Fire in his Eyes

There was fire in his eyes. It was molten lava swirled into icy cold brown, hardening the lines of his face into sharp angles. So sharp that she thought to touch them would be to bleed. The thin stone lips moved and he called her name, and the words were ash falling on her skin and burning through to her heart. She could feel the burns inside, how they swelled and left her throat too thick to swallow.

He was moving toward her. They were slow, purposeful steps and with each she backed away some more, mimicking his movements, treasuring the transparent wall of space between them. Another step. The lamp on the corner table rattled a little, feeling the vibrations of their poorly built house, and with it she trembled silently. It was coming. The weight of it pressed on her chest and made it hard to breathe. Always coming, and she almost wanted it to arrive so that it could be over. The first punch was always the worst.

Another step and her back hit the wall. The jolt of slamming into it surprised her, and she gasped a last breath as the barrier of space between them crumbled effortlessly under his slow, purposeful steps. She could see the fire spreading, traveling from his eyes to the entirety of his body, coating him in hot energy, kinetically charging the violent movement that she knew would come.

He stopped.

And for a moment there was stillness. She could hear a gentle breeze outside the open window across the room. It petted the leaves and danced around them playfully. It was dark outside and the light of the room seemed harsh and unforgiving amongst her dreams for fresh moonlight upon her skin. Fresh, and white and clean, like life-giving milk to revitalize her after the bruises and the cuts…

The stillness wouldn’t last. He was yelling at her, forming curses and ugly phrases with those chiseled lips that she tried not to hear. Her eyes felt drawn to the fire that stared into her and she wondered who had lit it. It was a vicious flame and it always consumed her husband first, before coming after her.

The stillness was crackling and she could see the conflagration beginning to burst forth, the red growing in the granite cheeks and razored fists that were rising before her and suddenly swinging into the side of her face. She fell against the rug, the texture hard against her seared and burning skin, and somehow she managed to turn over, looking up and blinded by the flames that caused dots to cloud her vision.

The fire slammed into her side and it filled her lungs with smoke so that she couldn’t breathe, sucking up all the oxygen she had left and holding her like that with her arms wrapped around herself and her eyes wide as she drowned in dry ash. Fire everywhere. And she knew there was no escape. The flames were omnipotent, a judging fury, and she’d learned long ago it was better not to fight.

The first punch was always the worst, and now she simply let it come, too dazed to really feel every time she was scorched, letting herself fade among the growing clouds of thick smoke that rolled into her brain and made it hard to think. Maybe she could evaporate away, high up in the sky, into the fresh, white moonlight reaching down to embrace her. She was coming close; she could barely feel the burns anymore, her bonds to reality loosening, and she felt herself dissolving and dissipating into nothingness where the fire in his eyes couldn’t reach…

And then…

Over.

So completely, so suddenly. And she sucked in the air that flooded into the room, hearing the door slam through blanketed senses and knowing that the fire was gone.

Gone. Yet she was still here. And she lay there, struggling to make some sense of a world that was dimming before her until finally her eyes closed and she let the soothing arms of unconsciousness come.

It was morning when she awoke. She knew because the sun was casting streaks of light through the window and across the red-splotched rug she lay on. It should have been blue, and she thought about how much of the day would be spent trying to clean it. Slowly, she rolled over, afraid that she might crumble, managing to climb up onto her brittle limbs, swollen and stiff. A moan slipped through the tight set of her lips, and she tried to quiet the sobs as she limped to the bathroom, almost falling against the door as she opened it.

She leaned on the sink to hold her up and stared at the unknown face in the mirror. A puffy red cheek, split and bloodied lips, black and blue rings around her eyes. It wasn’t the face she’d been born with, wasn’t the one she’d seen there only a morning ago. And yet it was one she’d seen before.

Always before. Before all the promises that it would never happen again, and always after them. She knew exactly how it would go. He’d give her flowers tonight, make dinner, tell her he was sorry. It would be the last time. It was always the last time.

But the fire always burned. She could feel it as she touched the swollen mass that should have been her chin and felt the searing hot edge of his fist still embedded there. It was consuming her even now and it lit her blood up with a scorching fury that tightened her muscles and made her teeth clench.

It always burned, through every last time and on to the next. No way to stop it. But it was in her now and this time she wouldn’t fight it, wouldn’t try to extinguish it with calming breaths and rationalizations and thoughts of love.

And as she stared at the mirror, she saw the glint of flame.

There was fire in her eyes.