The Woman in Glass Pgs.1-11

The Woman in Glass

      Warren sat apart from the rest of the mourners at the funeral.  He was consciously aware of their eyes on him, looks of pity and concern, but this awareness was dim, like an undeveloped sixth sense.  They weren’t his friends and family anyway.  They belonged almost exclusively to Rebecca.

      He thought it strange, then, that she so close in proximity to him, and yet so unreachable.  He glanced up, his numb thoughts disrupted, at the casket lying there.  The lid was closed on her, and he was half grateful for it but at the same time felt robbed, put upon. He knew the sight of her lying there, an empty shell, would be unpleasant, and yet he longed to see her face one more time, and the conflict within him tore at him like the claws of some ferocious animal.  Cold, bracing claws that howled like the harsh winds of some bitter snow storm.  He blinked, and absent-mindedly cleaned his glasses, and somehow relaxed back into the numb state that had been both a blessing and a curse since Rebecca had been found.

      She had been missing three days, which wasn’t all that long a time according to the Police, and to those few neighbors and acquaintances that took the time to reassure him.  They would all tell him “Becky” would be back, that three days wasn’t long, that there was hope.  He had never been one for optimistic thoughts, which he always had figured was the reason why Rebecca had had so many friends and he had not.

      Three days, alone in the country house her paintings had provided them, waiting and worrying and finally understanding that he truly was nothing without her there to define him.  It was a humbling, if not entirely unexpected, revelation.  After day one, Warren had barely been able to get out of bed, let alone shower, shave or eat.  The first night alone he had slept in the bed they had always shared together, hoping for a familiar feeling, a sense of hope that the space was waiting.  That the space beside him beneath the sheets would tell him, as if alive itself, that she would return.  It had not said this, however.  It had seemed to communicate the opposite.  There, alone in that bed, he seemed to understand that the space would never again be occupied, never warmed again by her body.  She would never again pull the sheets downward because her feet got cold, nor would she ever roll closer to him in the night when the darkness seemed so penetrating and undying.

      The second night he slept on the couch.

      Then, on the morning of his fourth day living as a shadow, a knock had rapped on the door, softly at first and then louder.  He opened the door onto a police officer, a man not too much younger than Warren himself, who looked at Warren as if he might in fact be some sort of walking corpse.  Warren would not have disputed such a claim, nor would he have even ruled it out as a possibility.  The officer calmly and sympathetically(but not too sympathetically, it was clear that Warren’s unshaved and filthy appearance had steeled the officer in his grave responsibilities) that Rebecca had been found in a ditch several miles away, just outside the city they had worked so hard to escape.  They were still figuring out what had happened, but one of her sisters had identified her body.

      They said they had tried to call him.

      When Warren had meekly, barely able to speak, asked to see her himself, the officer informed him that it “wouldn’t be pretty”.  Warren eventually would discover he couldn’t look, no matter how much he wanted to.

      He met the sister, Julie, at the hospital later, showered but not shaved.  Julies’ disgust at his appearance clearly shocked her from her grief long enough to infer that he looked like shit, and that whatever had happened to Rebecca was so horrible, so monstrous, that it there never would be enough to ever balance it.  He ended up reading the words ‘mutilated’ and ‘butchered’ in the newspaper the next day.

      Police spoke with him, asked him numerous questions about Rebecca- what was his relationship with her, and where she was going that night, and did they have a fight, and so on and so forth.  Warren answered them as best as he could through the fog that quickly descended onto him, and it became clear that the Police clearly did not think much of him- including his potential as a suspect.  Warren had returned home alone, just as he would when the funeral was over.

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      He had assumed that the funeral had been a nice one.  While he was there, of course, he hadn’t really been present in the strictest of sense.  He had stared at the casket, had avoided the glances of her friends and family, and had wondered what she looked like underneath the wood.  Was her face unrecognizable?  He remembered reading about the Black Dahlia in college.  Or had it been a movie?  He no longer remembered.  Would she look like that?  At the reception afterwards, held at Julies’ house, he withstood the measure of his social circle, the people who had put up with him for the sake of their dear and beloved friend, now gone and leaving behind her the shattered presence of a man who had been clearly broken to begin with.

