Introduction
After recalling the tragic event, chapter four returns to Molly’s present situation, as the demon begins to torment her once again.
Adrift in Amnesia, Chapter Four: Breakdown (excerpt)
Sunday 11th February 2001…
After Tony n’ Pip had gone, flashbacks of the crash led Molly not to sleep that night. For hours, she lay in her bed, gazing at the paling spiral above her, memories caught in a web. She gave up on the idea of drifting into unconsciousness around 4am and went downstairs. She switched on the TV and passively observed rolling news coverage – something about an election in the Middle East, which saw Ariel Sharon appointed as Israel’s president amid some of the worst Israeli-Palestinian violence in years. Molly sat looking at the images of conflict on the screen, feeling numb towards all the bloodshed. Uncertain if it was because she had lost all empathy, or whether she was perversely relieved there should exist a place more disturbed than Chelmswood.
The TV facilitated a state of mild distraction, as time crawled into sunrise on a winter morning. She looked at the lounge window, still covered by the board put in yesterday, watching splinters of sunlight attempting to break through hairline gaps. It felt like the thoughts in her head. On the television could be heard Palestinians expressing dismay at the selection of a man who had led the massacre of Qibya, a Palestinian village, that left sixty-nine civilians dead; followed by the American president, George W. Bush, who congratulated Ariel Sharon’s election win with a brief phone call. ‘Will he call Qibya to offer his condolences?’ Molly wondered, as she heard movement upstairs, which sort of broke her out of a weary, trance-like feeling, as if only just remembering she had a son to get breakfast for and walk to school.
Jacob had slept like a log. A busy weekend visiting his granddad on Saturday, followed by Sunday afternoon on the beach had left him feeling rather tired. He awoke in good spirits. It was always fun visiting his grandfather and he had likewise thoroughly enjoyed spending time with uncle Tony building Castle Grayskull and while unsuccessfully trying to teach aunty Pippa the ins and outs of Super Mario Kart. He was not much looking forward to school, but had not seen his best friend for a couple of days and was keen to exercise some faster lap times in ‘Time Trial Mode,’ while racing together in ‘Battle Mode.’ He felt the need to play nice against his aunty and was feeling a little out of practice. Against Rafa, the gloves would come off!
Jacob got out of bed and put Scruff in the hamster ball before going to the bathroom to brush his teeth. From the bathroom he could hear gentle clacks, among brief interludes, as his furry friend busied himself touring the bedroom, hitting everything from bedposts to the skirting board. Jacob was careful to keep his door closed. He had forgotten to do this once and Scruff had gone hell for leather out of the room and ended up bouncing down the stairs. The ball had cracked open while rolling halfway down and Scruff was sent flying – almost somersaulting the rest of the way off each stair. Amazingly, he was fine, tough little critter was Scruff. Still, Jacob was mortified at what might have happened and was very careful to keep his energetic little pet well contained, for his own safety! He left his hamster to get some exercise and went downstairs for breakfast.
While brushing his teeth, his mother had mustered the energy to go to her room, get dressed and do what she could to look like she had not been sat up most of the night lifelessly observing images of war. She then went to the kitchen to make her son scrambled eggs before walking him to school. ‘Are you having anything, mum?’ ‘I’m ok,’ she replied, ‘I’ll make something when I get back. C’mon … eat up, or we’ll be late.’ Jacob was just finishing breakfast when there was a knock at the door. ‘Morning, Molly,’ greeted Akila, in her usual warm and friendly demeanour, accentuated by the beautiful tone of her voice (Molly always loved hearing her speak). ‘I have to rush Emel to an appointment and I was wondering if you could walk Rafa to school with Jacob?’ ‘Yes, of course,’ smiling while successfully feigning an upbeat manner to her neighbour, ‘come on in, Rafa, Jacob’s just finishing breakfast.’ As Rafa ran in to see his friend, Akila thanked Molly and headed towards the car with her daughter.
