The Gossamer Thread

CW: Physical violence, abuse, mental health

When Bill awoke that morning of mornings he knew nothing would ever be the same again. He could feel it in a part of him that lain dormant all his life. Its awakening both terrified and numbed him. He was covered in a cold sheen of sweat that made him feel unclean. Even the warming shower waters and bar of soap did nothing to address this. Worse still, he felt uncertain and lacked the confidence to face the day.

Having dressed, he forced down a piece of toast. Helping it on its way with some tap water. Leaving the house was a short lived release. The world outside felt wrong somehow. The way it touched his befouled skin appalled him. But he was here now and so he continued in the hope that everything would click into place again. After all, he’d done this thousands of times. Days and days that were unremarkable in their sameness. So many experiences deemed unworthy of recollection. His life pockmarked with half-decent memories that were fading. Always fading.

As he drove to work he muttered to himself about those grey and forgotten days. His words repeatedly tripped and fell as the rhythm of his ever so ordinary life eluded him. Hid behind a curtain in an untidy room in his mind. As he scrabbled through the mess he became further unhinged. In the car park outside his office he burst into tears. The engine of his car still running as though embarrassed by his behaviour and trying to drown out the sounds of his pathetic sobs.

Bill composed himself and in so doing attempted to stave off the dream he’d had the night before. Somehow he knew that the dream was a harbinger of this change and so much more. To welcome it would be to accept a fate that did not seem to be his own. To acknowledge it would be to shatter his sense of self and the life he had carefully constructed so that he could hide from the unpalatable truth of the darkness that dwelt within him.

He thought this was how everyone lived. He’d never had the courage to ask anyone how they felt inside. He stilled his curious tongue because he could see the madness in their eyes. Knew that they were all a step away from a violent chaos that would make a mockery of civilisation. Culture and intelligence where eggshells barely containing a burning lava of anger. The dream spoke to him of this and that was merely the tip of an iceberg that patiently lay waiting in the dark waters for him.

At work, he went through the painful motions. He knew the dance steps, but his feet betrayed him. At lunch he told his line manager that he was under the weather and was heading home. He did nothing of the sort. He needed an escape. Thought about going to a pub for a beer and decided against it. As he deliberated his what next he realised he’d parked beside a small woodland. Got out of his car and walked the muddy path in his work shoes. The mud splattering unheeded up his trouser legs. Here his footing was sure. Here his mind rollercoastered around the dream. Screaming nearer and nearer to the vivid scenes that had played out in his head the night before.

It was when he saw the couple through the trees that the dam burst. He caught a fleeting glimpse of them and knew. They may have been a married couple rekindling the romance in a marriage that was flatlining, but he knew better. They were betrayers. Come here to enact their betrayal like a dark secret ritual. Snatching the time during their lunch hour. Returning home that evening to play a part they’d long since ceased believing in.

Bill wanted to march over to them and stop their sordid affair. He wanted to do something right for a change. Have the courage of his convictions to stand up and say no. He was in his car before he understood the depth of his cowardice. Watched them furtively return to their respective cars. More angry at himself than them for witnessing their sins and becoming complicit in their deception.

The dream came to him then. There was no stopping it. The truth was, it had been there all along. Biding its time. Haunting him. There would be no denying it, as much as he’d tried. He drove home. He needed to be there now. There was nothing else for it. He stumbled into the kitchen table. Dropped the car keys on it and collapsed into a chair. Hands to his temples as though to hold his mind in. Prevent it from exploding outwards into a world he dreaded.

The dream began right here. He’d walked into the kitchen. The familiarity of the space was fractured by the jacket hanging off the very chair he was sitting on. His chair. He’d touched the fabric of the garment as though to assess whether it was real. As he did, the pieces of a puzzle he hadn’t known he was intent upon solving fell into place. Changes in Maggie’s behaviour. New clothes. Exercise classes. Her increasing use of her phone. So many little clues that now mounted up to create an obelisk of pain that was about to come crashing down upon him. Knocking him flat. Crushing his hopes and dreams forever.

He'd leant over and sniffed the jacket. The smell of him was not new. Bill had encountered it any number of times. Maggie wore it more and more often. He went to the kitchen window and saw his car parked just down the road. Wondered how he’d not spotted it before. Seeing the car seemed to spark more anger than the jacket. Perhaps it was the way it was hidden in plain sight. The driver having some care not to brazenly park on Bill’s driveway.

In any other dream, Bill would then walk through molasses. Moving inexorably towards the horror revelation of his wife’s infidelity. This did not happen. He’d felt a strange numbness as he walked carefully towards the stairs. Heard the sounds of their lovemaking as he stared up towards the next floor of the place that was until now, his home. Between him and the woman he’d loved was a mountain that he would never conquer.

Somehow, despite the debilitating nothingness that was consuming him from within and threatening to take all his energy from him, he made it to the top of the stairs. He walked into the spare bedroom and sat on the bed. Staring ahead and seeing the vast expanse of an empty life before him. Barely registered the figure of a man walking past the doorway and heading down the stairs. Did not know how much time elapsed from the sound of the front door closing to his regaining his feet and with a force of will making his way down the landing to the entrance of his bedroom. His marital bed. Not hers. She’d lost her right to it when she’d broken her vows to him.

The way Bill felt, this was all too real. The devastation this revelation was reeking was no fantasy. He was breaking apart and there would never be any fixing this. As he stood in the doorway and looked upon his naked wife he knew how the rest of the dream would pan out. There were no alternatives.

“Oh, you’re back…” she purred the words in a way Bill had never heard or experienced before. The invasion of her had forever changed the landscape. She was foreign to him now. And in the next moment she proved this to be the case. Grabbing at the duvet and covering her wanton nakedness, “Bill! What are you doing here?”

Those nonsensical words sealed her fate. This was Bill’s house. He slaved away each and every one of those nondescript days to pay for it. This was his castle. And here she was removing him from the one place in the world that was his. Well, he wouldn’t have that. He couldn’t let that stand. He would defend this ground and he would defend his honour. She wouldn’t erase him so readily. He would show her. Show her that he was a force to be reckoned with. Show her that she had underestimated him. Made of him a weak and inconsequential fiction when the fact of him stood for something real. Something important. Bill was important and he still had strength in his arm.

He used all the strength he had in both his arms to choke the shame from her body. He stilled her mouth and rendered her into silence. Never again would she question his very existence. When it was done he lay beside her and held her hand. Squeezed it as he remembered better days and recalled the love he had had for the woman she had once been. That was how the dream had ended. His honouring how she once was.

The whole dream played out again as Bill sat slumped at the kitchen table. His broken head held tightly in his hands. A dream that felt all too real. So real that he felt behind him for a jacket that was of course not there.

Or no longer there.

For an age, Bill sat where he was and did not dare look up towards the ceiling. Beyond that ceiling was a bed that he had dreamed of last night. In the dream, his wife, Maggie lay lifeless, staring up towards a ceiling she would never see again.

Bill cast his mind back along the day he had spent since he had dreamt that terrible dream. A dream made all the more terrible by how real it had felt. He shuddered at the out of kilter feelings he’d had ever since he’d awoken. The sense that he no longer belonged. He wanted to close his eyes and wish it all away, but he knew worse still lay beyond these four walls. That inside him a door had swung wide open and something dark and restless had emerged.

Whatever truth awaited him upstairs, Bill knew nothing would ever be the same again. And he smiled a smile that did not belong. Just as he no longer belonged.