Author: Chauni

Disclaimers: None

Notes: Based on actual events

The Hollow Effect of Human Obsession

If you have come looking for the remains of a crying, broken woman, get the hell out because you will find nothing like that here. After long years and sleepless nights, I have found the idea of crying over the misfortunes that life decides to visit on me is a waste of human nerves and hormones. That brand which I wear is one I have earned through stupid deeds and pointless ideas, and though I bear no pride with such, it sits across the pale mocha of my irises.

The memories of that night itself are hazy and overcast on good days, vibrant and blinding on the bad ones. At times, the scent of that room still slips beneath my nose, that stale fragrance of burned apart pot leaves and the more pungent odor of cheap incense to mask it. The bed sat beneath the window, but it was dark then, several eternities past eleven the crimson LCD numbers had declared. A sheet sat beneath us, along with a sleeping bag atop the thin mattress instead of any comforter or the like. The walls were brown and covered in cheap wallpaper colored with age, and a simple wooden dresser sat an opposing wall.

He sat beside me, all long limbs and a dark t-shirt that he swam in, while brownish wisps of hair found paths into his eyes. He was not imposing; he was hardly a day past eighteen and could not have weighed more than one-forty-five after spending twelve hours in the rain. He smiled like an animal, and his eyes had grown a constant glaze, cloudy and far away with threads of constant crimson straying throughout the white.

The door slipped shut as the final person had evacuated the room for a much more thrilling game of poker around a broken kitchen table. The television was off, watching us with its gray reflective eye, and I wanted to leave, but had no excuse. It had been three months, three long months, and finally, he had seemed to improve. Finally, the idle threats had tapered away; finally, the late nights outside my house, lurking in my backyard, had faded to a memory.

And I wasn't at his parents house for him, but for our mutual friends; my friends, who knowing what happened, abandoned me and left me within three feet of him.

I don't recall how he had moved, or when those cloudy irises switched to a insanity-stricken calm, but the knife at my throat brought about my own eon of clarity.

Fine-boned hands ("artist's hands", my mom called them) grabbed his wrist, strangled by a strong silence I was amazed I could keep. The violence seeped from his pores like sweat, overpowering the stale illegal smell and shown up only by the fear coursing through me. His mouth was close to my ear, a hiss growling forth and tainted breath brushing against me, leaking with malice.

"Move your fucking hands right now, you dumb bitch, or I'll slit your worthless throat right here."

The tears burned my eyes as much as the slow taunting of that knife, cutting and rubbing for the sake of proving some sort of sick, sadistic power game. A line of puckered scarlet rose to kiss it, as if it were eager to meet such a fate, and I growled at my own recent foolishness. How many times had I heard that relaxed voice growl the massive intricacies of my own demise by his hands through electrical and phone lines alike? How many times had he sworn no one would ever find my ravaged body when he was done with it? And there was that inciden-

"You're nothing but a whore! Do you understand me? You think you can fuck around on me behind my back, is that it?"

He had forgotten we had been broken up for some time now; I didn't, of course, but he had always enjoyed the moments in a haze of crazed delusions rather than the truth. I couldn't look at him; his ceiling was white with a few water stains. The smell of cruel vows were choking me as he growled more threats, more ideas into my ear.

The four people in the next room were loud as they yelled about stacking a deck, and who won what hand, and did three of a kind beat a straight? Couldn't they smell what I did? Didn't it waft through the air? They were playing Blind Baseball Poker, and I remember whe-

"Let's see how far a whore will go, eh? You used to like this, I remember, bitch."

Bitch. Oh, yes, how I miss that name. You know, I wasn't called my real name for two years, but became that pleasant kind handle. "What's your girlfriend's name, Chris?" his friends would inquire, and he'd smirk the smirk of kings and respond with, "Bitch." It rolled off his tongue with ease, as if such had been printed on my birth certificate, as if I had introduced myself as that all those years ago.

My tears gathered in the dark hair around my temples, dampening it and forcing it to cling to my scalp. I wanted to brush it away, but he would sooner have forced that knife straight through my jugular than let me move. How I swore I could taste the edge of my heart as it pounded beneath the tightened ropes of my flesh, screaming on this twisted little carnival ride.

