Her face is a blur as I focus on the ash at the end of the cigarette; she’s sat in front of me just staring at me through a haze of smoke. She’s got her ice cold demeanour on, the room is pale blue with cold and rain is pattering on the windows. I look up to the ceiling and I stare at the green light on the smoke alarm and I hold my hand up with the cigarette in between my fingers
“It won’t go off”
Her voice seems to just flow in the background without any significance to me as i just sit and watch the green light and smoke and hope for escape. She pinches my toes and I sit up interrupted from my nothingness “I’m bored” she’s like a petulant kid, always a tantrum to be had. I look at her and wonder if I shake her if her eyes would fall out like she’s just a doll. Just a doll, wake up, she’s not real. In a puff of smoke you’ll see. I take the cigarette to my lips, inhale deeply feeling that tar imbed itself in my lungs and then I exhale and when the shroud of smoke has gone she’s there, she’s still real. I feel at a bruise on my cheek and run my tongue over the side of my mouth where i bit with the shock. It shouldn’t be a shock anymore, my body always reacts the same. I got the wrong fucking shampoo, the wrong fucking shampoo! For Christ sake! “It’s (brand name here) like you asked for” I said “No!” she said with that ice cold stare of hers, I saw her fist clench “NO!” she screamed “It’s not the right one. It’s in a pink bottle” “Maybe they’ve changed it” I intoned. Why did i say anything? I should have just stayed still like a mannequin. She does this all the time, she makes me go out to get stuff, then she claims I got the wrong stuff when I get back. Sometimes i think she makes this shit up, just to create a fight, she needs a fight. “You saying I’m lying?” she says, getting close to my face, i can feel her spit on my face I’m angry too by this point, at the world, at her but mostly at me. “Okay, okay I’ll go back out and get the right one” I said, she folded her arms looked at me, squinted her eyes at me as if to figure me out “You do it on purpose” she hissed “You buy the wrong things on purpose” i could see her body tensing up at this point, unable to stay still, fidgeting on her feet then she lurched forwards with a kiss on my lips, passionate as ever then she looked me square in the eyes straight after and the next thing I feel is her fist up against my cheek “Don’t you! huh! you do this shit on purpose!” her eyes should have been spinning with crazy, instead they just remained blue as always “Trying to antagonise me all the time” a tear rolled down her cheek and she wiped it. I held my hands up as if surrendering to the police, blocking her from my body as she started to lurch forwards again, and arms out trying to grab at me. She does this, I do that and then I get tired of it all and I decide actually I want her to hit me again then she hits me again and again. Leaves her marks on me. The worst of it is all the rollercoaster emotions, the loving me one moment, hating me the next, the wanting to fuck then the wanting me to roll off her “You sick fuck!” even though she initiated it. She hits me and then we fuck against the wall, as if fucking will make it better, glue back together the foundation we, I though the relationship could be built on in the beginning. I’m inside her and then she randomly slaps me across the face then she kisses me again and I’m so confused and I go limp. She laughs at me “You can’t last” she laughs so loud the neighbours will have heard “You can’t even stay hard enough to come!” I turned around so my butt was to her and I kept myself contained. But inside the beast had been woken so I turned to her, I imagine my eyes were red with anger and steam blew out of my nose and like a bull I kicked up the sand and charged, I dragged her by her arm into the bathroom, I stood her in front of the mirror, her and I looking in the mirror looking at two monsters “Look what you’re doing to me!” I hissed “Just look at that mark on my face! That’s you!” her nostrils flared and her eyes glazed over with yet more ice “Do NOT talk to me in this tone” she said through clenched teeth “Really? You think I care anymore? You think I’m scared of you?” I buried my head in her neck, let her feel my breath on her neck “You think after all this time I’m scared? No. Not anymore, hit me! Hit me again!”
She just stared into the mirror without flinching, didn’t say a thing “Go on!” I shouted right in her ear “Hit me!” I stepped back from her “it doesn’t matter anymore. You know why? You’ve numbed me, I don’t care. Hit me over and over it doesn’t matter!” Her eyes glazed over once more with more ice and her nostrils flared, she spun round, her fingers curled like claws, she lunged after me, pulling onto my hair, her spit landing on my face, the back of my head hit the toilet. Now we’re sat on the floor listening to the rain and the white noise from the aftermath of violence.