MONOMANIAC: Hauntings. Vengeance. Devotion., page 1
MONOMANIAC
RAPHAELLA CARVER
COPYRIGHT
MONOMANIAC
Published by Raphaella Carver
Copyright © 2024 by Raphaella Carver
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, contact Raphaella Carver.
The story, all names, characters, and incidents portrayed in this production are fictitious. No identification with actual persons (living or deceased), places, buildings, and products is intended or should be inferred.
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Warning: This literary work contains explicit sexual content, detailed depictions of traumatic events and violent scenes that some readers may find disturbing.
For any queries or information, please direct it to raphaellacarverauthor@gmail.com
AUTHOR'S NOTE
Welcome, dear reader, thank you for taking a chance on my debut novel. At this moment in time, I am tired with a good kind of fatigue, made possible by this monomaniacal dream that has somehow materialized in ink on paper and absorbed all the unspoken.
Ophelia and Dante, Dante and Ophelia. They are not protagonists for me, but emotions and states of being that breathe with a life force of their own and I sincerely hope that you will be able to experience every word and feeling encapsulated in these pages. Their love is a love that can only be embraced and integrated and I hope you will savor every fragment and hear every rustle in the wind of their story heavy in its weight, but deep in its passion.
Most of all, I hope you will feel, deeply.
That being said, a word of caution:
This book contains a number of potentially triggering situations and mature themes such as strong language, explicit sexual situations, murder, graphic violence, child neglect and abuse, mentions of violence against a minor, an attempted sexual assault on page, suicidal ideation, torture, mentions of mental illness, dissociation, claustrophobia, agoraphobia, acrophobia.
If any of these subjects make you uncomfortable, please prioritize your mental and emotional health. If you choose to continue into this world, I truly hope you will take great pleasure in what it has to offer.
Thank you.
“Here is a handful
of shadow I have brought back to you:
this decay, this hope, this mouthful
of dirt, this poetry.”
― Margaret Atwood,
Selected Poems 2: 1976 - 1986
TABLE OF CONTENTS
AUTHOR'S NOTE
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
AKNOWLEDGMENTS
For the lovers who never found a home in another;
the misunderstood, the lonely, the wanderers, the dreamers,
the poetic souls who seek the blood and heart
in all that surrounds them.
May you know peace.
Forgive me, for I can’t forget you
Since that November dreary dawn
Somewhere on the cusp of eighteen,
Where I have loved and lost perhaps more
Than others had in shared lifetimes sown together
Confused with hunger, drunk on your wailing beauty
I saw you, soaked to the bone by an unforgiving rain
Bent at the waist, with nails sunk deep in funeral earth
Holding withered flowers, with eyes ancient in their pain
Terrified of foreign passions, life has turned its back on us
Thus, mired in loss, many years have passed in utter gloom
Still welcoming their spinous torture, for I failed to hold you
And countless sleepless nights have followed like a plague
Along with drunken days soaked in your tomblike absence
I looked for you in every crevice found between my ribs
In every darkened corner, in every choked breath I took
But only the deathless perfume of the ghost of you
Lingered like a bloodied promise on my sheets
While lost, I’ve find myself in you, so please
Forgive me, for one way or another,
I will find and haunt you too.
Chapter 1
Ophelia
DARKNESS, SHELTER ME IN THE WARMTH OF YOUR WOMB, for people are strangers, even to themselves.
With the passing of years, many have died and lived by the shivering candlelight. Some have endured the unsaid under the faint glimmer of a detached moon, mirrored in a secretive sea. While most have worn a beautiful lie sewn into a coat they forgot to take off since childhood. It’s all the same.
Unrequited lovers wait, abandoned in cafés, no longer looking at the clock; their ash-stained lungs and ink-licked fingers, yearning only for their cold muse. Devotion.
Despairing mothers weep over their vanished children in the void of a night like any other, replaying their last words like a sickly well-oiled instrument built only for self-inflicted torture. Desperation.
Fathers scar their own flesh and blood by repeating the same wound of their own unhealed history. Since, even after decades, they cannot understand the sharp thing crawling under their skin. Avoidance.
Men, alone in their kitchens at three in the morning, eat their regrets with a slotted spoon, because the past remembers while they desperately try to forget. Shame.
Women consumed by a loneliness so great it has grown teeth, curl into themselves in an unmade bed, imagining in secret how would it feel to be loved, not just desired. Longing.
People simply are. Exhausted with want, alone while surrounded by many and carrying souls with a hunger that begs to be unshackled. All of them united by the inescapable. Fear.
