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CHAPTER ONE
Her
My husband stands over me, fury emanating from his every pore. I can feel it smacking into me. Dripping down on me as I lie on my back and stare up at him through two blood-crusted black eyes. His fury is battery acid on my skin. It burns. It makes me weep. It stains me, like the sweat that stains his shirt.
It’s useless to try to crawl out of reach. He’s bigger. Stronger. Angrier. Just like always.
Can’t you see? I want to ask. You’ve already done enough!
The words are in my head, beating against my throbbing skull. They’re in my throat, burning in the spot where his hands have left their most recent mark. I try to say them aloud. I can’t. I can’t even sputter. I’m immobile. A dead weight. And yet his anger still comes. Not physically. Even for him, there’s no joy in delivering a beating to a person who can’t move an inch. So, he’s done with fists and feet for now, but his accusations and curses continue in a tirade. The aftershock of him, the earthquake.
Bitch.
Useless cunt.
I should kill you. It’d be better for both of us.
I don’t disagree.
End it, then. Please.
But there must be some innate need-to-survive part of me that refuses to believe in the power of futility. Because when my husband’s familiar work boots, which are presently at level with my head, take a step back and turn in the other direction for some reason, a voice in my head speaks up.
You’re not done, it says. But you will be if you don’t do something. Permanently.
I hear the truth in my subconscious’s words. I’ll die. Plain and simple. Here. Today. One of those boots will find my head and take me out for good.
The instinct to save myself rears up hard.
It spurs me to roll from my back to my stomach.
It prods me to reach out my chipped and broken fingernails and grasp for the frayed carpet that lines the hall.
It drives me to pull with all my might to drag myself farther away.
Please, please.
I know I won’t make it. God, how I know it. But hope is an insidious poison. As I scrape forward, it creeps through my blood and bubbles in my chest and makes me think that maybe, just maybe, I can somehow escape. Someone will come. Someone will see. I’ll make it. In spite of the splintering pain, splintering bones, and my splintering psyche, I will it to happen.
If wishes were nickels, my grandmother used to say.
But even then, the richness would only have lasted a moment. My husband is there to rip away the hope as quickly as it came. Roughly, he grabs my hair and drags me not just back, but up. To my knees. Then to my feet. He spins me so I’m face-to-face with his chest, and he hollers something I can’t understand. An order? A question? A threat?
I open my mouth to reply in some way, but still nothing comes out. My words are dried up. And this time, my silence sets him off. Up flies his arm. Out goes his palm. It hits my chest like a two-by-four, and I fly backward, straight toward the stairs. My hands flail. They screech along the railing, but it’s no use at all. My body folds in half and gives in to the horrible tumble.
I want to scream. But now it isn’t just my words that fail me; it’s my entire voice.
End of Excerpt
