The stranger in the mirror | Wattys2016

(11) 04:57 minutes

The bathroom's empty. There is some vague background noise. The door is flung open and my wife enters, visibly angry (nothing new there), yells something which can't quite be understood in the low-quality video and throws the door shut so hard that everyone in the interrogation room flinches. She's crying, tears of intense anger rather than sadness – although the camera is a few meters away you can see her helpless rage, it contorts her facial features, it pervades her posture and her every movement. She strips, angrily, and gets into the shower (I feel a strange mixture of embarrassment and protectiveness at the fact that we're all watching my wife get undressed – after all those years of mutual neglect and estrangement, I am surprised to find I still have the husband instincts within me, the ones that urge me to close the laptop's lid and protect my wife's saggy breasts from this public exposure) but as soon as she turns on the water, there's noise from outside. It appears our fight is not over and I am yelling at her. She turns off the water, leans out the shower to yell a reply at the top of her voice – her face takes on a dark shade of irate pink from how loudly she's yelling – and then turns the shower back on.

I burst into the bathroom – throwing the door open so brutally that it knocks the towel-holder next to it off the wall – and take two steps towards the shower. We yell at each other, too loudly for any of it to be understandable on the video. She throws a shampoo bottle from inside the shower at me, then another and a piece of soap, then her loofah sponge – now there's nothing left in there. I'm only further enraged by this and swipe every single bottle and tub off of the counter over the sink with one swift arm movement.

She yells, I won't leave, she takes the shower head and directs it at me. I'm violently hit in the face by the water at full strength – now she is the only one yelling, because I can't open my mouth anymore. My arms blindly flail – it would appear I'm trying to rip the shower head from her hands in order to stop her – until I finally get hold of her wrist. I clench my fist around it and violently yank her towards me, trying to grab her other hand, the one holding the shower head. She struggles to break free from my grip, but won't avert the jet of water. I almost lose my balance, stumble backwards and yank her against the shower's side-wall in the process, but manage to steady myself and not fall over.

The water jet is still hitting my face and I am apparently losing my patience, because now I no longer pull, but push – I push her forward, suddenly and forcefully. She hits the back wall of the shower with the back of her head – in the process hitting the button that turns off the water with a lower portion of her body as she crashes into the wall. She lunges right back at me and we sort of wrestle. I push her again, harder still, throwing her against the wall. Her head hits against the thing which you normally stick the shower head in hard, and this time she doesn't get back up or continue to fight back.

I release my grip on her wrist and let her slide down (a shiver runs down my spine now and I feel sick to the stomach as I watch her seemingly lifeless hand slip from mine) – I turn around without paying any more attention to her. You can hear me still yelling something at her while angrily taking off my soaking wet clothes. I leave the bathroom in my underwear. The video is fast-forwarded over several hours until the moment I come back in in the morning, in dry clothes, and find her there.

There are a few moments of silence as they intently watch my face, presumably searching for a tell-tale sign of a guilty conscience - all while I try to process what I just saw. It looked so much like me, it sounded like me yelling - it seemed like our average fight, so typical of me...and yet how can it be me? How can you see yourself do something when you know you never did it?

They ask me questions about it, but to no avail – not because I refuse to answer but because I truly can't. I don't understand what is going on. The fact is I have never been more confused or terrified. The video shows me, yes, that is clearly my face and body, and that is clearly my wife, and yet...it isn't me. It can't be. I have no recollection of any of these events whatsoever. I've had blackouts, sure, anyone who drinks has them once in a while – but they're a few lost hours, they're not supposed to be dramatic. Drunk blackouts are supposed to be waking up naked in a recycling container somewhere across town, wearing a fake moustache and wondering what the hell happened at that party last night – they're not supposed to be this. Sure, I've had hours missing, hours in a day with no memories to fill the void, but those hours were in all likelihood spent sleeping it off. I just can't imagine I would...I couldn't have, I really couldn't. Something is wrong here, I don't know how, but it is. Something's off about that video. This can't be what happened. I know what I saw just now, but I also know what I remember and what I'm capable of, and what kind of person I am, and it doesn't match up. I can't have...

I try and of course fail to convey any of these thoughts, stammering explanations and excuses – that is, that I don't understand what I've seen just now and need a moment – until finally a thought emerges amidst all the chaos in my mind that seems reasonable; I remember what Oxy has told me on several occasions: no matter the context, if the police ever want to question you, keep your mouth shut until your lawyer arrives; no matter what they ask, and no matter what you did or did not do. So instead, I look at the policeman and say:

"I want to call my lawyer, and until she's here I refuse to speak."