Like Clockwork

39

It was just past four when Clare awoke, drenched in cold sweat. She had dreamt that she’d stumbled into a vast hall of mirrors. She stared back at herself in each mirror, her eyes wide open, each image reflected to infinity in every mirror. The shattered repetition of herself was dizzying. She hunted desperately for the door where she had entered, but it was gone. She tried to calm herself within the slow horror-time of the nightmare by staring down her own reflection. She was naked, suffused with shame at her body exposed and slug-like in the harsh light. As she tried to cover herself she realised that her hands were bound with blue rope. She tried to cry out but no sound came. When she opened her mouth, she saw that she had no tongue.

Clare sat up, switched on her bedside light, and calmed her breathing. She delved back into the nightmare as it receded. There had been a ghost with her in the mirrors. Hovering over her image had been the outline of a man with a camera, filming her shame and terror. Her hands had been painfully bound. She flexed her fingers and then smoothed out the bed where Riedwaan had lain. The indentation of his body was already cold. She curled up under her duvet. The touch of his hands lingered on her body, but she was glad to be alone.

‘They make a picture of me. Like a dog I must beg for them to hurt me,’ Natalie Mwanga had told her.

Clare pushed the duvet off and went to the lounge. The video she had taken from King was still in the machine. She pressed ‘play’ and watched it through to its bitter, humiliating end. Chilled, Clare went back to bed. ‘He was a director… he was telling them what to do… when they hurt me… he would make them do it again.’ Whitney’s soft voice whispered to Clare in the dark, ‘Why?’ Clare had no answers. She got back into bed and drifted into a troubled sleep just before dawn broke.