• She took a deep breath and glared into the electric blue eyes staring back at her.
    "We're though."
    But. . . what about everything we've been though? Do you really want to throw that all away?
    "No. . . but I have to. We can't be together. I wish I could tell you why. Really, I do. But I don't even know."
    So you'd dump me - just like that - without even knowing why? Is that how little I mean to you?
    "No! You mean everything to me, and I don't want to hurt you. But I don't want to get hurt anymore, either; come on, it's not like this was unexpected. It's been coming since we first got together."
    Oh, so you've been planning this all along, have you? You've just been waiting, waiting for me to fall hopelessly in love with you, which I have. And now you want to spring it on me that, oh, we never could've lasted. Is that it?
    "No! I didn't mean it like that. I didn't mean any of that to come of this. I just had this feeling, this premonition, before you even asked me to be your girlfriend, that things would never work out between us. I chose to ignore it and now, here I am, ruining stuff for both of us."
    Ah, so you admit that you know you're ruining my life. What, did you like decide on that at some point? Just like 'I think I'll ruin his life today' and you just didn't have the strength to end it? I would believe that: you've always been a coward.
    "I didn't mean for any of this to happen. It kind of spiraled out of control. I can't do anything about it now. . .what's done is done, and we're done. That's that."
    I don't think so, you little b***h. You're mine, and I'm keeping you, forever. You're never going to leave me because if you do, I will just hunt you down! Do you hear that? You'll never escape from me, no matter what! Even if you die, you won't be able to escape from me; you'll still come crawling back to me on your knees, begging, 'Oh, Max, please, I never wanted to leave you. . . . !'

    "Honey, come on down!"
    Honey jumped and banged her head against the back of the chair she was sitting at, facing her vanity mirror. Her own electric blue eyes stared at her, reminding her that what she had been rehearsing now for over 6 months was never going to happen. She sighed and replied to her mother, "Why?"
    "Max is waiting for you, and it's best not to be rude."
    Honey sighed and collected her backpack, but not before completing her normal daily routine: she checked her face to make sure her makeup was completely covering all of the bruises and lesions on her face, then she pulled her sleeves down as far as they could go to cover the scratches, scars, and bumps on her arms.
    She turned around to head out her bedroom door and found herself staring into Max's eyes: eyes that were, most decidedly, brown, and quite the opposite of the electric blue eyes she had been staring at all morning in the mirror as she rehearsed for something she knew she could never do.
    Max gripped Honey's arm firmly, and, with no care for the bruises they both knew were there, led her out of her house. Walking down the street, he had his hand on her stomach, and he felt a strange sensation on his fingertips, beneath her skin. That's when he noticed she was bigger than she had been. . . much bigger. Anger flared up inside of him. . .


    This was the last time Honey's mother ever saw her with her blood still pulsing through her body, supplying for the things she had hidden: the color for the bruises, and the life for the tiny being inside of her.