Ripcord

It shouldn't happen.
It should not happen.
But it has.

~

He stands by the door of the bedroom. Just looking. The soft
illumination of the
Winnie-the-Pooh night-light creates a softness to the room, a warm
feeling pulling the ceiling in, closing down the walls. The bedroom is
a tiny shell, a protective cocoon. Yet inside she looks so small, so
fragile. So broken.
The only sounds are the ticking of the clock by the bedside and the
laboured, mumble punctuated breathing of his daughter. She's somewhere
else now, lost in a world created through the confusion and memories of
her young mind, lost in a world where the Badman lives. She sleeps
where children should not sleep. She sleeps in nightmares. Looking at
her through misty eyes he aches. He wants to take it all away, to erase
that confusion and replace it with the feeling of safety and innocence
she once had. He so desperately wants to but it is too late. Will she
ever sleep so sound again?

~

She chases the wind, grasping out as she runs after the falling autumn
leaves that swim through the air. When she finally catches one she
simply stands in wonder at the crinkly texture before crushing it in
her small hand with a delightful squeal. "Daddy, daddy!" she shouts as
she runs to him and shows him the debris, dropping the pieces to the
floor. He takes her hand and touches the remaining pieces. "You've
broken it," he says and she smiles that mischievous smile of hers
before she is off again, tearing after another leaf.

~

He sits in the semi-darkness of his bedroom, bathed in the orange hue
of the street light that creeps through the curtains. In the distance
he can hear the hum of the motorway and occasionally the rattle of
water through the pipes in the attic room. He rests his head against
the wall, simply staring. It hurts so much, this guilt. So very
much.
"Oh Natalie," he whispers. Talking to ghosts. She isn't here. She's
gone, lost to a fatal car crash on a slippy January morning. Just a
year since. She would never have let it happen. She would have
protected Sarah like only a mother can. Her love was far more
practical. She wouldn't have let Sarah out of her sight. Not for a
second. No, she would have protected their baby, her belief in the
ogres and monsters that walk the streets a warm coat. He thought Sarah
was safe, that men are not capable of the stories on the news. He
thought he knew better. He was wrong. He thought he wouldn't have to
tell Sarah to keep her eye on the world, to fear the very place into
which she has been born. Maybe she is never going to close her eyes
again.
He sits in his bedroom and cries. Cries until he sobs then wails. He
cries for the pain in his heart, for the pain in his daughter's heart
and for the absence of those strong arms around him.
~

She isn't eating her breakfast and there is no making her. She just
dangles the spoon in her Cornflakes, absently patting the mush they
have become. The sun that shines through the window seems duller these
days as though it shines through a skein of grey. He goes to her and
sits beside her with a scrape of chair leg across the terracotta
tiles.
"Not hungry, baby?" he says, stroking her pig-tailed hair, brushing
the stray strands from her emerald eyes. She shakes her head, masking
her eyes with her pigtails for a moment. They look so different now.
They used to swim with effervescence but these days they just swim in
water, as if she sits on the brink of tears.
"Do you want something else, some toast?" She shakes her head again.
"Alright, he says, kisses her forehead and takes the bowl away. He can
hardly bare it. She's a butterfly transformed into a caterpillar, a
happiness turned sad. She has barely smiled in days and she seldom
wants to eat. Nothing he does seems to matter.
He empties the contents of the bowl into the bin and begins to wash
it. Natalie's way. He used to just put it on the side and leave it to
pile up with the rest of the pots. Such a simple thing. Such a huge
thing.
"Daddy," Sarah says, "can I go back to school today. She brightens
slightly. He turns to her and frowns.
"No. Not today. I don't think you're ready yet," he says. She drops
her head again. Oh, Sarah, it's too soon. Much too soon. It will always
be too soon.
"Daddy?"
"Yes, Sarah?"
"Can we go swimming then?" He is appalled at the thought, hit with a
sudden wave of nausea that he feels physically sick. He suddenly
imagines a thousand, lecherous onanistic old men, all waiting,
watching. He wants to lash out, to hurt someone; to destroy the man
that has taken away his little girl, who has stripped her clean of life
and left only a shell. He doesn't want to take her anywhere, trusts no
one. He wants to wrap her in a cocoon of his love and force the hurt,
the brutal horror and the confusion that reigns far, far away.
And then he is watching, almost disembodied as the bowl slip from his
fingers and shatters across the floor into a thousand pieces.

