As Darkness Falls

2

Sara went around to Zoe’s after work and found Zoe on the couch, alone in a dark room, smoking when she didn’t usually smoke inside.

Sara had a key to Zoe’s flat, because doing shift-work meant she came and went at odd times, and because Zoe got like this sometimes, moody and insular, and didn’t like to get up and open the door. Sara walked in and smelled the cigarette smoke and saw the darkness, and had some idea what to do, because this had happened before. She sat down beside Zoe, but didn’t touch her, and didn’t move too suddenly, either.

She just sat down, quite calmly, and said, “Hey, what’s up?”

Zoe was hugging herself. She was hugging herself more desperately than usual. She was wearing a top with sleeves that covered her hands, so she could pick the cuffs while she sat there, and was smoking with one hand, in quick sharp movements which let her put her arm back around herself quickly, and keep it there as much as she could.

Zoe sat there for a while, hugging herself and smoking, and then she said, “I need to show you something you aren’t going to like.”

“Okay.”

“So you understand about me.”

Sara sat for a moment, wondering what that could be. “Okay,” she said again.

Zoe ground out the cigarette into an ashtray, and leaned over and kissed Sara. “I love you,” she said.

“I love you too.”

“No,” Zoe said. “I really, really love you.”

Sara was getting a little worried. “I know,” she said. “And me too.”

Zoe nodded, and stood up. She went over to the TV. She switched on the DVD player in the shelf underneath it, and then took a home-burned disc out of a wooden box that Sara had never seen before, but which was sitting in the middle of the lounge-room floor. She did it all one handed, still hugging herself as she did. She put the disc in the player, and then glanced at the TV screen. It was off, but she didn’t seem to realise.

“That’s off,” Sara said.

“I know,” Zoe said.

Sara waited for Zoe to turn the TV on, but she didn’t. Instead, she just pushed fast-forward on the DVD player. Zoe stood there, and hugged herself, and watched the player’s counter race forwards. Sara watched too, wondering what was going on. She had an uncomfortable, unsettling, worried feeling which she couldn’t entirely place.

Zoe fast-forwarded. The counter raced up to twenty minutes, and then Zoe slowed it down. It went to twenty-two minutes, and she slowed it even more. It crawled to twenty-two minutes and forty seconds, and Zoe went backwards and forwards a few times, to get it exactly there. Then she pushed pause. And then she pushed mute.

She used the same hand for everything, and kept her other arm tightly around herself.

“Okay,” Zoe said. “Watch.”

“I’m watching.”

Zoe was standing to the side of the TV, and not looking at the screen. She wasn’t looking at Sara either, was staring past her, somehow, off into a corner of the room.

“Watch,” she said again.

“I am,”

Zoe pushed play, and switched on the TV, and Sara looked at the screen.

Sara looked, and couldn’t quite believe what she was seeing. It was a film of a child being raped by a man. It was a little girl, about ten or twelve, lying there, not moving, being raped by a middle-aged man. There was no question about the girl’s age, and no doubt about what was happening. It was a child. Being raped. And being filmed.

“Oh fuck,” Sara said, “What’s that?”

Zoe didn’t answer.

“Zoe, what the fuck is that?”

Zoe just stood there.

“You shouldn’t have that,” Sara said, her first reaction apparently to think like a cop. “It must be illegal.”

“Probably,” Zoe said.

Sara sat there, horrified, feeling sick. For a moment she thought Zoe was trying to say she was into this, that she wanted them to watch it together. Then Sara looked back at the screen and suddenly realised what was actually happening.

There was something familiar about the little girl. In the way that a childhood photo of a well-known adult is recognisable, this child was recognisable to Sara. There was something in the shape of the little girl’s eyes, and in the line of the nose. A shape Sara knew well. Familiar, almost, but smaller.

The little girl had her arms wrapped around herself.

The little girl had Zoe’s face.

“Oh fuck,” Sara said. “Oh fuck, Zoe, that’s you?”

Zoe nodded.

Sara sat there for a moment. She had no idea what to say. She suddenly realised she was about to vomit, and was almost relieved to have something to do. She stood up and ran for the bathroom, but changed her mind halfway there because the kitchen was nearer and she wasn’t going to make it to the toilet. She ran into the kitchen, and leaned over the sink and vomited, and then vomited again. Then she turned on the tap, and retched a little more, and then cupped her hand under the water and rinsed out her mouth.

She stood there for a moment, trying to decide what to think. She tried, but it was too much. She still had no idea what to say.