Hi guys, I know it’s been a while. I feel like I deserted you lot. I’ve been really ill, so I decided to keep away from computer screens until I got better.

It feels really good to be back. I’m still a bit off but at least I can blog 🙂

I’m really excited ’cause today’s post is another collaboration!!!!!

I teamed up (again) with the wonderful Nortina of Lovely Curses (please check out her blog here), and together we’ve written tried to do a collaborative story.

You can catch up on our last collaborative poem titled ‘Above the Ocean Breeze’ here.

We hope you enjoy reading it

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A few days have gone by and all I’ve done is write. I’ve run out of ink so I cut myself and use my blood. My thoughts need to be heard…need to be read. It’s been a long time coming…

Brick walls
Shattered glasses
Blood
Sweat
Tears
Pain

My phone vibrates against the porcelain tub and rattles to the floor. I don’t move to answer. It’s probably Kerry. I can’t talk to her now. I don’t want to hear her incessant complaining about Mike’s infidelity. If only she knew. I would do anything to be cheated on, to share my bed with another woman, who tangles herself in the sheets as the man I love pleasures every inch of her body with his tongue and lips as he did mine the night before. Instead, I can only taste the iron on his clammy palm from when he covered my nose and mouth, can only feel the shards of glass slice through my skin from when he thrust me through the window of the abandoned hospital building in the woods.

I lift my arm out of water. My skin is wrinkled like prunes. I wish I could trim it away, shed myself of the filth. How long have I been in this bath? An hour? Two? The water’s not even hot, not even lukewarm. I wipe away the soap suds to read what I have written. Most of the ink from the pen is faded, but the scratches are clear as day, a stark red against my pale skin. I take a corkscrew and continue my story, carving four more letters into my wrist:

R-A-P-E.

I trusted him.

I trusted him as a person.

I trusted his soul.

I remember the days when he was the one who made me smile. Dinner dates, movie night and cocktails. Maybe it was my fault… Did I not scream loud enough? Was my ‘No’ in whispers? When I said ‘stop’, didn’t I mean it????

Maybe it was my fault for agreeing to go out camping with him that night. It started so beautifully. We stared at the stars and watched as the clouds danced in circles around the moon. The weather was perfect and his smell…. Oh his smell – the woody, musky scent.

My face breaks into a smile at the happy memory and in an instant I remember… I remember him choking me and my smile, it turns into screams as I cut the side of my face. I don’t want to be beautiful. I want this pain to take me…to a place where I’ll never be able to return, a place where I have no trust, a place where I will never be in pain.

I sink lower into the tub, my knees at the level of my eyes. It was so tempting . . . Just to dip my nose under . . . inhale . . . let the water flood my lungs . . .

But I want to see his face when I toss the small plastic rod at his feet. I want to watch his cold blue eyes turn a steel-gray when he sees those two pink lines drawn right down the center.

It’ll be just our luck if we are having a girl.

The door bell rings. I sit in this bath tub contemplating if I really want to entertain guests tonight.

What time is it anyway??

If I ignore the sounds long enough, maybe they’ll go away…

Ding

Ding

Ding

Ding 

Diiinnnnnng

Who the fuck is it anyway!!!!!???!

I find the strength to get out of the tub, grab my robe and walk sluggishly down the stairs… Hoping by the time I get to the door, whoever is there will be gone.

Dinnnnggg

Dinnnnggggg

“I’m coming dammit”

I open the door….and blue eyes are staring back at me… I can recognize those eyes anywhere. I feel all the emotion rushing through me…

I can’t breathe. I can’t fucking breathe.

“WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING HERE?”

“I was worried about you.” He speaks softly, then steps over the threshold and wraps me in his arms. “You haven’t been answering my calls.”

I extend my forearm and push him back. “You’ve got some nerve,” I sneer.

“Babe–” he starts, but stops and hangs his head. He should feel ashamed. Coming here. To do what? To gloat? To pretend my torment for the past several weeks was all in my head? Will he go so far as to say I wanted it, I asked for it, I was begging for it?

Instead he says, “You know I love you, right?”

I slam the door in his face. That kind of love is deadly, so says my bloody wrist.

“Babe please… Open the door”

My calm breath turns into rage.

“You raped me! You raped me and you know it and now I’m pregnant and I don’t want this child…. I don’t want it… Take it away…..”

I hear him stop breathing for a second.

“We are  keeping MY child. Don’t you even think for a second you’re killing MY child.”

“Your child?” I say helplessly. I turn my back to the door and lean against it. What was I to him? An incubator? Just a surrogate? Collateral damage? He always talked about how much he wanted kids, almost to the point of obsession. I was the one who blocked it. I wouldn’t have a child out-of-wedlock. So he proposed. Again and again. Sometimes twice in one week. He was always in a rush. But why?

I thought my pregnancy would make him feel guilty for what he did. This couldn’t have been the way he wanted to conceive his dream family–a wife, a couple of kids, a three-story house in the suburbs–but I guess there’s always a dark secret behind every white picket fence. Would this be ours? It wouldn’t be as easy to deny him in marriage. How often would he take advantage?

My body bounces off the door as he kicks and punches it. “Just open up!” He shouts.

“Open up,” I scoff to myself, like he opened my womb. My stomach rises in my chest. I double over dizzy and start to dry heave.

He must hear me, because his pounding grows more invigorating. It’s only a matter of time before he breaks in.

It all happened in an instant….

The last thing I remember are sounds… Various sounds.

The sound of my hinges giving way to his strength…. My feet shuffling on the marble as I make a dash for the kitchen… Him grunting as he grabs my arms …. Me screaming at him to let go…

“I’ll kill you before you kill my child. If I can’t have you the no one else will you filthy bitch”

This can’t be how it all ends. Me – dead and pregnant for a psychopath. I still remember how every punch to my stomach felt…. And in my head I am actually dead…

I finally begin to see the light… Is this what death feels like???? Just as I’m about to give up, I feel the corkscrew in the pocket of my robe

Stabbing someone, on paper, seems easy. Hollywood would have you believe you can sink a knife into human flesh, down to the handle, and the blade would smoothly glide through, like slicing softened butter. In reality, you could use all of your strength, and the blade still wouldn’t go deeper than a quarter inch.

My energy depleted from the baby, my engraved wrist, the smell of Merlot I opened but never drank, I can barely lift my arm. I make it only to his waist, and blocking his blows with one hand, I jab his thigh with the corkscrew in the other. Once, then twice. It barely scratches the surface, but it is enough to stun him, and the minute he lets me go, I sprint for the bathroom, close and lock the door behind me, and dive for my cellphone on the floor.

It’s still vibrating. Kerry’s been calling this whole time.

“Kerry call the police. He’s going to kill me. Help me Kerry”

The next sounds I hear are two gun shots and Kerry knocking on the bathroom door.

“Kiera open up!!! He’s gone.”

…..

“Miss Kiera you were very lucky. You could have lost the baby…”

I’ve been in a trance for days. My memory is foggy. I remember bright lights  and beeps and people talking…faces, a lot of faces. Familiar ones. Unfamiliar ones. White robes. Blue suits… Needles, clanking metal.

“Miss Kiera, can you hear me?”

I look up at the doctor and smile.

“Yes I can Dr. Liam. I would like an abortion please…..”

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Thank you so much for reading guys, and of course a HUGE thank you to Nortina for doing this with me again 🙂

**Photo credit – mangoyauyeeman