Scene I.
The ringing in her ears grew louder, tighter, as if a string was wrapped around her neck and threatening to behead her as the sound filled the room.
Clammy hands, voltage speed, heart rate; skipping beats and pacing around in the tiny compact room that is her ribs.
She couldn’t breathe anymore.
She fell to her knees, cornered in the bedroom, her back against the wall. She pressed her hands over her ears, clutching them and begging them to close up, to protect her from the vulturous sound. Picking at her brain, making her come undone, dreading for the remainder of her mind to be torn up by the screaming.
Yes, that was the ringing.
Screaming.
“You pathetic, useless whore.”
Her beloved spat practically acid at her. The words burned through her wounds, the wounds on her arms and legs and in her swollen heart. She was so accustomed to his filthy mouth, it hadn’t always been filthy. Not initially, no. But now, with each condescending word that fell out of his big mouth she saw it as dirty, she didn’t kiss him anymore. She hasn't in two years now.
He stood above her with a lit cigarette in his hand, there was a pause to the screaming.
The cigarette, the caretaker, the soother. It quelled his rage momentarily, she knew this as she watched his eyebrows unfurrow and his eyes become absent from the moment. Empty. She watched as the smoke rose into the air and escaped the lit tobacco, uncurling and whispering ashy docile words, mouthing none, yet providing the perfect comfort any man could find. That her husband could find.
His gaze fixated on her after a second of calm.
“You deceitful manipulative woman. If I had known you would be like this, turn out to be so fucking disappointing like this I would have never sang you that song. Would have never…” She prepared for the impact of another blistering word, she believed them all to be true - not mendacious. Not repetitive, each word was another lash. Another wound. Another…
He crouched down to meet her gaze and gently stroked her cheek, two of his fingers catching loose strands of her hair and playing with it, adjusting it behind her ear with the same tenderness she was now unfamiliar with. It scared her. She hated when he was sweet. It wasn’t true. It wasn’t true like the wounds.
“I would have never chosen to love you.”
He plunges the lit cigarette into her collarbone, digging it deeper and deeper, till it becomes dim and dead.
Breathe.
Breathe, come on, breathe you idiot.
It isn’t the first time.
It feels good…
It feels good..
It feels good.
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