The Last Time

The Last Time
Caroline Scott

Noelle Piper wiggled in fear before she pulled out from under the arm of her long time lover, Mark Smith.
Grabbing her robe, the one with the flower print that looked like it was from Japan, she made her way toward the bathroom. She paused hearing the mattress frame creak and Mark moan. She began to count like a child would.
“One Mississippi, two Mississippi, three Mississippi…”
She held her breath. She always did that before she started counting again. She always made it to five. When she made it to five, Mark would get out of bed and drag her back to bed.
…He didn’t move this time. She made it to the bathroom.
Her hands began to shake as she reached the bathroom. The bathroom was the one place Mark never tried to hurt her. He didn’t want blood on the tile floor.
“My momma told me that blood was hard to get out of tile.” Mark explained after she had bravely asked one day. He took a long breath on the cigarette “Said that tile is no wax or something. Now come here baby cakes.”
That’s what he always called her when he decided to be sweet and loving. ‘Baby cakes’ How she despised that name. Baby cakes sounded like a dessert you would give a toddler or a child on their birthday.
It was then she noticed her hands were gripping the porcelain sink. They were still shaking.
“Stop shaking…” she told herself quietly. “He’s not here….he’s not here…”
She was gripping the side of the sink so tightly her knuckles had turned white. It made the bruises on her arms stand out. It made the purple seem brighter. At least the fresh bruises were bright purple. The older ones were either green or a yellowish-brown color. Mark would let those heal before he hit her again.
“You need to learn to keep that tongue of yours in control” he told her when she had gone against him over the simple fact that she didn’t want to eat with some of his drunken friends. He put down the beer a little too calmly and began to stalk forward,making her back away. She saw his hands ball into fists…
Noelle shook her head trying to chase away the awful memory. She hated thinking about that day. That was the day she had found out she was expecting Mark’s child and that was the same day she had lost it.
She could feel a pain coming into her arm and opened the medicine cabinet to grab some pain relief medicine. She jumped, seeing something wrapped in a old rag. Hesitating for a moment she reached over and grabbed the object slowly unwrapping it.
…It was a gun. She never remembered Mark saying anything about owning a gun. Probably because when they had first started dating, before he started all that drinking, she had told him she hadn’t guns.
“You hate guns? You hate guns?!” he asked and laughed as if it were the greatest joke he had ever been told. She didn’t. He looked at her a little surprised. “You’re serious?” he said
“Yes” she said
She slowly reached her hand out grabbing the gun. It felt cold in her hand. It felt dangerous. It felt…powerful. She felt that she could end her troubles with this gun. Her lips pulled back into a sadistic smile as she stared down at the gun. Mark wouldn’t expect her to be the one to kill him. He especially wouldn’t expect her to kill him with his OWN gun.
She checked the gun, It wasn’t loaded. She looked through the medicine cabinet. No bullets. She searched through the drawers. Finally she found them. A whole pack. She quietly loaded the gun and made her way out to the bedroom.
Mark was still asleep. She checked the time. It was 3:00. In three more hours, Mark would have to go to work. She made her way silently over to the bed, the carpet being her ally. It silenced her steps as she crossed. She loomed over Mark, looking at his sleeping face. His drunken, sleeping face.
She reached over and grabbed her pillow, hovered it over Mark’s face for a moment. She weighed her choices before pressing it over Mark’s face.
He began to struggle…she enjoyed it,
She raised the gun to the pillow.
“Go straight to hell!” she said
She fired the gun.