Walking to school, the boys joyfully exchanged stories of their weekend, interrupted briefly, as they passed a couple of mothers shouting angrily at their kids outside the local Costcutter: ‘Courtney! Courtney! Get ‘ere, you little cow! We’re gonna be late if you keep fuckin’ about! Shane, oi, Shane … grab that sister o’ yours! Some of their kids had the near-fatal temerity to answer back, which was duly met with some considerable fury: ‘shut-up, fuckin’ shut-up, fuckin’ kids! Get yer fuckin’ lazy asses off to school, Now! I said, NOW!’ Thus screams hailed on like a thunderous downpour, containing language with all the colours of a rainbow. Molly gently ushered the boys ahead, who were beginning to gawk at proceedings in mild amazement. ‘Don’t stare boys … they’ll start having a go at us too!’ She whispered with some urgency and they quickly turned away and carried on to school, irate shrieks cacophonously fading into the distance.
Rafa had been to London for an aunt’s wedding, which had been arranged in the old Turkish tradition of ‘Görücülük.’ ‘Goruck-you-look?’ Jacob attempted to pronounce this rather peculiar sounding word. ‘Ha-ha, you say it pretty good!’ Laughed his friend, before Jacob enquired into what this curiously named ceremony entailed. ‘It’s where women from the family of the man go and search for a wife from the families of their friends.’ Informed Rafa confidently … ‘so, you mean, it’s a bit like your mum choosing your girlfriend?’ Asked Jacob, a little uncomfortable with this idea. ‘Yeah, kind of … my dad told me it’s an old tradition from Turkey and my aunty got chosen. He doesn’t agree with it, he believes people should make their own minds up … just like him and mum did, but it was what my aunty said she wanted. ‘Oh,’ replied Jacob, then turning to Molly, ‘you won’t make me get married, will you, mum?’ ‘Actually, I was thinking maybe you and Princess Peach would make a lovely couple,’ she quipped cheekily, as Rafa burst out laughing (for the uninitiated, Princess Peach is a character from Super Mario Kart). ‘Don’t joke, mum, I don’t wanna get married!’ He protested, as Rafa clasped his hands together blowing little kisses, ‘Jacob and the Princess, in a tree, k-i-s-s-i-n-g!’
Despite feeling similarly to Takoda, with regards the tradition of Görücülük, Molly nevertheless found walking the boys to school as providing a much needed, somewhat light-hearted interlude. To be that young again, basking freely in the wisdom of benign innocence, where girls were nothing but trouble and life’s biggest problems revolved around winning time trials dressed as an Italian plumber racing a giant monkey.
Following a sleepless night, reaching the school gates would prove a little difficult to bear. The general small talk was usually something she could routinely navigate easily enough. However, today was going to fare slightly more challenging. In truth, Molly could not stand the vapidity of gossip, be it speculating about certain individuals from the estate, or excitable yapping about the world of fame. She preferred not to involve herself in idle conjecture and was utterly disinterested in hearing about ‘this’ or ‘that’ celebrity – what they were wearing, who they were dating and so on. She considered such drivel to be insufferably inane.
The topic of this morning was Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman’s recent split and Molly found it odd that people should be examining the finer points regarding a union of notion, expressed in a manner one might when discussing very close friends. Yet here she was, immersed in the superficial ‘blahing’ of grown women, to which the previous exchange between a couple of eight year old boys had felt comparatively sophisticated. She did her utmost to add to the conversation, basically through nodding agreeably, reaffirming the ‘views’ of the other mums. To contradict would have led to a pointless discussion, or to have simply called them boring, that is, to reveal the extent of her current exasperation, would have surely resulted in something far worse.
Molly engaged with the mundane as best she could before making polite excuses and heading home. She had put on a convincing enough display not to arouse suspicion and her presence appeared to be swiftly forgotten, while she left the others to continue babbling about all manner of banality – from Hollywood divorces and fashion to reality TV. What she did not notice was the aggressive scowl of a particularly unpleasant character from the estate: Angela Scrivvens. Angela did not have any kids, but she was friends with a few of the mothers from the school run and had stopped to join in the morning’s riveting topic. Her husband was a regular at the cafe and got on with Molly quite well. He was little more than an acquaintance, who she nevertheless rather liked, as he came across as a polite and friendly character – quite dissimilar to the typical, boorish lad types from the estate. Steve worked on the roads, spending much of his days tarmacking potholes in and around Chelmswood. He would usually pop into the cafe for a fry-up in the morning and often made conversation with Vera and Molly.
