I stood at the window, poking my head out. Clueless as to the horrors about to take place. Observing the environment around my house. Looking up and down. I locked the door, slowly dragging my body up the stairs. I made my way into my bed and kissed my wife on the cheek. She slept so soundly, like a kitten. I laid my head down on the pillow.

I woke up and yawned. I could feel my heavy bladder. I walked down the dark hallway. What was that weird smell? Leaky pipe? Spilled hairspray? It had a strong metallic scent.  I walked into the bathroom and struggled to flip the light switch on, and took a piss. I approached the sink and scrubbed my hands. What was that smell? Was it me? I squeezed out more soap and scrubbed harder just to be sure, applying some deodorant as well. I hurried back to my bed and laid down. Why am I all wet? My pants were drenched with something, the smell had also gotten a lot stronger now. I got up from my bed and turned on my lamp.

I turned around and dropped to my knees. The tears instantly came running down my face. My wife. MY WIFE. I grabbed her hand, it was covered in blood. Everything was covered in blood. I stood up and looked for my phone. Where did I put my god damn phone? I ran down the steps and to the kitchen. Sweat was dripping down from every part of my body. I tried to pick up the landline, but I couldn’t grasp it. What was that noise? Sirens? I ran to the window. Red and blue violently bled into my kitchen, blinding me before I even opened the curtain. I put my eye up to the fabric and peeked through a small opening. Police surrounded my home. Who called the police? I took a deep breath and walked out the door. The men saw the blood on me, pointing their firearms at me in response. They approached me as I yelled. “ I didn’t do it”.

They wrapped the cold cuffs around my wrist as shock ran down my body. I was shoved in the back of the police car.

As I sit in this dark cell, I dread that night. Every second of it, but I can’t forget it. I’m alone and as clueless as I was when this all started.

We’re driving up a narrow street, our little Volkswagen Jetta slows down, the sounds of sand and rocks grinding between the wheels and the pavement. Though I already noticed the car coming to a halt, the place we stopped just felt off. It was a normal street, no stores between apartments, just houses.

“Guess where we are!?”, Mom glances at me quickly through the rear view while reversing the vehicle.

“No mom, I thought you were driving towards that old high school you used to go to?”, I say this not knowing it’s a lie. I know that house too well. It was the apartment that my mom and dad used to live in. I remember now why I feel so uneasy, it’s where I saw that thing.

I can remember the little side room that was on the other side hall from my parents, in that room was a crib on the center wall where I would sleep soundly but I was awake this time, that’s my room. It’s funny trying to stretch a scene that probably took 6 seconds into one that seems like 30 looking back at it fifteen years later, I close my eyes and open them to end up in that same crib.

I’m a baby now, turning my head must feel like moving on anesthetics and with the warm and protective green of the walls only makes my time awake more limited, the room has one little window that covered, the crack between the drape shows me it must be early morning. Even as a baby I could tell some things were up with the light this morning because I saw the sun. No, not a real sun but a small green one, the green sun. It’s glow was respectable, only illuminating within a couple of inches from its body. It’s weird, it has a face, almost sinister in its warm smile but oddly making me sleepier. Its revolves, just like the sun would and its face becomes hidden from me once more and as the face disappears completely, so does its body, sinking back into the ceiling of my room and I sink back into a slumber.  

I wake, still with the same amount of question about that object I saw all those years ago. I can’t help but wonder weather or not it was real, I used to think it was my guardian angel, my zodiac of sorts but now driving off I’m almost certain it was best to forget again.

There were pieces everywhere. Sharp, shattered, sparkling. The music masked the clatter, but only long enough to shield younger eyes. Some things take time to understand. The room filled in and flowed out, buckets, bags, and rags trickling with them. I am cold, but it was summer, and I had been warm only seconds before.

My happiness drained through my toes. The shouting was loud but I wasn’t listening, there were too many busy faces and furrowed brows to distract me.

He went straight through it, I heard, but I couldn’t see him. I searched for his tangled blonde mop but he had already disappeared. They whizzed around. Suds flew. Towels rolled. Bodies on autopilot. An organized frenzy. I couldn’t control the mess. It was going to last longer than the blood. My skin crawled.

He was rescued. Removed and absorbed. No longer at stake. We picked his pieces off the floor. Removed the evidence. We rescued him from second death but we were still in danger. I hated that he put me in danger.

My time there had been long and short. Summers don’t last forever but they happen every year. Each time it feels like we never left our bubble in the woods. Our own heated snow globe. But his hand broke the glass. He shook too hard. Disturbed the comfortably settled dust. We let him. So we fixed it. Patched his hand and the door. Closed the young eyes. Shielded him by shielding ourselves. Everyone is affected by weak links.

Plastic protected my bitten fingers from the glass but I was still bare. At mercy of another; powerless to change his mistakes. The bass still bumped, matching my heart beat. I had to walk away. Find comfort in less danger, away from the shards, away from the glares. I wanted to be warm again. But that was too much to ask.

