"Come here, darling. Let's watch one of your favourites," Cassie said from the living room.
He turned back into the kitchen. "Cassie? Could you come over here? I want to make sure I'm not… just, could you come here?"
"Not right now honey, I'm busy doing the dishes," she called out, washing a frying pan. "I'll come there once the food is done."
Peter looked back and forth once more before finally giving into the coaxing gestures of the Cassie sitting on the couch. She wrapped herself around him as she said, "I picked The Seven Year Itch. You love that movie, don't you?"
She placed her head snugly on his shoulder. He decided to quell his confusion, and enjoy the movie with his wife. His wife entered the living room from the kitchen with a full plate in her hands.
"Don't eat it quite yet, it's very hot," she warned him, setting it down onto the coffee table and sitting down next to him. She wrapped herself around him and placed her head snugly on his shoulder.
Peter was staring at the movie, although he was not focusing on it at all. There were two Cassies, one on each side of him, holding him tightly. He looked down at each of their smiling faces as they watched the movie. They both looked up at him at the same time.
"You ok?" they asked in unison.
"Yes," he blurted out, "yes, I'm fine." Too disillusioned to concentrate on what was actually happening, he began paying attention to the movie. Marilyn Monroe was at the center of the camera's gaze. Peter had always told Cassie that her resemblance to Marilyn Monroe was striking: especially her short curly black hair. If only it were blonde…
Suddenly the movie was put on pause: Marilyn's face was frozen and she was smiling seductively. Both Cassies stood up and faced him with a pleading expression, one on the left and one on the right.
“What do you want?” they demanded simultaneously.
“What do you want from me?” asked the Cassie on the right.
“What do you want me to be?” asked the Cassie on the left.
“I am who I am!”
“Do you want me to be sexy? Fresh? Different?”
“And I love you, isn’t that enough?”
“I’ll be whatever you want me to be.”
His head bounced back and forth between them as they continued their competition in capturing his attention.
“Am I not enough?” asked the Cassie on the right.
“Just say the word and I’ll change, shift, morph,” said the Cassie on the left.
“Why am I not enough?”
“Transform, become, unbecome, anything.” And as she said it, something began happening to her hair.
“I’ve given you all that I am.”
“I’ll be shapeless until you shape me.”
“I love you!”
“Mould me, carve me into your vision — I don’t mind, I really don’t.”
“You bastard! How is love not enough!”
“You decide, you get to decide who I am.”
“This blood rushing through my veins, it’s yours! Drain it out of me, you’ll see it’s all you!”
“I want you baby. Whatever you want from me, you decide.”
“I’m yours, but I can’t be something I’m not!”
“Let your lips do the forming,” said the Cassie on the left, and by that point, her hair had become completely blonde. He went up to blonde Cassie.
“No, don’t!” begged the other Cassie.
But it was too late. He kissed her; she kissed back, passionately — primitively.
“I’m nothing,” breathed out the other Cassie. With those final words, she vanished.
It was only the two of them. They moved to the couch and sat down as they began undressing each other, and never for a moment did their lips part. He formed her with his lips, and he felt changes as he undressed her: her breasts grew, she was slimmer, her skin was smooth. She straddled him, moving about in a delirium when the front door opened.
He turned around and watched as in walked Cassie, soaking wet from the night's rain. She was about to take off her coat when she stopped and froze. She stared for a few seconds that felt like hours, as her expression adjusted to the circumstances. As she witnessed Cassie still kissing his neck, her noise and movement never ceasing— as she processed all that was happening only two feet from where she was standing, she became suddenly defeated.
Tears welled up in her eyes as she said, “I can’t take much more of this.” Before he could say or do anything, she ran out the door and slammed it shut.
With the loud bang of the door shutting ringing in his ears, he slowly became aware of the fact that he was sitting on the couch alone, fully dressed; the lights were off, and so was the TV. He was still wet from the rain outside.
