She had long since stopped struggling. As reward for her compliance, she was able to drift off into an alternate reality, one in which there was no smell of piss and liquor emanating from she didn’t know where. A reality in which her fingers were gripping the silky coat of her dog, Sophie, wrapped around her head on her pillowcase overnight; not tangled in a dirty, torn scarf dangling from her pained, bruising wrists. There were wind chimes tinkling outside the window in this merciful reality and there was a breeze gently rustling her hair against her neck; not salty, violent drippings from a shadowed face she could barely see.
But there are moments caught between heart-beats; a suspension of time and space and sound. All things are floating, no gravity. In that moment, she saw in his eyes, “I’m sorry.”
It was over.
144 words total
dVerse – Poets Pub: Prosery: Between Heartbeats
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