Bluebell Part 2
Episode 12 | Still There
Content warning for this episode: Themes of coercive control, sexual violence, and explicit language
Cassandra pulled the door of the studio shut and navigated the path to the house feeling shaky and anaemic. She wasn’t hungry and crept up the stairs to the bedroom, where Paul’s steady respirations were audible in the dark, the slight wheeze of his snore.
Cassandra shed her clothes, not bothering to try to find places for them in the dark. She felt her way to her t-shirt and leggings, recognising their well-worn texture, hanging slackly on the hook on the back of the bedroom door. But, looping them by their labels onto the hook again, she tiptoed to the bed wearing only her pants, chilly in the unheated room. She slid under the duvet into what felt like the inside of a toaster. Paul generated so much heat when he slept that, even in their draughty Victorian house, they’d never needed hot-water bottles or electric mattress covers or blankets. He did not stir when she slipped her bare arm over him.
‘Paul,’ she said.
Silence.
‘Paul,’ she said again, slightly louder. He did not jerk or startle but spoke as though he had been conscious all along.
‘What?’ he mumbled, unmoving, not turning to her.
‘I’m sorry that I’ve been spending so much time in the studio,’ she whispered. ‘It’s really helping, though. And you’ve been doing a lot, and you’ve been so patient and generous, and I appreciate it. I wanted to tell you that. I’m grateful.’
‘You’re welcome. Could we talk in the morning?’ Paul said. ‘Early flight.’
‘Okay,’ Cassandra said, kissing his shoulder. She rolled onto her back, her right arm slipping away from him and coming to rest across her body under her naked breasts. She felt the sheets against her skin, all her skin, and the space between her upper thighs grew warm. As though Alex were there, she heard his voice in her ears.
Cassandra. What have you done?
She woke early, but Paul was already gone. He sent her messages her from the airport, where he was waiting with Richard for the flight to Florence. Just-us holiday soon, I promise, he wrote. Be good while I’m gone. xx
I will. Enjoy the match. Love to Richard, but more to you. xxx she replied.
For most of April the floor of the nearby wood had been awash in bluebells, releasing waves of delicate scent at the slightest breeze, and the anticipation of seeing that gentle spectacle again on a warm and sunny morning moved her to take Flush there for her walk. The sun was slanting through the trees from the east and casting shafts of light on the forest floor, and the canopy of trees closed over her head as Flush pulled her into the woods.
Photo by Chris Whatley on Unsplash
But the bluebells had begun shrivelling on their stalks, and she felt melancholy that they were nearly done. On the return to the house, she tried to cheer herself up by reminding herself that she was making progress, that at the time of their last blooming she’d been a different person, that things were changing.
When crocuses first poked through, she’d only just visited Olivia's Memor.I.Am for the first time. She hadn’t yet fixed her studio, started painting again, hadn’t constructed her website. But already she’d received messages on her website-linked account, from people she hadn't met in years and people she'd never met in her life. She’d received a hello from Naomi, her mentor at art school. A stranger had written to ask if any Room of One's Own paintings were for sale. She’d had two queries about portrait commissions.
The avalanche of inquires had only made sense when she returned to Olivia's Memori.I.Am that night, seen that a hyperlink to her new site was already there, her name under Olivia’s portrait a new colour.
Over the days Paul was gone she maximised the opportunity of his absence by spending entire days in the studio, free from his judgement or jealousy. The morning before his return she went out early again, the dew still on the grass poking up between the stepping stones of the path. The smells of her domain, the paint and the brush cleaner and the coffee, enveloped her as she opened the door. She pulled out drawers and extracted paints, dried her brushes, readied her palette.
If she painted Alex sight unseen, what face and body would she choose to give him, what would fit? She eyed a blank canvas, considering.
She struggled to reconcile the dissonance between his insubstantiality and his impact on her. Her interaction with this formless being, this bodyless voice had been so brief, the breadth of their conversations so narrow, but it didn’t seem to matter. It only mattered that they made her feel, made her do. The coincidence of The Cassandra Parsons Project…
She stared at the window as she prepared, seeing some bluebell stragglers in her own garden that were rather fresher than those dying off in the wood, and her heart lifted. Her current piece was a vanitas still-life arrangement of flowers, fruits and bones, and as she mixed her colours the message pinged up on the phone beside her. Mechanically, she tapped the notification. A contact form message, perhaps another commission query.