Every now and then, Steve would come into the cafe with cuts and bruises on his face, which was usually an accident from work, or so he would say. One time, he had a nasty burn on his hand where he said he had spilt chip fat on it, ‘clumsy idiot, me!’ This all seemed innocent enough until, one morning earlier in the year, he came into the cafe with a particularly forlorn look on his face. It was only Molly working and the place was otherwise empty. When she asked how he was doing that day, Steve broke down and, through floods of tears, confided something in her that he had not been able to bring himself to tell anyone – that he had been on the receiving end of violent attacks from Angela for quite a long time. She had thrown boiling hot chip fat over his arm and hand, she regularly bit and punched him and even cut up his clothes after he had returned home late from work one evening (Angela refused to believe it was down to the fact there had been an accident on the road he was working on and all traffic held up for hours as a result). Furthermore, she had managed to convince him that such punishment was deserved.
Irrespective of studying psychology at college and all the cases she had read about, it was clear to Molly that Steve was suffering considerable abuse from his wife. Domestic violence had a common reputation as being perpetrated predominantly by males, which was certainly, for the most part, the reality on the estate. Still, she was aware this was by no means an exclusively male problem and that some of the women in town could be truly inimical. She did not know Angela, but was nonetheless surprised by Steve’s account. Such troubles were met with a heartfelt sensitivity and sympathy for a guy she thought was a genuinely decent man – one of the few in Chelmswood. More than anything, Molly was simply an empathetic listener when it came to this sort of thing.
Steve was around ten years her senior and he appreciated having someone to confide in. ‘It sounds like Angela could do with some help dealing with her anger issues but, honestly, this is abuse, Steve … no one deserves this!’ Urging him to get help and even go to the police. However, he was reluctant on both counts. Angela would surely erupt in volcanic viciousness at the very suggestion she had any issues and going to the police would just make him look weak. Steve may have been a nice bloke, but he was, like most men, no less encumbered by male pride. He thanked Molly for listening to his current predicament and she promised to keep their conversation confidential. He did not speak about it again, but continued to come into the cafe and she would keep her feelings to herself whenever he appeared with another cut or bruise. Somehow, their friendly exchanges would get back to Angela and a truly horrible confrontation would soon cross paths with Molly, at a time when she would never feel so vulnerable.
Molly managed to make it through her Monday shift on no sleep whatsoever. She got home around 2pm. Takoda had offered to collect the boys from school so she tried to lay down for an hour before Jacob got home. She stared into the helix reverberating outwards above her bed, unable to drift off despite feeling utterly exhausted. Jacob had been invited for tea at Rafa’s place and Molly distracted herself with house cleaning and tried to watch a film she liked, Legend, starring Tom Cruise. She struggled to suspend her disbelief in its fantasy landscape, as the morning’s insipid conversation intruded her thoughts. Unable to concentrate on any story, the screen’s narrative seemed to dissolve into little more than elegantly moving images, into which she longed to disappear. Tim Curry’s ‘Darkness’ (the devil-like character in the film) would soon find its equivalent as her company in the lounge.
The demon sat across the room and Molly did her utmost to ignore its presence. It did not communicate at first, but she could feel its malign intent projected towards her, as if all the world’s contempt was directed at her very soul. The room became black and cold with fear. Then, the demon began to speak via condemning thoughts seizing within. ‘It’s all your fault … you killed him.’ She tried to block it out to no avail. ‘You killed your son’s father … you’re a bad mother.’ The demon remained across the room; silently revelling in its torment, while Molly increasingly withdrew into inclinations toward self-harm. She looked across the lounge and noticed Jacob’s games’ console, which momentarily broke her free of its grip, as she remembered the smile of her son and the morning’s harmless conversation between the boys. ‘To be young again,’ she thought, ‘if only I could turn back the clock’ and she began to cry. The demon looked on, quietly satisfied with its work.
© 2025 Percival Alexander
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