Word Count: 486
Too far. It’s just gone too far.
I wake in a fetal position. Blood pounding through my head tells me I am alive. A wicked cramp strains through my whole body but I cannot stretch out.
My fingers play with my fingers, numb and unfeeling as clay. I bring my elbows into my sides to cradle the pain.
It was a bad one this time. The screaming still rings in my ears till I can’t separate the voices, pull out the words. But I know by rote what they’re saying. My shrieks are of drinking, of women, of not being a man; his bellows, my spending his money. Years and years of the same yet we never caught on.
With awareness comes knowledge; too late, too late. For I feel the hardness of close walls and the dearth of fresh air. He believes he has done it, has finally hit the blow that has silenced my accusations forever. I wonder how long I’ve been here, how he was able to rag-doll me into this chest I realize was my mother’s. It was down in the cellar for years. Where am I now?
How did he feel when he thought he had killed me? Was there any horror, any regret, or just fear? What will he do when he must answer to those who may ask where I’ve been?
The pain washes over in waves from my head to my toes. I don’t bleed anymore. My breaths are taken in shallow and slow. I hope I can just go to sleep. But he must need to come back to hide me again, put me deeper down into the ground of the past and reality. Maybe, maybe he’ll come back in time!
He’s really a good man unable to cope. I’m a woman who knows him too well. When did love and affection dwindle away and resentment swell into its place? I imagine him sitting alone on the sofa, scared and sorry, weary and weak. He’ll come back; I just know it. I only hope it is soon. The black closeness is making me sleepy. The small breaths don’t provide enough life. I forgive him, resolve to be more loving, and I wait.
I wake in a fetal position, but wait…there’s a scraping, a digging, a sound! He’s come back, guilt and hope drives him on. Love long thought buried has brought him to save me!
Even the light of the moon hurts my eyes and my voice is a weak raspy whisper. I can raise my arm up with the greatest of willed effort and he reaches down to grasp my hand and it’s warm with the pulse of the living. Then my wedding band, my watch that my mother had left me, my silver bracelet that he gave me last year are pulled roughly away from my hold and he slams down the lid.
