Enormous

Enormous
Kara Godin

She sits in the chair, eyes refusing to focus on anything but the sinister crushed velvet of the purple chair. Her eyes remain vacant as she wills herself to think, but she can’t. She is nothing…null and void.

She runs one finger against the velvet between her slightly parted legs; it’s wet, matted, she can feel the dampness has roamed to the space underneath her, far back. It is not pleasant, she wishes she could get up but she doesn’t have the strength. She can’t stand, she can’t move, she can’t make a sound. She can only stare at the velvet beneath her.

It is darker now; when she had first sat on it today it had been a bright royal purple. Now it was more of a maroon, traces of blood mixed with wetness. She knows that the rest of the chair looks normal, purple and ordinary, worn down in places, vibrant in others . . . but she can’t look can’t take her eyes away from the wetness … the color.

Instead of her standard vanilla body spray, the room smells of sex, of pain, of punishment, of shame and something else she can’t quite catch. She feels her stomach shift and the remnants of it begin to rise in her throat but she cannot throw up, she doesn’t have the strength. So she stares at the velvet.

He had told her he loved her. Cupping her face in his hands, telling her she was so beautiful before bringing his lips to hers and for once she did feel pretty, special, as if she actually had a place in this world. She had been happy, she had been . . . happy.

It had started innocently enough, just a few kisses, but then he began to shove his tongue in her mouth and she began to choke from the big monstrous invader. He murmured sentimentalisms that didn’t reach her ears and then he didn’t say anything, ripping at her clothes. Hard, fast, angry, he was not gentle and not kind. He got up, putting on his clothes as if she wasn’t even there, leaving her to shake and become numb.

Her eyes begin to meander on the chair. It is enormous, fit for a giant, the back towering over her, the arms holding her in, ambushing her, trapping her.

Suddenly her heart constricts, beginning to beat faster, and she can’t seem to get enough air in her lungs. Every breath she takes causes her body to need five more. She tries to keep up but can‘t, taking in great gulps of air trying to placate her starving lungs. She feels the food, bile and stomach acid rising up and she tries to swallow, over and over, but still it fills her mouth and she spits it onto the chair. Her quiet sounds of retching the only noise in the room.

She opens her eyes and drops her head, an eight pound weight resting on her shoulders, and as she sits in her own mess she begins to cry.