Just a WARNING…do NOT scroll through the entire stretch of the post before you begin reading because I include some computer art with my fiction/ poetry that may act as a spoiler! Beware!
Story begins here...
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"Bonnie, wakie wakie, Come on, Bonnie, its time for breakfast" a shrill voice called out like it did every time sunlight flooded the room. It was quiet in here; too quiet. The air smelled of chlorox and bleach and if you stuck your tongue out for too long it tasted bitter. It wasn't the air that was bitter, she realized as she felt the small trickle from a gash on her lip. The petite woman in flowe-print scrubs rolled in a trolley.
She felt a retch building up in her throat as she saw the yolks wiggle on the egg whites as the woman pulled the trolley upto the bed. She started rolling up the bed to an incline.
"Come on now. Up you go. You must eat, you know...otherwise we cannot give you your medications" the woman said in a high-pitched saccharine voice.
"No shit, bitch!" a shrill voice said rang inside Bonnie's head, startling even her. The woman turned around.
"Umm, did you say something hun?" the woman asked with a frown. Bonnie mumbled and shook her head. She wondered if this recurring dream would end soon. Sometimes she felt this was the real world and her life with Billy was the dream. She could never tell.
"You will be seeing Dr.Weldy at 2 pm today" the woman said as she shut the door behind her just after Bonnie took a peek at her badge. 'Nurse Linda White' it said in blue letters, followed by 'Mercy County Psychiatric Facility'.
Bonnie could feel panic rising to her ears with the rush of adrenaline and a horrible pit was growing in her stomach.
"What am I doing here?" she thought, her eyes scanning the steel door, nervously, her breath inhaling the cold sterile smell, her mind resounding every fearful question in the hum of silence. The white walls were closing in as a slideshow flashed in front of her. The needle jammed above her wrist now suddenly stung. The steady drip of sedatives seemed to climb to her forehead, numbing her eyelids and bringing thick black curtains of sleep that finally pulled her in.
"Ma'am, do you know what happened to the dog?" she heard the booming voice and the unshaven face of the detective made its way out of the fog.
"No" she said in a strangely toneless voice. She could see herself slouched in front of the detective, in a cotton nightie doused with crimson stains that were darkening with every passing minute. He pushed a glass of water towards her.
"Are you cold Ma'am?' the detective asked, offering her a jacket and she didn't even look up as she shook her head.
"Could you tell us where you were last night. How did you get those bloody gashes on your back? Ma'am, you know we can't let you go home unless you tell us something" the detective prodded, his voice still calm and unthreatening.
"I said I don't know" came the toneless voice again, this time with the slightest hint of anger.
Questions were suspended inside her own mind, floating about even as the detective looked towards the glass partition and shook his head, shrugging one last time before he left. As the door shut behind him in a soft thud, she watched her own face change, a hint of a smile was playing in the eyes that had been expressionless for so long. Was she having an out of body experience, she wondered as she watched her own face look like that of a stranger. Was this really her, being interrogated by detectives?
Behind the glass partition, the baffled members of the district attorney's office and the detective stood sipping coffee awaiting Dr.Weldy and his psychiatric team to come evaluate the woman they had found clutching a dead terrier in her neighbour's backyard. The scene had gotten gory as they approached the house that neighbours had pointed out. While two children slept in the bedroom upstairs, a large man lay sprawled face down in a pool of blood in the hallway to the kitchen. His hair had been sheared with a knife which lay bloody and strewn and words neatly carved into his back. "Yours, Delilah" it said when the blood had been wiped and the body lay cold and glistening under scrutiny on the forensic examiner's table.
Long after rigor mortis set in, the stunned expression on that man's face was still as agonizing as it had probably been when the knife first went through his heart.
"Bonnie, are you there? Bonnie?" the deep voice cut through her oblivion and she opened her eyes taking in the kind face of a man she knew she had seen before.
"Good afternoon, Bonnie. How are you feeling today?" he asked as sat down in the chair across from her. She mumbled and tried to sit up.
