Take Me to the River

content warning: Violence, references to sexual assault, coarse language

The gods envy us. They envy us because we’re mortal, because any moment may be our last. Everything is more beautiful because we are doomed. You will never be lovelier than you are now. We will never be here again.

Homer, The Iliad

We are in an office

A bland, blond, grey-and-taupe modern office

The shrink’s office

Opposite Shrink sits a sticky, sweaty, snotty middle-aged woman

Sheena

Sheena is here because her beautiful son, Damian, was murdered at 25 by a john – a client

She calls the client M—— because she cannot bear to name him

She wears a locket containing Damian’s baby hair. It hangs permanently around her neck She is clutching it

Shrink has just suggested that Sheena confront M——, who is in prison for life.

She thinks this might help bring Sheena some ‘closure’

‘You’re a fucking stupid bitch,’ Sheena wants to spit

‘Nothing, ever, will make this stop’

This much is truth

*

M—— had stared, impassive, as lawyers, witnesses and specialists analysed the rape, torture, dismemberment and death of her beloved Damian. His empty, horrible eyes reflected nothing. Matt-black holes. Drift too close; they will suck you in and crush you into anti-matter. Black mirror sirens of the underworld.

M——’s defence team had bombarded the court with ‘compromising’ photos. Because Damian had been a sex worker, nothing was considered off-limits. Nude, blindfolds, dildos, slings, drugs, in nightclubs next to famous people. Coked, drunk, reckless.

Sheena had held another picture tight to her heart throughout the trial. Damian before – as a little boy with his zingy eyes, his soft, pink lips and his gorgeous, ringing laugh.

*

Shrink volunteers to seek visiting permission. She knows Sheena won’t survive a rejection.

‘Yes,’ Sheena says. ‘Yes, I would like that.’

*

And now, here they are. Sheena and M——. They sit across from each other in the high-security visiting room. There are no glass screens or phones, no grunty buzzer. Just chips and flat lemonade, bored prison guards, broken, weeping women, and zoned-out children. The void Sheena experiences in that moment is indescribable. Her self-hatred – because just being here is an act of wanting – threatens overwhelm.

(She fantasises about the punishment she will mete out to Shrink, who caused this shit show. She imagines crushing the cunt’s fucking skull.)

In her dreams, her fury shames and humiliates him. He cannot withstand the weight of her grief and her rage. She is Medusa, and he shatters into a million pieces the moment he meets her eyes.

But he doesn’t shatter.

*

‘Why?’

blank

‘Did you want to hurt him?’

blank

‘What did he do to you?’

blank

He just stares. Silent. Refusing to answer any questions. Vacant. Utterly disengaged. His victory dance.

Sheena sits there.

Leaking.

*

None of her fantasies about this meeting had entertained the possibility of this nothingness. This absence of traction. She ended it early. At the doorway, she looked back. He was still sitting at that metal table. Staring impassively at her.

A bolt of rage shot through her body at such high voltage she was terrified her skin would split. It boiled her blood, stained her skin beetroot, mainlined to her most primitive form. ‘I will end you,’ she mouthed.

Out of his sight, her body seized with a freezing shiver. Gasping for air, she felt a huge, strong hand on her back. It was warm, and it rubbed gently in circles.

How long were they there? Time stopped. She was a child again, wrapped in her parents’ arms. For the first time since the police phoned two years earlier, she felt safe. He had a malty, cinnamon smell – like biscuits in a hot oven. He had shaggy, soft, dark hair and eyes like a river. ‘It’s been a long, tough road, eh sis?’ he said. Sheena nodded. ‘Ok, now we go.’ She slipped her tiny hand inside his huge, warm paw. ‘Call me Jay,’ he said. She opened her mouth. ‘And you’re Sheena – I’m across it all, baby.’

Jay guided her deep into the bowels of the building. He led her down a concrete stairwell, then through a metal door. On the other side, they walked into a pure, black void.

