[OOC: Ok, the narrative may start jumping from here on in, but it's important to the mindset of the character.]
Chapter Four - The First Recollection
After a few minutes of staring out of the window, her eyes fixed on nothing in particular, but at the same time, far too terrified to look back just in case he was still there, staring at her, yelling out her...that name, she allowed herself to breathe easily again. She ran the incident over and over again in her head like some sort of obsessive sports replay, allowing it to bite and gnaw at her mind. How had she allowed herself to be so lax? The whole reason she had taken this long to make her move, to get away from here, was because she wanted to make sure she had it straight in her mind. She had to know that no matter what happened, she wouldn't give up who she was. Yet here she was, barely an hour having since slammed the door closed on that dingy little shit hole of an apartment, and she had just given away her identity like a cheap whore offered a carton of cigarettes.
Sighing and exhaling heavily, she ran the words over and over in her head. She cast her mind to that briefest of seconds when they had made eye contact. That had to be it. She had looked up, and for the shortest amount of time, that glint in the guy's eye had connected with her. She dreaded it as soon as it had happened. If she had just had the fucking nous to keep her empty head dipped for even just a few seconds more...she could have easily gotten away with this. Once the train started to move, once she felt that familiar little jolt that always made her stomach feel like she had just been told some bad news, then she'd have been gone. People could recognise her then, she didn't care, as soon as this train pulled out of the station there was no way that anyone could make her go back.
She cursed herself again as she caught an outburst of "Kamikaze" in her throat just before it had slipped out. She had shocked even herself these past few days. She had almost managed to keep it locked away, like some sick dark secret while she had been alone in that apartment. Who she was trying to keep it from, she didn't know. She was the only one there. Perhaps that was it. Nine years on, and the person who despised her more than anyone for what she was was her own self. She had yelled it out once, when she had first entered the house a few days before. The echoing, empty reverberations of "Kamikaze" had almost seemed to attack her from every angle after it slid effortlessly out of her mouth. At that very second, she had thrown herself onto the sofa, like some sort of worthless rag doll, her hands fused against her ears as she lay there, rocking herself incessantly from side-to-side.
Since then though, since that first time, she had managed to keep it relatively under wraps. Whenever she thought of something that angered her, she would feel the all too familiar sharp escape attempt of the harsh "K" sound forcing its way up from her lungs like some sort of parasitic creature trying to burst free from its host of whom it had outgrown. But she had managed to fight it. She had scarcely said anything since she had gone there anyway. Just the occasional curse word, and four or five little demented laughs when she thought of how beastly she had become, those were the only things which had managed to escape her mouth so far.
It had been a long time since the first time she had screamed that word out loud, an affliction which would later see her crudely tarred with the Tourette's syndrome brush. She had always felt that she had been cast aside like some weary leper ever since the day she had been diagnosed. Eight years old she was, sat in a room in front of two adults. One, a doctor, a man who had studied for years in order to help people. Help? Even at eight years old she wasn't completely dumb. She saw the corners of his lips curl up into a crooked little smile every time she blurted out the word, fighting every little twitching nerve buried beneath his bushy brush of a grey moustache to try not to laugh. The more she noticed it, the more she would get angry. And the angrier she got, the worse the outbursts would come. For half an hour they sat there in that surgery, the doctor trying to make Kate stop blurting out the word that would later haunt her entire being, her tiny fists balled so tight that she could have compressed graphite into diamonds, anger bubbling up inside her.
It was the other adult in the room who had bothered her even more though. Diane Kerry, her mother, the woman who had carried her for nine months and brought her into this world. The very same woman who had nurtured her. Who she had relied on entirely for eight full years to love and protect her. Yet with one look of her brilliant blue eyes she had sunk Kate's heart to a depth that one so young can never fully recover from.
"I'm afraid Ms. Kerry that Kathleen is suffering from Tourette's Syndrome."
She remembered that as the very moment when the bottom fell out of her world. Here she was, as naive and scared as any eight year old could be. She heard what the doctor had said. She didn't know the word "Tourette's", but the tone in his voice sounded downtrodden and jaded. She knew the word syndrome though. A little boy she knew from school had been diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome, so even at her tender age she knew that that word meant there was something wrong with you.
She felt her tiny little bottom lip begin to quiver, and she was acutely aware of the tear starting to well up in the corner of her eye. She took the palm of her hand and gently brushed the hair from her face behind her ears, slowly turning her head towards her mother, pleading for help, for love. All she needed was a tiny little sign that would tell her, "It's ok Katie, everything's going to be alright."
But the sight which greeted her made that sinking feeling of doom race to the very pit of her stomach. As she turned to look into the kind and loving face of the woman she called mummy, she saw her eyes, contorted, disgusted almost, staring back at her. Her mother's blonde hair sat beautifully framing her face in a neat bob style. Normally it made her look angelic and sweet in the eyes of Kate, but today...well today it merely served to accentuate the shaking of her head even more. The young Kate stared up in disbelief at her own mother, as she watched her dazed expressionless face shake from side-to-side.
"You couldn't just be like all the other girls Kate could you?" Her voice was cold, and hard. It hit Kate in the chest like a brick wall to hear her mother talk about her like this? How could she want her to be like everyone else? Didn't she want Kate anymore? A million and one thoughts fought for supremacy in her tiny little head, confusing and angering her all at once. The only thing she had wanted in the whole world was to be told by her mummy that everything was going to be alright, but in the space of just a few seconds, a few seconds which felt like a lifetime, she had just been torn to shreds by the one person she had always felt like she could rely on.