By this point, Peter was terrified — at what was happening, at his own actions. His mind wandered back to his heart, to that something in there covered by a shroud… The only thing he could think of was to run away, from all the uncertain madness of the entire night that had his head reeling. He ran out the door, barefoot, and began sprinting toward nowhere in particular. He barely noticed it in his wretched state of mind, but a couple passed by him as he was running. He stopped and turned around to look at them: he swore it was the same couple that walked out of the bar together. And the rain that was drenching him didn’t seem to even touch them. He felt sick to his stomach as he watched them enter his house. He began shaking his head in disbelief, and turned back around and kept running. Something was very wrong…
He feared his feet were leading him somewhere. His vision was hazy in the pouring rain, but he could make out a running figure in front of him. He didn’t need a better look to know who it was. And so he chased after her, calling out to her, but she neither responded nor turned around. Suddenly the figure turned into a thicket and disappeared into the woods. He followed her into the dark of the forest and screamed after her. Eventually he saw her outline, standing still, facing away from him. As he finally caught up with her, he touched her shoulder to get her attention, and she turned viciously, smacking his hand off of her.
“Why the hell did you have to chase after me?” she said through gritted teeth, “I needed time to be by myself, why do you always do this? Whenever I need you around, you’re nowhere to be found, but when I want to be left alone, you cling to me like some child.”
“I hate unresolved conflict, you know that.” The words came out of his mouth in a tone that in no way reflected his panic. He was in a movie, this was nothing more than a scene; everything felt staged, scripted, rehearsed — and he was playing his part.
“You only hate conflict when it involves your mistakes. You end up blaming me for the fact that you don’t know how to process guilt.”
"You know I would never hurt you intentionally." No matter how much he was trying to break away from what he was saying, he couldn't stop what was coming out.
"Yeah, well that's the root of the parasite, isn't it? Your Goddamned good intent."
“I just want this fight to be over, please!”
“Well it’s not that simple! You've done things I can't even say out loud — and when I asked you why, you revealed to me that after years of marriage, you don’t feel the way you used to about me. That I'm not enough for you. This isn’t something that just goes away!”
“I was trying to be honest, I want to fix this!”
“No you don’t, you just want to feel like it isn’t your fault. Well guess what, it is. And I don't want you to fix this, not that you ever could. Some things can't be fixed! You’re too romantic, you never understood what marriage is about, what it implies. It means being there, supporting and loving, through the good and the bad. Did you not understand what those vows meant? Of course you didn’t, you’re too naive. All I wanted from our relationship was to love and to be loved, but all you cared about was the feeling of being in love. All you ever wanted was the build-up, but I just wanted to settle down. You only wanted to find someone who would be what you wanted them to be. But I've always been me, I can't be anything else. And I think you knew that, but you just decided to ignore it until it blew up in your face. Well here we are, and what do you have to say for yourself? That you don’t feel the same anymore. And what have you done because of that? You've broken our vows! Where the fuck does that leave me, Peter?! I’ve given you my all, I’ve tried time and time again to reach out to you, but you never reciprocate, you never give anything back.”
“You want more than I can give…”
“No, you want more than I can give! The problem here is you never finish what you start. That’s the difference between us, I was always in it for the long haul, but you just wanted to live in the present. You’re such a coward, commitment isn’t something that’s meant to be feared! It’s something to be thankful for. But of course, you were never grateful to have me, you’ve always taken me for granted. You've been too busy keeping your eyes covered to notice me, right here in front of you! Well, one day when you finally uncover them, hoping I'll be standing in front of you waiting for you, you might be too late. I might not be there,” she said, and her stare was a void.
"Honey, don't say that. I love you!" he pleaded.
“It doesn’t help, you saying those same three words over and over and over, as if it was a resolution. It ought to be, love ought to be, but coming out of you — it means nothing. It doesn’t take back what you’ve done.”
“Wait a second,” Peter said, feeling dizzy, breaking away from the script. “We’ve had this conversation before.” He grabbed onto a tree, his vision blurring. “We’ve had this conversation before!” he cried out in panic. It felt like his stomach was being ripped apart, and something in his heart kept calling his name…. He felt like his mind was stuck in some sort of a loop, like a phonograph scratching the same moments again and again.
"Just know, I finish what I start," she said, except her voice was much too hollow and empty to be hers.
As he looked up at Cassie, she was nowhere to be found. Feeling a new surge of dread course through him, he vomited on the root of the tree, and began running again, screaming out Cassie’s name. He faintly remembered where he was, having been there before, and a feeling of uneasy foreboding drowned his thoughts as he vaguely recalled where he was going. Finally finding an opening out of the forest, he ran out into an open field where he saw Cassie, who walked up to him, a sweet smile of solace decorating her face.