      They paid their lip service to him in abundance, and he obliged in the same distant way he always had when they spoke to him.  He spoke clearly and effortlessly, the way he always had, but they knew as well as he did that there was nothing more there- Rebecca had been his personality.  They had met in a life drawing class; she perfecting an already impressive talent and he trying to find something he was good at.  He spoke eloquently, and had has some success as a debater, but found he had no head for factoids involving law or philosophy.  He could take a decent picture, but had no head for composition.  He could do several things, but none of them were truly useful.  She had been a wealth of talent- if it involved art, she had the knack for it. Painting, sculpting, photography, illustration, poetry and even dance all came naturally to her.  She had caught his eye, as she caught the eyes of everyone else, and he had done nothing.  He knew it wouldn’t happen.  Later, she told him she had overheard him giving a classmate directions and had fallen in love with his voice.  He didn’t remember the circumstances in which they officially met, only that she arrived, took him and he had never questioned his fortune.  It was the only good thing to ever happen to him.

      People flew by him at the reception, as they moved at superhuman speed.  Well wishes, condolences, quick hugs and handshakes, uncomfortable silences filled with nervous laughter or tears.  He withstood it all impassively, the whole world a blur that he was moving far too slowly in.  It was almost dizzying. Then they were gone, just as quickly as they’d appeared, off to their own private gatherings to mourn the loss of the woman who had offered them so much.  They would go on without him, and he thought it would be strange if he ever heard from them again.  Every holiday party she had brought him to, every wedding, every funeral or gallery opening or concert he had been as meaningful to them as her handbag- a somewhat attractive, well-spoken and polite accessory.  They claimed to be his friends, but they weren’t.

            She had always been the social one, gathering people in her warm glow, defying all those she met to not fall in love with her.  Her warm, easy smile and bright green eyes, the slim figure and small shoulders, the graceful way her hands always seemed to move.  He had never understood how she had managed to fall in love with him- a dour, socially awkward never-was, the struggling poet-turned-telemarketer.  It had been a strange courting, and the effort had been entirely hers.  She had been successful in everything she tried, including getting underneath the nigh-unbreakable shell that was Warren Mesmer.  Warren, on the other hand, had never succeeded at anything beyond being the man that Rebecca had wanted- it wasn’t much, but it was enough.  Even if he never did truly understand what it was she saw in him.


      Words continued to fly by him and hugs given.  He briefly snapped himself from his internal paralysis to have a conversation with Rebecca’s Mother, who also called her ‘Becky’ and it annoyed him.  It felt slightly cathartic to feel annoyed with her, even as he empathized with the woman’s pain.  Her hug was the only one that felt even a little real, even though Warren remembered very clearly that she had never liked him.  He half expected her Father to arrive before him, perhaps to verbally punish him for ruining his Daughter, to blame him for the loss of her, until he suddenly remembered that he had been to the man’s funeral a year or so before.  He briefly felt an aching for Rebecca’s Mother, but it went away as soon as she did.  He took a drink to ease his nerves, and found a quiet corner away from the mourning party in a small bedroom he didn’t recognize.  The room was silent save for the constant ticking of a small alarm clock on the night stand.  He sat here several minutes, sipping his scotch, until he realized he was staring at his own reflection across the room.  He blinked at himself a moment, seeing another him trapped behind the glass, and then stood up and left the reception.
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      He drove home alone.

      A fog had descended onto the countryside, enveloping him as he drove away from the city.  He squinted to see, and briefly toyed with the ironic idea of possibly getting into an accident, being killed on the way home from her funeral.

      She had been murdered.

      The thought landed and then took flight again, like a spooked insect, and he quickly shrugged it off.  Now was not the time to be considering such things as fact.  Let the details go for now.  There would be time for it.  He reached their house, seeming small and surrounded inside the swirling fog, like the tiny model houses in Christmas snowglobes.  He wondered if the world had disappeared, if now he was alone here.  Maybe he would open the door and she would be there, and they would stay alone together in their snowglobe exsistence.  He immedietly knew this thought was pointless- he had never been one for imagination. 

      The garden looked sick in the fog, weighed down and wearied, forsaken as if in its own casket.  He wondered if he would remember to take care of it without her around.  He doubted it.  He took of his suit jacket before even reaching the front door, and draped it on his arm.  The fog misted his glasses, but he ignored it.  As he took his first step onto the stairs leading to the door, he felt his foot slip from under him and crashed hard onto the stone.

      He lifted himself up, smiling wryly.  He looked up to see in his now blurred vision that his glasses had bounced off the stairs and down into the plant life to the side.  He stood up to his full height, slightly annoyed at the taste of blood in his mouth.  He had bitten his tongue just enough to draw blood.  He got down on his hands and knees and hunted through the bushes until his trembling hands rested on the fallen glasses.  He lifted them up and examined them, only slightly dismayed to find that the left lens has cracked slightly.  He placed them back on his face and carefully climbed the stairs and entered their house, this time without incident.

