Courting Jezebel

A Story by Socioloverboy

A man struggles to make sense of his life and feelings as he is haunted by his past and crippling mistrust of others.

Courting Jezebel

A man finds love, true love, once, maybe twice in a lifetime. And that love, that bond, is everlasting. Period. Even as the world burns down around him and he is filled with the lightless void of apathy, that bond remains.

-C. Windhaven-

Kate. I loved Kate. I really did. But we were young and naïve…the timing wasn’t right. If we’d only been born 10 years before we’d have one of those loves that those cheesy romance novels talk about. You know, walking ten miles across broken glass for one last kiss or defending her honor to all naysayers and anyone who would listen…proclaiming your undying love in original song or expressive dance…that kind of love. But it wasn’t meant to be. We fell too fast and eventually burned out like a gasoline fire. Even now I still think of her. The way she smelled, how soft her skin was…how she tasted. Dr. Midland, my therapist, says it’s unresolved emotional stress that’s allowing her to hang around. He says that I need to tell her exactly how I feel. Purge myself. Come clean.

She haunts me. None of this started until I met Charlotte. Again, Dr. Midland believes it’s my guilt, but I don’t think so. Of all things I feel or felt about Kate, guilt was never a factor. Even after her death I never felt the slightest hint of remorse. Love is like that. I understood, just as she must have, that it was just her time. And it’s not like she haunts me like in those terrible “B” movies, not at all, quite the opposite really, she’s just…here. She still thinks we are together. I know how it sounds. It’s kind of nice actually. After not laying eyes on her for so long, it’s nice to see what’s left of her face. She’s so pretty underneath all that dirt and blood.

The first time she came around I had just met Char. I caught a glimpse of her from the corner of my eye, sitting at a table; still wearing that dress I bought her at Macy’s the night she died. My heart skipped a beat. Charlotte doesn’t know about her. How can I tell her that my dead girlfriend follows me and is still madly in love with me? I doubt that would go over well. Full disclosure is what “Marty” suggests. That’s Dr. Midland’s first name, Marty. Marty Midland. Kind of a mouthful. And he insists that he be called Marty. Not Martin, not Dr. Midland, just Marty. I know what he’s doing. Trying to be my friend, break down my defensive barriers, and fiddle around with my mind…not likely. He will always be Dr. Midland to me. The last person I allowed into my head didn’t fare so well. Kate was a psychology major. Intensely smart woman, much smarter than me. She sits in on my sessions with Dr. Midland sometimes and just shakes her head. She knows just how full of s**t he is.

We talk, Kate and I, sometime for hours, and it feels just like old times. The topic of marriage comes up frequently, but I always change the subject. I bought a ring over a year ago…but not for Kate, and I don’t know how to tell her. That is why I originally went to see Dr. Midland. Proposal anxiety. But somehow we got on the topic of my dead girlfriend and her continual presence and before I knew it a year had gone by. He doesn’t know how Kate died, just that she’s dead. He’s never asked directly but I get the feeling that he believes me to be somewhat responsible. Nosey, nosey mind digging doctor. And he’s not wrong. But I’ll never tell him that. I tell him that she appears to me as beautiful and pure as the day we met, when in reality she’s just as disfigured and bloody as the day she died…with the hilt of that butcher knife sticking out of the side of her face.

“Marty” Midland

Dr. Midland thinks I’m crazy. More professionally put, Moderate to Severe Schizophrenic Psycopathy paired with Visual Hallucinations. His words, not mine. I looked at his note book when he was out of the room. Kate thinks he’s a quack. She diagnosed him with a Savior Complex and Delusional Self Worth. I don’t think they would have cared much for each other.

“Marty” is your typical head shrink. Thinks everything has to do with either my mother or some repressed sexual desire. Very Freudian of him… but mistaken. I just want to be able to propose to my girlfriend without offending the dead love of my life. I don’t think that is too much to ask for. But he got sidetracked. He’s focused on Kate. He’s focused on why she is suddenly an issue again. He says, “Until Kate is gone, you cannot move forward with any relationship.” To be honest, Kate never stopped being an issue. I loved her. Mickey and Mallory love. Romeo and Juliette love. That isn’t something that just fades away. But he doesn’t understand that.

He isn’t a man that has ever experienced it, I can tell. He has nothing behind his eyes. With all his knowledge and self absorbed know how, love has never found him. It’s sad really. Kate thinks so too. He gets bolder every time we talk, bringing Kate up more frequently. I ask him not to…because she asks me to. Sometimes when he talks I don’t hear him. His lips move and watch the sweat on his brow drip onto his khakis in slow motion. Kate stands behind him, knife in her face, smiling at me. Telling me that anyone who has never loved anyone doesn’t deserve to live. Which is very unlike her, she was always a pacifist.