‘Look up, baby, look up,’ Jay whispered. The walls started to glow. As her eyes adjusted, she realised she could see through the walls. She could see into the cells they were passing and beyond them to the cells in the next block: those above and those below. She could see all the inmates locked in their cells, going about their private lives. Some were reading, watching TV, on computers, masturbating, shitting, cleaning their teeth, dancing. Living life in their tiny rooms, bored, horny, anxious, depressed, but mostly – weirdly to Sheena – utterly unremarkable. She looked for and found M——. He was lying on his bed curled up in foetal staring at the wall, as blank as he had been upstairs.

They eventually reached the bank of an underground river. A dinghy sat on black sand. She climbed in. Jay pushed out into the water, vaulted in, and rowed them into the dark. A line of candle flames flickered on each bank, mirrored in the black water. The sound was incredible – so quiet that any noise seemed enormously loud.

She heard the water playing over the oars and the creak of the dinghy, and then – soft and sweet – the sound of Jay singing in a language that, although she understood not one word, filled her with joy. The music shimmered in her body.

After forever, Jay pulled the dinghy right and rowed towards a woman on the bank. She was gaunt, with enormous, calloused hands. She wore a hand-stitched black shift and headsquare. ‘Geia Sheena,’ she said, ‘my name Klo. Welcome.’ Her accent was thick and difficult to follow. She turned away and almost disappeared into the gloom of a dark cave. Sheena looked to Jay. ‘Let’s go, baby.’ He winked.

The dark was so profound they had to feel their way along the wet rock wall. They came to a corner, and as they rounded it, they saw Klo waiting for them under the dim light of a failing, naked bulb. She pushed open a weird-looking door – the kind you’d find in a cheaply-built school: hollow wooden laminate, scratched and graffed, ball-shaped handle.

            Sheena found herself in a tiny kitchenette: grey Laminex table pushed against the wall with mismatched chairs; hospital-green, worn lino floor; small sink with manky wettex and crusty detergent bottle. A worn IKEA bench ran along the wall, strewn with chipped plates, random cutlery, fly-blown packets of dry ingredients and rusting tins. At the far end stood an ancient-looking samovar, complete with a lit tealight. And then a red wooden door.

‘You want drink?’

‘Um…ok,’ said Sheena, looking back for Jay.

‘He no allowed. No men.’

Klo turned the tap of the samovar, then handed her a chipped, mass-produced mug. Sheena blew the steam off the top of what looked like tea and took a tentative sip.

It was mind-bogglingly lovely. She had no idea tea – or any drink – could taste like this. Sweet and reviving, it made her mouth fizz and her lips tingle. It sent ripples of pleasure through her. She felt light. She felt clear. The oddest phrase occurred to her – ‘I’m at my fighting weight,’ she said.

‘Good,’ laughed Klo, then suddenly snapped her head up, sniffing slightly – like a dog, thought Sheena – ears cocked, nose twitching, energy straining forward. There was a soft knock at the red door. ‘Yassou!’ yelled Klo. She looked playfully at Sheena, ‘Me and my sisters, we have been waiting for you.’

As Klo opened the door, Sheena saw two twinkly-eyed women. ‘Oi aderfés mou,’ Klo sang out, ‘Sheena, my sisters – Aisa and Ananke.’

            They were wrinkled, comfortable in their skin, grounded: thrillingly, powerfully present. Sheena was suddenly teary. It had been years since she’d felt such radiance, such vitality. Sympathy – yes. Sadness – endlessly. But these women seemed up for a party. They were strong, practical, earthy.

There was a chorus of joyful chatter in Greek as they tucked their arms underneath Sheena’s elbows and waddled into an enormous, bright room. It was airy, with a high ceiling and broad, worn floorboards. It reminded Sheena of a Parisian atelier – the sort you see in movies with extras scrambling on their hands and knees, mouths full of pins.

