Note: I’m gonna stop doing these at some point, promise. But this one is important. First off: trigger warning for abuse. If you are or have been in an abusive relationship, this story might not be for you. If you’re actively going through something like this right now, please know that there are a lot of places around the world where kind souls are waiting to lend an ear and a helping hand, if you’re ready for it. If not, please know that you are in my heart. I was brought up in violence so please— be sure that my writing about this is not something cheap. Like most of my writings, it comes from a very real place. And I’ll be around if you want to talk about it.
Second: This one nearly broke me. It’s gonna be a burned-out wreck. Trust me. There are better ones coming. Also— graphic content at some point but… come on: isn’t that why you’re here?
Pain was an old friend.
Humiliation was another.
They’d been around for so long that sometimes she didn’t even notice them anymore. But once in a while, they’d find a way to let her know they were still around. Once in a while they made sure she knew there was still empty space between her and the bottom.
Late November the eldest came from school crying. As it turned out, the check for the big ski-trip never made it to school. She looked to her husband hunched over his dinner in his undershirt. Catching the silence, he paused mid-shovel.
“I’ll fix it,” he said.
“You can’t. The school says it’s too late.”
He sucked at his teeth, looking from mother to daughter to mother again. “So it’s my fault?”
Cutlery hit plates. A deep quiet settled over the table. His eyes held hers, fork still held in one ham-fisted hand.
She muttered. She shouldn’t have muttered.
He stood up so fast the chair flew back. Feet pounded. Pale, tight faces watched as he chased her around the table. She could feel a stubby finger brushing her hair when he tripped and fell, striking his head on the table as he went down.
There was a stunned second or two before she hurried the children upstairs. Punishment without a crime. Then she waited until he struggled up from the floor. A doomed soul beneath the hangman’s noose.
Rubbing his cheek, he let out a chuckle. Boy, whaddaya know about that?
When she opened her mouth, he socked her in the jaw.
The force of it knocked her unconscious, but the damage was waiting for her when she came to. Three molars broken off at the gum line, their jagged remnants still in her mouth. Her face had swelled up like an overstuffed sausage, one puffy cheek pushing her eye into a narrow slit.
“Got something to say?” he said, leaning in the bathroom doorway.
Clutching the weight inside for balance, she turned. Stood before him, head bowed in supplication. “I’m sorry.”
She was sorry.
Most of the time he was gracious enough to keep his offerings out of sight. But sometimes he got excited. Especially when she got smart. She shouldn’t have gotten smart.
So, for the next three weeks she wore her old friends out where the world could see. Words slushed and teeth throbbed. Eyes of customers and co-workers crawled. She burned under their scrutiny. But inside— Inside was a dark and quiet place, cradled by the vaulted arches of her ribs, where she held the one thing that was still her own. A ponderous relic to be worshipped in this church of one.
She had read a story once where a man had compared himself to a deep sea fish. She’d understood at once, the differences part of the same gestalt. The man had been trapped by the crushing weight of exception, whereas hers had been the pressure of her own bated breath, seeking to join the air around her and become a part of the flat, smooth surface she forever took care not to disturb. The both of them held by forces beyond their control. Both living in dark and airless places.
In time the pressure had lessened. She imagined the molecules of the oxygen she’d held for so long bouncing and trembling in powerless frustration, before clustering in some new, carnivorous configuration that consumed itself until her lungs became two shrivelled, vacuum-sealed strips that twisted into a sphincter-like sinkhole that fed into nothingness. From there, it would pull down the rest of her, crumple flesh and bone into a bloody paper ball before she flashed out of existence.
Or.
Or perhaps even the boundaries of her body had surrendered, allowing the air to pass through, until all was hushed and still— inside and out.
Standing in front of the mirror, this last sounded entirely plausible. She had no idea if this was true for others but to her, life was a quiet, relentless fading; a flaying knife peeling back unimaginable layers of some essential part of her day after day, until all that was left was a stranger, staring out at her with dull and hollow eyes. A ghost, disturbing the air no more than she disturbed it.
Mostly.
She would be lying if she said it didn’t hurt anymore. The looks. She knew them all. The naked ones that said: Why do you stay with him? The furtive ones that held either sympathy borne from experience or thought she probably got what she deserved. They still stung, along with the words. Advices and explanations that felt like worms trying to burrow into her, invade the quiet within.
