In My Mind Read online

  In My Mind

  Shaida Mehrban

  In My Mind

  First published in 2017 by

  AG Books

  www.agbooks.co.uk

  Digital edition converted and distributed by

  Andrews UK Limited

  www.andrewsuk.com

  © Copyright 2017 Shaida Mehrban

  The right of Shaida Mehrban to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1998.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser. Any person who does so may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

  All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  In My Mind

  My love you are perfect, I do not want you to go,

  you are my mind, happy to live this empty life so.

  Both of us had needed no one else but just us,

  understand my love, they understood us not.

  Two turbulent hearts together beating as one,

  two aching souls inseparable, for we are none.

  Evils and egos had to spoil our days to come,

  roses were red, when your lip’s colour did run.

  Feels as if heaven would be ours all of the time,

  liars and lovers came, none were truly ever mine.

  Yet you stayed and played with ringing in my head,

  in and out of troubled times, my head was so lead.

  Nothing had changed as you remained so very true,

  memories and madness, became trouble that’s due.

  You and I why couldn’t they all just leave us alone,

  months of yearning, had sadly not made me a home.

  Indeed they didn’t understand our tainted aching pain,

  nobody could of been you, sadly you were not my gain,

  dying seemed the fall, this life left me quite insane.

  In my mind, in my mind, you will always be with me.

  In my mind, in my mind, you were my only eyes to see.

  Chapter One

  Slowly, her body slithers down to the ground. Her limp hand strokes the back of her head as her eyes weep in pain. Her pain throbs away and the sadness is in her grey eyes. She knows that slowly but surely, she will be no more. She cannot remember feeling so helpless ever before in the thirty-five years of her life as she has helped to give life, not take it. She lays perfectly serene, as beautiful as ever, make up still as fresh as the morning dew and her eyes as round as a reindeer’s button nose, perfectly round. He stands beside her and shudders, trembling pain in his eyes as his tears playfully roll down his withered, arched jaw.

  “Stephen, save me please, save me,” she pleads with him, not in anger but in helplessness.

  All he utters is, “Gabriella, my beautiful Gabriella.” She lays still with stunned eyes peering up at the old cellar ceiling. It is full of cigar-smoke grey cobwebs and she knows that she has been here once before. She escaped before, perhaps she can once again. Has hope come knocking on the door once more? She tells him to shut up as she cannot stand men who cry like a weeping bitch. He quickly shouts back that nothing can wound the sly fox in him as he only loves her and hatred has no home in his unfulfilled aching heart. He tells her to quieten and relax as she has suffered a very bad “bloody” blow to her head through her own innocent clumsiness and that she has no right to leave him, no matter what. She must only live for him.

  “My head is bleeding badly, get help, Stephen!”

  “Hmm,” he quickly utters, “It’s Steve, remember? Steve as in Steve McQueen. I’ve told you so many times to call me Steve, my beautiful Gabriella, take a little look, you’ll see the resemblance.”

  She fights back, “No one calls me Gabriella, it’s always been Gaby.”

  His tongue cuts her words short. “No, no, I’ve told you it’s beautiful Gabriella Velente. You’re not like the rest, common trash like the young folk of today. You’re simply not trash, you are sophisticated as I, my gorgeous. I’m the hand as you’re the glove, perfect together, my Gabriella, only mine, no one else’s.”

  There’s a creepy chill lurking in the background. The walls are crying out for help for this helpless young thing amongst the cracks of the smothered paint. They watch as her soft voice murmurs cries of helplessness and he in a world of his own with her firmly in his mind.

  He sits on his buttocks with his nose dribbling slowly like the tap that has worn out its washer, but all the while, he keeps his eyes firmly on hers. Fixated. For a moment, he stands still and yet his head is chasing butterflies. Nothing new there! His humming tune sounds like, “Sweet Gabriella the most delicate butterfly of all, now here with me forever, just the way it should be, the way it should have been a long lifetime ago, my sweet, my sweet.” He interrupts his own broken strings to slide his arm straight across his moist face. He carries on, telling her that it has taken him five years to get her to come to stay in his kingdom even though she has visited his public house upstairs many times.