      ………………………

      He smoked a cigarette quietly at the kitchen table.  The fog had seemingly thickened outside, becoming a strange gray wall that surrounded the house, concealing him away from the rest of the world.  It felt slightly soothing to be invisible, even if the alone feeling threatened to overwhelm him.  The smoke from his cigarette drifted calmly, softly, up to the ceiling.  He stared straight ahead at the back door, as if he expected someone.  No one would come, though.  He knew that.  He did, however, eventually expect a phone call from his sister once she found out about Rebecca, which would undoubtedly be soon.  He hadn’t had the heart to call her himself, both out of fear for her but more for him- Clare had loved Rebecca immensely, but he already could hear the conversation they would have.  She would cry, he would not.  He would approach the conversation with the same emotionless controlled speech, the seemingly cold and heartless pragmatism that always served as the best defense against what he really couldn’t handle.  Even though she would understand, it would only upset Clare further.  The cigarette burned down, uncaring about his time and needs.  He stared at the burnt out filter for a long time.

      Next was the living room.  He and Rebecca had not owned a television, and in it’s place stood a large stereo, the wires moving unseen beneath carpet and up walls, connecting to speakers on all sides of the room.  Rebecca had loved music.  He put on a favorite CD of hers out of habit.  He had often done this when home alone, waiting for her.  She would always come home, delighted to hear her music, and delighted that he loved it, too.  She had always loved to share with him.  The music made him maudlin, and he poured a drink of whiskey, though he scarcely sipped at it as he sat there on the sofa, hearing the notes enter and exit him, feeling the stillness of the room.  He lit another cigarette, though she would have disapproved of him smoking in the den.  He briefly exited the room to find an ash tray, and placed it on the coffee table, flicking ash into it more out of habit than necessity. 

      There were a lot of pictures of them here.  Three stood atop the stereo system- one of them camping, two happy young people in love.  Another they were dressed in formal wear, smiling together at the wedding of a friend.  The last was them snuggled together before a fire, taken without their knowledge at her sister’s cabin the previous winter.  He stared at them and ignored his cigarette and drink, and only glanced up when he heard the distant boom of thunder.

      That night, listening to the sounds of rain pattering unmoved on the window pane, he slept on the couch, a glass that had once contained three servings of whiskey and an ashtray with the forgotten corpses of half a pack of cigarettes standing still nearby.

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      The storm had ended, and the rain had softened into a miserable drizzle.  The fog remained constant, both inside and out.  When he first awake he thought that the grogginess might be from a hangover, but then realized he felt exactly the same as he had when he’d gone to bed.  The whiskey and sleep had provided a brief distraction, but little more.  He felt no better rested than he had any night since that last night he had slept beside her.

      He opened his pack of cigarettes and found it empty.  He stared at the space inside the little box for a moment, finding it somehow fitting.  It took him several minutes to realize he’d gone comatose inside again, and stood up.

      He briefly thought he might be hungry, but none of the food in the fridge seemed to bring any promise of nourishment.  He thought about driving into town, but realized he wanted to do nothing less.  He instead busied himself straightening the house out.  He had not kept it very clean over the past week, but figured that was normal.  But it was no way to live, or so he said to himself.  He wiped down everything, picked up all the trash and fixed himself a bath and a shave.  When shaving, he looked at his exposed neck, and thought about doing something about it.  But this passed quickly.  Such an ending wouldn’t make much sense to him, when all was said in done.  He may not have been good at much of anything, but he didn’t like to take the easy way out nonetheless.

      He made the bed.

      Of all the chores, this easily became the hardest.  He swallowed back the same lump in his throat several times, willing it never to return and failing.  He tucked the sheets in, straightened out the comforter, fluffed the pillows.  He straightened out the closet, putting her shoes into a nice order the way she had always hated.  She didn’t like being organized as much as he did.  He looked at the now orderly closet, entirely filled with her things(his things were kept in another closet in another bedroom he never used).  He briefly wondered if he was expected to do something with them.  Practically, they held no use for him any longer.  He wondered what widowers did with things like clothing.  He supposed he’d donate them, eventually, but the idea of packing it all up in boxes exhausted him, and caused a brief recurrence of that terrible lump.

      He stepped back into the hallway and briefly stared up at the entrance hatch to the attic, where Rebecca kept her work.  He realized eventually he’d have to go up there, straighten that all out, too.  Perhaps he’d have to get in touch with her agent, arrange the sale of her final paintings the way she would have had she not been killed.

      The sudden thought of the word brought it roaring enormous into the forefront of his mind, taking shape.  He could see the word in great, blocky letters against a perfectly white backdrop, an object all its own.  It shook him slightly, and he cleaned his spare glasses.  He would have to fix his primary glasses soon.  This new practical thought shattered the image of the terrible word from him.  He glanced again at the attic door, and walked away.  It would come later, he knew, but for now better to let those ghosts stay where they were.

