Captive - FourTris

One

AUGUST 30
ONE YEAR

I lie in pieces on the floor. A hundred different things surround me: shards of a destroyed wooden jewelry box, some cracked CDs, a few ripped books, a shredded picture of Tobias and me. I think my insides must look like they do, all churned up and cracked and unrecognizable.

My lip bleeds, staining my sleeve every time I wipe my mouth. My chest is hollow and empty, as if he ripped out my heart and took it with him when he left, the door slamming so hard the picture frames crashed to the floor.

All I feel is pain, one big wave of it crashing over me again and again, relentless. I ease back on my elbows until I'm lying flat on the ground, staring upward at the shadowy ceiling.

It's nearly dark. How long have I been lying here? The blackness reaches the corners of the room and fills everything. Once that darkness was a cocoon, enveloping us and protecting us from everything outside the door. Together, we hid in the dark, hoping the world would leave well enough alone and we could find peace.

But nothing can protect me now, least of all the darkness.

No one can protect me now. I pushed them all away. I lost everything. I gave it to him, and he gave me this.

I think my wrist is broken, because every time I move it, pain tears up my arm and steals my breath away.

Tonight was so much worse than anything before it. Tonight he didn't stop after the first slap. His rage spilled and bubbled and grew, and he destroyed everything he could find, and still it didn't stop.

I don't know if he left in order to find more things to break, or if it was the only thing he could do to stop it.

I don't understand how so much changed in a year, how I lost myself.