  His broken string repeats itself and he tries to reassure her that it’s only A MATTER OF TIME before the bleeding will stop and she will find the energy to get up. Then, he will carefully cradle her into his arms, both cradled in the corner of the public house cellar which he has made so new for her. There’s a lingering smell of thick lacquer on the walls and clean glossy oak sideboards tainted in strong odour, a bit like him. He tells her that he purchased this designer two-seater in a peach colour just for her because that’s her favourite colour.

  “The sofa is empty and so is my Gabriella’s life. My sweet, do you realise now why I had to take you away from this wicked and monstrous life? Do you not understand, Gabriella? But of course, you do. You do, don’t you, Gabriella? I am truly sorry, my sweet, that I had to put something in your drink that I made for you, what did you ask for?” He laughs out loudly as his ears ring with his own laughter, no one else’s. He can visualise her friends upstairs, sitting on the soft blossomed bar stools with whisky cracked splinters raging to get out. Night falls, darkness serenades the sky, the bar stands still.

  “You know, Gabriella my sweet, you must tread more delicately like a butterfly. That martini on the rocks was supposed to only make you relax and wash away your worries and come in to my lonely, longing arms. I would have guided you carefully down here so we could live our life together, forever. A life where I would take care of you, that’s all I want and to fulfil your every wish, a life with no care in the world as you would be mine and I yours. The only thing you would need to do was feed my hunger. Five long years I waited and now you’ve gone and spoilt it all, you could have had everything. Why did you screech and slither as I aided you to the washroom? I had to lie to your friends by telling them that you’d left already. You made me lie, Gabriella my sweet, lie, see what you have made me do. I DON’T LIE.”

  He continues with his jumbled words that he brought her down stairs to speak to her and make her understand that she needed to be saved from her wild friends and he had to protect her from this life which was wrong. His sobbing child-like words plead with her to wake up as he narrows himself to her slender pink palm and then nears himself further to smell her close up.

  “Wake up, beauty!” He orders her an
d he bangs his fists in vain for her to open her eyes, she bleats back “doctor.”

  “It’s okay, my sweet, I am here, you need no one else, we will live together, we need no one else, but you need to listen and be patient with me. I did ask you to come quietly with me down the stairs but you resisted. I had to make sure that you didn’t hurt yourself so I held you real tight and caressingly close to my heart, my sweet Gabriella.”

  He continues, “I helped you all the way down the stairs and then into this palace of ours. You see, my sweet thing, time waits for no one and I have been waiting far too long, five years for you and many years for my father. You’re in my head, he’s in my mind and my heart all the time, as if it’s been raining for years, five long years of getting wet as if there’s only been one season, winter, cold and damp, then dry and wet all over again. The wanting and waiting and loneliness and the mind games you played with my head whenever you came. I’m not lonely anymore, no I’m not, see, I have you and you have me.”

  The cold cement floor gives no comfort to his posture as he clasps his hands like a staple. The crispy crumbly floor feels cold and uncomfortable like them, as one lay in her own blood bath and the other besotted in his own mind. He keeps reminding her that he is doing this for her own good, he is obsessed with her delicate being and now he will make this a beautiful love story. She tells him that this is a horror story that’ll destroy him as death will come knocking on the door soon enough and her friends will report her missing. He doesn’t want the black death to cradle her. He peers attentively at her laddered black stockings and wedged black shoes, he strokes the gothic look one by one and then looks tightly at her short leather skirt as he politely asks her the purpose of wearing such tight clothes?

  “This is why I had to take you away from them, all those people you hang around with, you understand, how could you not?”