Nobody seemed to understand that nothing was ever made all at once. A thousand trivial decisions, stitched together to start patterns you couldn’t even comprehend at the time, that you still couldn’t fully grasp. You don’t even realise it’s a straight-jacket until it’s buckled tight. The rest of the time you’re bouncing off the walls, trying to figure out where it was— the exact moment— where it all went wrong. Was it her? Was it him? Was it them? Until you gave up on even those questions. They didn’t matter. All that mattered was the cell. Walls made up of a part-time job, children, a mortgage, and credit card debts. She knew these walls. She grew comfortable in their embrace. They cradled her as she cradled the airless place inside her.
And so she might have remained.
Had she not met Andrew.
He started working at the store in late February. Tall, athletic, and well-dressed, he caught the eye of several of the girls, whose flirtations he endured with a grace and good-natured humor she wouldn’t have thought possible in a man. Even from a distance, it was clear that he wasn’t interested. She thought he might be gay— a rumor that began to circulate not long after. But no. As it turned out, Andrew had been married for nine years. The marriage that had ended when he found out his wife had slept with several of his friends. What had followed was a messy divorce and a move to a new city and life, where he hoped to start fresh.
All this she pieced together from overheard conversations. She never spoke with Andrew directly, gave him a wide berth. Not because she was interested in him, god no. It was just better this way. Safer. When her eyes drifted across the floor and lingered on him, that was just because he was something new, an unfamiliar piece of furniture she hadn’t gotten used to yet. And the way she jumped when he caught her looking, the heat that leapt into her face, that was just because… because—
That was just because she didn’t want others to think she was interested. Yes. It could be bad, for Andrew and for her. But mostly for her. So, no. Not interested. She would keep her distance, insist that he keep his. Better that way. Safer.
But a month or so later, management shook up the departments and she ended up on the children’s department with Andrew. Suddenly there was no more distance and, to her dismay, she found Andrew orbiting her in ever tightening circles. Always asking questions, sticking close to her while they tidied up the floor stands near closing time. She tried to discourage his friendship with cool reserve but he either didn’t notice or he didn’t care because he kept up the conversations— even the ones that were entirely one-sided.
It was a new kind of pressure, one made up of thoughtful words and warm laughter. It tugged at her, until one day, he dragged a smile from the depths of her. It fought and struggled all the way up, but in the end she burst out laughing.
“Music to my ears,” he said and laughed along with her.
After that, whenever she knew he was scheduled to work, she drove to work with a head full of clouds. Silly, she thought to herself, checking her makeup in the visor mirror. It was all silly. Harmless. It was just that Andrew made her feel—
She couldn’t even finish the thought.
But no matter what he made her feel, the tight little fist in her chest never unclenched. It held her as she held it. A constant reminder of the dangers of what they were doing— even if it was harmless. He wouldn’t care. If she disturbed the smooth surface of his peace and quiet, he would take her down. If he suspected her of… that she and Andrew—
She couldn’t bear to finish that thought.
Caught between the two, she floated; a pale and bloated thing drowned long ago, carried away on fickle currents.
Until—
Her phone chirped as she was standing in line at the supermarket. Opening the text, her heart dropped. It was Andrew. He’d gotten her phone number somehow. The airless place pulled at her, threatened to suck her down.
“Ma’am?”
She looked up at the cashier, startled. The groceries were already run through, lay in a pile at the far end. Behind her, sour faces glared impatient.
“Sorry,” she said, pushing the cart with a twitch of a smile, then began to dump groceries in her cart in double handfuls.
“Sorry,” she said to the line of waiting people.
“Sorry,” she said as she left.
She was always sorry.
Later that night she came downstairs to find him looking at her from his easy chair, belling sloping over his boxers, a tight sickle of a smile on his bulldog face. Steeling herself for the barrage of insults that usually followed, her mind stumbled when he said: “Hey, how’s work been?”
When was the last time he’d asked her that? She couldn’t even remember.
“Work?”
“Yeah,” he said, drawn out and cheerful, as he reached for the can of Pabst on the side table. “How’s things?” The can hovered in front of his mouth. “Anything… new I should know about?”
Her heart began to throb as his hand tipped the can. Something was wrong. She struggled to hold his gaze but her eyes kept wanting to skitter away, like beads of water in a scalding hot pan.
“I— I don’t—“
Her glance was an eye blink, there and gone. But it was enough. Enough for him and for her.
Wedged in between his meaty thigh and the armrest was her cellphone. Thoughts like movie frames picked up speed, whirring, beaming the truth from her widening eyes.
