Chapter 12

He was awoken by the stream of cold water mercilessly whipping his face and body. John opened his eyes, and swiftly moved aside to avoid it. He tried to dry his eyes with a sleeve of his shirt, but it was so soggy, it didn’t help at all.

“Is the defendant ready for the trial to continue?” the woman judge asked. There was a complete silence; the spectators were quiet, as they were observing the situation. The creature stopped pouring water on John and put the hose away. The prosecutor came closer to the cage, bent a bit to look at John with his oddly pale eyes, then straightened and walked towards the judges.

“Yes, I believe he is.”

“Good, let’s continue. I want this thing to be done with by the end of the day,” the woman judge replied.

“Of course. The next witnesses are Rhonda Martin, Cindy Miller, and Molly Brown.”

“How is this possible?” John whispered when he looked at his hands. His left palm was bandaged, with two fingers, the middle and the ring one, and there was caked blood stains on the material. Speechless, he sat on the wooden stool, put his head on his hands as he leaned them on his thighs. The drops of water were falling from his hair to his eyes, and were dripping one by one on his shoulders and back.

Three women walked upstairs, and came closer to the prosecutor. Cindy looked at John, their eyes met, and he couldn’t deny it; she felt sorry for him. One person among all those who came to testify against him. Neither Rhonda nor Molly looked at him, even in his direction. He swallowed loudly and kept on observing the situation.

The women were ordered by the prosecutor to stand in line in front of the judges, to introduce themselves, and to describe their relationships with John. Each of them talked about the same mechanism. All of them knew he was married, all of them heard the story of an unhappy husband trapped between the love to his only child and the abusive, toxic relationship with a drinking, unstable wife. It also turned out that none of the women knew about each other.

His method was constant; he liked to impress them with things, like taking them for expensive holidays, or showering them with expensive gifts such as jewelry, or beautiful clothes and when they were already mesmerized enough, he would step by step gain control over them, until he was bored and would sabotage the relationship in order to end it.

Two of the women admitted that at some point they all felt he was changing them, more or less creating them to suit his needs. With Cindy it wasn’t the only thing, it was also his remarks about the way she dressed, or the color she dyed her hair, or sometimes about what and how much she ate. With Rhonda it was about teaching her things he liked so he would have a companion while doing something fun for him, like for example, sailing, or playing tennis. She was extremely afraid of water and didn’t succumb to the sailing idea, which made John quite disappointed. He even offered to pay for her course, for the lessons, but she refused, and when she did, their relationship started going through a rough patch. John kept on underscoring that he wasn’t sure if he wanted to be with someone who was unwilling to cross certain borders, to learn new things. When she was underlining she did learn to play tennis, he would simply reply she was still on a beginner level and playing with her wasn’t as much fun as he was expecting it to be.

Molly was the toughest, the most resistant one as far as the changes were concerned, and never allowed John to impose similar expectations on her, but it was most probably because their relationship was different; she was often gone, and they weren’t seeing each other regularly.

Rhonda confirmed she wanted John to finally make up his mind and leave Margaret, hence she called her and told her about everything in hopes that maybe this would push her lover to stay with her. Cindy said she did keep her fingers crossed for it, but at some point realized it wasn’t going to happen, mostly because she knew that John was the kind of a person to always have different options in life. It was clear to her when after a month of living together he never mentioned getting a divorce, nor ever allowed his son to come to them and stay for a night, or a few days. Those days were clearly still adjourned for him. Molly admitted she never had any expectations for John to leave Margaret and stay with her, and, as far as her understanding was concerned, the whole reason why she was there was to prove John’s constant infidelity rather than his pathological tendencies to hurt and control women.

Both Rhonda and Cindy admitted they were hoping for a steady relationship with John, and they were both heart-broken when he was ending their affairs. None of the women had any idea that he was lying to them about his family situation. He told Cindy that Mickey wasn’t visiting them because he chose to stay with his mother. She understood that the boy had problems with letting his mother go, that he felt responsible for her. Rhonda thought that Mickey was much younger and needed a dad in his life, so she was able to understand John’s lack of commitment to her and his doubts concerning leaving his wife. Together with Molly, they all said they wouldn’t have gotten engaged in a relationship with a man like John if they had known the truth about Margaret and Mickey. Cindy wasn’t able to stop crying throughout the whole thing.

As the women were walking downstairs and were passing the cage, John looked at them. Rhonda said “Are you happy now? Look what you did?”—words that were to burn in his mind for many, many days ahead. Molly didn’t bother to even glimpse at him, while Cindy came closer, kneeled by the bars, reached her hand to him and touched his shoulder. John was looking at her, looking at her big, wet eyes and cheeks swollen from crying, waiting for her to say anything, but she only patted him on the shoulder, and went downstairs.

John felt the blood pressure in his veins rising. He’d had enough. He looked at the prosecutor, then at the judges, stood up, walked closer to the bars, grabbed them and shouted, “I’m not the only person to blame here! Call Paul! Call him; ask him! He knew all along about my family, about my affairs, he never, ever, pointed out I was doing anything bad, anything wrong! And he was supposed to be my best friend! Where is he now? He’s an accomplice for fuck sake!”

The creature came to the front of the cage, and hit John in the face with the weapon. John reeled from the blow, and felt drops of blood falling from his mouth. With a trembling hand he touched his chin as well as his lower lip, and realized his tooth was missing. He looked down and saw it on the floor; it was yellowish, with white at the top.

He had never felt so scared.

When John woke up that morning, he saw the brown leather belt lying on the bed. He started screaming.