She, 5

            She opened the apartment door and walked in. There was a dark greyness surrounding everything and the dreary light through the windows was cold, damp, ill illumination. She entered the bedroom and saw the outline of his body lying on the bed. The drapes were drawn and it took a moment for her eyes to adjust.

            “You look pretty,” he said in a low voice.

            “Thanks,” she said shortly. She walked to the closet and hung her jacket as her heart began to hammer. She could feel the chemicals reacting in her body. Fear, anxiety and sorrow mixed into a confusing mass. She turned to look at him through the darkness.

            “Are we going to talk about this?” he said. His voice was still a low drone. The monotone heightened her emotions. She knew he was wrought and raw on the inside.

            She fumbled with a corner stitch on her blouse and slowly walked to the bed. She sat down at the corner furthest from him, her back to him.

            “What’s happening?” he muttered.

She was quiet for some time and shrugged. “I don’t know,” she matched his low tone.

“I don’t know you anymore. And it is making me crazy. It makes me feel like I don’t know me anymore because when I think about me, I think about you. I think about us.” He stopped and collected himself briefly. “You’ve pulled away from me and everyone else. If you can’t talk to me at least talk to someone.”

“My brother saw shrinks his entire life before he killed himself. For nineteen years. I am not going to a shrink.”

“So you’re just going to hold everything inside and push away everyone?”

“I don’t want to talk about this. Again.”

“We wouldn’t have to talk about it again if you would… could make active steps to fixing it. And it’s only getting worse – that shit at the church, that is the worst I have seen you.”

“I know that,” she snapped. “That is the worst I have seen myself, don’t you think I fucking know that?”

“And you’re okay with that? You’re okay letting that be your worst ‘til you do something else that’s your worst? Over and over?” She remained silent. “It doesn’t make any sense!”

She rose from the bed and walked to the bathroom and slammed the door shut. She blinked heavily, droplets falling from her lashes. He knocked on the door softly.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

She closed her eyes and inhaled heavily as more tears escaped her. Sorry. She was sorry. It didn’t make any sense to her either. She carried everything inside of her, hiding away pieces – sometimes forever – and expressing herself untruthfully. It was who she was now. Thinking about a way back to her former self was dizzying and impossible. She was sorry. Yet there he was, apology in hand; anything to pull her back to him.

An inexplicable anger came over her and she pulled the door open. “What are you sorry for?”

“For what I said.”

“But it’s all the truth, isn’t it?” she countered, the boiling inside her rising.

“For how I said it,” he corrected.

“Fuck off,” she said nastily as she pushed past him. She entered the bedroom and reached inside her closet and pulled out her jacket. A piece of paper fell onto the floor and she bent down to pick it up.

“I said I was sorry,” he said as he came up behind her.

“Stop saying sorry.”

“I am fucking sorry!”

She balled her fist painfully and swung at him, hitting him on the chest hard. “STOP!”

The blow didn’t faze him. “I’m sorry that no matter what the fuck I do or say or try or give or accept, you are still hurting. That’s what I’m sorry for.”

She shook her head and pushed him hard as she marched to the door. He followed her and pulled her back by the arm. She flung him off her and looked him in the eye.

“I’m done with you. I want you to get all your shit out of here – out of my fucking life,” she spat.

He looked at her with a dead expression then chuckled.

She spun around and walked out the apartment. She exited her building and walked swiftly to a nearby deli.

“Cigarettes,” she said to the man behind the counter. She put the money on the counter.

“This isn’t money, miss,” the cashier said.

She stared at him blankly as he unfolded the piece of paper slowly. “It’s a business card. See?” He held it to her eye level and she blinked many times until the words came into focus.

It was the card the waitress had given her.

She, 3

She looked at the strikingly white porcelain as the water poured over her head. Even over the rush of noise of running water, she could hear him banging around in the kitchen. She heard the clink of a bottle being dropped heavily on wood, she heard him throw cubes of ice into a tumbler. She had to imagine him downing the Scotch; she couldn’t hear that.

Even then, she couldn’t remember him.

Goosebumps erupted on her body but she ignored them and lathered her hair.

She didn’t love him. He deserved it: he loved her, shared with her and gave to her. He thought he understood her but she didn’t understand her; how could he?

As she stepped out the shower she heard a door slam shut.

She walked out the bathroom and looked around the empty living space.

The bottle of Scotch and nearby tumbler gleamed on the kitchen counter in the soft recess lights.

Entering the bedroom, she saw that his suit was strewn on the bed. On the nightstand was a piece of cake on a paper plate. She stared at the scene, puzzled, only remembering the wedding after a few seconds.

She bundled up his suit haphazardly, her towel dropping softly to the floor. She snatched the cake off the nightstand, squashed it into the bundle of fabric in her arms and rushed into the kitchen, bending over double and shoving it violently into the trash under the sink.

As she straightened up, she savagely wiped the tears on her cheeks.

She stood there for some time: naked, shuddering, droplets of water falling from the kinks on her head. She picked up the bottle of Scotch slowly, uncapped it and took a long swig. The sweet bitterness burned her throat and she drank again.

Back in the bedroom, she fell onto the bed. Her head pounded and she had too many overflowing thoughts and no medium of expression.

