Imaginary Friends - 16: Hole in the Head (part 1/3)

Hole in the Head

(Part I: What You Calling For?)

Straightaway something felt wrong. Sara would never knock, not in her own house.

Knock, knock! Again at the back door, this time louder and more persistent.

I turned away from the stairs, darted across to the small mahogany hall table and slid open the little drawer, wincing at every sound it made. From this I withdrew a letter opener, grateful for Sara’s interest in the démodée. Little more than a second passed before the same terrifying thought struck me and Mercy.

‘Could it be...’ she whispered. The sentence didn’t need to be finished.

I wanted so much to tell her no, to reassure her, but all I had was, ‘It’s entirely possible...’ This caused Mercy to let out a little ‘oh’ of realisation. I hated being right sometimes.

With shaking hands I clutched the letter opener, holding myself rigid despite knowing my best chance was to get moving. My stomach felt hollowed out, empty, but at the same time stuffed full. That nagging butterfly feeling which I had worked so hard to put behind me was back. I scanned about me for possible hiding places (old habits), only managing to move my head around.

It looked like everything that I’d tried to forget was about to be refreshed in my memory. The reasoning behind the painful reminder boiled down to little more than the satisfaction that could be gained from it.

Chillingly, that was the moment that the back door creaked. How long did we have? My distress gave Mercy leave to take action.

‘Something has to be done! I’m gonna do it if you won’t’, she said, holding my hands out in front of me to show that she’d wrested control. ‘If it is him, I’d rather confront Doc than let him find us. I’m not afraid’, she maintained, slipping the letter opener into her boot.

‘So that’s it – you’re just going to walk right in?’ I asked. Mercy’s gutsiness was admirable, but I worried that she had more guts than sense.

‘Better to burn out than fade away’, replied Mercy. ‘Let me try for once. He hasn’t met me… he hasn’t seen anything yet.’

In this inert form there was little point in arguing with her any further.

Mercy marched toward the kitchen, haughtily swinging her hips as she walked. She said nothing. Only the minute stumble in her step, the slight rise in her heart rate and the hitch in her breathing betrayed what her pride had been masking as she flattened herself against the wall.

Peeking gingerly round the doorframe, all was confirmed. We didn’t need to look anymore, didn’t need to see the pair of shoes again to recall their squeaking on linoleum, or the misleadingly gentle voice of their owner.

“There you are, madam”, the doctor called. I could imagine him pointing right at us, like it was some kind of hide-and-seek game. “Come on out. Come home…”

The stupid, childish name burned. Madam is something you call a difficult little girl if she decides to have a paddy. I should have long outgrown it.

Mercy leaned sideways into view and addressed him with her best quizzical look. “Sorry, were you talking to me?” she asked cynically, “because I have a bloody first name that everybody else uses. You ought to say your prayers, my dear doctor – I’m the other Miss Watts, Mercy, but I don’t do forgive and forget very well.”

“You’re unreal...” He stared at her blankly for a second, looking equally close to both laughing at and striking her.

“Aww, did I steal your thunder?” Mercy asked, with a pout that was perceptibly drenched in derision.

“Don’t flatter yourself –” Doc apparently loathed the thought of being beaten by her. “My dear, I’ll not insult your intelligence. You know what you’ve done and why I’m here. Now must we make a big scene out of it?”

“Oh, I’ll give you a scene”, she interrupted. “Why can’t you just leave us alone?”

“Hmm… you just admitted to something I didn’t even ask about.” Aiden counted a point on his fingers. “Furthermore”, he continued, “something that does no favours for your questionable sanity.” He counted himself another point.

Keeping score, huh?

Mercy snorted. “What kind of a sane person treats anyone as infernally as you treat Layla?” she retorted. “You fling insults and torture around like they’re nothing, until she’s cracking at the seams. Most times, you make her cry when you come near her, but you wouldn’t know that because she’s been forced all her life to keep her feelings to herself! She cries no less, simply because no one hears her but me.” Mercy paused like she was going to stop, but she’d decided she would make the most of Aiden’s attention.

She wasn’t done yet… she had been lying low far too long, planning this.

“If you had any sense of remorse, you’d have asked yourself why Layla left in the first place! It was not so you could waltz in and try to – to – seduce in her into going back!” Fury radiated from every word out of her mouth. “I suppose there’s just no pleasing some people”, she finished dryly, folding her arms.

Both had more to say, but the conversation felt over. Finality hung in the air, and the outcome seemed almost inevitable. I hoped for both our sakes it wasn’t.

During the sharing of her thoughts on Doc’s treatment of me, Mercy had pulled herself up straight, trying to be as in his face as possible. Now he was enacting counter-moves, as one would in any attack.

As Aiden stole into her space, Mercy took compensating steps back toward the wall, until she bumped it with a second nauseating wave of finality. This was when the deep-seated urge to push this man away, to keep him at arm’s length where I could see his hands, flooded in. Being unable to act on it was almost painful for me. I had grown to embrace the concept that if he was too close, it wasn’t really a matter of me letting him in.

Before either of us knew it, Mercy was entrapped by his hands resting on the wall, just shy of her shoulders, putting her in a most definite state of discomfort.

He smiled. “Don’t fear, I’ll return you to your place. Or have you forgotten?”

My place. That place. Maybe it was because the sound of my breath catching at the notion and its connotations (what does it matter if I wasn’t ‘breathing’ as such?) was so clear, but Mercy echoed it exactly. At this point Aiden was staring directly into her eyes, so intently that I could almost believe he was looking right at me through them.

“Go to hell!” Mercy yelled, with a sudden new surge of ferocious vehemence.

With startling conviction, she struck out with the letter opener – strange – when had she pulled that out? I could only guess that she’d barely thought about the action herself.

Nimbly, Aiden sidestepped the blow, leaving a gap and an opportunity for us.

‘RUN!’ I screamed, grateful when Mercy listened and sprinted from the wall. Her instincts were the same as mine would’ve been.

In the midst of her flight, she had to let her weapon clatter to the ground, her arm ruthlessly twisted from behind. There was virtually no time between registering that and the next pain.

Mercy’s small cry of surprise alerted me as well as if I’d felt the sting responsible myself. I knew that cry. As Mercy whirled her head round, I caught sight of the syringe in Aiden’s hand.

‘Correct, he stuck me, wherever the hell he got that syringe from. Well done.’ Mercy’s tone was sardonic.

Everything blurred out of focus for a moment, like being underwater and looking up at the surface. All I was aware of was the motion of lurching forward. I could well imagine the dizziness Mercy must have been feeling by now.

Her attention shifted back to the door as she staggered in its general direction. The anaesthetic’s work was quick. Clearly, it was too little, too late. I knew it was over as she dropped like a stone to her knees. Mercy was doubled over, the effort of supporting herself too great, but Aiden slid his arm in so she was bent over it, to prevent her from hitting the floor face-first. She looked up at him with something like disappointment. And that was the last thing we knew.

Lights out…