When she began to giggle, I knew. I couldn’t even speak for a moment; but this didn’t matter because I knew that nothing, I could say would stop what was about to happen, perhaps my speaking may have even hastened it.
Everyone knew there was something wrong with Ellie the moment they met her. She was quick to anger, and she was quick to laugh, but neither seemed a response to what was happening around her; sometimes the things just seemed to coincide.
I knew better than most of course, but that was only when ‘ much later ‘ I grew to know her far more intimately than most ever would.
Ellie was a few years younger than I, and at first, I would not speak to her. This wasn’t because of anything Ellie ever did, it wasn’t her quick temper or quicker wit, it wasn’t her occasional verbal cruelty that hovered just this side of humour or even those rare moments of genuine anger which became local legend. No, it was none of these things; I didn’t speak to her because I think I loved her from the moment I saw her.
Love at first sight; is there anything so foolish?
Now I think I know that to be human is to be a fool; and that’s good and fine and I would want nothing more or less.
If love is foolish then we should all be fools: am I right?
I was drunk when we first spoke, drunk almost to the point of falling over and I was told later that she had plied me with drink most of the night to get me in such a state.
This was a symptom of that petty cruelty I spoke of. She liked how absurd I was being, she liked that this stoic creature that she had met was becoming a brazen fool under her influence. She lined up the drinks for me and gave me a little push this way and a little push that way until something she said would trigger a response; then she would laugh.
I didn’t remember much of that night, but I did remember her laugh and it was the echo of that laugh in my memory that inoculated me against the knowing looks I received the following days after my drunken performance.
I woke the morning after on a strange couch in a strange room and once again she plied me with drink; but this time the drink was coffee.
I know I must have left her side since then, but I don’t remember those excursions into the world without her. I suppose they were of no importance, and little was of importance to me until the day she moved in with me and I learned of the real Ellie.
I left to collect her things from her old flat and she remained in mine to make space for these things. The round trip took no more than half an hour and I would never have believed that things could change in such a short period of time, but I suppose that was just the arrogance of youth speaking.
Now of course I know things can change much faster than that; but none of us expected what was to come did we?
When I returned home, the first box filled with her things in my arms I called out ‘Hi honey I’m home!’ and laughed; thinking I was the pinnacle of wit; but the silence that greeted me was thick with dread. It took just seconds for me to sense there was something very wrong and no more than five seconds to begin a panicked search of my ‘ our ‘ home.
I found her quickly enough and at first, I thought it was a joke and started to smile, but the look on her face quickly turned that smile dead on my lips.
She was crouched under the kitchen table with her hands over her head as if warding off something she feared would fall on her.
‘Can’t you feel the rain?’ She asked me. ‘Can’t you feel the rain!’
I climbed under the table and held her.
The doctor told us it was a psychotic break and sent us away clutching a prescription for twenty milligrams of aripiprazole. There was no offer of therapy and when I enquired about it, we were put on a waiting list and warned it might be a while before we were seen.
The pills took affect almost immediately, within a few days reducing Ellie to something that I had trouble recognising.
I had never had my heart broken, I had always kept a distance to make sure that never happened, so I didn’t realise that the phrase wasn’t a euphemism. My heart really did break, and the pain was constant; and tearing; and I never thought it would end.
She would sleep most hours then stare into nothingness on those rare occasions when she woke. Sometimes her eyes would see me, but I wondered how much they recognised me. She knew my name and where we met but the mischievous joy was taken from them, and I wondered if the medicine had taken her memory as well as the demons plaguing her.
We revisited the doctors, and the prescription was changed.
We visited again and it was changed once more.
It was six months before her eyes seemed to have a spark of life back in them, but the woman I fell in love with was gone and sometimes I didn’t like the person who had replaced her.
But I learned.
It’s all we can do.
Each day we played at normal, each day getting a little better at it until we almost fooled ourselves. Friends and family played along and some perhaps fell for the ruse; but I don’t think I ever truly did.
Life moved on and the apartment we shared became an amalgam of the two of us. I didn’t know where she stopped, and I began. Her clothes migrated to my wardrobe and mine to hers and slowly my vintage vinyl collection became resplendent with the early 80’s pop she enjoyed so much.
Enough years passed that people started to speak of marriage and sometimes we spoke of it in the early hours when the world was silent and still. Sometimes she was glowing with the idea of it and at other times I was, but these times never coincided so we never took the plunge.
Most days I’m glad of it. Most days I’m glad that these years together were because we wanted them to be together. Most days I’m glad that there were never pressures to remain and I feel that any love we felt was purer and truer because of it.
Most days’
Some days my heart near bursts at the idea, some days I feel hot tears at it.
I suppose you already realise this was all a long time ago, and perhaps some reading this might not even understand some of what I write. Some of you may wonder why Ellie would become so ill when life was so good, or why in a time when someone could afford to drink to falling over, we would care about anything else.
Yes, this was a long time ago.
Ellie and I were together for almost twenty years and things had changed so much in that time. Computers grew smaller and mobile phones ‘ oddly ‘ grew larger; and paper all but disappeared to be replaced with Kindles and tablets and other screens of all kinds. There came a time when we would pay our bills at an ATM and buy our groceries at a self-service till and would not ever see another human being through the process.
Human interaction became virtual and those you saw on the street rarely looked up from their phone screens.
When we do talk about those days, Ellie and I, we agree that this was the beginning; and as a beginning it was so innocuous that hardly anyone noticed it. Society didn’t die with flames and turmoil but with clicks and likes; after all it’s easy to misunderstand those we have no contact with, and it’s easy to demonise those we don’t understand, and ‘ finally ‘ it’s easy to hate those we demonise.
And demonise we did.
There were no innocents; we all fed a little into the fire that led to what came next. It wasn’t politicians who did it in the end, it wasn’t wars or religion; what led to our end was us, just us. We killed our empathy without understanding that we would have to be next.
So here we are now, Ellie giggling while I hold her in quiet dread. The faces around us are cold and some look on us in disgust.
I saw it coming and if they would listen, I would tell them that they will soon be next. I think of Invasion of the Body Snatchers and Kevin McCarthy screaming ‘You’re next!’ and I feel the dread of knowing.
I shudder and they see it as fear.
One of them carry a flag with a symbol sprayed across it. I can’t make out what the symbol might be, it makes little difference; hate is hate regardless.
They lead us out and I wonder if the one who holds my arm will want to wash afterwards, in another time and place I would think it was funny; but there is nothing funny anymore, I think that’s part of why all this happened.
People are shouting and calling to each other but I’m not listening. Hands try to wrench Ellie from my grasp, but I hold on tight. Ellie is laughing now, and I can hear in her voice that the last of the medication has long since left her system. I can’t remember the last time we found her something to quell her demons, or the last time a sympathetic ear was there to hear about them.
A van awaits with open doors, windows blacked out and hard metal seats inside. We are pushed inside and the doors close.
Before darkness engulfs us, I made out one word of the tirade that washes over us, I hear someone scream, ‘abomination!’
In the darkness I start to laugh, and I clutch Ellie close.
I never thought of myself as an abomination; I always saw myself as just an average woman.