Thorn

A heavy wind, whistling around her body. 

It's cadence, rising and flaterning intermittently. Creating a sound that could nearly be music. A lamentable ballad. 

She hadn't moved yet. She tried to talk but her voice resembled that of a zombie. What the woman knew only, that this was not my bed. 

Not in the conventional sense. 

The lost woman was laying face down in a field. 

Facing her at some distance away, was a young boy. Making wild gestures. 

Resembling a witch doctor, performing a ritual to ward off evil spirits. 

The object of the boy's concern hit her in the stomach. The boys baseball. 

Accident. Understandable. Memory becoming clear. 

Name returning. 

She rotates her body around at the location she is in. The local park. 

Five minutes away from her house. 

The frightened boy shouts repeated apologies at her back, as Mary stumbles away towards her home. The boy fretting that the baseball created that damage, internally and externally on her body. 

Mary simply throws a thumbs up. 

Like his accidental hit, was a positive occurrence for her. 

Well it did jumpstart her subconscious. 

Frenetic images of limbs intertwining. The sight of eyebrows furrowed and teeth bared. Not knowing the correct response, as Mary's vocal cords were deprived of speech. Deprived of it by the cold snap that appeared overnight. 

She reaches number 47 Thorn street. The door, slightly ajar. 

It formed an ominous appearance. 

Open doors were always the curiosity of our subconscious minds. Certainly hers. Ever since a child. That overriding feeling of curiosity. 

The opportunity to peek into another person's world and not be noticed, like a phantom camouflaged among the shadows of the night. 

Legs are working on autopilot. 

They give up when she reaches the sitting rooms threshold. 

She sits down. 

Her back against a torn apart couch. 

She drinks the remnants of a whiskey glass next to her. 

Barely reacting beyond a minor wince at the burning sensations it provides her throat. Warmth.

Or the imitation of it, provided comfort. 

"Phone" 

She whispers out. 

Then slowly reaches out, as if the gesture would make the phone magically travel into her hands. The mobile for some reason being by the downstairs toilet door. Cracks all over. 

That five letter word sending little ripples of pain from her damaged tongue to her badly lacerated lips. The sound of knocking interrupts her thoughts that were slowly gaining coherence. It was as if a hypnotist clicked his fingers, releasing her from a trance. 

Her eyes widened. Despite the growing pain from all over, she starts to laugh. 

A manic laugh. That makes eyes water and it's result to trickle down her hollow cheeks. "You can bloody wait. Knocking won't do you no good. Nobody's getting called yet." 

The knocking wasn't an auditory hallucination. It was her husband. Although she hadn't dared to even bring her mind to give him that underserved title. Instead what her mind conjured up in conjunction with those violent images she had was.. "him". 

The awful crime committed to her, gave her new found confidence to reciprocate one back. She turns her head to the direction of the knocking. 

"How does it feel?" 

The knocking abruptly stops. 

She can only hear his heavy breathing. Realizing the control has changed. He is now in her debt. The power. 

"How does it feel that for once in your life, I was the one standing over you? " 

A futile bang of knuckles hitting the bathroom door. 

"Keep going. Sounds beautiful to me" 

She remembers it all now. 

Mary Kelly remembers getting a slap.

Then a frenzy of kicks, like she stood behind a nervous stallion. 

Mustering up some residual energy, she returned a lamp to his head in order to brighten up his fractured masculinity. 

She stayed sitting. Hyperventilating at the appearance of her bloodied body. Still struggling to breathe properly over the cowards blows. 

Before passing out, Mary had the immense luck to function long enough to lock him in the windowless prison of the downstairs bathroom. To ruminate over the painter shades of black, blue and purple. That now peppered her whole body, except her face. 

Ingenuity on his part she thought. 

So the results of his wicked attempts of dominion were hidden. 

She felt like a walking Jackson Pollock canvas, suffering for his lack of talents as a stable man. She stood by for too long reserving her strength. 

Packed up and stored away when she submitted her freedom at an altar. For a man who couldn't stomach that beyond just her beauty, there was a fierce identity that would never have to be relied on for his support. Furthering that weak and petty rage was her refusal in the bedroom to not be demeaned by his pig like grunts. Her terms, not his. The only kindness he revealed to her was when selfish lush woke up his face. 

To nearly bust at the seams. To flash the only smile she had ever known, in the last ten years of marriage. All because of a question…. 

"Where is my peace?" 

A slap from a man she dedicated her passion to. Love is blind when the one with endearing eyes, leaves your ones blindied. 

Black, blue and purple. 

The colours of renewed transformation. 

His violence, in choice, whims of cowardice. Towards a woman who dared break the domestic chains, who dared to bare no child in his Janus like image. 

The misguided innocence of hopeful youth . 

Finally freed last night and put forcibly asleep among the wildlife of the park. 

Smiling now, as she drags herself up onto the couch. 

Brimming with purpose. Finally. 

Faintly in the darkest distance, she can hear sirens.

Accompanied by the sounds of concerned neighbours. The lights of the sirens brushing over the bent row of lillie's now thrashing underneath the weight of an incoming storm. 

Black,blue, purple. 

" He can wait" 

Becoming like a mantra now. She shouts it back at the shocked faces. 

"Let him wait"