“Why if it isn’t my paramour!” she said lovingly, “You found me, my little hideaway. A place of death that makes me feel most alive.”
As Peter looked around, he realized he was in a graveyard, surrounded by hundreds of graves.
Such hallowed ground, and such a dear reminder of our hallowed vows: till death do us part.” She smiled a bedazzling smile, lighting up his insides with a sweet and wonderful warmth. There she was. He had missed her.
“What are you doing here, Cassie?” he asked, feeling relieved that he was finally face to face with the Cassie that he knew, loved, and cherished — the rest was but a bad dream from which he had just awoken. This was real, this was her, this was finally now.
“I like to escape sometimes, to be alone. It gives me time to think. And the graveyard is so silent and respectful… it’s a place of completion. But I wasn't complete, and that’s what these gravestones remind me. You know, I’ve had so many dreams in my life: I wanted to be an actress when I was a child. When I was a teenager, all I wanted was to be a chemist. In college, I studied art and realized I wanted to be an artist. I painted every day, it was a way to pour out all the goodness that overwhelmed me — I was always overflowing. It was everything I wanted, it filled me with a tranquility and a purpose that was unparalleled by anything else.
“But then I met you… and you showed me that none of my dreams meant anything if you weren’t in them. And the more I got to know you, the more I realized they were nothing, they were so miniscule compared to you and your magnitude: you became my dream. And suddenly, nothing else mattered: it was all about you, you filled my entire periphery until I saw nothing but you. And I was yours, and in all that I could give I never overflowed again. Fulfilling our wants and needs, fulfilling our unity became my only priority, my only desire. To be your husband, to be the mother of your children… that’s all I’ve ever wanted, I just didn’t realize it until I met you. And so I dropped out for you, I gave up on a career; and everything I was, every waking moment of my day became dedicated to keeping us happy. And now that we’re finally married, I am complete. And I will take care of you with all my heart and soul, until death do us part. Those were my vows… and I’ll never forget them.”
Peter looked at Cassie with a strong and sturdy love in his eyes: he wanted this, exactly this — it was his dream as well. It was their dream, it began growing from seeds in the spring, and it was alive and well here in the summer. But what happened in the autumn? He couldn’t remember… or had he chosen to forget? But before he could think much more of it, Cassie took a hold of his hand and was dragging him along.
“Come on, follow me! I know the perfect spot for us.” The words burst out of her mouth joyously, as if every word was suffused with an eternal love, as if every word was a sacred gift to Peter’s ears, evidence of their intimacy that had made two beings into one.
They ran and ran, until they reached a small meadow off to the side, erupting with a variety of wildflowers. She lay down in the middle of it all, spreading open her own flower; her hands gestured him to join her, to climb onto her and make their unity explicit. He gently undresses her as he kissed her softly, delicately. She moaned in delight as he made love to her, tenderly. But as their unity grew, he realized that her touch, her movement, everything was completely unfamiliar to him. As she stroked his cheek with one hand and held onto the back of his neck with the other, as she moaned in pleasure, he began doubting that it was really Cassie. Cassie felt different, she acted differently… she was more rough, she was more primitive. She did what he wanted — no, no that’s not right. That wasn’t Cassie: this, this was Cassie, this was who she really was. She wasn’t what he wanted her to be. He wanted sex; she wanted to make love. Something was wrong here, but it wasn’t her: it was him.
She moaned loudly as she climaxed; he didn’t finish. He got up, and he faced away from her as he buttoned up his shirt. “You know, I wish we could try having sex dfferently,” he admitted.
“What? You want me to be sexy? Fresh? Different?” she said, except it wasn’t the same voice she had just a moment ago: all the love was gone. And as he turned around, so was she.