  He tries to reassure her, “Don’t be terrified of me or angry and this is not how it was meant to be, we were supposed to live happily ever after like Cinderella, like Snow White. You can’t leave me. I won’t let you.” He runs his heavy hands through her red hair, all the while trying to unlock her curls.

  She slowly says, “Leave me alone, don’t touch me. All I want is a doctor, please call a doctor.”

  “Doctor,” he retorts, “I can do what a doctor can do. I will make you comfortable.” His heavy clammy hands smother her legs. She feels uncomfortable and nervous and moves her legs. Goosebumps!! The hair on her legs stand on edge with the creepy eerie chill and not because it is cold. He tells her that she likes that and even if she doesn’t, she will have to get used to it. He sniffs and hovers around her like a bad smell, placing his being close to hers, realising all the while that even he is feeling uneasy. His eyes pierce at her, as green as the sea on a not so sunny day. He gazes at her sunny warm blue eyes and smiles.

  He tells her that they can be together forever now but it just wasn’t meant to be this way and he repeats and repeats but she hears no more. His tone bounces up and down like empty yet powerful words, bouncing around in a hollow bucket as he tries to reassure her that it will be alright as she has him and he is enough.

  Slowly, he slithers off her footwear and reminds her that she can be more at home and relaxed. She releases stress by bending her toes yet her eyes flicker not.

  His nose is moistened and it drips and drips onto her. He sees her eyes give way to the agonising tear drops. They glisten from the corners. He doesn’t want to lose control or weaken but hesitantly puts his hand underneath her cheek to save them.

  “Our pain, my beauty, is the same. We both idolise one another, the only difference is that you don’t know it yet. Let me wipe away your teardrops as they are too precious, my love, my Gabriella, my delicate beauty, my awesome butterfly.” He looks at the teardrops in his palm now and with a few words recited to himself, he rubs his hands around his own neck and tells her that her pain has become his. A man’s body jumbled together in a boy’s head? He has chosen not to grow up whereas others have had no choice!

  He starts to talk to her. He tells her that this world has lost its senses, not him. The world cannot appreciate what true love is, as no one really loves anyone anymore, it’s all lust but not him. His words ring like an awful nightmare banging on and on in her tiny ears.

  He tells her, “I’ll go and get us a few drinks and you can relax and after a bite to eat, maybe a drink again. We will sit and we’ll talk and will make a plan about our future life together, as I haven’t got it planned yet but I’m a good planner. I tell you what, why don’t I get some paracetamol or maybe something a bit stronger? What would my butterfly like, hey Gabriella? Anadin maybe? I’m an ibuprofen man, or codeine. Perhaps we could get the ones that go fizz in liquid and that you could drink down, think of it as champagne. Better still, sip it slowly like a real butterfly.”

  Quietly he rumbles around her head without too much disturbance to her. She looks more and more helpless. A beauty that is tainted with red splashings of seeping blood. Red and black together like cosmopolitan, the mystery of the Gothic black against her blood red lips. She fears that she may not play chess anymore.

  “Dangerous colours.” She looks very cold and helpless right now. Quietly, he reassures her and then slips away from her, but keeps his beady like eyes firmly on her as if she was going to escape.

  She murmurs, “Doc. Doc, please.”

  He smiles and looks back at her. “Don’t worry, you mustn’t worry. I’d never leave you, ever. I’m only going to get brandy, or whiskey if you’d prefer, to warm you up, maybe some sweet sherry.” He goes up the steps, slowly treading on the wooden slatted stairs. They creak but that doesn’t stop him, gently he utters a quiet cough and wipes away the trouble he dribbles as he opens the door to the pub floor. The open door opens a glimmer of hope in her eyes but quickly it’s slammed tightly behind him. Short lived hope without the glory.