Hermits, each in their own wounded way, from the womb of their beginning to the end of their bones that will inevitably turn to ash.
And I am one of them, yet I am not. I have never truly been.
Pretending has become a second skin, and I may not be naked in the visible sense, but I can feel it peeling off my flesh with each floor the elevator travels; my fissured self slowly emerging to the surface. I barely have the strength to fight it anymore, and why should I?
The stage is empty, there is no audience to hide from. No tightly woven web on which I must carefully balance on in order to remain undetected in plain sight, while the gaping mouth of the world awaits at the bottom for my downfall.
"Through the darkened path tonight, let my soul heal in the moonlight," I whisper absently the mantra my grandmother used to murmur in my ear as a child, trying in vain to banish the nightmares that came to haunt me in the middle of the day with religious promptitude.
I say it out of habit, out of the need to feign a shred of normalcy. Perhaps from a place that craves comfort rather than spiritual conviction. Both my soul and mind are too tender at the moment; logic can remain trapped here, surrounded by mirrors marked by two sets of overlapping handprints and the stained linoleum at my feet.
Elevators. A space that people care little about, not realizing that often, this little pocket of time may be preparing them to face yet another hour in their lives that could add a layer of monotony or a calamity. Some even secretly wish for the latter, just so they can drown out the other.
Still, in the confines of the one taking me home at this very moment someone loved not long ago, either the soul or simply the flesh. They felt something of substance nonetheless.
Unimportant as it may be, I must dissect the invisible; my soul diet demands it, especially at this crucial time in my recovery. Distortion is my drug of choice lately anyway, so why should I forsake it in the name of a sterile kind of sanity?
I count the seconds with each floor the creaky cabin goes up, my broken nails tracing the lines in my palm. I know these carvings by heart - they are a graveyard resting under my bruised fingertips, foreshadowing a life I have yet to truly live.
Though I can't help but wonder, what's the purpose of palmistry if there is no future for a woman like me?
For the moment, it is of little importance. Anything will do, if it can distract my thoughts from the aftermath of what happened, even for the briefest of seconds.
Escapism, why am I so fond of you?
Sharp, off-white claws make their way into the opening of my wool coat, revealing a furless paw in search of warmth and safety. Just as I do.
My fami
I couldn't find it in my heart to let her spend another night with my cousin, though I felt drained even at the prospect of leaving the confines of the cab.
Being seen became an afterthought, all because I knew she was not at ease with the ghostly inhabitants of the family funeral home, nor with the still living unfortunates, who cross its threshold on a daily basis.
From what I've heard and seen, most of them aren't too keen on her furless skin and soul-gripping gaze.
They call her abnormal, odd. How easy is to judge the unfamiliar.
But they don't know how her unique beauty and watchful eyes provide me with immense comfort. How her atypical appearance resembles how I truly view the world surrounding me – peculiar and unapproachable; frail and tender to the touch, bony.
And today I need her tacit support more than in the last five years combined. The crisis of the spirit will always flow more easily toward redemption while accompanied by another soul.
I will let myself be vulnerable, bare and weak; reduced to nothing but feeling when I reach my sanctuary, my home. It's a part of the healing process I dread, but one I find necessary if I want to fully return to myself. At the end of the day, it's all I have left.
As isolating as it is, there is solace in that.
"Coblina, my sweet girl, be patient," I croon as I gather her delicate body to my chest, trying to calm her visible nerves. She is usually a serene being, but her empathetic spirit probably sensed my distress and took crumbs of it for her own.
I sigh, closing my eyes, not wanting to delve into the recent past that marks me far deeper than the lingering bruises on my body do. Not that evading it would solve anything, but because I'm not fully prepared to admit how close to the end of all endings I've been in the midst of floating through existence.
Little did I knew that just because I faced the prospect of death in the flesh a long time ago, it didn't mean I was fully reconciled with it or what it might entail later in life. Albeit much earlier than I dared to predict.
Now, it's just another bitter pill I have to swallow. One, I'll let slide down my throat with little to no water, for I'm still here. Barely breathing, but enduring it all the same.
I do not take pride in my suffering, nor do I amplify it for the sake of cheap dramatics. But I must face it in the days to come if I am to have any semblance of peace in the ones to follow. Whether I am standing or not.
"Coblina?" my voice quivers as I lower my head, "I refuse to even contemplate it, but when your time eventually comes to cross over, will you wait for me?" I ask my sapphire-eyed sphynx cat, not expecting an answer, but even so seeking one in her restless irises.
In response, she digs her claws into my shoulder, an inch away from drawing blood. That's how she loves, my feline mirror.