He snapped up in his chair, quick and furious. She watched the can sail past, a comet dragging a tail of piss-colored liquid. She didn’t even see the cellphone until it struck her with a bony thud that filled the world. Clapping a hand to her face, she stumbled backwards. Straightened just in time to see his looping fist rushing to meet her. There was a crunching sound. Red exploded across her vision and she staggered back, blindly reaching for support. When she didn’t find it, she went down, stars exploding as her head rapped on the floor.
Then he was on her. Heavy hands slapping her from one side to the other. She tasted blood in the back of her throat. She snorted, started coughing.
“You goddam bitch,” he said, panting. “After everything I’ve done for you? Going behind my back like some fucking whore?”
She could’ve told him it wasn’t like that. Could’ve told him it was harmless. But right then, his hands wrapped themselves around her throat, cinching tight, cutting off whatever explanations she might’ve offered.
“How could you? How dare you?” He yanked her up, squeezing. Slammed her back down. More stars.
The realisation that he was going to kill her was a mildly amusing fact— not in the least surprising. She’d always suspected, somehow, that this was how it was going to end. She was foolish to think that if she played by his rules, they might be fine. Some men wanted everything, even if they destroyed it in the process.
She didn’t struggle. After all the years of flaying, all that had been stripped from her. The children would be fine; they’d be taken from him, would go and live with her parents. A normal life. Her death was the best gift she could give them.
He lowered his face to hers.
“Was he worth it?”
Her vision blurred. Darkness loomed at the edges, eager to rush in. She welcomed it.
Lips parting, she let it go: the poisonous breath she had held for so long. As it floated away, she felt as light as a feather.
Suddenly, the hands were gone. Eyes fluttered, looked as his blurry shape stumbled back.
As her vision sharpened, her brain struggled to make sense of what she was seeing. His hands were wrapped around his own throat now. His face was red, eyes bulging. His gasping breath was a distant train rushing through a subway tunnel.
The sound became a whistle, sliding up the register until it faded out of the human range. He was turning blue now, hands clawing at his throat.
There was a loud pop, followed by a handful of dry branches breaking. Between the sagging meat of his breasts, a circular depression appeared, as if he’d been struck by an invisible sledgehammer.
The bulge of his belly shrank like a deflating balloon, until his boxers slid down to his knees. His skin clappered, began to shrink back into the now hollow pit of his stomach. Ribs stood out for the first time in a decade, became leather-covered sticks. His head tipped forward, mouth and eyes drooping as the skin of his face pulled tight, teasing glistening red underneath.
The depression grew, cracking and crunching, his torso leaning this way and that as his ribcage folded into itself. The head fell into the ruin like a big testicle. Skin shrivelled, grew tighter still, enveloping this new construction as best it could. For a brain-searing moment, his face became a melted halloween mask, stretched and smeared.
Then it was whipped away with all the suddenness of a waiter performing a party trick with a tablecloth.
What remained of him was lifted off the ground, a monstrous starfish that twitched and jerked as it was being eaten from the centre, until all that was left was something that looked like a pale anemone, made up of his fingers and toes.
Bones moved in intricate, furious movements as they dissolved. And then— another pop, softer this time, as air collapsed into place.
Silence.
She sat on the ground, heart hammering, staring at the empty space that had been her husband. It could’ve been a hallucination, if not for his purple boxers, lying neatly on the floorboards.
Her phone lay nearby. She reached for it. It slipped through strengthless fingers. The third time she managed to grip it tight.
Thoughts were a raging sea, made it hard to concentrate. But finally she found what she was looking for. Holding the phone up to her ear, she brought a trembling hand up to her face, wincing as she struck her broken nose.
When the call connected, she realised she’d been holding her breath all this time. She’d been doing it for so long, she hadn’t even noticed.
“Hello?”
She took a breath. Let it out. Closed her eyes. Her smile was a fawn struggling to stand, at first. It grew more confident as grateful tears started to flow.
“Hello?”
Lowering the phone, she pushed end call.
I wasn’t going to read this, Ken. Almost heeded your trigger warning. I’ve never been able to write about what happened, back then. Every time, my voice would fall to a whisper and I’d work on something less…real. But you’ve done it, and now I don’t have to. This was more than extraordinary. It was freeing.
Wow, Ken...this is unbelievably powerful. The work is so raw and embodied, and had my heart on my sleeve the entire time. Brutal yet profound work.