She retrieved the small container of marijuana in one of her drawers and returned to the bed with her legs folded beneath her. She stuffed the green flakes into her small pipe, lit and took a long and calming pull.

She did it again, many times, until her head felt light and her body buzzed with high.

The headache was gone but now her mind – cloudy – seemed to taunt her with her situation.

He had been with her from the time she was a foreigner in someone else’s country. He had molded her like soft clay, not to his whims, but in the direction of hers. He knew her best and she wanted to escape him worst. The familiarity was stifling; it wasn’t a comfort. He was everywhere in her life as if he demanded the space, he took up her time and efforts in ways that begged so much sacrifice.

She bent her head down to her ankles and tried to sob. Her hand brushed between her legs and the sensation rattled her body. She lay back slowly, rubbing her feet up and down the soft duvet as she continued to palm herself.

Her dark body was one with the darkness inside of her, and with the darkness of the bedroom. She couldn’t see what she was doing to herself. She could only feel.

Her calves tingled and cramped as she slowly rubbed her hidden clitoris, feeling the warmth in her become wet.

She inhaled so deeply that her chest cracked. She haphazardly searched through the dark for the vibrator in her nightstand; she felt for the switch and heard the faint buzz. She licked the tip and put it on her nipple.

“Fuck…” she moaned into the empty darkness as the vibration seeped through the rest of her body, the buzz palpable.

Before she could part her lips with her fingertips, the bedroom door swung open. Light from outside flooded onto her pulsating body. She raised her hand to shield her eyes. She could see his silhouette in the doorframe but could not make out his expression. She heard him laugh sardonically.

“You gotta be fucking kidding.”

“Jesus,” she said exasperatedly, pulling the duvet over her naked body as he turned on the light.

“Really?” he commented, looking at her hands clutching the duvet over her chest. His breaths were short, eyes wide and he was on the verge of screaming. “Like I haven’t fucking seen it all?”

He advanced on her and savagely pulled the duvet. She catapulted forward, her hands still clinging to the downy white. They struggled for some time until he snatched it from her and threw it to the floor.

“Stop it!” she cried as he pushed her back on the bed and put his hand on her pussy.

“Why are you hiding?” he asked through clenched teeth, his fingers pushing into her hard.

“Fucking stop it!” she screamed while kicking him off and pulling her legs to her body, back straight against the headboard.

“How much is too much?” he asked. “For weeks you shut me out, you cancel at the drop of a hat, you never want to have sex – how much do you expect me to fucking take?” He searched her face but she kept her eyes fixed on his chin.

“And the wedding… the fuck were you thinking? Huh? What came over you in the church? Who the fuck were you? In front of eighty fucking guests? In a fucking church?”

She felt a current through her body. She expected that his failure to confront her when she first arrived at the apartment meant that he would comfortably ignore what had happened earlier; the way he comfortably ignored everything else. And she would have let him the way she always did.

But this was the reckoning moment. He was firing his shots right at her, calling her out on the cruel darkness that lived inside.

“Say something.”

She shrugged and he made an aggravated sound and punched the mattress hard. He got to his feet and spat, “Fuck you, then. Fuck your mind-games and fuck you.”

He picked up the duvet and threw it on the bed, switched off the light and slammed the bedroom door shut.

She let out a hard breath and clutched her heart. The darkness was blinding against her eyes, it pressed in overwhelmingly and felt barren. She could feel the beating organ inside her as it graphically pounded. She could feel the pump of blood through it and the rush of life coursing through its core. Pumping life in the dark.

She shifted on the bed and the sudden buzz of the vibrator frightened her and she let out a small cry.

She felt for it on the mattress and turned it off. A chuckle escaped her lips and then tears sprang to her eyes.

She tried to push back the thoughts in her head. Was he still in the apartment? She listened keenly to the deadness and decided he had left.

You can’t run forever, a voice inside lulled.

Couldn’t she? She could so easily detach from moments and herself, as if she had tied her emotions to a helium balloon and let it float away forever. Why couldn’t she do that with love?

This isn’t love, another voice taunted.

She pulled herself off the mattress, turned on the lamp on her nightstand and rolled a joint. As she pulled, she could hear the sizzle of buds burning. She looked over at the nightstand and noticed a clump of whiteness stuck to the top.

Bewildered, she poked her fingers through it and realised it was icing from the wedding cake. She put her finger in her mouth and the sweetness mingled with her smoke-tinged saliva.

It tasted like shit.

Just like everything else in her life tasted like shit. Whether it was the way she had to interact with waiters or smile encouragingly at tourists as they waved annoyingly or entertain his friends even though she hated every one of them more than the last or go to work and entertain her new boss, the grandest dick that ever was, or pretend to be excited every time she saw a baby in a stroller, even if it looked like a swaddled beet with lips, or wear heels to dinner when she really wanted to stay in, watch TV and binge eat a bag of Doritos; everything lately tasted like shit.

Suddenly, there was a jolt in her stomach. She felt a push on her throat and ran to the bathroom, letting the vomit out into the toilet bowl. For a minute, she violently spat up her insides, moaning and gagging with no restraint.

After she rinsed her mouth and face, she stood up straight and looked into the mirror at herself intently. Her dark eyes were watery and red.

She pressed her tongue against the roof of her mouth. That didn’t taste like shit. It tasted like steak.