Faster
The sun beat down on the backs, fronts, sides of various wet bodies. Babies in the wading pool splashing away with tiny chubby little arms, a mix of adults and teens in the diving pool and a further mix of adults and the elderly in the lap pool, all completely self-involved as is our way, unaware of the mental storm among them.
Faster
Nobody noticed the tiny form in lane 3 as she wandered out of the change rooms, dropped her bag and towl at the base of a tree, found herself a lane and dove in. Nobody except for the sunbathing form atop a towel on the other side of the pool. Startling blue eyes following as she moved. It had been 8 long months since the incident on the Red Eye, 3 of which spent in the companies hospital and another 5 spent compiling good marks to his name. They had decided that it was cheaper in the long run to keep him than to kill him and train another to be as good as him, but he had had to re-earn the trust and respect he once had before they would allow him near his Lisa, not that there efforts to stop him had been all that successfull, they needed to be sure that he wouldn't lose control again. A lose canon was still a lose canon regardless of it's proficiency on it's good days. Jackson had spent those first 3 months seething. Confined to bedrest for weeks without end all he could do was hate her. The bitch that insisted on ruining everything he had worked so hard to procure for himself, a job, invisibility, the complete annihilation of his emotional state. Well, almost complete. A very troubled and very violent childhood had convinced him of one thing as far as emotion and emotional intimacy were concerned: that he wanted none of it. He had spent years in this particular field of work destroying any trace of it within himself and then she comes along. In walks little Lisa Reseirt stage left, and after 8 weeks of surveilance she had him feeling. She had him feeling and liking it. And that was the unforgivable wasn't it? After all that time all that effort she had made him second guess himself, had made him question the male, fact based logic he had not only lived by, but taken to the next psycological level. She had made him feel. And as days turned into weeks, hate had turned into love, anger into pride. He had changed her, true she was already a surviver but interaction with him had planted within her the ability and the willingness to use physical, violent means to protect herself and he had put that in her. To see her use it was a great source of pride to him. Sure she had injured him. She had beat him at his own game, firmly establishing herself as the only cross on his otherwise spotless work record but in doing so had proved herself worthy of his newly resurected affection. She had changed him as surely as he had changed her and she would be his. Never taking his eyes from her, he pulled a piece of paper, an envelope and a pen from the bag beside him. Then, taking one last look, began to wright.
Faster
Swim Faster. Keep moving. Breathe, Stroke, Kick. Breathe, Stroke, Kick... Repeated in her mind. Her mantra. It changes according to activity of course, but the underlining message is the same. Don't Stop. For 8 months. Breathe, Smile, Move. One day, a few weeks after her run in with Jackson, she had been helping her father with the dishes after dinner at his house. Chatting away as he washed and she dryed and paying little attention she accidentally cut herself on a knife. The relief was equisit as she felt her tension disapear, as if it were some saught of virus in her body and someone had injected her with an anti-body and, staring at that short red line, she felt as if she had exorcised Jackson from her system as if she had bled him out in that tiny red drop. It had accurred to her then that she had a way to keep going, something she could do when she was overwhelmed. And she had a secret, a guilty sceret but a secret non-the-less. Realising that her pause was drawing attention she pulled her shirt sleeve down as if she were cold, apologised for 'drifting off into space', and resumed chatting. Then, at work 2 months later it hit her. Frozen she sat at her desk pen in one hand starbucks coffee in the other, she hadn't thought of Jackson or the plane or the rape in over a week, because all she had been able to think about was work. Work and her weight. She saw what was happening, recognised it for what it was. She was in the opening act of an eating disorder. Fearing the velocity and force of self and emotion, so tired of the constant thunder of emotion she was choosing the numb silence of Anorexia. The crashing tide of self and emotion within was all encompassing and up untill that point inarticulate, subconciously pinning this force to the body gives it definition. Gives it a beginning and an end, your problem is your body. She began to believe that if she could only contain her body, if she could keep it from spilling out so far into space, then she could, by extension, contain herself. If she could be a slip of a thing, a dainty, tiny, bony little happy thing, then the crashing tide of self and emotion within the skin would subside, refrain from excess, be still. Sitting there, coffee cup in hand, she had the choice to seek professional help, to face the tide and thunder of emotion head on. Or she could continue on as normal, substituting food with coffee and vitamins as much as humanly possible, consuming only enough to subsist. Stifling the roar of emotion and it's pain with the obsession with weight. Taking a swig of coffee she lowered her eyes to the page and began where she left off. That night she had had a little bonfire in a small corner of the community garden atop her apartment building. Her kindling of choice: every self-help book in her collection. Breathe, Smile, Move. 8 Months.She was exhausted. But she couldn't stop moving. If she stopped then she would have time to think, to feel, for the memories to catch up and she couldn't allow that. It was all too much too fast, a vast ocean of emotion and confusion and pain and she was cinvinced that if she could just keep going, stay in front of it, starve it away and bleed it out then she just might be ok at the end of the day.
Breathe, Smile, Move.
Checking the giant clock on a wall near by she lifted herself out of the pool then wandered over to her bag. Relaxed and loose from her swim she reached for her towel and started to wrap it around herself then frose mid-action. There amidst her phone, keys, purse and various other handbag-like posessions, someone had slipped an envelope. Realising who it must be from her blood rushed to her head and she grew dizzy, half sitting half falling to the ground. Her her heart began to thud in her ears as she emptied the envelope of it's content and began to read.
You have a beautiful stroke Leese. So strong. Quite good for someone whos only been lapping for about 4 months. Though you shouldn't push yourself so hard, you might pull one of those beautiful muscles and we couldn't have that. Oh, yes I've been watching. Who could resist? You are a beuatiful sight to behold as that tight body slips slowly through the water. I love watching you move. No it doesn't excite me. It pleases me.
Ah, No Leese. No intimidation tactics here. A frightening letter from the obsessive monster that threatened to kill your father. I write merely to warn you. I will be back for what is mine. You mightn't like to think of yourself as so. You don't like the thought of being owned I imagine. 'Mine'. I picture you sitting at the base of that large oak you so favor contempuous and seething at the title. But I assure you that as a result of this most curiously strange situation mine is exactly what you are. I know you Leese. I know your habbits, your deepest thoughts, your innermost fears. Your secrets. Yes, I know you all too well. And that, my love, makes you mine. I know things about you that you would never admit to. Not even to yourself. Do I still haunt your dreams Leese? Are you still hosting replays of our time together in the plane bathroom, of the time I headbutt you and knocked you out? The time I threw you down the stairs of your fathers house? Is mine the face you now see when you dream of the event in the car park? Or do I haunt your dreams in a different way? Do our little interactions end in screams of a different nature? Do the things we do make you shiver in something other than fear? Oh and don't believe for a moment that your newly aquired coping mechanisms have escaped my attention. You can swim twice as much, jog twice the distance and take on double the hours at work and I will be right beside you. Tell me that my voice isn't planted firmly in your mind. Can you, Leese? Truthfully? I'm inside you. Those scars on your thighs spell me, spell only me. And you can whittle yourself down to 80 pounds trying to forget the reality that is me but I will not be forgotten. I will make you see me Leese. I will make you feel what you so vehemently deny and you will be alright Lisa. I will make you alright.
Jackson Rippner.
Eyes red and puffy with tears she collapsed back into the giant oak. Head in hands her cheeks redenned in shame. He was right, about everything of course.
'Of course'.
At the sound of that oh so familiar voice she didn't look up. She knew it hadn't come from outside her head.
He would be back for her, she knew. He said he would be. And she knew he never lied.