Kate felt her own chest tighten as her breathing went from mellow and smooth to short and sharp, her anger boiling at the fact that her mother had just belittled her and all her problems. She saw what she thought was some sort of white hot anger in front of her eyes, nagging away at her head, poking her, laughing at her. And then she snapped.
"KAMIKAZE!" she let a roar out and immediately threw her hands to her little mouth, shocked into silence by the sheer ferocity of her own violent outburst. It was like some sort of caged beast had been let free, forced out of her and ready to roam around taking no prisoners. It was at that point that she realised she felt strangely calm. Her mouth was distorted into an o shape by her shock and surprise at how loudly she had yelled, but her hands relaxed, and she let them fall carelessly into her lap, as a warm flood of calm washed over her.
Up until this point in her life, she had managed to almost totally keep it under wraps. She would whisper it involuntarily, yes, but that was all it ever really was, a quiet little whisper that she had learned quite effectively to disguise as a cough. She was a clever little girl, and in so far as she could tell, none of the kids had yet figured out that there was anything untoward going on in her mind.
Just at that, she heard the brutally harsh sound of sobbing from behind her, followed by the sharp slamming of a door, the wood sounding as if it would shatter at the very point the door made contact with its frame. The doctor pulled himself to his feet, as he looked into the still shocked little face of the eight-year old girl who sat before him, her eyes still glazed over and slightly amazed at what had just so vehemently and violently erupted from her own mouth.
"You sit tight Kathleen, I'll go and talk to your mother. And don't worry, she's just a little shocked at the moment, that's all."
She let out a sigh as she heard the end of an announcement on the train. Shaking her head at the memory of that fateful trip to the doctor. That had been nine years ago, and the memory of it all still got no easier. She remembered the last words her mother had said to her as they sat in the car outside the doctor's surgery, Kate feeling and looking nervous at the prospect of being examined and categorised.
"It's alright Katie, once we know why you're saying...that word," her mother had tried to reassure her, "We'll be able to fix it. Finding out is the tough bit." Thad had been little more than a lie. That hadn't been the day when things had started to look up at all. Far from it. That was the day she transformed forever, from Kate Kerry, an innocent yet troubled little girl crying out for help, into Kamikaze Kate.
The name that had haunted her since she was just 8 years old. She turned her head slowly back to face in front of her, and let her weary eyes drop slightly, settling on her fingertips, and as she turned her hands over, her fingernails in turn. She looked at them intently, staring at the black which stained the top millimetre or so of every fingernail, letting her wandering mind run slowly over another day, a much more recent day, once again.
It had been a full four days since she had scrubbed her face. She had done so with such a ferocity that she had cried afterwards. It was all that she had wanted to do to rub away the memories forever. For two and a half years, she had been told that it was who she was. She had been dressed up, messed up and thrown into the limelight at such a tender age, and it had driven her to become exactly what she now was. When she had come to this realisation, alone in a dimly lit house, she had burst almost immediately into a flood of tears. She remembered being 14 years old, and being tall and thin, yet with curves which always seemed to draw attention to her. She was never quite sure if she liked the attention, but just a year later, she had been told that should could be a star...she could make millions.
Yet just two years later, she had found herself staring at her own panda-eyed face in the cracked mirror of this damp smelling London town house. Had she earned the millions promised to her? Yes. Had she earned the fame that she had told would come to her if she did as she was told? Yes. Had it made her the happiest person on planet earth? Not even close. As the thought travelled through her body, sending a shiver of sickness and fear careering down her spine, she looked up once again at her own face. Seeing a single tear roll down her cheek, blackened by the thick eye make up she had been told to always wear, she screamed out loud and sobbed. Grabbing a loofah from the edge of the bathtub she turned on the hot water and splashed it on her face.
As soon as she began to scrub, she saw the makeup flow into the sink. A sickening, sugary mix of blacks and rose coloured cheek makeup ran round and round, forming little swirls in the water as it crashed through the surface, before melting into the water as if had never been there. After a few minutes, she took a deep breath and looked up, only to see her now relatively makeup free features, looking red and sore. But those eyes...the eyes were still thick with a slab of black mascara. Grabbing her loofah, she dipped it in the water and ferociously attacked her closed eyes, rubbing at them furiously as she continued to sob through the pain. When she was finished, she collapsed onto the bathroom floor. Immediately, the cool hardness of the bathroom floor tiles shot through the back of her bare, smooth thighs, and she lifted her knees. The cold had felt good though, and her face felt so sore.
Curling up into the foetal position, she slowly turned so that she was lying on her side on the bathroom floor. As her side and her upper arm made contact with the cold tiles of the floor, she felt her body tense and shiver. Pulling her arms closely into her body, she felt the straps of her black bra, the only item of clothing aside from her underwear that she was wearing, dig into her wrists.
After a few minutes of lying there, shivering and sniffing back slightly, she turned her head slowly to the floor, allowing her face to make contact with the solid cold of the floor. It felt like an ice pack on her face immediately. The bright pink stinging, induced by her angry scrubbing with the loofah, felt like it was slowly draining out of her body as she lay there, whimpering, the occasional tear allowing itself to escape the prison of her eye, clattering into the floor with a solid thud.
As Kate lay there on the floor, sobbing and shivering, her sore red face being soothed by the cool tiles under her soft skin, she slowly drifted off into yet another lonely, disturbed sleep.
"Good morning ladies and gents and welcome to the 0643 service to London Heathrow Airport."
She snapped back to reality suddenly, her dark eyes opening sharply and wide. This was it, the train was about to move. There really was no going back.