Dr. Midland…Middy. He hates when I call him that. I warn him not to dig, not to psychoanalyze on Kate’s behalf. I just want to marry my girlfriend. She’s the living love of my life. But he keeps…insisting. He wants to know how Kate died. I ignore him, watching her behind him, slowly sliding her finger from one side of her neck to the other. Insisting.

The more “Marty” talks the more I can feel Kate in my head. Lovingly caressing my mid brain. Prodding her dainty fingers deep into my psyche. Motivating me. Controlling me like only she could. Reestablishing her analytical strangle hold. Dr. Midland isn’t safe…but I don’t think he ever was. Why did I come? Charlotte? No…I’d heard his name. Somewhere.

Kate

Puppy love. Dewey eyed red head. My Kate. Never Katie, she hated Katie. Sometimes I’d call her Kateland. Equally as despised. I would have done anything for her. From the moment I met her, I knew. A man knows, you know? He knows when he meets a woman, the woman that no other woman could possibly amount to as long as she draws breath. She was older and I was young…we both were young, I was just younger yet. She had no business being with me, but we were drawn together by forces unseen. The Gods or angels. Chubby Cupid and his recurve bow and arrows laced with concentrated infatuation.

When I think about it, I’m not sure what it is she saw in me. I’m about as average as the definition and she was…spectacular. It started off playfully, the psychoanalyzing. We’d lie in bed, moist with each other’s sweat, and she’d ask me questions. I’d answer as tactfully as I could, trying to circumvent her cunning, but she always broke everything I said down to the bare elements. She asked me about my mother. I said she was a stable, quiet, and loving woman. Within a minute or two she nearly had me in tears, asking when she left and if what I really meant was that my mother was cold and unaffectionate…which was the truth. The adult in me didn’t want to remember her like that, but my inner child knows that truth all too well. Of the few things she said to me before she left, the “I never wanted you” stung the most.

On the night of Kate’s death, wearing that beautiful sun dress, I heard the skittering of my mother’s subtle insults. I ignored them, losing myself in Kate’s beauty, but the voice was relentless. I drank, drowning out her voice with red wine, and her voice lessened. It was our anniversary. And I stared at Kate the way a child stares at elephants at the circus, or an astronomer stares at stars. Completely dumbfounded but so in love. Then her face started to melt. Her beautiful face began contorting into a ghoulish mother-like figure. I closed my eyes…drank more wine. She asked me what was wrong and I lied, told her I had a headache. She knew I was lying, she was good at that. That’s when she asked me, “Have you even thought about seeing a therapist?” “But you’re my therapist” I said jokingly, she was not amused.

That’s where I’d heard his name. On our anniversary, she told me she thought I was conflicted. She told me that something I’d said or done in a dream had frightened her. She just kept…talking. My head spun and before I knew it I’d thrown up all over hear. Red wine and lobster. Ruining her dress. I saw the pain in her eyes. Tears. Tears borne of fear and concern. Her face started melting again…dripping off her chin onto her dress, mixing with the red wine and vomit. She said I needed help, real help. Help she could not offer. Her voice cracking under the pressure of choked back tears. “I love you” she said, her dress completely saturated with her liquid face, her skull mouthing the words without a tongue, “but I can’t do this.” That’s when I heard it, unmistakable, my mother’s laugh. Tormenting me. Ridiculing me. Berating me.

“Nobody wants you, you see!” “Nobody loves you, you nameless b*****d!”

I just needed to make her stop…

Charlotte

Like South Carolina, she’s southern. Sweet as a Georgia peach, she hates when I say that. Playfully hates it, I know because it makes her giggle and smile every time. Her face, dotted lightly with freckles, wrinkles up like you’d imagine a prune’s would if it had eyes and looked up at the sun when she laughs. She’s so pretty. And loving. Never once has she asked me about my past. Not once. “Marty” thinks that’s a red flag…Kate thinks that Marty thinking that is a red flag in itself. Their psychobabble confuses me.

I met her in grief counseling. Everyone there was broken in some way, I felt more comfortable than I had in a long time. I’m not surprised that it was there that I found love and companionship. I’d lost my girlfriend and she’d lost her son to whom she was very close. Though I don’t believe in first sight, I do believe in being lost in a sea of love at first sight. There will always be work but love is worth it. Kate didn’t start showing up until about the eighteenth or nineteenth counseling session. I’d see her standing over by the burnt coffee and stale donuts, just staring at me. Not angrily…more disappointed. Like she knew the feeling I was beginning to have for Char had taken root and begun to blossom. I can’t say Kate hates Char at all, she ignores her. When we talk she never speaks of her. I wonder what Dr. Midland would think of that? He’d probably say something like, “You’re projecting your feelings of loss and worthlessness onto a dissociative avatar of your deceased girlfriend.” That sounds exactly like something he’d say. Then Kate would mock him, “Blah blah blah, I’m a narcissistic prick, blah blah blah, I’m alone.” She always knew how to make me laugh.