Form Submission - Contact
From: Alex
Date: 19 April
Email: AlexJamesLeicaBoss@protonmail.com
Message: Two hydrogen atoms walk into a bar. The first atom says, I think I've lost an electron. The second one says, 'Are you sure?' And the first one replies, 'I'm positive...that I've offended you or at least freaked you out.'
I'm sorry that our last conversation was so weird. Your website is wonderful, and your work is even more so. If you don't want to get in touch, I understand, but if you do, this is me. I'd love to speak with you again but I'd rather we talked somewhere else...other than...THE ANTECHAMBER.
Alex. x
He must be a nice man. A creepy man wouldn’t have feared he’d been forward. She counted backwards to the possibilities: Eastern Standard Time, Central Standard Time, Pacific Standard Time. His inflections certainly sounded standard, didn’t place him anywhere, like he was an actor in a TV programme set in generic American suburbia, someone anyone could relate to. But whether he was west or east, or somewhere in the great land mass in between, this message had to be coming in quite late at night, or very early in the morning. He could be drunk. He could have a wife and kids that would have to be sleeping for him to be on the computer messaging strange women. Or he could have woken up thinking about her.
Laying her palette to the side, she studied the message, chewing her lip. On any other day in the last fortnight, given this timing, she would not have read the message for hours. The first time in ages that Paul was out of the country, and he was messaging her. If she answered straightaway, would it be too transparent, would it disclose the jolt of pleasure this communication had given her?
She sat down on her paint-splattered four-legged stool. The still-life arrangement lay on the table next her easel, with a realistic fake skull at its centre, a relic of a long-ago Halloween party. Artists used to paint these sorts of things all the time, she'd learned at school. The Flemish were masters of making decaying heaps of animal and vegetable matter attractive. One was supposed to see such pictures and be reminded that they would die, memento mori. But memento viveri, too. Remember that you must live.
Still Life with Bouquet and Flowers, Adriaen van Utrecht (1599-1653)
She touched the screen to resurrect the fading message. He would love to speak to her again, he said. But what justifiable basis did the two strangers of such slight acquaintance, at least one of them married, have to continue a conversation at all?
She stared at the skull as though it could answer all her questions, but it only grinned back at her.
She had slept soundly thus far in his absence, but now she tossed and turned in their bed. Paul would be returning on the first available flight the next day, he’d said; he was hoping to put in a full day of work. In mere hours he’d be home again, and she would have lost her chance.
She took a three-quarters-full bottle of wine from the fridge and left her shoes behind in the house, wanting to feel the cool ground and the paving stones under her feet. The bright light that snapped on automatically in the studio felt like too much as she entered: an imitation of daylight, good for painting but not right for now.
'Relax the lights,' she said, and they faded to golden.
'Dimmer,' she said, and they obeyed.
Now the room fit her mood, had no expectations of her, was prepared to forgive anything. She had taken both keys with her, the usual key hanging from the ribbon on a shell, and the spare from a drawer. She didn’t think that Paul would lie to her about his return, didn’t imagine that he’d do such a thing to surprise her. But just in case, in case of what she wasn’t sure, she didn’t want to be surprised.
Dear Alex. The cursor flashed, waiting. She uncorked the top of her bottle and poured a quarter of a glass and stopped, then up to half, then three quarters.
She turned away from the computer, the overstuffed loveseat presenting itself to her, inviting. She read there, or stared out of the window, but had never yet slept or dreamed on it. She plumped its cushions and drew a velour throw over her feet and lap. The glass of wine was heavy and satisfying in her hand. She swallowed another mouthful.
'Clio, could you transcribe, please? And turn the monitor and lights off,' she said.
The night pressed in around her. She closed her eyes.
'Hi, Alex,’ she said. ‘I'm actually really so glad you wrote. No. Delete last sentence. I'm glad you wrote. I'm in my studio late, in the dark. The moon is full. You should see it, shining through the big roof light.'
Behind the dark monitor Clio listened, silently spooling out her message.
'So much has changed since we met - mm, change that to since we spoke – my head’s spinning. I think I was building up to a change, though. There was a lot to that, a lot that felt different after Olivia. But if I'm honest - and I want to be honest - there was something about our conversations that was...a catalyst. Why is that?'
Silence.
She had forgotten. They weren’t on the Memor-I-Am, he wasn’t in the room. She kept going.
'I've thought about those conversations,’ she said. ‘I've thought about you. I’m embarrassed to admit it. Lots of people have encouraged me over the years. But sometimes you listen to strangers the most. Even though you don’t feel like one.'