~

Someone has pulled the ripcord but there is no parachute.

~

She is in awe of the swans, watching in wonderment as they float by the
riverbank and waddle up the shore towards the offers of outstretched
bread. She grips his hand, squeezing it tight as they near. She edges
towards them, he can tell she wants to touch them but she is frightened
by their size.
"Do you want to feed them?" he asks, handing her a piece of broken
bread. She moves forward nervously. Looking up with a puzzled look that
says, "Should I".
"Go on," he prompts and she throws the bread to the nearest swan which
reaches down with its long neck and devours the piece in an instant. A
sudden scramble of birds toward the bread startles her for a moment but
then she is back, laughing with glee as the fear is banished and
eagerly she throws more bread, clapping her tiny hands.
Further up the lake they watch as other swans swim by on the tiny
ripples. They seem to majestically glide across the water, as if their
beauty propels them with the shove of a God's hand.
"Winnie-the-pooh was a swan to begin with," He says. She looks up at
him, small wrinkles of puzzlement in her brow. "It's true, Christopher
Robin called a swan Winnie before he met Pooh bear. She stares at him,
wondering whether to believe him or not then looks back out across the
lake.
"Silly daddy," she says.

~

She sits in the bath, surrounded by toys. Two telly-tubbies, a purple
octopus that squirts water and a green mottled dinosaur. They float
unattended, disregarded in the soapy water. She doesn't want toys
anymore. She is examining herself, staring down at the smattering of
faded bruises across her ribs, the grazes on her arms. Fingerprints
upon her wrist.
He cannot look at her. There is something about her nakedness, it is
almost sacred yet disturbing too. He wonders if he is capable of it but
he hates himself for even thinking it. What he sees is too much,
something insubstantial, almost unreal, as if the bruises, the marks
and grazes of her ordeal don't actually exist. He views her through the
foggy eyes of a dream, a milky room clouded with the past.
She is lost in thoughts, locked in memories, feeling the cuts and
bruises, running her fingers over them as if to check they are actually
there. He wants to take a giant eraser and just rub them out, rub it
all away. The water feels lukewarm around his dangling fingers as he
leans against the bath.
There is no going back on what is already done.

~

There is an ice cream by the lake, close to the large country house
where families picnic, play cricket in the large open spaces or watch
the birds on the lake. It's not really ice cream weather but Sarah
wants one so they eat huge cones of Mr Whippy, the cream running over
her fingers. Sarah just laughs. She loves ice cream. They find a bench
by the water, watching the ripples that a cool breeze blows, by an old
couple that sit wrapped in winter coats. The swans are back down the
lake and Sarah watches them from a distant, more intrigued by their
beauty than the dowdy colours of mallards, drakes and Canadian geese.
She sits with her legs dangling in the air, humming a tune as her pink
shoes swish to-and-fro.
"Are you enjoying yourself?" the old woman asks Sarah. She reminds him
of an old aunt, one who lived out by the blustering sea in Cornwall.
Sarah nods her head, her mouth full of ice cream.
"You love the swans, don't you?" he says but Sarah just nods again, a
little coy all of a sudden.
After a while Sarah gets up and wanders off towards the shoreline.
"Don't go too far, Sarah," he says.
"Have you travelled far?" the old woman asks.
"No, about three miles. We come here quite often. It's Sarah's
favourite place. We used to come here with my wife." He looks away. Far
away.
"Oh, have you.....?" she leaves the question hanging in the air.
"She passed away last year." He is looking across the lake, over past
the rising skyline of distant hills.
"Oh, I'm so sorry," she says and there is genuine sorrow in her
voice.
She places a hand on his shoulder and he can see the concern in her
eyes. So rare, so true. All of a sudden he feels himself opening up to
her and it is ten minutes before they notice that Sarah has gone.

