Archive 501
Vivian Galván García
Blythe
By Gemma CampbellShe hadn’t thought of much for the last while. Thinking had become a chore that was too complex, too open, in fact she was afraid that if she started thinking, she might never stop. She would spiral into a cavernous void of thoughts and memories that she simply did not want to visit. She only engaged in activities that were predictable and reliable. Preferring things with beginnings, middles, and ends that weren’t really ends, as they’d always need to be done again. Things like laundry, dishes, and showering. Things that her mother had loved (although “loved” may be too strong of a word) things that her mother had meticulously controlled throughout her life until the day she died.
Mornings were soft, they smelled like clean laundry and Springtime when she opened her bedroom window. The way she washed her face was thorough so as not to leave a single sud unlathered. Once her moisturising SPF had settled in, she would take to the kitchen for half a grapefruit with a teaspoon of sugar. She always used the same teaspoon that was previously dipped in sugar, to stir her mug of coffee, believing this would sweeten the bitterness in a frugal sense. Slow sips while watching the clouds outside filled 20 minutes of her time.
After coffee, she would unload her laundry from the drier to be folded and put away, put away inside a tall wooden dresser wearing duck-egg blue paint. The paint her mother had bought when she decided the walls in the vestibule needed refreshing. With the final pair of culottes neatly stacked inside the bottom drawer and pushed away, she felt something inside her chest, or maybe in her stomach. That feeling made her think for just a moment, that instead of using it to customise a dresser, the leftover paint should have been saved and used again for the walls in the vestibule, as now years have passed and they were looking rather faded from the sunlight coming in through the glass pane door the last time she had paid them any attention.
Mornings always turned to afternoons, which for some reason felt a little heavier in her head, like a caffeine crash that couldn't be sufficed with another hit. Her chores were done and so, it seemed, was the tranquillity of the sky. Perhaps the rain would wash away the blue of the dresser and stain the beige carpet beneath, leaving only a reminiscent tint of her mother’s last idea.
At this, she at once rushes up the stairs, and shuts her bedroom window before the rain begins to pelt inside and dampen the furniture. She takes a seat on the foot of her single bed, sighs heavily and stares at the steady pattering on the glass. Trickling and merging into streams. She thinks again of her regret, how she could have been more provident, in more ways than her painting of the dresser. Had she considered the rain, she never would have left the window open in the first place.
Her mother had always insisted on opening the windows in the morning to let out “the stink of the night.” Though she wasn't sure exactly what her mother meant by this, as she didn't wake up particularly smelly (thanks to always showering and laundering her clothes) she complied. Her mother's wishes held sway; challenging her was never wise. This habit wasn't the only one she continued long after her mother's passing. Whether it was out of respect or simply ingrained behaviour from her mother's conditioning, she never pondered much.
When she was a child, she hated the smell of the lemon disinfectant wipes her mother had hidden in every room in the house to quickly wipe up any spills or dirt. The thing was, that the packet always said “lemon-scented”, but the scent was more of a treacle-bleach blend that sunk into the pores of any surface they were used on. It put her off citrus fruits for the longest time, not that she was allowed to stop eating them, she eventually became blind to the smell of the wipes and the taste of fruit. Eating lemons, oranges, and grapefruit were just as routine as wiping their juice spurts off the kitchen counter.
While weather was inevitable, and indeed the most predictable element in nature, it was the one thing that she hadn’t, or couldn’t plan for. This unsettled her, made her roll her eyes at TV weathermen when they gave their predictions, they were never quite right.
She used to take a stroll on sunny afternoons, down to the pond to watch the ducks glide across the water and dunk their heads underneath when people would throw bits of bread. She didn’t like to feed the ducks bread, as she had heard that it would swell up inside their little necks and make them choke. She knew what it was like to feel a lump inside your throat so big you couldn’t breathe, she felt it every time the rain would come and spoil her chances of going outside.
It was only on sunny afternoons that her mother would read her book in the garden and fall asleep under the sun. Those afternoons she was free to escape, free to wander. But as her mother got sicker, she was needed more inside the house, to keep up with the cleaning that her poor sick mother just couldn’t do any more, but that would eat away at her mind until it was done. And so, her days became not only guided by routine but by being entirely indoors.
There came a day after her mother’s passing where she had a thought, a thought of going outside again, going down to the duck pond to watch the people throwing crusts into the water, but she quickly packed the thought away remembering that lump stuck inside her throat. She wouldn’t step a foot outside the door from the day her mother died for fear of feeling that again.
Well into the afternoon, she had managed to keep to her schedule, the carpets had been vacuumed and the curtains had been steamed. While placing the bin bags in the vestibule, ready to be collected by Julie, (her carer who brought her food, cleaning supplies and tended to any needs that involved leaving the house), she noticed a car in her driveway.
Now, it couldn’t have been Julie’s car, as this was a Thursday and Julie didn’t work on Thursday’s, and besides, Julie’s car was siren red, and this car was a sickly shade of green. The kind of green you’d get if you mixed a lemon yellow with a cerulean blue, a green that was all too bright and thick and present. And it was present, for which she still couldn’t figure out why. It wasn’t Julie’s car, and it couldn’t have been anyone else’s car that she knew because, well she didn’t know anyone else.
