The Ex

She loved this place. 

A lovely little ‘shack’ – as she thought of it, shown to her by an ex who…

…An ex, nothing more now. 

Deep in the woods, amongst the trees and bushes. Gavin had brought her here, many times. He said it could be their ‘secret place’, that nobody else knew it was here. They came here and made love, so many times she lost count. It had been such a magical time until…

So many happy memories.

So long ago.

But things changed.

And now…

She sat before them, nervous and afraid, wringing her hands together.

Three men she had loved more than anything at varying points in her life.

Three men who – in return for her loyal and passionate commitment to them, had lied, cheated and abused her trust in them.

Three men whose actions had resulted in her mental breakdown and having to see a therapist every week after becoming suicidal .

She looked up at them. Each one looked as if they would rather be somewhere – anywhere else but here. 

Derek, on her left, slouching - as usual, in the wicker chair she'd chosen from the second-hand shop in the village centre. His mop of fair hair trailing over his brow, those piercing blue eyes looking down at his feet. He made her feel like she was the only woman in his life – even though she wasn’t.

Gavin, lounging on the large forest green bean bag directly in front of her. With his dark hair, brown eyes and slim but muscular build. He took her to the alter – and the edge, before leaving her there in her Wedding Dress, those final, pathetic words, ‘It’s not you, it’s me…’

She could still hear those words now, each one a sharp, barbed hook in her heart still pulling.

At the alter…

…all those faces looking at her…

Then there was Colin.

He was sulking in the arm-chair, his face moody.

He was her most recent relationship and probably the worst.

But, blinded by naivety and damaged expectations, she didn’t see it at the time.

‘Not all men are bad,’ her therapist, Jenny had told her. ‘It’s important that you realise that.’

Looking at them now, not one of them showing the slightest bit of discomfort. No emotional displays, just… nothing.

‘Fucking male bravado,’ she thought. ‘Tear a woman’s feelings apart and then laugh and joke about it down the pub.’

She bit her lip, feeling that familiar tide of rage well up inside. A veritable tsunami of raw and savage emotion that could easily swamp everything inside.

‘Not all men are bad,’ She mused.

But these three were.

Taking several deep breaths – as prescribed by Jenny, she could feel the stormy waters within begin to calm.

‘You have to face your demons on your way back to you,’ Jenny had said. ‘It’s all part of the healing.’

Their blasé approach irritated her, why did she have to be the one so cruelly hurt? Telling her it was them – a pitiful excuse that covered the real truth, which was it actually was her.

It was blatantly obvious to her – yet the reasoning was hidden to her.

Was she too boring? Not exciting enough?

What?

She gave all she could, at least all she felt she could. Was that not enough? How much more did they want?

Deep breathing again, trying to calm herself, she wondered if this was actually a good idea.

The scars helped her to keep her emotions in check.

She looked down at the scarring on her wrists, deep scars, eight months healed. Ugly yet beautiful in their own right. They reminded her why she was here, why they were here – these men.

They were scars borne from a moments weakness, but they were also symbolic of her fight to survive, to come back, to be herself again.

They were the scars of a warrior, and these men would know that now.

She could do this.

She had to, if not for any other reason but her piece of mind.

‘I’m sorry,’ she started – her voice a little shaky. ‘This is difficult for me, I guess it won’t be easy for you all either. But if you give me a little more time, I can explain, then, I will leave you all alone.’

‘First, I want to thank Gavin for letting me use this place for us all to get together. There are a lot of memories here, some good ones,’ she felt her cheeks flush slightly as she remembered the many times her and Gavin came here to make love…

Was that really what it was? Making Love? The thought was sharp, invasive. Wounding

No, it was nothing more than a fuck! 

At least for Him!

‘And some bad.’ She continued. Her mind becoming a little muddy. ‘Sorry, I’m wandering from my point. I don’t want to praise any of you. You see you all took something away from me when we were together.’ she rubbed absently at the scars, taking what strength she could from their memories.

‘Not all at once. But gradually, over time.’

She looked at them, her eyes fixing on each man individually. ‘You all made me feel like I'd done something wrong, as if this was somehow my fault.’

Hand’s wringing once more.

