Chapter 1: I've Spent Half My Life Out There
The silver sheen of the mirror in front of you only seems to offend you more, as you brush away the last tiresome threads of saddened heartache. It doesn't really matter how much you brush it away, it always finds a way to stick to your skin, colourising it carefully to taunt you whenever you look at yourself in such an analytical manner. But you're strangely aware of the testing lessons that have cornered you into being someone you don't even recognise anymore. It's moments like this that you wonder if your sister would even recognise you. That's what upsets you more than anything else.
Change is inevitable they say. But you can only feel yourself scoff bitterly at the very thought. There isn't a fraction of yourself that you can remember from before you arrived on the island. Your once vivid eyes have lost all traces of their electric blues; the mirror only reveals the dull numbness that possesses you from deep within, somewhere where you've forgotten to reach to now. The nervous, shy smiles that you used to play with on your delicate lips have since disappeared into a thin line of defiant confidence in the indifference that you pretend to feel.
It's been an expensive lesson to learn that a smile can hide so much. Everyone questions a gloomy frown; concern is thick inside their voices, as curiosity urges them to discover the secretive truths. But everyone falls into the pit of deceit with one flash of a smile, the wider it is, the deeper they fall into the world you've created in pretence for them. No one questions your indifference either, in some ways they hold an unnerved fear for the plainness of your expression; they don't know how to respond to you, so you win, they leave you alone inside your lonely head.
It's all part of your survival here. You had to learn that too after the six months disappeared into the calendar of your history. It still pains you to know that your decision led you here, to be a prisoner in the middle of nowhere. It's all that fills your waking thoughts and your undying dreams. You want to leave. You don't belong here. You've known it all along, and pretending otherwise seemed pointless after the first few months, so you've stopped lying to yourself.
Instead your life rolls across the playing board with every clatter of the dice, and you no longer care where you land. It doesn't matter in the end because the finish is nowhere in sight for you, the glorious winning prize of actually being allowed to return home has once again been snatched from your fingertips. You can't go home, you're constantly being told, because women need you here. It infuriates you to hear that every time you ask Ben to go home. You even lose your well perfected control over your emotions, subsiding into the rough seas of your tears. But it doesn't help. He doesn't waver from his concrete decision.
Now you have a new project to focus on. You remember the pile of folders that are still sitting untouched on the white counter of your kitchen, and now you allow a heavy sigh to escape from your lips as you remember Ben's visit this morning. It seems he is using every available excuse to come and see you. You visibly shudder at the vileness of his presence. You hate him. You've never felt that way about anyone that strongly about anyone. Yet he has the subtle talent for making it so easy to instil so much hatred into him.
He's demanded that you read through the files, to memorise most of the details. You held your tongue steady with a reluctant bite, as you remember what he told you only days before. Your eyes cleanse themselves again with a gentle flow of tears at the memory of seeing her, your sister, on one of the screens of Mikhail's communication station. You smile loosely, overwhelmed by the healthy sight of her, the joyous happiness that radiated from her and the small boy who ran around her feet. It had worked. You gave her the child that she had so desperately wanted for years, and she'd even shared your name with the precious miracle.
You owe Ben now. You feel obliterated in the wake of his cheating ways. You pinned the liar name tag onto his chest in a fit of desperate frustration, and of course he's proved you wrong. Now you owe him. You scoff under your breath at the irony of it all, you owe that man nothing, yet you have no choice but to do as he says. You pad across the kitchen, towards the files that you've tried to ignore for several hours now. But the bright clock face is taunting from the wall above you, its steady black hands slipping slowly. You sigh deeply, realising that unsettled mayhem is just around the corner.
There are only three folders you now notice, but they are so thick that you could have sworn that there were more folders there. You pause for a moment. Your thumb is lightly tracing the black button that fastens the red folder closed. You come to realise that this is someone's whole life inside that file, darkened secrets that no one else would know, hidden memories that only hold sentiment for the name attached to the top of the file.
The rancid guilt has started to well up inside you, tugging harshly at your shame. You try to push away the plaguing thoughts of the reversed situation, the possibility that somewhere your whole miserable existence could be shoved hastily into a tiny red file, and who would read it? What would they think of you? What names would they call you, weak, feeble, fragile, lonely, a joke, a mess, a waste of space? You shake your head violently, muttering at yourself for being so stupid, and pick up the file on top of the pile in a hurried motion. You want this to just be over.