  The noises from upstairs serenade into the cold, bleak, damp cellar. Laughter brings life to this cold place and the loud music overburdens against the large chattering of people. She moves no limbs to the movement of the music and lays wrapped in the coldness of her pain. She is helpless but the ones upstairs are not, these walls can hear lots of laughter and noise. She needs someone to help her as she lay silent and still and knowing that she cannot be heard in the cold quietness, suffocated like a wet blanket all the way around. The door to the cellar cracks open as he smugly bursts in like the drenched rain on a stormy dark night. His fumbling fingers snuggle two perfectly sparkling tinkered glasses with powerful brown liquid. Delicately, he puts the glasses beside her as he swiftly goes back to close the door. He puts the door neatly with the latch and doesn’t waste time as he quickly glances at the time keeping object that hangs silently, and quietly comes to be with her once more.

  “Now, my delicate Gabriella, do you think you could try and sit up to enjoy this intoxication? A new liquid handmade, yes, handmade by me. I’ve got some tablets as well. Don’t worry, they are painkillers so you release your pains with these and don’t worry about the rubbish you hear about mixing tablets or drugs or drink, they all go well together, I know. You see, I know what it’s all about so long as it’s all in the carefully measured quantity and as delicious and intoxicating, it’s perfect, sweet, seductive and sticky like fudge. Yes, fudge, the heavenly thing that children grow up with. I know I did, it’s been my bittersweet weakness and always on this bar counter along with the salted peanuts and sea salt crackled crisps.” He pauses to scratch his head.

  “You see, I ain’t a big eater or a big man since Father left, coz I just turned into a man who eats bakery bread sandwiches with fruits and salads. What the heck! The old lady, her upstairs, almost a permanent fixture, a definite part of the furniture upstairs, spends all day from watching the television even though it’s turned off to cleaning and cooking the hot meals and always insists on saving me a bit. I say
bit coz she knows I ain’t a big eater and I’m repeating myself. She is my, you know who, her upstairs. So, what would you expect even though I don’t get on with this nagging evil woman. I need staff and would rather employ someone than have her, but she says she needs to keep busy. We have this love hate relationship not, no, no, it’s hate. Mine’s the hate, you know, and we ain’t enemies but we’ve never shared that bond like a glue to paper. Truthfully speaking, she’s the needle and I’m her thread, good left alone and not in the eye.”

  “Stevie Boy!” He can hear her calling him at the top of her squeaky annoying parrot voice, squeaking at him again and he tells Gabriella that he has to go and put an end to her squeakiness, or else she’ll never shut up. His hands embrace his ears firmly trying to put a trap door on his hearing. He jumps up, his eyes showing a bit of rage, he quickly moves up the creaky steps and slams the door behind him.

  She can hear light laughter with the ding ding of the bell when food orders are ready along with the happy crowd in fits of laughter. Her eyes search for her friends. She wonders if they are missing her? Has anyone even noticed that she is missing from the crowd up there? Has anyone noticed her half empty ginger ale glass with the red lipstick edged around the side? She tries to move her throbbing head as she searches for life with her draining eyes. She can sense the confused being of the boy forced to grow up in a man’s body torn between the bell, the woman, the tinkering glasses and the happy crowd. And now, there’s the cellar with the ugly black morgue-like emptiness, cold and creepy compared to hot and sticky fudged ice cream. Ice cream or fudge, hot or cold?

  Quickly, he scuppers here and there around the bartender and his bar, the snacks and the food trays are full, all’s well and whilst panting, he re-opens the door and shouting through it again at her, “Woman, serve up, clean up and go home and don’t wait for me.”

  He opens the door again and in an authoritative voice, “Don’t wait for me, bartender Bob, make sure you finish on the dot at 11:30. Tell the punters to clear off, load the dishwasher and dim the light, lock up the till and let yourself out, I’ll lock up later. I’m staying here for a while and...hey, woman, don’t be poking your nose in here or anywhere else. I’m working till late here so sod off home, don’t wait up for me.” No replies come nor has he waited for them. He gives his orders. He marches from one corner to the other corner in search of sanity whilst watching the peeled paint in the corners of the cellar. Both are frazzled now.