‘It’s taken a long time for me to realise this, but I know now, that I'd not done anything wrong…’

It was Colin who moved first, his hand sliding slowly from the arm of the chair to his side, his jacket pocket in particular.

She knew that move all too well, he wore that jacket all the time when they were together – apart from bed time.

At bedtime he had frequently tied her to the bed, telling her she should be a good girl.

She looked at his hand resting on the pocket – the same pocket where his silver knuckleduster was kept.

He'd used the knuckleduster on many occasions – times when she would disagree with something Colin had said or done. She quickly learned that challenging him was often met with violence.

He had been the hardest one to convince to come here, but – as he always thought primarily with his dick, she had used her ‘womanly’ charms and…

well, here he was.

‘You won’t find anything there Colin,’ she smiled. ‘Your knuckleduster is in the kitchen drawer, you won’t be using it on me anytime soon.’

She smiled, feeling a little smug that she had managed to ‘get one over on him’. 

‘Surprised?’ She asked. ‘Don’t be. If I learned one thing from you it was how to be quiet, to be so gentle in my movements.’

She didn’t have to say more, Colin’s hand simply rested on his pocket, as if he had intended to put it there all along.

Snippets of her time with Colin flooded her mind, the glint of shining metal wrapped around his fist as it streaked towards her. The hard, almost blinding force of his fist driving into her cheek. The sudden, cold sensation of realisation and the fear.

And pennies.

The coppery taste of blood as it filled her mouth.

He was probably the worst of them all.

‘Let's start with you Derek,’ She spoke, pushing the painful memory aside. ‘Because that is where my journey down this… rabbit hole started.’

Uncrossing her legs, she sat forward looking Derek straight in the eye. ‘You told me you loved me, that you would never leave me and that, as far as you were concerned, I was the only woman for you.’

Derek didn’t say a word, simply sat there looking almost blankly at his feet. 

‘How many more were there?’ She tried to engage him, but he was having none of it. ‘If I was the only woman for you, why were you seeing at least another three that I knew of?’

Before he had a chance to respond, she quickly continued. ‘How did I know? Facebook. Bloody Facebook,’ she almost laughed. ‘I didn’t want it to be true, you have no idea how much I wanted it to be a cruel rumour being spread by someone – anyone.’

‘I’ve been following you pretty closely since then, apart from last year when I…’ She stopped, there was no way she wanted any of them to see how bad things had gone for her, how far down the rabbit hole she had gone – almost never making it back.

‘It seems to me that you spread the same shit all over, I wonder how many more you have told the same crap to, how many – like me, believed it and would be hurt by your lies.’

Looking down at her scars, they seemed to be reddening, a sign of her anger bubbling up. 

‘Breathe,’ she thought to herself.

‘Gavin,’ she started. ‘You asked me to marry you…’

She snorted as a sudden urge to laugh gripped her, ‘Sorry,’ she smiled. ‘But you have to see, looking back on it now, how ridiculous that sounded. But like a fool, I said yes. Again because I believed you loved me.’

Looking at Gavin, there seemed to be a pained look in his eyes. Was it guilt, was she about to get an apology?

But he remained silent, deciding against saying anything. 

Tears stung at her eyes again, ‘You left me at the Church. I had to explain to everyone there that you must have got caught up somewhere else, but like me, they probably couldn’t understand what could be more important on that day than turning up for your own fucking wedding!’

She stood up suddenly, she had to, her emotions were getting to much for her to control, Jenny was wrong, this was a bad idea. She went to the kitchen area, opening a plastic bottle of water and downing half of it in one swallow. Taking the bottle with her, she returned to her seat.

Nobody had moved.

They reminded her of naughty children, sitting politely quiet as if seeking forgiveness and being told they were fine.

Fine they may have been, but she was far from that.

‘Sorry,’ she started once more. ‘This isn’t easy for me. I don’t even know why I’m apologising to you all, like I said before, I have done nothing wrong.’

She placed the bottle on the floor beside her chair. ‘Well, apart from allowing myself to be made to look like the fool with all of you. But, I wont be allowing that to happen anymore. Like my ther…’

She stopped, not wanting them to know she had been driven to see a therapist. They would think she was some kind of idiot. She took a deep breath, corrected herself and continued.