Our relationship is…quiet and stable, Char and I. It’s simple. I love her and she loves me. Period. No abject judgment or questionnaires…just affection. I don’t believe we’ve ever fought, not even once…about anything. Again, Dr. Midland believes this to be a characteristic trait of an untrustworthy companion. Kate can sense my irritation. I usually agree with her on most things but what she wants me to do…I’m not sure where it’s coming from. She was never the violent type. Who does he think he is questioning Char’s love for me? He who has never loved or ever been loved. He who judges so harshly. It is her honor I’m defending. Her name. Our love. I think she would appreciate that.

Dr. Midland

I think Marty knew when I walked in that something wasn’t right. He shifted uncomfortably in his seat, stinking heavily of nervousness and fear. I remembered why I knew the name. Kate knew him. He never mentioned that. All this prodding and digging he’s been doing was never to help me get to a point where I could be free and move on. No. It was an interrogation. He cared nothing for me or Char. Nothing. He attempted small talk but I was uninterested. Kate slunk around behind him, tracing her bloody neck from ear to ear with her thumb. Smiling like the first time we kissed under that awning in Newark. My heart raced. I burned to keep that smile on her face.

Before he could string a sentence together his face began to trickle onto his loafers. His left eye oozed down his cheek, snaking down his chin and hanging there for a second before falling with a wet thud onto his desk.

“It’s happening right now…isn’t it?” he asked.

“You never wanted me, did you, “Marty”?”

“What?”

I crept closer, Kate’s erotic whispers warm and wet in my ear. Laughing softly like she often did. When I mentioned Char both of them grew quiet. Kate’s smile rescinded. Dr. Midland’s eyebrows rose inquisitively. For a second I was almost sure they looked at each other, both confused, taken back by my last words. Kate looked as if she’d been betrayed and Dr. Midland looked as if he’d never heard her name.

“You need to sit.” Dr. Midland said quietly.

“Why?”

“Is Kate here?”

She shook her head and pressed her pointer finger against her lips.

“N-no. Why?”

Then he said it, “Who is this “Char” you speak of?” Kate stood in the corner of the room behind Dr. Midland, the annoyed expression on her bisected face begged for the same answer.

“She isn’t your girlfriend…is she?”

I couldn’t be sure but what looked like a bloody tear fell from Kate’s face. Her arms fell loose and listlessly by her sides…she looked dejected.

“Yes, she’s the love of my life.”

I could feel Kate’s gaze upon me. Her eyes fiercely burning her pain into my skin, branding me with her unrelenting love. She just couldn’t understand the love I have for Char, it’s different. Not that I didn’t love Kate, I did, with all my heart. But she didn’t love me, did she? She abandoned me. Went behind my back. Betrayed my trust. Just like mother said she would. Taunting me with the promise of her undying affection and now judging me with her undead trance.

“Like Kate?”

“No! Nothing like…Kate.”

“Who are you looking at? She’s here isn’t she? Kate.”

“Why do you always want to talk about Kate?”

“Calm down�"”

“Kate, Kate, Kate, Kate, Kate!”

The repeated mention of her name brought a smile to her horrific face. She reminded me of my purpose. Why I came today. Blood oozed down her face and neck and despite it all she had never looked so beautiful.

“This woman, Char…”

“What about her?”

“Is she the woman you mean to marry?”

“Why?”

“Well you’ve never mentioned her name…only Kate’s.”

I could feel a pinch in my neck and it crept ever so slowly up the side of my face and into my ear. There it began to ring, quietly at first, almost like a bird singing in the distance…but it grew louder. Painfully louder.

“Are you ok?”

His voice only seemed to make the sound worse.

“We need to talk about Char.”

The nagging sound of her voice…my mother. Eating away at my eardrum like termites to a wood shed. Tunneling around, gnawing, destroying, screaming…

“He doesn’t care about you! He hates you! He never wanted you either!”

Kate was directly behind Dr. Midland now, her bloody hands on his shoulders. Her vomit stained dress dangerously close to his sport coat or blazer or whatever expensive garment he was wearing. She wants me to kill him. It’s the only way we can be together she says. My head was throbbing. Too many voices. Screaming dead mother. Gently insistent deceased lover.

“I looked at your file. Your family history.”

His face was completely gone. Just bones. Vacant sockets where his eyes used to be stared at me from across his desk. A puddle of melted face pooling in his lap and spilling over onto the floor.

“Please stop talking…” I mumble.

He didn’t.

“Charlotte Windhaven. From Goose Creek, South Carolina…”

The tornado of voices, shouting, suggesting, kill, murder, blood…I stood up, my legs felt like there were thousands of fire ants stinging them.

“Shut up!”

“She’s your�"”

Before he could utter another head shrinking lie I lunged over, grabbed him by his fancy tie, bashed his head against his desk, and sunk a fountain pen into his ear all the way down to the end cap.

The voices started to fade and a wave of euphoria washed over me. And there was only Kate, standing in front of me smiling…knife positioned exactly where I had left it.