A huge rosewood table stood at its centre, and in the far corner, under a spectacularly tall sash window, was an enormous spinning wheel, soft and gleaming from years of use. On the floor, piles of just-shorn wool, rough and waxy, with the musk of earth and fresh-cut grass.

The sisters started to sing a soft, rhythmic folk song. Although they sang in Greek, Sheena somehow knew what they were saying. It was a song of work, the rhythm of the sun, the strain on the body, sadness, and longing. It was intense and strange. Sheena felt her guts stirring as she listened.

In the silence as the song ended, Klo sat at the wheel, gently stepping the treadle to start it turning. She grabbed a handful of wool and began easing the clumpy, rough fuzz into a fine, silken thread, which she then fed through the flyer onto a bobbin.

Ananke and Aisa stood by the wheel, looking at Sheena. Their eyes were soft, but they were clearly waiting for her to speak.

‘Um…’ said Sheena. Klo's wheel instantly stopped, and she, too, looked up. The silence weighed a tonne. ‘I… I’m not… I don’t …’

‘Sheena mou,’ said Ananke gently, ‘your son, no?’ Sheena stared at her, trembling. And suddenly, it spewed out of here like a torrent. ‘Help me, for fucks sake!’ She spat sour saliva. Help me destroy the pig fucker who took him from me. Chain him naked to a rock in the wildest ocean. Burn him alive with the fiercest sun. Send an army of birds to rip out every organ of his body!’ She heaved, breath ragged, hot and ferocious, ‘I know who you are, I know what you are capable of, and I don’t care what it costs me, I want him crushed.’ She doubled over with a jack-knife of pain, screaming, punching, kicking with rage, frustration and terror.

The sisters clucked and soothed. They laid their hands on her until, at length, her breath deepened, her skin cooled, and her heart slowed.

‘You sure you want?’ asked Ananke. Sheena nodded, silent and wide-eyed. ‘No go back,’ Ananke warned, ‘this only one way. I need you to say.’

‘Yes,’ croaked Sheena, hoarse, almost imperceptible.

Klo handed Aisa a full bobbin. Aisa closed her eyes and gently started to slide the thread between her thumb and middle finger. She swayed and sang, almost under her breath. The light suddenly fell, and Sheena saw M—— being dragged by three men down a hallway and smashed against a shower cubicle wall. Her body jerked involuntarily with every punch, every stab and every kick. His blood spattered across the floor and up the walls. He gasped for air; she spat in his mouth.

Then Aisa snipped the thread.

Sheena felt it start in her pelvis—this tingling, light feeling, this incredibly pleasurable flood of delight that bubbled up and made her giggle, then laugh, then cackle with joy. This was revenge. And it annihilated justice.

She felt suddenly reckless. ‘You take lives,’ she said to the sisters, ‘but can you give them back too?’ She felt the air thicken as the question left her mouth. Her heart rate accelerated, and she suddenly felt light-headed. ‘Can you?’

‘Give me,’ Klo said. She pointed at Sheena’s locket. ‘His hair, no?’ Klo opened it, carefully extracted the soft, blond lock inside, and started twisting it together, strand by strand. ‘This will hurt,’ she says.

*

Aisa takes the thread between her thumb and middle finger

She sings

*

There is a light so bright that it blinds you if you look at it

Sheena squints

She feels sound in the back of her skull

It gets louder

Piercing, metallic, insistent assault

She jams her hands against her ears

She hits herself, smashing the noise out of her head

She slams her skull against the table

Begs for oblivion

For silence

Silence

*

And then

She sees Damian

Beautiful boy

Dancing

Smiling

Shining

He raises his hands

She thinks for a second it is a greeting

She laughs, cries, stumbles towards him

But she realises he can neither see nor hear her

In him

There is

No sense of her, no memory of her, no connection to her

*

Aisa picks up her scissors

Sheena prays silently

End

Now