PSYCHOPHILIA: A Disturbing Psychological Thriller Read Free Page A

her, I am assured.  He begins to talk to me whilst
checking his appearance in the mirror.
    “Are you certain about the menu
tonight?” he says.  I stand on the bottom step, my hand gripping the rosewood
banister.  His attention is on his gloves, good quality leather and for which
he paid a small fortune.  Quality, I am told, does not always come cheap. 
“Venison?  Really?  Sushi is much nicer.”
    “I am not allowed to eat Sushi at the
moment.  It’s dangerous.”  He nods, his lips pursed shut and I have my second
disgusting thought of the day.  Why do such simple things all remind me of my
own body?  My opinion regarding the food and lack of compliance with his
envisioned evening of entertainment seems to have hindered the perfect
alignment of his cuffs.  He is fiddling with them but his gloves limit his
dexterity.  He grunts a little as he tugs, first holding his arms straight, and
then bent as he tries to regiment them in place.  I am his inconvenience, a
destroyer of plans.
    “Ishiko, please, would you?”  He
holds out his arms and she expertly tugs at the starched sleeves, and as if she
has cast a magical spell his appearance comes together.  He looks back to the
mirror and after a brief and indistinguishable adjustment to his scarf he is
ready.  “Then pheasant it is.”  He walks towards the door before stopping,
turning, and walking back towards me to complete a task that he has forgotten,
as if only now he realises that he does not have his keys.  There is a hint of
a smile but still no eye contact.  I know I saw it, and for just a second I
thought he was going to grin, show me his teeth and reach up to kiss me with
Ishiko standing behind him looking on.  I am on the bottom step and so we are
roughly the same height.  But the hint of a smile was exactly that.  It was
gone as quickly as it came.  He does kiss me, though.  On the cheek.  I'm what
he had forgotten.  “Happy birthday,” he says, the tail end of the words leaving
his lips as he turned to walk away. 
    “Thank you,” I reply, a little too
gratefully.  But I am grateful.  I cannot hide it.  Any type of love is good. 
It doesn’t matter if in reality it is hard, or damaging to the soul.  It can
push you to the edge of sanity but it is still better than its absence. 
    By the time he left the house and got
in his car I had put on my coat and arranged my own scarf.  Ishiko has lingered
next to me, perhaps waiting for me to chastise her for a menial failure on her
part.  This is what she expects from me.  I decided not to in the hope that
some of her calmness would soak into my pores, and my body would save it up so
that later, when I am with Gregory again, I will emit the same radiance and he
will love me.  All I have wanted is for him to love me, I think.  I see his car
leave the driveway, and I pick up my keys and turn to follow.  As I step out of
the door I hear Ishiko speak.  I am so used to not hearing her say anything to
me that it is as if my ears have tuned her out, gone on hiatus, not expecting
to have any role to fulfil.  When I realise that she spoke I turn and ask her
what she said.
    “I wished you a happy birthday.”  I
say nothing and shut the door.
    I am thirty two today.  I was born at
10:15 AM in the morning, my mother a child herself, my father convinced he was
adult enough to handle it.  They held me in their arms and cried, their tears
falling onto me leaving tracks in the birth slime on my face.  She told me that
I cried for three days solid.  It was as if I knew that I was a mistake, that I
knew I should not have been.  Generally my birthday does not cause much
excitement for me, but this year, this year especially I did expect a bit of
fuss.  How sad that the most enthusiastic person about my birthday is my
housemaid.  Her wishes were those you would offer to a stranger, should you learn
that on your day of meeting it was the anniversary of their birth.  Perhaps
that’s