Foreword

This is the first chapter in a story that is much longer than 3,000 words. This concept has been brewing in my head for months, and I felt compelled to write this down after leaving an abusive relationship. It is my hope that the finished manuscript will raise awareness toward the issue.

I write a foreword to provide a warning. This excerpt contains strong language and graphic descriptions of violence and domestic abuse. It is intended for mature audiences. That being said, enjoy.

I close my eyes, and for a moment, it is Arizona and I am seventeen. Eagle’s calls rush in my ears as my toes melt into desert sand, my father standing beside me for the last time. When he finished making his magic on the nine-to-five, weaving art from wires and batteries, he joined me here. He had done it every night since I’d been alive. This night, he tells me that he could send sound on waves at the speed of light, to touch the tops of the atmosphere and come falling back to earth, all the way home to the battery-powered radio sitting on our windowsill, and that every note it plays is his message to me. His face is lit up by the desert sunset, an oasis I will chase for the next four years when he doesn’t  come home the next day. Or the next. Or the next. 

    Even now, when I am twenty-one, sometimes when I listen to the radio, I find myself captivated. I am struck dumb by a line, or verse, a chord or a cadence, sometimes even the voice of a morning talk show host. I see the sound as water, moving toward me in a crashing wave, and the words as droplets of water. They form a glistening rainbow of vivid memory as I recall his broken promise.

Sometimes, at twenty-one, I still believe that the radio is my father, sending messages to me from the great unknown.

    I peel open my eyes, rubbing my temples in pain. This morning, I am waking up to the disappearance of another man in my life. Ben left last night.

    The condo was in disarray. My coffee table I’d worked so hard to paint that perfect shade of white was spattered with my blood. My precious sheet music was sprawled across the floor like a corpse, telling its story in red-covered pages and ripped notes. “Do you see what he has done to me?” It seems to call. It almost makes me laugh. Look at what he’s done to me. My body feels as though it is in tatters as I sit up, surveying the place the two of us had once called home. 

    The coffee table was not the only part of the condo covered with my blood. The stairs to the doorway looked injured. The wooden handrail had been partially ripped out of the wall, bloody fingerprints hanging on for dear life. I looked at my hands. My fingers were raw, nails bloody and broken. I tried to piece together what had happened. Had I clung to it as he tried to drag me to the bed? 

    Probably. This was doubtless the reason why my face remained unravaged, looking just the same as it did on a happy day. Ben needed me to look pretty when he fucked me after our fights, whether my face had a hand clamped over it or was stuffed into a pillow. Needless to say, I never wanted it, but telling that to the man who had left chunks of my hair on the carpet was pointless. I felt my head. 

    It hurt to touch my temples, and my hair (on and off the carpet) was caked with blood. I’d always wanted to go red, but blonde locks stained with macabre crimson was not the look I was aiming for. There were no bald patches this time--thankfully, he had only grabbed the ends. 

    I hold my breath in my hand as I try to stand up. It aches-everything aches-but I am on my feet. Today will be a cleaning day. Maybe, if I’m strong enough, today will be a day of changing locks as well.

    The shower feels so far away. I grab my phone off of the bathroom counter, noting that I have received seven missed calls from Tamara. I’ll return them eventually, but as much as I’d like to talk about last night, my throat closes and I cannot speak. 

    As I turn the knob and steam fills the room, I take in my appearance in the mirror. My hair, as mentioned, is bloodsoaked, and my eyes are rimmed with dark circles betraying my sleepless nights to all who care to look. I look like a cheap Halloween decoration. I see three deep gashes on one arm, not enough to warrant stitches but surely enough to warrant a fiery amount of pain. The other is wrapped in bruises in the shape of a hand. I try to remember him grabbing me, forcing me to look at him, screaming at me to just listen. Noting surfaces. The bruises crossing me look like snakes, and for a moment I am sure they’re cutting off my circulation and that my arm is bloodless, turning blue. Salty tear stains adorn my cheeks like battle scars. 

    My torso, of course, is covered in bruises of all ages. I am a myriad of black, blue, red and yellow, a macabre rainbow of the human condition. In short, my body aches like blue fuck.

I sigh. The mirror is covered in mist now, and I can’t see myself. Maybe that is for the best. Nothing the mirror holds is a surprise, and everything in it is listless. 

    My phone rings again as I step into the shower, making me flinch. Loud sound always makes the headaches worse. He had mastered the art of mirroring the pain of a hangover and sharpening it over a grindstone; rather than a subtle, throbbing ache, it came in grotesque flashes. Pain shimmers across my lower back as I turn too sharply, offending a bruise or pulled muscle or... something. I don’t know if the call came from Tam or Paige or who-the-hell-ever, but it scared the shit out of me.

I slid to the shower floor, opening a cut on my thigh I didn’t know I had. My heart was in my mouth, feeling like a stopped clock, though I knew it was still pumping blood through my wrists. It was blood I was grateful to have kept in my body. 

    Once, my morning showers had been relaxing. Now, they felt mandatory. I had lost any love I’d had for them in watching my blood trickle down the drain. Since Ben had started drinking, it had begin to feel more like a place to mourn. 

    Impulse overtook me as I gripped the handle for dear life, pulling it toward scalding as though my very being depended on it. I rose to my feet and gripped my head in my hands as though it was about to explode, resisting the urge to scrub my body raw until every trace of him had died. I needed him to be gone from my skin and for his scent to get out of my hair. I knew that I needed to get out before I did it; this has happened before. I wouldn’t be able to lay down to sleep when my body was scrubbed so raw it glowed with pain, like a hot poker in a campfire. 

    The white walls looked like a prison, and suddenly I felt my lungs being crushed. Out. The drain gurgled and I stepped mechanically into the bathroom, returning Tamara’s call with sloppy, wet swipes on my screen. She answered frantically.

    “Sasha, God, thank God… Are you alright?” 

My voice broke, betraying me .

“I need you to come pick me up.”