speak of and the one person I could possibly be friends with wouldn’t even look at me. I was at rock bottom and knew the time to embrace and celebrate it was there and then.

  I poured myself another glass, drank more, then lit a cigarette and enjoyed many long, deep toxic breaths. By the time my stick and second glass were done, my limbs were warm and loose and I was feeling way more gregarious than usual.

  “What are you in for, really?” I heard myself say.

  Paul didn’t answer, as expected, but I didn’t even care.

  “I’m here because I have anxiety, depression, self-mutilating tendencies and memory problems,” I told her. “Multi-talented, don’t you think?” I poured myself another glass and drank almost all of it right away.

  I think I did spot Paul peek at me briefly but she looked away again the instant I met her eyes.

  “I know, Paul, I know I look weird now, but do you know I wasn’t always this weird? A long time ago, I was really hot. I was cool, daring, sexy, and I was definitely fun. Many, many, many women had crazy crushes on me. Because I was so fun.” I sighed heavily and emptied what was left of my glass down my throat.