She froze, still half bent over clutching hold of a bin bag that was nearly touching the ground, completely still as if she wouldn’t be seen if only she didn’t move. Her motives unsuccessful only by the fact she was standing in front of a clear glass door that was entirely see-through. A man stepped out from the driver’s side of the too-green car and approached the door, which she still cowered behind, staring cautiously. All at once, every thought she had ever pushed down, came flooding into her mind.
What if this man is here to kill me? What if he opens the door and I fall into the driveway and I break my neck? What if he says something about the state of the walls? Why didn’t I touch up the paint in the vestibule?!
Pretending not to see the startled-looking woman holding onto a bin bag on the other side of the door, the man chaps the letterbox, hoping it might be more respectful than knocking on the glass. She drops the bag, and straightens her legs.
“Wh-who is it?” She calls out in a slightly stifled voice, attempting to sound pleasantly surprised to be receiving a stranger at her door.
“Hello, Miss Becket! I’m - my name’s Darren, I’m here to drop off your groceries. And I can take your bins out for you, if you like?”
She looks bewildered, how did he know her name? She’s never heard of a “Darren”, and she certainly doesn’t want him to take her bins out.
“Julie is the one who takes care of all that, although she doesn’t do Thursday’s. I don’t mean to be rude, but, why have they sent you?”
“I understand that Julie is your usual carer, but she's taken unwell– something to do with her tonsils. So, I’ve been sent to cover for her until she’s feeling better. Didn't you see the email? It was all in there. I can come back tomorrow if you’d rather not see anyone today”
He sounded sincere, and a little scared. Perhaps because he was having to yell as politely as possible through a closed door at a woman who looked absolutely terrified of him. Her posture softened, she hadn’t looked at her emails in, well, ever. She preferred to handle things with Julie in person, emailing meant writing and writing meant thinking, and thinking meant, well, we’ve been there already.
“Oh, right. Sorry, I didn’t see it. I hope she’s alright. You can come in.”
She unlocked the door and stepped back into the hallway, letting Darren open the door himself.
“Nice to meet you, Miss Beckett. Sorry for the confusion!”
“Course! You too. Well, there’s the bin bag, and the kitchen’s just through here if you just drop the groceries wherever then I’ll put them away. There’s a system to it, so I prefer to do that myself.”
“Absolutely, not a problem Miss Beckett.”
“It’s Blythe. Miss Beckett was my mother’s name”1
1 From the old English word blithe, meaning "carefree" or "cheerful". https://www.dictionary.com/browse/blithe
Methodically, each packet of rice, tin of beans, and carton of milk was placed in its reserved space. If she had ever worked a job in administration (or ever worked at all), she would have been praised for her meticulous organisational skills.
“Never known anyone to have a filing system for their fridge. You must be well on top of your stuff Blythe!”
“It’s just how I was raised.”
It was true. With her mother's authoritarian approach to parenting, she had only ever learned to follow rules. Rules that kept her mother happy. No official diagnosis was ever made of her mothers condition, but she certainly was obsessive and compulsive in her abuse. Blythe was her first, and only child. An accident, a side effect of a mistake. The only mistake she had ever made, she would tell her. Mistakes were made to teach lessons and inspire improvement, so she made it her duty to raise the child to be as perfect as can be. Pure. She should be no more a burden on the world as she was to her mother.
Darren made some remark about how wonderful her parents’ must have been, but she wasn’t listening. She was focussed on turning the bottles in the fridge to make the labels face the front.
“What was that? Sorry.” She whisked herself around to face him.
“Do you mind if I use your loo?” He asked almost gleefully, as if he was asking for a slice of cake.
Julie would never.
“Oh. I suppose that’s fine. It’s upstairs, on the right.”
She was beginning to realise this man had barely skimmed her file. If he had, he would have known that having other people use her bathroom made her stomach churn, triggering a cleaning frenzy that would last for days. He also would have known that her “parents” consisted of a neurotic woman who hated children, and a stranger whose name she didn’t even know.
Come to think of it, how did she know this man was really who he said he was? He never shown any sort of identification... but he knew Julie’s name, and that she didn’t work on Thursday’s... wait-did she tell him that? Never mind. Besides, he knew her name, and he brought her all the right groceries, everything she usually gets. How could he have known all of that if he wasn’t from the agency?
She began playing out scenarios in her mind where he had been hiding behind the bushes watching the house for weeks, learning Julie’s schedule, waiting for the right moment to pounce. She was convinced by this point that Darren hadn’t come from the agency, but that he was there to kill her, or worse, steal from her!
She figured he knew that she would never run out after him if he did, so it would be an easy getaway. And if she were to call the police or tell anyone they would never believe her. She was thought of as the local “loony”, people would whisper it behind her back when she used to go outside. Since she has been house-bound, she would occasionally hear kids outside her window telling stories about how she was a crazed witch who couldn’t go outside or else she’d catch fire in the sun. If she told anyone that a strange man had entered her house, taken out her bin and dropped off her groceries then stolen her mother's jewellery and legged it – they'd all but laugh in her face.