~

When the police come he takes them into the kitchen, away from Sarah.
She plays in the living room, sitting in the half-light of the sun.
Three officers file in. They have found someone but they have nothing.
Nothing. They arrested him and had to release him. He was somewhere
else. They thought they had him but they hadn't.
He shakes with the anger, rages at their incompetence. If they thought
they had him then surely they knew. Yes, they thought they were
certain. They may have been wrong. Don't they know the damage that is
done, the web that is woven, the heart that is rendered wide open? He
wants to find the man, begs them to give him the address, just a name
even, but they say no, leave it to us, they will find the man. There
will be justice. But he cannot see it.
When they leave the youngest officer lingers. He is a tall man with
children in his eyes. He whispers a name, an address. "I can imagine,"
he says.
"No. But thank you."

~

She has gone and he is frantic, tearing over the park, stopping passing
strangers, calling her name. Desperately calling her name. Soon the
panic engulfs the people like wildfire. What if it was our daughter,
our son? His heart is beating too fast and his eyes begin to blur. He
feels detached, floating. She has gone.

~

He stands outside the broken door of a piss smelling council building
corridor. He feels numb, his muscles tense to the point of breaking.
Silent. There is no one here. No one. The man has gone, vanished like a
phantom, like the ogres and monsters that walk the streets of Natalie's
dreams. The man is gone and he is left with nothing but a guilty
emptiness and a terrible, all consuming rage. The knowledge hits him
like a tornado and unleashed it forces him to his knees, forces him to
scream in rage, and to bitter, vicious tears.

~

They've found her, he heard someone say, and he is racing across a lawn
of sculpture towards the large house, into a courtyard of giftshops and
a cafeteria. Someone directs him through an archway, across the
cobblestones and on toward the toilets. He can see a gathering and as
he gets closer he can read something in their faces, the hands over
their mouths, the sorrow, the sadness and the pity. His run turns into
fear filled walk and his heart begins to slow, to feel as if it is
going to cease to beat. Something is wrong. Something is wrong with his
daughter.
A hand stops him, a face says sorry, but he doesn't hear and he pushes
through the crowd, pushes past them into the toilets. The men's
toilet.
Just snapshots are all he can remember now, sepia moments. He cannot
remember the smell, the acrid smell of stale urine, or the scrawl of
graffiti over barren walls. He cannot remember the dim light of the
tiny window nor the tear filled eyes of the tall woman who cradled his
daughter. He remembers nothing. Nothing but his daughter.
She looked like a doll, a rag doll that someone had thrown away. Her
tiny, alabaster limbs flopped without strength, cut and bruised. He
remembers the large cut on her thigh, high up where her skirt rode. He
remembers the blood that matted her hair from a gash on her forehead.
He remembers how her eyes stayed closed, cut off from the world. He
remembers thinking it could not be Sarah, was not Sarah and he
remembers the striking moment that, yes, it was Sarah. And he remembers
crying, howling like a cornered, injured wolf when he held her tiny
body, when he held her so close and thought she was dead, when he
spotted her discarded, torn panties that lay in the unmentionable fluid
by her side.
But what he remembers the most is when she opened her eyes and
whispered his name and the tears began to fill him, to overwhelm him,
and his heart felt itself pulling in a thousand different directions.
And as he wept he pulled her deep into himself, so deep that he could
almost feel her breathing inside of him.
He let her down. How was he ever going to put her back together
again?

~

They sit in the conservatory, beneath the rattling sound of the rain
against the roof.
She sleeps on his lap as they lie together on the sofa. The
Winnie-the-Pooh book is closed now, his reading sending her back to
sleep. She sleeps easier today, as if the troubles have slipped their
moorings and are sailing off into the distance. They will be back
though, returning like a trawler through the storm. He wishes she could
sleep for a year, sleep until the memories fade like photographs left
in the sun. The sound of the rain is hypnotic, sending him away but he
fights the sleep. He has to stay awake to protect Sarah. While he is
here she will never be alone again. While he is here he will always
protect her. While he is here he will do his best for her.
Sometimes a man's best just isn't good enough. Sometimes there is
nothing a man can do.
As she sleeps he listens. Not to the rain but to the outside world. He
listens for the sound of something unspeakable, the sound of the past
returning. He is out there, the man, and somewhere he waits. Somewhere
he breathes his foul breath and sleeps his foul sleep. Somewhere he
waits. Waits. Just a knock on the door away, a face in the street. He's
out there. Somewhere.
Will they ever sleep so sound again?

5

6
Ripcord Matthew Bingham