The chaos chilled me no matter how many layers I put on. I wasn’t protected anymore. But that is life. The fog lifts on everything eventually. If you don’t prepare for the worst, you will be left cold, shivering. It took too long for me to see this. Took shards covering the floor where children played. They would never know. They didn’t have to know. We glued their snow globe back together with our stories. We kept them warm.

Cold hospital air hit my nose as I sniffled, I stared at the hospital bed in front of me, holding my dad’s hand. I thought back to all of the time I had spent with him, sitting with my mom in the small apartment we lived in, awaiting my father’s arrival home from work. My mom walked around, humming to herself and cleaning spots off of the countertops. That’s when a key hit the lock, turned, and the door opened. “Daddy!” I yelled, hopping off of the couch to run into my uniformed father’s outstretched arms. He picked me up and squeezed me tight, that’s when I assume that my mom walked over and kissed him on the cheek, asking him how his day was. That’s what she normally did at least, but it slips my mind if she did it that day.

He then put me down, walking over to the cd player that sat in the corner of the living room. Ring of Fire, by Johnny Cash started playing, followed shortly by my father’s raspy voice singing along. He then picked me up and held me in his arms. We danced around the living room of the small apartment we lived in, while my mom sat and watched, smiling from ear to ear.

I can’t remember how long we danced for, if it was just that song or more to come. I can remember though, how the smell of cigarettes radiated off of his clothing when you got close enough. That’s when the beeping of the hospital monitor and my dad’s deep coughing pulled me out of my daydream. He half smiled, the most he was able to do. I held tears back as I smiled back, squeezing his hand.

In you, everything sank. This phrase pops into my head, from an English class long past, or at least that’s how long it feels. We spent weeks upon weeks investigating every couplet, scrutinizing every stanza. I hated it. I hated talking about “author’s intent”. Why did Pablo Neruda repeat this line? Why was it a motif? Who gives a shit? In you, everything sank. I think about you and I wish I didn’t. The kid who sat next to me would always fall asleep. I couldn’t blame him. It was an easy escape. Why did I ever bother staying awake? His light snore invades my thoughts, of Neruda, of the teacher’s droning. It’s there, gently, always reminding me that there’s another way out.

In you, everything sank.

Stocks pop into my head. Our economics teacher was always right after English. He taught us all about the stock market that year. We even invested a little bit ourselves. I heard but didn’t listen. In you, everything sank. Science was next. We would skip class together, you and I. We’d sit in the stairwell and talk. Or we wouldn’t. But we always understood.

In you, everything sank. It happened on a Sunday. The Lord’s day. Funny, because we had always hated religion. I like to imagine you did it to spite God. I didn’t find out until Tuesday: you weren’t in the stairwell. They called me to the office. Your mom broke the news.  In you, everything sank. On a whim today, I visit the bridge. The cold wind whips my hair, the seagulls below call, like sirens. And I, too, am sinking.

Creative Writing Piece: Haunted

Reading our old text messages brought me back to where it all started. The flirtatious conversations, the plans for our first date, our first phone call. It reminded me of a happier time, one that bore no resemblance to the trauma I’d end up facing. Looking back on it now, I wish I would have known that the first phone call would be a contract I unknowingly signed. He wanted all of my time, every second of it. If I said I was busy or that I wouldn’t be able to call that day, he’d guilt trip me by threatening to kill himself. He knew that was my weakness. That I cared about him enough that I couldn’t risk it happening.  I felt helpless. I couldn’t help myself because if I left and he ended up killing himself, it would be my fault. The guilt would have been harder to handle than dealing with him ever was. As time went on, I thought I’d been getting better with coping. I thought going to therapy was aiding my healing process. It was supposed to show me that his abuse was not my fault.

I hadn’t noticed that my heart had been racing until now. My posture was stiff and my breath was coming in and out in nervous, short intervals. Just seeing his name brought back all the terrible memories. It reminded me that he still followed me everywhere. His harsh words were forever embedded into my being, and whether I liked it or not, he still had me under his control. I could never get away. He knew exactly what to say in order to make me stay. “You can’t leave me, Claire,” “I’ll kill myself if you do!” he’d say. His mental health history and the things he’d confided in me during that first phone call let me know that the threat was real. I was convinced that the fate of his life was in my hands. It was too late now. There was no turning back. I wish I would’ve known that there’d be one moment in time where the rest of my time would never be mine.

Author’s Note:
When writing my reconstruction of memory, I was inspired to emulate Margeret Atwood’s narration tactic of putting more emphasis on how the moment she’s writing about makes her character’s feel rather than spending too much time contextualizing the moment itself. I felt that putting an emphasis on the emotion would aid in the characterization of the narrator of my memory and would make it easier for the reader to see that her memory was a reflection of her experience. Similarly to Chief Bromden in One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey, the narrator of my piece solely speaks about her experience with her antagonist in order to show the effect he’s had on her. It was an intentional choice on my part to make the narrator of my story focus on the actions of all of the other characters but themselves because I didn't want the reader's perspective to be skewed. As for the topic, I felt that writing about emotional abuse in the manner that I did would allow people to see how it’s an internal battle that many people can not see.