Peter’s mind began gnawing at him. Why did he say that? Why did it matter? She loved him, why was that not enough? He began walking around the graveyard, trying to make sense of everything. It was his fault, he was aware of that. He demanded too much from her, he wanted more from her than she could provide — unless she turned into another person. Is that what he wanted? No, it couldn’t be, he wasn’t that shallow. The love they shared pierced into their very hearts, the deepest parts of them, the very core of their beings. Something so physical, so primitive couldn’t have become a priority, couldn’t be considered more important than the union they had with their souls, and the daily joy that brought them. Stability couldn’t have been cast aside for something so impulsive — no, no, it wasn’t possible. It couldn’t be. He refused to believe it. Unless… what if something did happen, a change, a shift… not in her, but in him. What if he… but no. It didn’t matter. This would be solved in the morning, so he might as well just forget about it for now.
“How could you forget!” The accusation came out of nowhere and smacked him out of his thoughts and into the present. Cassie stood in front of him, and her eyes were filled with rage.
"Forget what?" he asked, but he already felt something within him agree with her, as if her words were his — as if he was asking this from himself.
Another Cassie appeared and with a snarl on her face she growled, "I'm going to make you remember."
There was no doubt at this point: these were his words. This was his anger. Cassie never behaved like this.
A third Cassie appeared with a frying pan dangling from her hand. She was smiling wickedly, the same smile he wore when—
A loud bang echoed in his ears; she had hit him on the head with the pan violently, mercilessly. He collapsed to the ground. He was barely conscious, but he felt the three Cassies dragging him somewhere. He tried to pull his head up, but his muscles refused to work. His mouth attempted to form the words of an apology, but everything that came out was incoherent.
Finally, they stopped and let go of him; his head was greeted by the soft grass, and for a moment he was Cassie in that meadow, he felt everything she felt. It was pure bliss, incomparable to anything: it was what sex was meant to feel like, something he never understood. It was supposed to feel loving — it wasn't about the physical, it was about two souls suffusing over and into each other. But all he had cared about was the primitive. And so he acted upon it, causing all this, all of these reactions. He was the source of this hurricane — no one else could be blamed for it.
He sat up and the three Cassies were glaring at him. A fourth appeared.
"You should have realized what you were doing to me, you should have done something!" she said.
A fifth appeared, saying, "But you kept going, you didn't stop, you knew what you were doing."
A sixth appeared, saying, "You were killing me."
More and more Cassies appeared, and they all said those same words, again and again. There was a constant stream of them, all gathering around him, all gathering around something they were trying to block from his view. He stood up and began pushing through them, and those same words kept echoing amongst them, kept getting louder and louder. Finally, he pushed enough of them out of his way to see what they were blocking.
In front of him was a gravestone marked Cassandra Amanda Farrell, loving and loyal wife. An involuntary cry of desperation sprang forth from Peter's lips as he fell to his knees, grabbing his hair in devastation.
“No, no, no, no, no, NO!!! NO, THIS ISN’T REAL!! This isn’t real, this isn’t real, it can’t be real. No, no, no, IT CAN’T!! IT CAN’T BE REAL!!”
“IT’S YOUR FAULT!” screamed out one of the Cassies savagely, and the others repeated what she said, the words traveling around him, attacking him from every angle.
"You ruined everything when you broke our vows!" another screamed.
"Sleeping with that blonde bitch!"
"How could you betray me like that?!”
But they were all his words, they were all his…
And suddenly it all came back to Peter: the blonde woman he saw with that man walking out of that bar, walking into his house… She had reminded him so much of Cassie, with her short curly hair: how they first met, their first time. And like a drunk idiot he had forgotten his wife would be home that night, and he slept with her on the couch. He remembered so distinctly the flash of blonde hair as she ran out of the house that night. The next morning, Cassie cried for the first time in front of him. He begged her to forgive him; she said she didn't think she could. And yet life went on: she didn't leave him, she loved him too much to let him go. But that wasn't the only time. It happened again. They would fight, Cassie would be heartbroken, but she wouldn't leave — she couldn't. He was her whole life, she dropped everything to become his perfect wife: leaving him would mean death.
And so it happened again and they would fight, and it would happen again. And again and again and again — until suddenly Cassie couldn't take it anymore. One night, after catching them in the act in the bedroom, she groaned out "How could you?" and ran to the bathroom, locking the door. She kept screaming in between sobs "I CAN NEVER FORGIVE YOU FOR THIS" — and yet, he didn't stop. He didn't want to stop. Blondie was whatever he wanted her to be. "You decide," she used to say, "you get to decide who I am." She didn't care either. About the screaming. She said, "Ignore it, just keep going." And so he did, until he finished. At this point the screaming and sobbing had died down. There was nothing but dead air between the bedroom and the bathroom — air thick with death. Wary of the silence, he got up and moved towards the bathroom.