So much easier with strangers. She had almost said so easy, with someone who sounds like you, but she stopped short. Her voice was going low and slurry.
‘Your friends will always tell you you're great,' she said, adjusting her sitting position and clearing her throat. 'But when you...when we...after a few minutes of speaking to you, I got a different perspective on what was possible. Or, not what was possible to do, but what I was willing to do. What I wanted to do.'
She leaned her head back on the armrest. For a minute she sensed him sitting at the other end of the loveseat, almost touching her feet, waiting, listening. She wanted to conjure him physically. He was tall, she imagined, but not as tall as Paul. He was as slender as Andrew had been, as lean as Paul used to be. Alex would have darker hair, paler skin than either man. Perhaps long, elegant fingers, like Jack's. If she kept her eyes closed, he would be there, his energy shimmering like his circle when he spoke, more presence than form.
'I'm going to be honest with you now,’ she said. The moonlight was bright enough now to seep through her eyelids. 'I told you I hadn't done much in recent years. But I've been the doldrums for a long time. Such a long time. Over a decade. And I was ashamed, so ashamed about it. And now that I’m getting moving again...that has something to do with you. You asked if you offended me. You didn't offend me. I'm happy you wrote. I'm thrilled you wrote. I'm not sure why you did. Perhaps there's something going on with you too, something you haven’t told me about yet. But I want to know. I want to know everything.'
A mechanism deep within the old clock clicked and whirred, the little buzz before the chime. The bell struck tinnily again and again, right up to midnight. Now was the moment of decision, to stay or to flee. If she allowed herself to slide into a dreaming sleep, now, his weight would be on her and the breath of his lightly husky voice in her ear.
Cassandra, what have you done?
The sound of the last chime died away in the air as she felt herself falling. Her intentional mind telegraphed one last warning about spilling her wine. By then, though, she was in no more control than Alice falling down the rabbit hole.
'Clio, send the message, please,’ she said, perhaps too indistinctly for Clio to detect, and slept.
A stronger light and a throbbing headache, the dampness of the sofa fabric, the scent of spilt wine. The sun seemed higher than it usually was when she woke in the mornings. She was slow and groggy until the memory hit her. She could not recall if she’d sent something, and if she had, what it had said. She sat up with a gasp. She had definitely sent something.
She stumbled towards the computer, adrenaline slicing through her bleariness. 'Clio, computer on, um, ah, last message sent, Clio, last message sent!'
As responsive as Clio was, it seemed a painful eternity before the last sent message was unveiled. As her eyes raced across the lines, her breathing regulated. It wasn’t that bad. It sounded…friendly. Just friendly.
She had felt far more than friendly, lying dozy and drunk on the loveseat the night before, but would he be able to pick that up from this message? Lucky that she’d opted for voice to text - despite being drunk, she’d had enough presence of mind not to send a voicemail. With her head back against the arm of the sofa and her windpipe constricted, she would have sounded like one of those webcam girls on a documentary about sex work.
He hadn't taken long to answer, with voice this time instead of text. The icon within the message was unfamiliar to her, sound waves rolling towards the outline of an ear.
Touch or say play.
She didn’t have time to decide. There was a sound from the doorknob, and then a rattling. The three even knocks on the door weren’t casual, weren’t tentative, but firm and definite. There was a sound lower down, too – Flush’s nails scratching at the door.
With the first knock she’d jumped, and by the third she felt sick. She’d slept until nearly nine thirty in the morning, in her studio behind a locked door, and the person on the other side of that door now could only be Paul.
‘Clio!’ she whispered urgently. ‘Log off and shut down computer, NOW. Disable voice notifications.’
She scurried to the mirror, not sure what kind of tell she was checking for but saw only her mussed hair and the dark circles under her eyes. She arranged the blanket over the damp patch of wine on the sofa, seized a book from the shelves, and threw it on top. Just before she went to open the door, she spotted the spare key she’d brought out and slid it into her pocket.
‘You’re home!’ she said and embraced him, but he was perfunctory in returning her hug. He drew back, studying her face.
‘Cassie,’ he said, ‘Have you been sleeping out here?’
‘I guess I did last night,’ Cassandra said, rubbing her eyes as though she’d only just opened them. ‘But I haven’t been. I was missing you and drank some wine. How was your flight? ’
‘Drinking alone in the studio,’ he said. ‘With Flush in the house. Hm. Flight was fine. But why on earth did you come out here? And why the fuck was the door locked?’