You collect the white mug from the other side of the counter, its steaming vapour rising quickly from its contents. Sitting down on the soft sofa, you slip your finger down the thin opening of the file, flipping it open with a disinterested reluctance. You let your eyes fall across the white paper that fills the front, the blackened ink typed out in a neat, formality that you've only seen in medical records.
The name filters into your head and then floats across the breeze again, you don't care about this person; you've never met them. You flicker your eyes barely across the various medical data that stares up at you willingly from the piece of paper, birth date, blood type, weight, height, hair colour, eye colour, shoe size. You quickly sigh as the boredom starts to roll inside you, forcing yourself to stick with the tedious task set to me by Ben. Great, you think silently, you know this woman's shoe size, how on earth would this be helpful to Ben's cause?
You've already been briefed carefully on how important this task is, and you feel a sarcastic laugh rumble through your throat, trying to escape from your nose. Ben needs one of these files to help save his life, to remove the tumour that you discovered only days before. You don't understand how this particular file is going to bring any sort of help that Ben needs. As far as you can tell from the first page, this woman hasn't got any knowledge of medical issues. You're confused as to why you've been asked to look at this folder; it doesn't hold any relevant information that would help Ben's cause.
You draw in your breath tightly, almost tempted to push this one to one side. This is a waste of time you conclude. She obviously isn't qualified, so why would you waste your time looking further into this woman's secrets? It isn't fair. You don't care what Ben says, you won't read any further, now that you know she isn't useful to the cause.
But something fails to make you put the file to one side. It's a faint scarlet mark, almost like a box shape that bleeds through from the page behind the one you're currently half-heartedly studying. You're intrigued as to what it is. It must be something important for it to be such a scarlet shade that has the ability to show through another page of paper.
You quickly loose the shame of peeking, knowing that you've been ordered to do it anyway. You flip the page to reveal something that you hadn't expected at all. You're confused at first as to what it is, your eyes immediately drawn to the small images printed on the paper roughly. For once you're stuck for words, unable to understand what you're actually seeing. But yet your tranquil blue eyes spark with a renewed energy, as you can't rip them away from the pictures in front of you.
There's an odd beauty that surrounds the face that stares back at you blankly. Dark spots of ink mark the eyes, yet you swear you can see the distant innocence that lingers there amidst the vivid guilt. You trace the dark lines of the thick hair that spills from the woman's head in an unkempt mess. It fascinates you to see this woman's natural beauty even through the dirty shackles of crime. You let your eyes wash over the black number board that the woman holds in loose shame. Then you finally read the violent red box and the word that sits accusingly inside it, as if it was a prisoner itself; fugitive.
A cutting frown shapes your thin brow, as your swirling curiosity comes to replace the boredom that had once hung there. You turn the page quickly, eager to learn about why those pictures were taken, and why the woman looks so destroyed at being caught. You soon begin to build a montage inside your head of a world that is so unknown to you, but is probably the most memorable thing for her.
Your stomach turns cruelly on yourself, as you read about her step-father, the drunk who violently lashed out at his miserable world and at the people who filled it. You're narrowly aware that it doesn't mention if he hurt her, it only says he hurt her mother. You suddenly start to wish that you had more information now that somehow this file was thicker to fill in the missing answers that you're now desperate to know.
She murdered him. It's such a simple, short sentence but you have to read it several times to really understand its meaning. Had it really been that bad that she had decided that it was the only way to survive? You find yourself scrutinising each and every little black detail that makes up the two small pictures, you're unable to comprehend that such a shape of innocence could be capable of such a terrible act.
How concrete was this information in the file? You ask in vain, knowing immediately that Mikhail is an expert at collecting information on people. There would be no doubt that it was all the hardened truth that lay at your fingertips. Yet somehow you still need convincing a little more, so you rush forwards, reading more of the many paragraphs that make up the next few pages.
The clinical black font seems far too criminal in itself. The unemotional smoothness in its shape is most certainly casting guilt into the woman. It's far removed sentiment only chills you further to the bone. The tragic fairytale unfolds before your eager eyes from its accusing details. Then the unannounced, disastrous pain flies from a simple sentence stamped harshly at the end of the paragraph you're reading. Her mother informed the police.