It started with a knock. A mumbled out "Cassie? Are you ok?" Then another knock. Multiple knocks. "Cass? Can you answer me please?" The knocks turned into bangs, the whispers turned into shouts. "Cassie I'm sorry, please open the door, baby. It won't happen again, I promise you. I swear it this time." The door vibrated with the constant slam of his fist, again and again until his knuckles were bloody. "Cassie, open the fucking door!" He gave up with the banging and started attempting to kick the door down. It took five kicks for the hinges to finally given in, and at this point he was panicking.
And he had every reason to panic.
The blood. Oh God, the blood. That was all that was going through his mind. He couldn't even look at Cassie at first: all he saw was the blood sprayed on the walls — dripping, dripping, dripping. He dropped down to his knees in horror, and there she was, sprawled across the bathroom floor, her wrists running like faucets. All he could see was her, her, her: her blood in puddles by her delicate wrists, her short curly hair soaked in blood, her shallow breathing, her flickering eyes, her twitching feet. Except it wasn't her he was looking at — it was him. She used to tell him, "This blood rushing through my veins, it's yours. Drain it out of me, you'll see it's all you." And there she was, drained, but really it was him that was drained, it was him that was dying — and he couldn't even see that until it was too late.
He picked up her head and put it on his lap. "Cassie, baby, please! Stay with me!" Blondie came to the door and stared in shock at the murder scene. "Please," he cried at her, "call an ambulance!" She ran off down the stairs.
"I'm not…" breathed out Cassie, "I'm not your baby. I'm nothing." Tears fell down her temples and her fading eyes closed, her breathing stopped. He screamed and sobbed, just as she was only five minutes earlier. And in about five minutes, he quieted down, as he realized he was dead. He stared at the blood on the walls in a trance. Yes, dead. It was all there. The explosion — all the warning signs hiding in the blood cells. The collision course, never wavering, always certain on its destination. It was only a matter of time. Yes, he was dead — and yet, he was forced to live on.
By the time the ambulance arrived, blondie was long gone, and he never saw her again. She was nothing, he didn't even know her; she was a mirror, a mask that he could mould. He never even bothered to remember her name; he even called her Cassie most of the time and she didn’t mind. But Cassie, she was everything. Like a light brightly shining, her very own self and nothing else. A goddess. And yet, he made her believe she was nothing. It was the cruelest crime he had ever committed.
She was only a body when they rolled her into the ambulance, a white sheet stained with blood covering her. All light gone, vanished. It was never really his anyways. He just had the blessed opportunity to bask in it — whenever he cared enough to notice. And now it was gone, forever. He took her for granted, it's true. He had been covering his eyes from her insides, only focusing on her dull surface. And by the time he finally stopped covering his eyes, it was already too late — the light inside her was growing dimmer and dimmer as the blood pools grew larger and larger. She finished what she started, and he couldn't even see what started in her, what he had catalyzed the first time she caught him, sitting on those steps with her arms wrapped around her legs. And now she was a conflict left unresolved, forever — and it grated against his mind, letting every scream she had let out of her lips reverberate inside of him, forever.
Ever since then he had never gone outside during daylight… he couldn’t face it, knowing the light he was missing. Each day consisted of waking up in the evening, going to the bar, coming home, and losing himself inside his unsalvageable mind. Memories of her lingered on repeat; all the different times and places he shared with her were haunted by a nostalgia with teeth, looped endlessly to remind him that it was his fault. And it was. He had broken their vows, he had broken their relationship, their marriage, everything they had… He had broken her.
As he crumpled up in front of her grave, sobbing uncontrollably, he finally remembered what he was trying so desperately to forget. He deserved remembering, he deserved the suffering, the self-hatred, the torturous revelations. He deserved realizing that he could have stopped it if only he had noticed her. Well, now there was no way not to notice her. A hundred memories of Cassie surrounded him, every one of them screaming at him over and over and over again: “IT’S YOUR FAULT! IT’S YOUR FAULT! IT’S YOUR FAULT!”
Read part 1 here!