"Where are the kids?" she asked. Her head was throbbing and she couldn't get the image of Billy's cold body lying on the examiner's table. Had that been a dream, she wondered quietly, her eyes unconsciously glancing over to the name plate on the desk. "Dr.John Randall Weldy" said the golden letters.
"Where are my kids?" she whispered, this time the urgency clear in her voice.
"Do you remember their names?" he asked looking over his glasses.
"What do you mean do I remember their names?!" she began her voice rising, "Billy Junior and Jean....after my sister" she answered composing herself.
"Good, that is very good" Dr.Weldy said encouragingly. His tone was making her drowsy.
He went behind his desk and returned with what looked to her stinging eyes like a large black snake. He unwound it and the belt at once gleamed in the dim yellow light of his office. She remembered that buckle, her skin had felt the nook of its metal, she had tasted the cold blood that trickled out of her back when that very buckle had hit her square across the spine.
"Do you recognize this, Bonnie?" Dr.Weldy asked.
"Yeah, yes..." she began softly but the tears were making it hard to speak.
"Are my kids ok?" she asked through a gulp, "Did I..." she began, too afraid to go on, "Did I kill him?" she finally asked, tortured by the finality of that question. Dr.Weldy surveyed her for a brief moment.
"Well, Bonnie, did you?" he asked studying her expression carefully.
He started walking towards her the belt in his hand. The buckle was mocking her now as it caught light and a reflection danced wildly on her face. His slow, determined footsteps echoed inside her head and a low toneless voice was resounding in her ears. She had heard this voice before. It was the voice she had heard in the interrogation room, it was the voice that had rung inside her head when the nurse had come in that morning.
"Back off asshole" she heard the voice say, her white knuckles clutching the arm rests.
"Bonnie" Dr.Weldy said bending down.
"Bonnie!" the voice mocked him, "You get that filthy thing away from me, asshole. Bonnie's the weakling. You're dealing with Delilah now."
"Bonnie, how are we doing?" he asked, "Does this scare you Bonnie?" he was holding the belt out.
"It might scare her but you know what...nothing scares this one here" the voice said breaking off into a high-pitched laugh. Dr.Weldy watched at once fascinated and fearful of this creature that had emerged from Bonnie's face. This face, this voice, this demeanour was not that of a woman or a remorseful wife, but that of a bully.
"You get that thing near me and I will wipe that smile off your face, baldy" she now reached out and flung the belt.
She lunged out of her chair and almost immediately felt a needle sting into her arm, subduing her voice to a gasp. The eyes changed and the smirk left her face.
"My kids...where are my kids?" she said, her expression relaxing, as her eyes closed yet again and they wheeled her out of the office.
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Dr.Weldy sat in his office studying the verses Bonnie had been scribbling every time she woke up from her deep sedation. He had emailed Dr.Drury at Princeton to see if the verses matched any known literature. Dr.Drury's reply was now in front of him, the answer presenting only more questions than before.
John,
Sorry about the delay in replying. I had trouble looking through the scanned pages you sent me. While most of it was illegible, one verse did seem quite clear. Despite a few spelling errors I was able to crack the stanza. The verse was as follows,
"To the bodies wounds and sores
With maladies innumerable
In heart, head, breast, and reins;
But must secret passage find
To th' inmost mind"
They belong to a tragic poem by Milton, titled Samson Agonistes which dramaticizes the story of Samson from the Old Testament.
Let me know if you need any more information.
RD
The email didnt shed light on much. John Weldy immediately wrote back his questions, at least a few of the odd million that had crossed his mind.
This case had been as obscure as one pulled straight out of a movie. John Weldy's life had come to standstill after having met Bonnie. He couldn't get her face out of his head. Each time he saw her, her eyes had sunk in some more. All she asked him about now was her kids. He had been instructed by the police to not inform her about their location for the sake of the children's protection. And then there was the bleak face of Delilah which emerged every now and then from Bonnie's soft features, like that of an abused, angry animal. The same eyes, the same frail face, but such a contrasting countenance. Each time he wanted to tell Bonnie that her children were safe with their grandmother, Delilah's angry face flashed before him and told him not to.