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      On the third night after Rebecca’s funeral, a new storm raged through the foggy night bellowing its disgruntled rage, and the nightmares started.

      He stood on an empty street, in the night.  It was calm and cool here, no storms raging unabated and no mournful silence to be filled with thoughts.  Instead white snow, pure and innocent looking, drifted down around him.  He was dressed only in a t-shirt and jeans, and yet he felt no cold.  He didn’t shiver, but instead felt a warmth inside, a feeling of serenity.  Beside him on his right stretched a long hillside, covered in white snow that glistened under an invisible moon, small patches of new green grass peaking out, a promise of a new start.  He felt comfort. 

      To the left were stores.  He realized this was the edge of town- though what town it was escaped his dream-mind- and he had wandered to the primary street, the one that greeted new travelers as they came to this peaceful place.  There were huge picture windows in front of all the stores, showing off their wares, though he saw no inventory to be marveled at when he looked.  It stretched several stores ahead, ending in a flat void of white snow just beyond the edge of the street.  He didn’t turn around to see behind him, but instead walked forward, realizing as he did he was forgetting something important, but knowing it could wait. 

      The air felt colder as he walked closer to the end, and he began to shiver.  In the way dreams do, he was suddenly provided with a coat, black and thick, and it huddled around him like the arms of a lover, and it warmed him.  His steps became audible, crunching through increasingly deepening snow.  He began to worry that the snow might be coming in too quickly, wondered if it would hinder his progress- or worse yet, the journey home to where he’d come from. 

      He turned his gaze upwards, ahead of him, seeing all of those strangely empty storefronts, none of them reflecting that snowy hill as he’d expect, and suddenly he felt slightly worried, a strange sensation of something being wrong, different.

      And then he saw movement.

      The window of the final storefront, still several long steps ahead of him, had some sort of movement.  At first he thought it a reflection, perhaps finally this strange glass that reflected nothing would suddenly begin to make sense.  His footsteps no longer crunched, and now the world around him was filled with silence.  And still, that peculiar movement.

      He walked closer still, even though he wasn’t curious.  In fact, he wanted to stop, to turn around, to go home.  But still he journeyed onward.  The movement was more pronounced.  It was a person.  This wasn’t that frightening- perhaps someone was finally putting something up in these storefronts, and perhaps that meant the morning was coming soon, and with it shoppers of all kinds.  Still, he stepped onward.

      The shape in the window jerked unnaturally, it’s movements a strange staccato dance.  He saw this person’s arms in the air, moving slowly and unnaturally.  He could see a white hand press against the window, as if trapped there.  The moonlight caught a pair of pale, white arms. 

      A woman.  He saw it now more clearly.  The jerking limbs in the window belonged to a woman, and she moved even more jerkily now.  He felt prickly, chilled.  The calm winter air had turned more hostile, and now biting cold winds bit into his skin and made him shiver.  He moved closer, now he wanted to stop more than anything.  His feet moved him onward, compelled, and he felt a scream welling up inside his throat like grief.  His cheeks reddened and blushed as he realized he could see the woman’s body clearly, and she was naked.  The stomach was thin but not firm, the barest hint of her ribs pressed against the pale flesh that stretched sickly over her bones.  Her breasts sagged, fleshly and distorted, the nipples swelled like bruises.  As he stepped closer, he could see her veins trailing along like highways on a road map, blue and cold looking.  Bruises shown all over her, marking her arms, and stomach.  His mouth opened to make some sort of noise, anything to calm himself, to feel normal.  A hello to her, perhaps, or a cry for help for this poor confused woman.  The only sound was the thumping of her hands slapping against the glass, thumping a strange horrible rhythum that seemed to echo throughout the cold night.
     
      The snow had stopped.

      His feet now moved silently through the snowy ground, no longer making it’s rhythmic crunching noises.  Nothing moved or made sound other than her, and his walking steadily closer.

      She was only a few feet ahead of him now, near the end of the street that had seemed to stretch forever.  He felt tired, as if he’d walked a long way, and he seemed to feel his heart beating uncontrollably in his chest, as if it would burst from him and run away, deserting him to the strange horror he felt as he closed in on the scene awaiting him.  Her hands were thumping harder now against the glass, her movements revealed as even jerkier than he’d originally thought. Her limbs moved slowly, like dim-witted serpents touching the material world for the first time.  He could see her hair now, stringy and unwashed, and bald spots peaking like voyeurs through hastily drawn curtains, draping there across her pale facial features, but not enough to hide the unmistakable appearance of his grotesque cheekbones seeming to threaten to tear through her pale, stretched skin.  More blue veins spiraled uselessly down the side of her temples. 

