Splice

She sees his face change as she stares at him -- not a real change, but a flash, spliced film. His real face is benevolent, calm, terrifying; he says "You're forgetting me" sweetly, like the accusation before a murder.

Then it flashes; she sees him angry, eyes dark and rimmed in crisp fury, mouth tight together, the clenched muscle in his cheek like a slap. Then he's laughing, soundless, teeth alight with pearled certainty -- he's tipping his head back and to the side -- he mocks her with half-shut eyelids.

And it's over, no time elapsed, just the serenity of him weighing her, pausing for an answer. Her body reacts late, a kind of lurch and loss of breath, weakness behind her eyes.

He smiles. "Is it working?"

If she looks away his face won't flash again, or she won't have to see it -- if she looks away -- maybe it could be safe or she could see it safe in the sides of her vision --

Gently, so smugly, "No?"

"No," she whispers, tamed, docile.

"You can keep trying, honey, but it won't do you any good. I can't let you hurt yourself like that."

Space

I fall asleep by not thinking of it -- by thinking of the hour, of the chemicals chasing the frenzy from my muscles, the bed, the man beside me in the bed, all kinds of logical thoughts that cut any associations.

It's how I get up, too -- school, the children and their eyes, or the day, or the bus coming on time and how I have to be there. Nothing to comprehend, nothing to overcome -- no recover -- no association -- nothing.

Simple

She was almost grateful for him, for the way he can't get into the space where all her friends can hurt her. It is agony but it is not betrayal, and so it is bearable. It is easier than being awake, in that way. It is simple.

But when she wakes up she thinks it must not be; the dance has an odd man out, splitting up the pairs, twisting the steps. They are all stumbling.

Her pain is not her pain. She shares it with invincible people, people who never knew the feeling, never feared, and they begin to shiver.

One -- two -- trip -- four.

She Wakes

It starts with the littlest fear -- the possibility that poisons my mind like a drop of dye in the water, and when I smell it I am unable to sense anything else.

Never mind his "hush hush," never mind the sweet hands in my hair, never mind that there's nothing to be afraid of any more; the sharks smell blood and they're coming from miles away. All else can still, but not the jittering in my chest, my leg.

When I start to call it silly, when I start to fight -- finally, then, He speaks to me in a voice like a bucket of dye. I still have stains where his voice has washed down my body, like rain that poured through my hair, making rivers across my collarbones, in skittering lines down my arms, then over the open space and the paths divide to follow the outside and inside lines of my breasts -- thick trails across the hills of my stomach and then gathering, pooling in the hair between my legs.

The stains are from yesterday and two years ago, raw but not faded from my scrubbing.