‘My friend, Jenny, told me that if I was going to get through this pain and hurt, then I should face up to my demons. And you three, are my demons so to speak. It’s kind of strange because on one hand, I need to learn how to be a stronger person, but on the other I should be thanking you for the lessons I have had to learn to get here.’

‘You all took advantage of me. Each of you took my self respect and worth away from me, and if the only thing you take away from here tonight is that you feel that the way you treat me – or other women is wrong, then that’s a good thing, right?’

‘Colin,’ she looked directly at him. ‘You were the worst. In our two years together, you raped, abused and beat me like I was some kind of dog. You said it was my fault, that I was so utterly beneath you, I deserved everything you did to me. I would like you to answer a question…’

‘…what did I do that made you feel that this was the only way you could treat me? I would love to know. Maybe having your precious knuckle duster in the drawer is enough to take what power you had over me away – you need a weapon to beat me with, or is it the fact these other two men are here and you don’t know how they would react if you tried to attack me again? Would they sit and watch? Join in? Or would they be true men and stop you?’

Colin didn’t move.

‘Just like I suspected,’ she continued. ‘You can only hit a woman. You’re a fucking coward. I am angry at myself for letting you do all of those things to me, but I would like to see you try it now. You see, I am stronger now than I was back then. You wouldn’t get away with half as much as you did before.’

‘You should realise that now, I could have called the Police and had you arrested Colin, I could even have come visiting you in prison, to spit in your face and laugh at you.’

‘But I knew that wouldn’t be enough, I had to show you – show you all that I am better now. That I am a strong independent woman that no man alive – let alone you three degenerates, will ever get the better of again.

She reached for her bottle down by her chair, as she did so, she was distracted by a mark on the side of her leg. She hadn’t noticed it before.

It was a small tear-shaped mark, crimson in colour. She wiped her hand absently at it, it was dried in. 

The puckered scar on her wrist looked like a smile, turning slightly at each end like some macabre, jagged grin.

Sitting up straight, she looked at them all again.

‘I want you all to know that somehow, God alone only knows, I have found it in myself to forgive you.’

She smiled and nodded in agreeance with herself. 

‘I know how difficult it was for me to get you all here, and I appreciate your participation. If nothing else, you have helped a woman who was taken to the edge - fuck, almost thrown over it, to make sense of her life.’

She drained the last of the water from her bottle before wetting the end of her finger. She wiped at the mark on her leg, and was pleased to see it fade slightly.

It’ll come out ok, she thought to herself.

‘I’m going to go now,’ she said as she stood up. ‘I won’t be seeing any of you again. That makes me happy, and Jenny was right. I guess in a way, this helped.’

Crossing the room towards the door of the shack, she stepped over 

Gavin’s out-stretched leg, reaching for the door-handle, she looked back at them one last time.

‘Goodbye my loves,’ she said, and closed the door before heading off through the trees.

The three men remained silent, not moving at all. 

Derek sat staring at his shoes, a deep trench carved in the back of his head from the hatchet which lay on the floor behind his chair. A Trail of thick, coagulated blood had run down his back, gathering like congealed gravy at the top of the wicker chair.

Gavin stared into space, eyes wide and unblinking. His mouth hung open as if gagging on the large kitchen knife skewered through his windpipe and jugular. 

The gouting blood had long since stopped flowing, leaving a crimson bib on his white T-shirt.

As for Colin…

Colin was the worst. 

His hair was a mess. His skull, a mis-shapen mass of lumps and bumps, the most prominent of which was over his left ear. Here, the hair had been forced into an almost sheer hairy ski-jump, at the end of which jutted a sharp, glistening white piece of bone. His face was covered in frenzied bruising, deep gouges over his cheeks and eyes leaked viscous, crimson blood. His nose was so badly disfigured, it no longer resembled a nose at all, but rather some strange lump of meat that had been placed there.

His knuckleduster was in the kitchen drawer, placed there after he was introduced to it several times as the victim, not the attacker – a concept Colin thought would never happen.

In the room flies had made their way in through the partially opened window. Buzzing around, their tiny antennae wiggling this way and that, homing in on the scent they wanted to feed on.

The coppery scent of pennies.