      He was almost in front of her now.  He willed his eyes to close, for his legs to move, to run up that hill or turn around and bolt like a startled horse, but his body only propelled him ever forward, towards this strange and terrifying woman.  Her lazy limbs pumped forward ever more, and he saw her sway unsteadily, unbalanced, her breasts flattening against glass obscenely, a perversion of erotic pleasure. 

      She wasn’t breathing, he saw, and terror gripped him harder than any feeling he had ever felt before, chilling his insides and stopping his breath, choking his will from him steadily and harshly, a malevolent terrible entity.  She swayed as he finally found himself before her. 

      She was dead.  A walking corpse, banging at the window, seeking escape.  Her eyes were white, pupil-less, her mouth open in a constant moan made inaudible by the fragile glass that separated them from one another.  He stared at her, now facing her full on, just inches from the glass she desperately tried to force down, seemingly ready to topple into it heavily, dizzily. Her eyes locked onto his sightlessly, the hands now banging with renewed vigor, but still clumsily, unsure of its own movements.  He opened his mouth to scream, but the sound eluded him, the expression of the untold terror he felt deserted him, had long ago fled as he had longed to do.  The wind blew one more time and then stopped, and silence filled the terrible world around him, as if he had gone deaf.  He heard her hands bang into the glass again, and then it toppled forward towards him.  He heard her moan then, a strangled, pained sound, and saw as she lifted a pale disgusting foot to step through the empty space that no longer separated them. 

      The glass shattered on the ground, and he found his voice screaming.


      He awoke then, suddenly, bolting upright in his bed.  He heard the crash of glass to the floor upstairs with his first waking senses, a window falling out.  He was covered in sweat, the couch behind him damp with his perspiration.  He sat up and put his glasses on, hearing the moaning sounds of wind outside followed by the photo-like flash of lightning and the roar of thunder.  He swung his feet to the floor and sat, elbows on his knees, and rubbed his stubbly face with his hands, catching his breath.  His heart still pounded, but his mind blessedly began to fog over once again, expelling his terrible visions from him as it always did, his armor proving strong enough again.

      He stood up without turning on the light.  He reached for the pack of cigarettes, but found it ever empty still.  He padded barefoot upstairs, to the entrance to the attic.  He pulled the string down and opened up the entrance way and climbed the stairs into the dark attic that Rebecca always used as her studio.

      He could see nearly nothing, even against the illuminating flashes of the storm outside.  Cold air swirled in the room from the now broken window, exposing the room to the whistling wind and deflected rain.  He walked forward, reaching out for the dangling string that would cause the bulb to glow incandescently against the wooden floors and walls, but found it escaped his blindly groping fingers.  He stepped into the room, using the flashes of the storm to remind him of where obstructions were.  He dodged her easel, and scattered canvases on the floor.  His feet crumpled tarps and papers scattered about the floor.  He found his way to the far wall and edged across it, not wanting to disturb her things. 

He winced as he stepped on some glass, cutting his foot.  He lifted his foot up and pulled a small piece of glass from it, grimacing at the pain that coursed through his leg.  He bent down, seeing the glint of the broken glass reflecting lightning, and saw the flung tree branch that had broken the window.  He picked it up, examining it, as if he’d never seen one before.  He nodded, taking a glance out the window.  As the lightning flashed, he thought he saw someone standing in the rain on the grass, just before the small shed with the gardening equipment beside the only tree in their lawn, wearing a dress that fluttered in the wind, her black hair clinging to her pale skin.  For a second he saw her, and then she was gone, swallowed by the pitch dark following the light. 

When the lightning flashed again, she was gone.

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      The following day he realized he could no longer avoid a trip to town, and got into his car to buy food, cigarettes, whiskey and some tools to fix the broken attic window.  The fog had remained but seemed somewhat lessened now.  The radio in his car told him that the fog and storms would come again, the weather fronts would again and again clash into each other and rage with storms at their constant stalemate.  It was warmer out, and the humidity had risen, and he took off his jacket and rolled his sleeves back, hoping to alleviate the perspiration that threatened to soak through his white button-down shirt. 

      He drove the car quicker than he normally would, anxious all at once to be away from the house, and back to it quickly.  He had all but forgotten the dream, except for the glass shattering and a vague sense of primal terror that now seemed remote and foolish.  As he left the driveway, he looked over at the enormous old tree that stood guard in the lawn, and at the shed, and briefly wondered if someone had really been standing there in the storm the night before.  He shook his head and put the car into gear.  He had never been one for imagination.

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