"Chris, please, please, you don-"

"You don't know what I want! I wanted you, but you left, didn't you?! You left to go whore around with all my friends!"

I was rewarded with some recognition of the situation at least, aside from everything that came after the "left" part. His friends were more of my own, and I had done nothing with any of them, but reason never wins over paranoia and insecurity, now, does it?

Images flickered through my head, like the other time he had tried this, when he vowed to scar me so badly that no one would ever touch me again. I remember standing at the police station, staring up at them over their counter, explaining that my ex-boyfriend had threatened my life, then the waving of their hand without even taking my name while telling me "It's okay. He's currently has a knife pulled on his dad. We went over there already." And the kicker, the absolute amusing high point of all was the his voice broken when he told me he loved me, that he was sorry, but that I did this all to myself.

The movement of his fingers lanced through my thoughts, the most sadistic weapon yet. He fumbled with the button on my jeans, intent, needing, one final desecration before throwing them up with all the others. He would shame me before kicking my ass off to hell.

I tried to stop him, my hands flying to his, but he beat them back. Not this, not this, not this, not-

"I'll kill you faster, bitch, and just do it after. Stop it, now!" and he emphasized it with another mark of the knife against my throat.

Hiccupping cries found my ears, and it seemed surreal that they were born from my own vocal chords, that I could even make noises like that. I was afraid to close my eyes, afraid that would be the moment when we lost whatever precious connection that was keeping myself alive for the moment, and my flesh would open up before that blade, betraying me a final time.

"Come on, Chris, we can talk about this, it doesn't have to be this way, just put the knife down, pleasepleasepleasepl-"

"Shut up!" he growled, fighting his voice low. "If you get any louder, if they hear you, I'll just kill you in front of them. Do you want that? You want them to watch you choke on your own fucking blood, bitch?"

My hope was gone, and time ticked away with merciless languid heartbeats. His words turned to white noise as I prayed, simply prayed to whatever deity was within earshot. The derogatory comments churned to promises of death, of a quick one if I was good, a slow one if I was bad, a clichéd movie speech. He cursed at the insubordination of the golden button on my jeans, working it with one hand while the other gripped that cursed blade. And through it all, through it all clicked one thing that shattered the mood:

Footsteps.

Immediately, he threw the edge of that crude blanket over my chest, knife now clenched at my breast, warnings hissed in my ear: don‘t move, don‘t cry, don‘t say a word or your dead, you hear me? The door was flung open, the curves of a female savior standing in a halo of artificial light as it supernovaed behind her. A few months later, standing out on the porch under a moonlight darkness, she would tell me that I deserved what I got considering how I began some of the verbal arguments, but for this precious second, she was my only love, my only hope, my only God.

"What the hell are you doing to her?" she growled, the brown hair brushing against her tight shoulders while her hands curled into fists at her rounded hips, as was her habit.

"Nothing, Jamie, now ge-"

"Why the hell is she crying then?" Her voice had cracked somewhere in there, and she didn't give a breath's notice as she darted across the room to snatch that sleeping bag away.

My tormentor pulled his hand away as if he had stabbed himself, dragging the weapon with him. An audience was at the door, and shaking and sobbing, my body rolled off the bed and collapsed onto the dusty carpet below. Someone came to me, helped me to my feet, pulled me away with questions rattled off lips with practiced precision; after all, this wouldn't be the first time. I always went back, didn't I?

The world was so scary when you had to face it alone.

I formed joining syllables through wails from the next room. Once the story was done, no one moved to call the police, no one moved to teach him the errors of his ways. One person spoke something semi-degrading to him, but no right was ever wronged. There was no three-fold rule for this time; there was no moment of satisfaction.

Hollow air breathed in the back of the room, clumsy silence whispering calming urges.

When our backs were turned, him and the weapon were gone. Later, I would discover that after I went home with a few friends, he had walked to my shadowed little house and lingered outside for hours, carrying that knife and determination in his heart. He left after three hours because he had gotten cold.

It wouldn't have been the first time.

Two years later, I still jump at noises. Two years later, a knife sits at my bedside and the darkness frightens me. Two years later, I write this piece and I find myself visibly ill and rushing to the bathroom to vomit.

I see no victim here.

I just see me.

The End