I looked down into my coffee cup, sipping it quietly. What stared back at me was not something I had really wished to see; a woman in her late twenties that looked more like fifty. Dark circles shadowed my eyes, the consequences of many sleepless nights. My usually bouncy hair hung down beside my face, it's volume depleted from only a short time ago.

I leaned back in the comfy lazy boy chair and took another sip of the black coffee. Would I ever be the same again? Even if I got rid of the problem, would I be like I was before?

No. But I couldn't live like this anymore. I needed a change, and for better or worse, I needed it now. I couldn't take this torture anymore, the agony of pretending I loved someone who I now despised with all my heart. The tables had turned out of my favor, and now I had to do something.

I frowned at the picture on the table beside me. With one swift motion, I kicked the memories from the table and onto the floor, hearing a crack of the glass and then, once again, silence. Silence ruled my mind once again, trapping me in it's cold dark cell.

I peered over my feet at the picture. How long had it been since I had actually seen something? How long had it been since I had looked past the outer edge of reality and into the deeper meaning? A while.

I got out of the chair and took a look at the picture again. Oh, how I wished back the happy days of the photograph. Now I only looked a fraction of the person there. He looked different too. Back then, when he used to smile and wrap his arms around me and whisper how much he loved me in my ear. Now he was so dark, so changed. He wasn't the man I married.

A prick of pain made my teeth clench and I balanced on my right foot to look at the shard of glass embedded in my sole. Carefully I pinched the glass between my thumb and index finger, then quickly pulled it out. Forgetting my coffee, I bent down to pick up the noticeable glass and carried it into the kitchen, discarding it with the picture that was mocking me. I then grabbed a dish rag and wiped away the excess blood on my heal.

It was so pretty. So dark and red; so... inviting. I shivered, licking my lips for a moment before I washed the blood out of the small towel.

God, I have changed.

These reactions would have scared me a while back, but now they had become the usual. My foot was still bleeding, and I touched my middle finger to it, looking at it curiously. I rubbed the liquid into my hands, pleased at the color it made. I then limped to the bathroom, washed out the cut and my hands again, and placed a bandage where the glass had made contact.

I abhor the mirror. I think I'll take out all the mirrors in my house soon. It would have already been done if he wouldn't have punished me for it.

I want to leave here, but I can't. He knows this too. He knows my parents are dead, and that my only sister died in the car wreck two years ago. He knows that I have no place to go, and no way of supporting myself.

I dropped out of college for him, damnit!

I can't change the past though. I'm living for nothing now— no reason at all. And it's come to the point where his beatings don't even bother me anymore; when it's just one more time I get to see that pretty red color.

Yeah, I know he thinks it's my fault. If only I hadn't have lost my baby... if only I hadn't had been in the car with my sister. Everyone tells me it's not my fault. Except him. He tries to make me live in the belief that I killed his only son before he was even born. And he makes me pay for it every single day of my life.

But now...

I'm not willing to live with it anymore. I'm going, and if I have anything to say about it, I'm taking him with me. Tonight.

Tonight the pretty red color won't be my own.


End