You're not even aware that you've just swallowed three times in succession, as you try your hardest to comprehend every question that forms in your head. You can't even begin to imagine what turmoil that the young woman has tussled with inside her head at her mother's Judas kiss. The unadulterated innocence that lingers in those darkened eyes of the picture is only holding on, you assume, because she still believes she made the right decision. You don't even have to question this; you know she still thinks this, because she ran.
You hold your breath tightly, as you realise that you've only just started to break through the heavy ice that covers this woman's cold life. A strange, almost foreign emotion of sympathy rises up within you from somewhere deeper than you have dared to venture before. You're not sure why you're feeling such intensity for this person that you've never met before, yet you're too weak to stop reading now.
There's a heart-rending moment when you pause over another paragraph, slowly believing that you're reading something out of Shakespeare. The familiar tale of loosing a best friend, the childhood sweetheart that you know should have become more, stares at you from out of the page. She killed him too. You curve around the simple, colourless words that form what happened in such a brazen manner. You believe she was surviving, doing only what she knew, running away. He was just in the wrong place, at the wrong time.
A deepening frown settles itself poignantly onto your darkened brow, there's more to your dismay. Her mother is dying of cancer. A sudden sharpness twists violently inside your throat, slicing through your skin, spilling out all the pain that you've tried to keep at bay for so long. The single word, cancer, sticks inside your frozen blues. How familiar the whole scene plays out within your mind, the various emotions that fill you with constant dread, distressed into a darkened oblivion, and plunged into a world of agonising uncertainty. A twinge of sympathy rushes to your foreground, in deep awe at the woman you've never met, who tried to see her dying mother, to try to cope with the turmoil of such a destructive disease.
You finally realise that you didn't properly study her name, you've forgotten it already, you're not even sure if you even looked at it. You flip the file back to the front cover, keeping your slender index finger in between the pages, eager to continue reading until the end. There's a violent strength about the dark ink that sits at the top of the page, haunting your fragile clear eyes. Katherine Anne Austen. You try it for the first time on your tongue, the whole name, in a quiet whisper and it feels oddly foreign, yet there's a flicker of recognition that this won't be the last time you'll say that name.
You're deeply intrigued by the intricateness of her life after the murder. You can see a certain new strength that radiates from the brunette, the cleverness that develops in her from using all those people without any hint of remorse. Seduction shuffles its steady feet into the pages, as you read about the men that she killed at the New Mexico bank. You're not quite sure why but there's a bitterness that taints your mouth in a rapid sweep. It doesn't sit well with you to learn this about her. Maybe it's because now you know that men come easily to her, and for you it never happens, not properly.
There's a sense of artificial sadness for them, as you quickly discover that she needed them to get the toy aeroplane that once belonged to her deceased friend. You can see the shallow mournful act in all of this, that plane was the only thing that reminded her of him, of what she had lost before she committed murder. She does care, regardless of what the document in your hand reads.
It's almost too much to take in at once, but you know you have to continue, your mind won't let you ease out of the electric urgency that it's pushed itself into. Your heart plummets to narrowing depths when you read the next page, she was once married. Another very recognisable story lingers between the sheets of paper, taunting you into believe that this could very well be your life that you are reading about with only certain details changed. His name flows across you without much caring essence about it; Kevin, a policeman in Miami.
There's a moment that splits right in front of you, coming dangerously close to cutting deep within your heavy heart. She had lived in Miami, so close, yet so far. It doesn't mention anywhere on the page about her true feelings for the man she chose to wed, and it makes you wonder if she ever did profoundly love him like she would have promised at her wedding. You start to recall your own precious wedding; the glorious happiness that surrounded you on that single day, a day that you foolishly thought was going to be the start of that thing we call forever. How quickly it had all turned bitter, and how rapidly the mould had started to cling in the corners of your relationship. It had turned into a joke, something that had poisoned you into becoming that weak, shy woman who was too afraid to admit defeat.
You gently shake your head, not able to understand the parallel line that has seemed to have drawn itself so determinedly between you and her. It's harrowingly familiar and that's the only reason why you're still sat there soaking in the devastation of this woman's life. You mutely wonder whether this woman would share the same brutal understanding between the ghostly similarities between your lives. Would she turn away from you in bitter denial? Would she even notice you at all? But you've spent half your life out there, deep in the thickness of the howling storms that twirl around you. You know how to survive its wild, taunting hurricane winds. Finally a simple questions comes to your lips, has she spent half her life out there as well?