IT CAN BE NOTHING

By Lindsay J Sedgwick

PROMPT—The story I told myself ...

The story I told myself was that it would mean nothing.

That I had to do this because his need was greater than mine.

Hadn’t I said before that kissing felt more intimate than sex.

I was there for the children but stayed on for the evening, to meet up with my sister’s friends. He groomed me all night. Told me what would happen. Pushed against me so I could feel him. Hard. He made comments, puns, jokes to make sure I knew what was happening. Every time I left the room, he was there, blocking the corridor back to the safety of my sister’s friends. His friends. He fed me drink that I drank because I was trying not to be there, not to be in the house, trying to work out how I could stop it happening.

Pretending it would all go away.

My last glass is a whiskey I do not want. I take it to keep the night going, so everyone that is in the room will stay. My shield.

I think of driving home but know I am incapable.

Of sleeping in the car. Cold, but that would be fine. My head is hot; my mind is spinning like a Ferris wheel.

He would not let me do this. I know he would not let me go out there into my car. Nobody here would and I am sensible. I have already nearly died of the cold once and cold scares me.

But this is worse.

Nobody would believe me if I told them what is going on. They are his friends now.

I tell myself it will not happen. I hold the glass so tightly in my hand – it’s crystal, sharp jagged patterns all the way up. A proper whiskey glass - that it shatters.

And the fuss then. I pick up shards but am warned that I will cut myself. The hoover comes out. Everyone leaves. I flee to my room and close the door. I tell myself that if the door is closed, if I am in my bed and under my covers, he will leave me be.

But I am only getting into bed when he opens the door. Tells me to follow him.

I feel I have no choice. To do this and get it over with. Pretend it’s nothing. It will be nothing. Surely I can make it be like nothing.

My sister told me, ‘You know Irish men. They have to have it every night’.

I did not know. I laughed with her as if I did. She was my best friend and we lost her three months ago. I held my arms around her children walking alone behind the coffin and had to push against my siblings to get out and do this one, small thing.

When it is over, when he has done what he had set his mind on doing, I creep back to my room. I fall into a sleep that is alcohol deep but fragmented. In the morning, I help to get the kids ready for school. My beautiful sister’s kids that I love so much but will lose because of this, because – and he jokes about me ‘keeping him up all night’ as if there were two of us and all under the score of his words, over the heads of their children, so I cannot respond.

I tell myself he did it to me because he was angry at my sister for dying.

But I am broken by it and think to myself, did he hate me that much?

Did he hate me that much?

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Lindsay J Sedgwick is a playwright, screenwriter and author of seven books. Based in Dublin, the former journalist lectures in Maynooth University, where she was Screenwriter in Residence 2016-7. Her first book of flash fiction, Glimpses Beneath, is due out with Silver Locust Press later this year.