Shannon Smith
October 16, 2015
Eng. 121
Tom Blake
I am the Creeping Woman
She started out the window and looked right at me.
The eye contact for her must have been frightening but not as frightening as it was for me.
'Rule One: Do not let her see you.'
The words ran round and round in my head.
I knew what I had to do.
The next day she sat in her chair, like the perfect wife she was pretending to be.
'Fraud,' I think to myself, 'If only your husband knew what you wrote.' I knew what she wrote.
I slip in quietly, silently, hurriedly up to the room where she was staying. I had watched and waited carefully, and knew just where her room was. I had watched the lights, charted the path in my head. I had never been in the house, but I already had it memorized.
The old nursery was large and spacious. And she was right, the yellow wallpaper was hideous.
I crept around silently, testing the floor for creaks and moans before I put my whole weight on it. The bed was immovable, so I stepped onto it, light as a cat. I pulled at the wallpaper all around the room. A corner here, a strip there. Not much.
Not yet.
I fingered the pencil in my pocket.
'Patience. Madness comes slowly, not all at once.'
I put the pencil back and slipped out down the stairs and back to my post. I watched her the rest of the day. Once the lights went out in the house, I slipped back in. I had a bedroom downstairs that I slept in at night. Never for long. I could of course stay in the greenhouse, but there is no adventure in staying safe, and I don't mind the risk of being caught. I would certainly be dead if I were to be caught. Women are not treated kindly in this culture. I do not mind this so much, as long as I can continue exploiting it.
Depressed housewives are my specialty. You know the type. Known for their beauty, they marry rich but are quickly bored by their husbands, who work constantly to keep them rich, and then they have a child in an attempt to regain attention from their husband, but instead get postpartum depression. They are easy pickings, and they never notice the missing earrings, or bracelet or person watching them or person slipping into their house, or eating their food or sleeping in their beds.
Or occasionally driving them mad. After all, who is going to believe a wife with an already questionable mental state that a woman is stalking her? No one. They never have before
I settled in to the best nights sleep I've ever had, but not before watching her sleep for a while. I slipped my hand under the mattress and found her journal, reading the most recent entries in the moonlight by the window.
'So far so good.'
I always sleep better knowing that I have done my job well. 'It's far from over, but I've a good start.'
Her husband left right on time, and she picked up her journal almost immediately. She had stopped eating and her hair was frazzled, the "rest-treatment" for her mental instability starting to show in the worst kind of way. I'd like to take full responsibility for her oncoming insanity, but her loving husband had his own hand in his wife's poor treatment as well.
I crept around the house, moving things ever so slightly, enough so that a wife would notice but a busy husband would look over.
I moved to the upstairs bedroom. My face was already peaking out of a couple places in the wallpaper, the result of a few days work. The room was noticeably darker, thanks to the film I had put over the windows, and the wallpaper was more tattered. I pulled more away and continued my art project, and after finishing a face, I would plaster the wallpaper back up on the wall, making sure to leave a corner exposed. She would rip it all down later, I was sure of it. Her obsession with the wallpaper was growing, and I was merely planning ahead.
I pulled out a knife and dug deeper into the floor. The original marks were not my own doing, but making them more noticeable would be. I dug into the wood until it splintered, with the wife weeping downstairs.
'Madness comes slowly, that is to be sure, but once it comes out it comes out full force,' I thought. Her writings had made this apparent. Her fear and hatred of the wallpaper had turned into an obsession. Almost an object of desire.
And she did not miss a thing. Each day I added to my art project, drawing more and more and making the other ones darker, more noticeable. How her husband did not notice, I do not know. I suppose that mad women notice more than doctors. Or doctors just refuse to acknowledge that which they cannot explain with their stethoscope.
'Fools,' I scoffed.
It has gotten more difficult to get into the room, for it seems my project has worked too well. She is always in the room just staring at the paper or sleeping. There is only one week left in their stay, and I have to act quickly. She cannot leave here knowing about me. So I have made myself more obvious. I've sprayed my perfume around the house. The husband, oblivious as they are, would think that it is his wife's. But she would know that it was the smell of something strange.
I've started creeping along outside. More and more obvious. Hiding from everyone but her. She sees me and I do not flinch away. She has turned against her husband, against her child, against everyone. She has started pulling the wallpaper away since her husband is out of town. Jennie is otherwise occupied, I have ensured that. It is just me and her now.
I hear her husband open the door. He walked up the stairs and sees me, opens his mouth to say something, but I silence him, telling him that his wife is in there and in trouble and I saw a commotion from the road and felt the need to help. The fool thanks me and bangs on the door.
"The key is downstairs," I tell him, and he rushes to fetch it.
The door opens and it's better than I could have imagined. She was creeping along the floor, her eyes glassed over. Her husband did not know that I had gotten that axe he asked for earlier. One clean swing and he fell over, but she kept on going, crawling over his body. Round and round and round. She came around by the door and I bent down and snapped the watch off her wrist and put it on my own. It was a perfect fit.