Weldy had been shocked at the scars and bruises all over Bonnie's back. Evidence indicated that the abuse had been long and traumatic. This would be his first case of dissociate personality disorder and he had been reading and researching all day to try and understand the psyche of this woman, who the police had said was their only suspect.
It was time to call it a night, he finally decided. It was after midnight, way past his bedtime. And just before heading off to bed John Weldy decided to test his luck. A quick search on the internet won't take too long, he told himself. 107,000 pages of information came up, on his first search for Samson Agonistes. He clicked on the first link not hoping to find much and then something caught his eye. As his eyes skimmed the details, he found the one detail that stood out, clear as daylight. Weldy pushed his glasses back and slowly took in the details in disbelief. Goose bumps began to scale his arms. Everything seemed to fit.
"Delilah, the wife of Samson who had betrayed him...his locks had been sheared, his strength had been stolen...a death had to take place -- his death, Samson's death"
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As she was wheeled into the lobby, she noticed new faces, faces that had not been there.
"Where is Nurse White?" she asked the young nurse who was wheeling her through the glass hallways.
"Umm, I'm sorry, I don't really know a Nurse White" replied the young girl. She seemed barely out of college.
As Bonnie turned to look into the glass panels, an old weary face looked back at her.
That couldn't be me, she thought as she squinted and touched the hair on her head. It had been days since she'd been rolled out into the lobby. The day of the trial was the last she remembered. Her mother-in-law had dropped off a letter and pictures of Billy Junior and Jean. She had worn a lavender suit and sat sedated through the trial, faces of the jury weaving in and out of her delusions.
The glass panel ended and at the far end of the hallway stood a tall man in a dark suit. He seemed familiar. Even from this far, his frame and the way he stood seemed to move something inside her. The slideshow that had mellowed over the years came back again. Those were the eyes, she realized as she came closer. that had looked at her in shock when she dug the knife deep into his heart. Light caught the brown hues of this man's hair bringing back memories, of the locks she had once put away in her musical jewellery box. How they had been strewn mercilessly over the floor of the hallway that fateful night. God alone knew how much time had passed but she could still hear the neighbour's terrier barking even now as if it had been last night. His paws scraping the glass windows, his whining boiling inside her head, turning things to a blur.
Her wheelchair was nearing the beige lobby. The man that stood at the end of the hallway was now walking towards her. His face caught her like a sudden gale and she could feel her throat clamming shut. His footsteps were burning her ears sending a wicked chill through her spine. How was this possible? Could he still be....was he still alive, she thought. The memory of the wound on her spine came back like a ghost as she stared into the same blue eyes. Those were the eyes that had widened and then frozen in shock, when metal had snuffed his heartbeat that night. The blue eyes that had looked at her one last time, like two haunting mirrors in the face of her betrayal, were now looking down at her, brimming with a smile, with a mysterious sorrow.
"Billy!" she gasped, touching the face that had lived now only in her dreams. Gone was the desolate look that alcohol had poured into the beautiful blue eyes. They were as clear as they had been on the night of their last kiss. These eyes were the ones she had fallen in love with, before all the bitterness began. Her lips could not move. She was back in the throes of that one night when they had made love, for the very last time. She was falling fast through the scenes, a white wedding, the two beautiful babies, the laughter. She clutched the fabric of his shirt.
"Oh Billy" she whispered, her mind answering to a different world.
"How've you been?" he said finally, peering into her brown eyes, his voice hoarse from holding back his own tears.
"How've you been, Ma?" he repeated,louder this time, trying hard to break through her glazed look, as she crumbled into his arms yet again, lost, like she had been every time she saw him.
"Do I love you, Billy?" she whispered, as he buried his tears on his mother's shoulder, "Or do I hate you?"
