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It's darker than what I'd normally write. But I'm still pretty satisfied with it. Feel free to comment! Constructive criticism is always appreciated. smile
The door swung open and Leila stumbled into her apartment. In her right hand she clutched her keys, which she attempted to hang on the hook next to the door with no success. They fell to the floor with a clatter and she stared at them for a moment, before seemingly giving up and taking a swig from the bottle clutched in her left hand. The vodka burned as it went down.
She staggered down the hall into her bedroom. Her bottle was half empty. She collapsed on her bed and sat, staring at, or perhaps through, the wall. Every few moments she took a sip from the bottle still firmly clutched in her hands.
It had been three years since that night. Three years to the day.
The first year she had sat in her bathroom, carving into her arms with a kitchen knife. The cuts were not intended to take her life, although at a few of the lowest points in the night she considered it. However, her main purpose that night was to forget. She tried to use the pain to block the images that flooded her brain.
It hadn’t worked, so the next year she drank until she passed out. This year she planned to do the same.
The bottle slipped from her hands and crashed to the floor. It shattered on impact, and the smell of alcohol filled the room. At the sound of breaking glass, she screamed in terror. He had broken the window to get into her house that night.
She sat on the bed for ten minutes before her breathing returned to a normal pace. Once it did, she rose and stepped over the broken glass to the full-length mirror hanging on her dresser drawer. She wasn’t entirely sure what compelled her to do it, but in her drunken state had no power to think it through. So she walked to the mirror.
She stood for a moment, contemplating her reflection. Her eyes were bloodshot. She slowly unzipped her jacket, pulled off her shirt, and removed her jeans. How her form had changed. The once healthy figure had wasted away to almost nothing. She touched the faint stretch marks on her belly. Forever a reminder of what happened that night and what came from it. The circular scar on her left wrist seemed to come to life with the memory of the thing that put it there.
The memory slammed into her. The broken window, the man crawling through. How she’d been too shocked to even think of defending herself before he was upon her, forcing her from the couch on which she sat and carrying her into the bedroom. How he’d handcuffed her left arm to her bed, how she had fought uselessly against the bonds.
The look in his eyes as he stripped off her clothes and-
Before the memory finished, Leila was in the small bathroom next to her bedroom, vomiting the contents of her stomach into the toilet. What came up was mostly alcohol. After she finished, she slumped to the bathroom floor, lacking the strength or will to move.
Three years and he still had power over her. Three years and she still felt the compulsion to throw up every time the memory surfaced.
She might’ve been on that bathroom floor five minutes or it might’ve been five hours. Leila didn’t know and didn’t really care. Memories of that night floated in and out and she desperately tried to block them. She had no more alcohol, nothing to bring even a short relief in unconsciousness.
Finally, after a mental battle which seemed to last hours, Leila pulled herself from the floor. A cold sweat covered her body, and she was shivering from her bare skin’s prolonged contact with the chilly tile.
She looked at her reflection in the small bathroom mirror. Her eyes were slowly returning to normal. Something glinted behind her pupils that Leila hadn’t seen in three years. She left the tiny bathroom, sidestepped the broken glass, and walked down the short hall into the kitchen.
It had begun to rain. Leila stood at the kitchen window, so like the one in her apartment three years ago, and watched it fall.
After a moment, she went to the door, opened it, and stepped into the rain. As the drops fell, washing the sweat and tears from her body, Leila did something she had not done since she was a child.
She lifted her face, opened her mouth, and caught the raindrops on her tongue.
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