Carte Blanche

Carte Blanche - The Events That Followed

She sits upwards in her bed, whilst buttoning her medical gown, facing the pale, white walls of her allocated room in the New Warsaw Institution for Mental Health and Psychiatric Care.

'Is it surprising? Certainly not. In fact, you could say my… incarceration is a meagre blessing, given the alternative arrangement. But for my own sister to imprison me in this hell… some would call it betrayal. Still, I harbour no resentment for her. She’s a sweet girl, truly. For years she cared for me, loved me when no other would. When the world showed me misfortune, she would give me solace. It was only in her final act of charity that she… wavered. '

She begins to sob.

'Mother… she... she always reminded me that virtue and fertility are a lady’s most invaluable assets; she would tell the servants to rouge my cheeks and... and comb my hair, and make me the “quintessential debutante”. Ha. '

'Oh, and him. That brother in law who got me in this mess! Him and his frivolous tricks… his… carnivorous desires... The fool, no doubt, takes for granted that I.. that I am nothing but a helpless invalid by placing me in this… lonely bastille. When in truth, no means of confinement render me without hope. And yet still…it, it so ails me to know he is the husband to my sister; the father to my nephew! That unfortunate little boy may never know what foul creature bred him. I wonder at the process of that conception… given the events that brought me here I dare question if my sister… if my sister had to endure… no. No. No need for that. '

She stands up and shakily pours a glass of what seems to be fizzing, orange juice. She pinches a corner of the room’s wallpaper and starts to peel it away.

'Perhaps one day my damaged heart can come to forgive him for his unspeakable sin. Although naturally even his presence… disturbs me. The assassin to my spoilt virtue, the secretary of my demise. To this day I question: why do the cruel so harshly pursue me with such ill intentions? What is this universal conspiracy that seeks to undermine my honour? In heart, in soul, in body, my happiness is depleted. For decades and decades, it appears the devil has sent his convoys of malice and terror against me, only now my armour slowly diminishes. With every blow to my vanity, I lose a part of myself. With every change in the tide, a new evil presents itself to me, each one more spiteful than its predecessor. Than his predecessor. For what cause you might ask? To degrade. To demoralise. To oppress. And then in one cruel strike, I find myself stripped of all protection. The defences I have spent my life building in aid of my vulnerable soul, avalanche down to the floor in that rancid apartment. I carry the scars he inflicted to this very day. While I lead a dejected life, my previous assailant roams freely.'

Another patient’s heart-rate monitor starts to signal loudly in the background. She continues to tear the ageing wallpaper, gradually expelling waspish crackles from its blemishes. As she peels away each layer, the sanity in her eyes fades.

'You see, my love, I have spent my pitiful life wasting away in disgrace, letting the harsh colours of this world corrupt my purity, chasing love in a streetcar that moves in a quick, lascivious motion. My own selfish wanting to be free in a deceased world has driven me away from a home. A family. Every day, whilst I undress, I am reminded of the immensity of my failure. The way he… oh and that look in his eyes… No. Never mind that, that’s all over now. Still, looking in the mirror, I now see no heroine, no white pillars of glory, but ruin. I see a vine of rotting fruit that man after man has discarded for the next. I see the cold bitterness, the deceit. Now who… who is left for me? '

She stands up sharply turns to the apparition of her dead lover, to address him, as her glass of narcotic falls to the ground. The lights dim and an erratic rhythm sounds loudly in her mind, enough to be heard within the institution walls.

'My rouge, dear, its running out. My hair’s getting coarser. '