False Memory

later, because she felt dirtier than ever before, intolerably filthy, as though she were smeared with a vile grime she couldn’t see, acrawl with hordes of microscopic parasites.
    The videotape first. The truth. Then the cleansing.
    Although she was able to delay her shower, repulsion drove her to strip out of her clothes and wash her privates. She scrubbed her face, too, and then her hands, and she gargled with a mint-flavored mouthwash.
    She tossed the T-shirt into the clothes hamper. The panties, with his odious ooze, she placed atop the closed lid of the hamper, because she didn’t intend to launder them.
    If she had captured the intruder on videotape, she probably had all the evidence she needed to file rape charges. Preserving a semen sample for DNA testing was nonetheless wise.
    Her condition and demeanor on the tape would no doubt convince the authorities that she had been drugged—not a willing participant, but a victim. Yet when she called the police, she would ask them to take a blood sample from her as soon as possible, while traces of the drug remained in her system.
    Once she knew the camcorder had worked, that the image was good, and that she had irrefutable proof against Eric, she would be tempted to phone him before ringing the cops. Not to accuse him. To ask why. Why this viciousness? Why this secretive scheming? Why would he jeopardize her life and sanity with some devil’s brew of narcotics? Why such hatred?
    She wouldn’t make that call, however, because alerting him might be dangerous. It was forbidden.
    Forbidden. What an odd thought.
    She realized that she had used the same word with Martie. Maybe it was the right word, because what Eric had done to her was worse than abuse, seemed to be beyond mere unlawful behavior, felt almost like an act of sacrilege. Marriage vows are sacred, after all, or ought to be; therefore, these assaults were arguably profane, forbidden.
    In the bedroom again, she dressed in a clean T-shirt and fresh panties. The thought of being naked while watching the hateful video was intolerable.
    She sat on the edge of the bed and picked up the camera from the nightstand. She rewound the cassette.
    The preview window on the camcorder provided a three-inch-square image. She saw herself returning to the bed after starting the tape, which she’d done a few minutes past midnight.
    The single bedside lamp provided adequate—though not ideal— light for videotaping. Consequently, the clarity of the image on the small preview window was not good.
    She ejected the cassette from the camcorder, put it in the VCR, and turned on the television. Holding the remote control in both hands, she sat on the foot of the bed and watched with fascination and apprehension.
    She saw herself as she had been at midnight, returning to the bed after resetting the tape in the camcorder, saw herself get into bed and switch off the TV.
    For a moment, she sits in bed, listening intently to the silent apartment. Then as she reaches for the book, the telephone rings.
    Susan frowned. She had no recollection of having received a phone call.
    She picks up the handset. “Hello?”
    At best the videotape could provide her with only one side of the telephone conversation. Her distance from the camcorder ensured that some of her words were fuzzy, but what she heard made even less sense than she had expected.
    Hurrying, she hangs up the phone, gets out of bed, and leaves the room.
    From the moment she had taken the call, there had been subtle changes in her face and body language that she perceived but could not easily define. Subtle as those changes were, however, as she watched herself leaving this bedroom, she seemed to be watching a stranger.
    She waited half a minute, and then fast-forwarded through the tape until she saw movement.
    Shadowy forms in the hallway beyond the open bedroom door Then she herself returning. Behind her, a man moves out of the dark hail, across the threshold. Dr. Ahriman.
    Astonishment left Susan breathless. Stiller than stone, colder, too, she was suddenly deaf to the audio portion of the tape, deaf to her own heartbeat, as well. She sat like a marble maiden sculpted for the focal point of a boxwood-hedge parterre in a formal garden, and here misplaced.
    After a moment, astonishment spawned disbelief, and she inhaled sharply. She pressed the pause button on the remote control.
    In the frozen image, she sat on the edge of the bed, rather as she was sitting now. Ahriman stood over