Psychopathic Bed Manners: Suffocation

Our story today shows what it is like to live with a madman.

Have you ever wondered what it is like to live with a really toxic person? If you attend a Freedom Course in the UK you will meet many men and women who have endured similar experiences. As you attend the weekly meetings, your experiences have much in common with others on the course.

You discover that they too had the unthinkable happen behind the happy outer walls of the home. 

 As the target becomes worn down over many years what would appear to be abnormal to others becomes normalized.

Psychopathic Bed Manners: Suffocation

Karen had gone to bed at ten the night before.

Judy, the toddler, had not woken through the night.

It was now three-thirty on a sunny October afternoon. Karen stood in the playpark, watching the other parents chat. She had left her husband Robert at home. He detested coming to the park and it was much easier leaving him to read his Dad's Army Script Books. When he accompanied them, he was detached, not present, observing their every move. Roberts's face squinted at life and always seemed to be working something out.

Karen placed Judy in the toddler swing and secured the bar. Judy laughed as she glided back and forth through the air. The child was unaware of the disharmony, and frightening events at home. Karen constantly told Judy how wonderful her Daddy was and that he loved her but wanted peace, and quiet. They would spend hours away from him at the weekend to soothe his poor frazzled, anxiety-ridden life.

Karen had not imagined the events of that morning. She stared into the wooded glade next to the playpark and tried to organize the earlier events into rational normality.

It must have been about seven o'clock Sunday morning that it had happened. Karen had thought she was asleep but was not sure. She recalled another event like this recently, waking and having the bedclothes over her, and feeling pressure on her head. The pressing heaviness of the covers had almost sunk her into the bed. Was she asleep, was she dreaming? She had tried to move but could not. After a while, the heaviness went. Karen was lying on her left side and could not flex her head enabling her to roll over. The covers were completely over her. How had this happened? She pushed the covers away and looked up and to the right.

Robert was staring at her. He was only a foot or so above her. His face exhibited that peculiar smile, that special smile that was full of glee. Karen sat up.

Robert held a pile of several large books in his hands.

“You had those on my head!” she said calmly. He looked pleased with himself, like a child who had won an award at school. He said nothing and moved away like some frantic turned-on fiend. Robert pushed his head into the air like a demented peacock and left the room.

Then the sickness began. First, Karen felt it churning in her stomach, then her head. Agony emanated from her. A shrieking alarm call to the world outside the skull stating that the compression had almost worked. Karen got up and put on her underwear and then clothes. She attended to Judy, happily sitting in her cot when Karen arrived.

The pain was getting worse. It was alarming. Unlike any other migraine, Karen had experienced. She placed the baby on the changing mat on the living room floor and then changed her nappy. Now a humming noise swelled in Karen's head. Robert was nowhere to be seen. The pain then exploded and projectile vomit left her mouth. Just before the flow of runny glop left her mouth in a line across the room she managed to turn away from Judy. The pain in her head and the vomiting took over her body for what seemed like ages.

She collapsed for a moment next to Judy on the floor.

Robert entered the room. Yes, you would appear now thought Karen. He got a huge psychological kick from the drama he caused. Robert picked up Judy and then dressed her. He stared at Karen, intensely watching her every movement, pleased with the outcome of her near-death experience.

He said nothing.

Karen picked herself up and went to the kitchen to find some paracetamol. She shoved two pallid tablets down her throat and drank a glass of water.

She found Robert playing nicely with Judy.

“You had those books in your hands, you tried to kill me,” she said.

But what did she expect as a reply? A confession, an apology.

“ I don’t know what you mean” he replied as he switched on the television and turned up the volume of the children's program to help her headache along. Karen knew it was not worth taking this any further. He would never engage in any conversation about the “events” that happened between them. So, she made him some toast, breastfed the baby, and gave Judy some solids. But the headache would not shift. It was calling her. Her brain needed attention, and she would have to go to hospital. 

Robert said he would not come with her. He would stay at home and look after Judy. Hospitals were not hygienic places to take a toddler. She might pick up a bug.

Karen grabbed her bag and cardigan and walked up the main road to the local hospital’s Accident and Emergency department. Her head was throbbing, and she felt like she would fall over at any minute. She arrived at the front desk. Karen would be seen soon. She swayed as she walked into the consultant's cubicle. Her legs were weak, and she was not sure about anything. But very certain about the pain in her head.

The doctor checked her reflexes and senses. He then asked her to walk in a straight line. She fell over. He requested that she return to the bed and that he would be back in a moment. Then he turned back to face her and said.

“You have a serious concussion Karen to the head. Are you going to tell me who did this? What happened this morning? He then said he would return with a colleague.

Karen feared the worst, that she would tell them the truth and they would not believe her. Then social services would take Judy away. She would be committed as Robert would lie through his innocent sweet face. Convince everyone she was making it all up. They would believe him. Everyone always did. No one knew the truth, the madness in her life.

She grabbed her coat and bag and walked out. No one stopped her and she made it down to the roundabout at the front of the hospital. Robert arrived in the car. She climbed into the front seat next to him. He looked radiant, so happy. He would be ecstatic today.

“Let’s go out and have coffee and cake!” he announced. Judy gurgled and laughed in the back of the car.

Would the doctor contact social services? As they traveled Karen considered many possible outcomes. She then decided to focus on making Robert happy. They piled into a local café. Robert was loud, happy, and full of compliments. Karen settled down to her cake.

Social services never called, and the events of that morning were never discussed. Roberts's capabilities grew, and with each new “event”, a new level of terror entered Karen's life.

Image: Model: https://unsplash.com/@juricakoletic  Jurica Koletić

All writing based on research Sonya Lawrence 03/11/2024  ©

For those who have known or lived with a psychopath you will have come to realize that you lived, in a different world to everyone else. The film below is from The Society for the Prevention of Disorders of Aggression on YouTube. You can find more films on their channel.

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