‘Security,’ she said. ‘Someone could get into the garden through the back gate.’
‘That wouldn’t be a worry if you were sleeping in the house,’ he said. ‘What were you doing out here?’
Cassandra looked over her shoulder towards the loveseat. ‘Listening to music. I read for a bit, I think,’ she said.
Paul pushed past her into the room and picked up the book. ‘The Art and Science of Ernst Haeckel. Looks…edifying. Good read?’
‘He was a biologist,’ she said weakly, hugging herself as though she were cold. ‘Drew marine life. Mostly.’
‘I missed you,’ he said, strolling over to the worktop under the monitor and running his fingers along its wooden surface. ‘I really missed you. You know, it really is a nice setup out here. I should work out here too sometimes.’
‘Well, yes,’ she said. ‘We could share. Of course.’
‘Let’s fire this thing up,’ he suggested, nodding at the screen. ‘Have our coffee out here. Give me a tour of the new kit.’
All she could think of was that notification with the new icon, the ear with the sound waves and its invitation to touch or say play, and if it would still be showing when the screen came to life again.
‘You need real coffee after a flight,’ she said. ‘Not the pods out here. Let’s go in, and then we can take Flush for a walk together, maybe? If you don’t have any appointments this morning?’
She arranged her mouth into a smile with a hint of a pout, tucked her chin and looked up at him with a sheepish, sorry-I’ve-been-naughty expression with a hint of flirtation.
‘I missed you too,’ she said. ‘Even though you dumped me for the football. But you did promise me a just-us soon.’
Going to him, she encircled his waist with her arms, tilting up her face, sliding one hand underneath his shirt to contact the skin at the small of his back.
The energy changed quickly. She suspected she had done it, effectively shifted Paul’s attention away from the computer. But she kept her arms around him, drawing light circles on the base of his spine with the side of her thumb.
She thought he was reaching his hands up to smooth her hair away from her face, and he did, but one hand continued around to grasp her hair, pull her head back slightly. Keeping her hair entangled in his fist, he backed her against the work surface, studying her face, pressing his hardening groin against her.
‘Oh…actually Verity said she was coming round for us to go get brunch,’ Cassandra said. ‘What about Verity?’
‘You know how to lock the door, apparently,’ Paul said evenly. ‘So lock it.’
He let go of her hair and waited.
She crossed the room and depressed the button on the doorknob.
‘And the bolt,’ he said. ’Now come back.’
She took his hand and pulled him towards the loveseat.
’No,’ he said, picking her up by the waist and hoisting her onto the worktop so that she sat where the keyboard should be, her back to the monitor. She wondered, nervously, whether it could be jogged awake, but then Paul was pulling up her skirt, grasping at her underwear, yanking them down to her ankles and off. ‘Is this what you wanted?’ he asked, low and gruff, undoing his belt.
‘What I wanted…’ she said, momentarily confused.
‘Is this what you were missing? Wanting a bit of this, were you?’ He unzipped his trousers and they dropped, remaining in an ungainly puddle of fabric around his feet. ‘What did that therapist of yours call it? Intimacy. Have you been craving a little bit of intimacy while I’ve been gone, Cassie?’
Not waiting for her answer, he pushed her knees apart and entered her. He squeezed her body to him, aiming for maximum depth for a few moments, before starting to repeatedly bash into her with increasing speed, hanging on to her buttocks as he scuffed them against the worktop. ‘Jesus fuck, Cassie,’ he murmured in her ear. ‘Fuck. Lock your legs around me. Oh my christ.’
She made the right noises, tried to ignore what was starting to feel like friction burns from the table.
‘Tell me this is mine,’ he panted, pushing into her harder and faster. ‘Tell me all this is just for me. Tell me all this belongs to me.’
‘All this belongs to you,’ she whispered, and she wrapped her arms and legs around him and held on for dear life until it was over.
In the next episode, Cassandra is further drawn into interactions with Alex, and confesses to Verity that something is up. Don’t miss out!
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About the Author
Known for her nonfiction work such as All the Ghosts in the Machine and Reset, Elaine Kasket is now exploring the boundaries between memory, technology, and human connection through fiction with Still There. This serialised novel is being released exclusively on Substack, with new instalments dropping every Tuesday and Friday. Join the journey from the beginning and subscribe to make sure you don't miss a single episode.