Removed from everything and everyone, a blue smile settles like a visitor on my face, with the kind of absent emotion that doesn't touch the corners of my eyes. One that will fade in a blink, for life is fickle. Because I'm alone and tired, the sort that a month of deep sleep wouldn't cure because the soul is drained.
Everything around me suffocates; the feeling so bizarre, given that my feet are always treading the thin surface between unseen worlds.
The here and now is rarely poignant enough to either tame or subdue my wild inclination towards the unseen and all that it entails. I suppose this is a side of being forced to be present I hadn't yet fully acclimated to.
It will pass, everything eventually does.
I take a deep breath as I wait for the signal for the eleventh floor. When the cabin halts, I absently push the heavy manual door into the wall, its deafening sound jolting me back to reality with a violence that cannot be ignored.
Lost in search of my keys and with Coblina's claws digging into my thighs as she makes her way down, I almost lose my balance at the sight that awaits me at the hand-carved wooden entrance of my apartment.
An arrangement of dead burgundy roses rests solemnly on the floor, as if my door were a funeral stone.
I count perhaps more than a dozen as I reluctantly move towards it, my abused knees protesting in pain as I bend to inspect the long stems held tightly together by a ribbon. Instinctively, I try to detect a scent, but it's apparent they smell of nothing. Of everything that once has been.
A detail that generally appeals to me in theory, but does little to undo my inherent fear that they might be poisoned or spiritually charged with something that will ultimately harm me through the mirage of their undeniable beauty.
The large bouquet is fine like poetry, dark and ominous, just the way I prefer it. Someone who knows a thing or two about me must have sent them. But who and, most of all, why?
No one has ever offered me such a peculiar gift in the past. There is no occasion to celebrate, and besides, how would they even know my address? I guard my privacy with the ferocity a mother would protect her first newborn.
My logic concludes they must be a simple misunderstanding, but my intuition tells me to look more closely at the ribbon and, as per usual, I indulge it. With limp fingers I grasp it loosely, not knowing what to expect.
When I turn it over, something is written in elegant calligraphy on the faded beige silk in what appears to be black ink. I read it once, twice, my mind too hazy and still partially wrapped up in events that I have not yet digested to fully understand the ambiguous message.
'Dead roses for the one who gave me life.'
It makes no sense. Who and bizarrely enough, why would they write something of such intensity? There must be some mistake. Then why does it seem so deliberate?
I fiddle with the smooth fabric between my fingers, trying to find meaning behind the words, but I come up empty. All I know and sense with certainty is that there is no malicious motive on the part of the sender, which eases my worries now that I have come into direct contact with them.
My tarot cards will perhaps give me more answers if I can find the energy to delve into it later in the night. But, as of now, I'm too spent to let my energy flow in that direction. I need rest and a glass of wine.
With the keys finally found, I enter my personal haven, where I am free to breathe without the incessant noise of the outside world.
The familiar creak of my door brings me immense comfort, a soothing product of my refusal to grease its hinges even after all these years.
My bruised lips curl into a genuine smile this time as I feel Coblina walk past me and head for the kitchen.
"I'm back," I whisper in the dark hallway to no one, to myself.
I don't turn on the lights, basking in the familiarity of uninterrupted night. My sensitive eyes yearn for the intimacy offered by the candlelight that never fails to transport me directly into the catacombs of 19th century Paris. I will always prefer it over the white, sterile light that these times embrace so easily.
Sighing, I bend down, pick up the roses and lock the door behind me with a gentle flick of my still gauze wrapped wrist.
I wonder if the sight of it will be a reminder from now on, if I will ever look at it the same way again. Even so, I refuse to be a slave of fear. I will never go back there ever again. The sixteen-year-old me, has made this promise to myself, and I will be true to it for as long as I can.
Nothing but deathly silence shrouds me as my abused stilettos click ominously on the hardwood floors of my three-bedroom apartment.
I sweep my eyes absently over the shadowed surface of my marble seraphim statues that occupy the corners of the narrow hallway, trying to discern if something is amiss with the energy in the rest of my house.
Fortunately, nothing is out of the ordinary. The invisible sigils on the walls made sure of that.
I open the double doors all the way and enter my sitting room decorated from top to bottom with antique solid wood furniture, an oriental rug, a burgundy sofa and my rattan rocking chair, which is now swallowed by the faux furs I left behind four nights ago before I left. I was supposed to be back in less than three hours.
I roam my gaze over the dusky mauve walls that have seen me through my worst moments. That have tasted the pure bliss of transient peace found in the unseen and untranslatable.
