Tag Archives: abuse

[Fiction] Friday Challenge #163 for July 9th, 2010

In her right hand a woman holds a loaded gun, in her left, a coin that just came up ‘tails’…NOW WRITE…

TAILS

It had come to this.  Fourteen years of an emotional rollercoaster.  Even now her stomach churned at the drop that was about to happen.  Her heart raced unsteadily, knowing the action that was supposed to follow.  Her mind had devised the plan, but her heart had initially rebelled.  Rationalisation overturned emotion and the cogs began to turn.  The gun felt alien in her hand; its weight unnatural.  The coin in her left hand was as lead.  Its outcome was predetermined before she turned it over in her hand.

She felt like Desdemona, turning the tables on Othello, standing beside their marriage bed.  He stirred in his sleep and she involuntarily recoiled, wrapping her left arm protectively around her ribs and stomach.  She thought of the two young children who had grown in the vault of her womb, cradled and nurtured.  Her hand circled her belly as if to create a magic circle, yet it hadn’t been able to protect her from the abuse.  Vicious blows had landed repeatedly, frequently; anger lashing out and striking her shielding arms and exposed ribs from the hand of the body that lay in front of her.  It was never the face.  Clothes could hide a multitude of received sins.  Once again she circled her belly.

She placed the coin beside the sleeping form; tax for the ferryman.  With a bitter sense of relief she placed the muzzle to his temple and pulled the trigger.