But what was she to do, let him get away with it?
She moved her hand over the knife block and slid out the sharpest one she had (one she never used as it was made for chopping meat, and the idea of slicing into rounds of flesh and eating them repulsed her). On her tiptoes, she climbed the stairs that creaked with every step – which made the act of tiptoeing redundant, but she figured that if you were going to threaten a burglar with a knife, you should tiptoe so as not to startle them prematurely.
Outside the bathroom door, she heard the muffled sound of water running. He was washing his hands. He really had just gone to the bathroom. The bedroom doors were still closed, nothing was being stolen. She breathed a sigh of relief, then inhaled stiffly again realising that she’d have to sanitize the toilet ten times before she went to bed.
Right as she was about to rush off, the bathroom door swung open. In a panic, she dashed toward the stairs, hoping to disappear before he could see her holding the knife. Her hurried steps only proved to be her downfall - quite literally. She tripped and began to fall, and in a split second, he lunged to catch her. Falling together, they tumbled down every step until they reached the ground.
It happened so fast.
She wakes mildly concussed at the bottom of the stairs. Darren lies with half his weight on her, she uses all her might to shove him off and tries to wake him.
“Darren? We fell, are you alright?”
She places her hands on his shoulders and rocks them gently, then she notices.
Blood. It’s blood on her hands, blood! The knife is sticking out of his stomach. His blood from his insides is touching her outsides. This intimacy is something she has never felt before. A man's blood, a dead man's blood. Her skin, her body has never been touched by anyone, let alone a man, let alone the blood of a man. Images inside her mind a flood with bodies, men and women, bodies and bodies, lips on necks and fingers on thighs, skin on skin, the heat of the breath of another on her very being. A thing that she could never even dream of and now, she knows the blood of another. To know the touch of another only in their eternal ending.
It rained for nine hours that day.
The phone. She could call the police. No, she’d be arrested. Arrested means taken from the house and moved into a cage that she can’t control. A cage with other people, with other dirt, with other smells. An ambulance? The agency? Same outcome. How does someone who had never lived deal with an untimely death?
Pacing. She used the sound of her footsteps to distract herself from the dead body on the floor. Back and forth. She itemised cleaning products in her mind, which would be most efficient at removing blood from carpet? Psychotic. But all she knew was stain removal. Body removal wasn’t in her itinerary. Not today.
She felt as though her skin was being brushed by feathers, each stroke raising her body temperature until she was ablaze. A deep, gassy gargle in her stomach slid up into her throat, she gulped it down and made a guttural moan.
“Don’t be sick. Don’t be sick.” she begged her body not to do it.
The sheer panic of expelling anything from her insides caused her knees to buckle. On the floor again she was face to face with him. His eyes were open, blue.
Voice: “What have you done?”
“What.” She looked around, unsure if she was answering or questioning.
Voice: “Look at the state of you! Stand up and dust yourself off.”
Like a machine, up she stood and off she dusted. She knew this voice, but it couldn’t be...
Voice: “How are you going to get this mess cleaned up?”
At this point, she wasn’t sure if the “mess” in reference here was the bloody body, or the fact that her mind was now projecting the disembodied voice of her deceased mother only to scold her for making said “mess”.
As her lungs filled with the heaviest of air she balled her fists and slammed them at least six times on the ground beside her waist and bellowed a manifesto of “fuck”’s and “shit”’s concluding with an eloquent yell of the words “CUNTING CARPET!”.
Voice: “Now, now. What kind of language is that for a young woman?”
“Fuck my language! Fuck your rules! This wasn’t my fault!”
And with that, the voice was gone. Silence battered her eardrums as she stared into the open, dead eyes of the man she had inadvertently killed. Watching the glistening of his irises fade, her reflection drowned in the presence of blue.
In one single spin of the Earth she had:
- Met a man for the first time in years
- Suspected he was up to no good
- Killed him (by mistake)
- Fallen, not only down the stairs but into a psychotic episode in which her long-dead mother berated her for getting blood on the carpet
- Humphed2 a corpse into the upright freezer in the back room
- Shampooed, steamed, and hoovered the carpet until perfection (with the exception of a slight pinkish patch which was barely noticeable, really)
- Showered four times
- Squeezed half a lemon into a cup of hot water, chugged it, and vomited citric acid
In a semi-psychotic state, she told dead Darren that stuffing him into a freezer was only to buy them both time to figure out the best solution. After all, she still had no proof he wasn’t a burglar or a killer himself. So, alerting anyone of the accident could, in theory, incriminate both of them. She was doing him a favour.
If everything Darren had said before he died were true, then Julie wasn’t coming round today, meaning she had time to pull herself together. She would have time to revisit the pink tinged carpet, time to sanitize everything Darren touched, and time to...
Julie: “Morning, Blythe! Whose car is that in the driveway? Is someone here visiting?”
2 "humph, n.1, v.1." Scottish Language Dictionaries. Accessed April 18, 2024. https://www.dsl.ac.uk/entry/snd/humph_n1_v1. (Definition II. v. 1. tr. To carry about a heavy burden, as on the back, to lug, to hoist or lift up anything heavy.)