The Only One He Wants

Michael stood above her for a few seconds. The icy, blood-curdling look of revulsion returned to his eyes and promised to stay there. Then he left. Just like that. Gone! As if he hadn’t been there for the whole day. Only his scent lingered for a moment or two.

A terrifying cry tore from her chest. She couldn’t see from the pouring tears that ran down her cheeks. She was so angry at him that she could barely remember what the fight was about. Now she wasn’t even sure what he had said, she just knew that she felt offended by him.

She was ignorant to the time and space surrounding her. Sitting there hunched on the floor, she didn’t care about anything. Maybe an hour passed. Two, or maybe even three. She was alone, deeply pulled into the darkness of her soul as the light from the sun fell on her.

Gabrielle realized that she was now definitely late for work. And yet she found that she didn’t want to get up and go. She simply couldn’t handle another day hidden in that storage room she called an office nor face those bleak masked faces she called colleagues.

Her cell rang. She didn’t pick up. As a matter of fact, she didn’t even turn in the direction it was ringing from.

She felt oddly numb and empty. If someone had barged in through the door at that moment with a knife, she wouldn’t even flinch. She was sure that she wouldn’t even feel the knife going through her skin and penetrating her organs.

She wasn’t even sure if blood ran through her vein or arteries because she felt like a wooden lifeless doll lying in the bottom drawer and collecting dust due to a child’s forgetfulness.

The cell rang again. It was the second that day. Or was it the third? She couldn’t remember. The only thing she could remember, the only event preoccupying her rational mind was the argument with Michael. She kept replaying it, scrutinizing every detail, fast-forwarding and then going backward. She could recite the whole of it (or what stayed in her memory) by heart. She could even act it out.

But would she change anything? No. She thought that the anger fueling her words had died out and now all that was left of it was pure ashes. She was wrong. Oh, so wrong. As the hours passed and the hands of the clock spun like crazy, she found the nest of the anger. It hadn’t left her after all.

“What happened to me? Oh my God!” she whispered, her voice strange on her tongue probably from not using it or maybe from misery.

Her ringtone echoed through the apartment. It was an eerie sound that frightened her and made her jump a bit from her place on the floor. It was either her daughter, a colleague asking for an excuse why she didn’t come to work, her boss asking for a lengthy explanation and reasons why he shouldn’t fire her. Her tired mind ruled out the last one. He surely wasn’t that arrogant to bother her when she was feeling like sh*t because of him.

She despised herself for blaming it all on Michael. Why did people have to find someone else to be guilty, someone else to point their fingers at?

Nevertheless, he had started it all, hadn’t he? He’d begun it all with his talk of going to Mauritius with him. With his mercy, demonstration of power over her and pitying?

Then another voice popped up in her mind, whispering in her ears. This new voice spoke that this version she was telling herself was just a fabrication of her consciousness. So that she would turn out to be clean whereas his would be the fault in their fight. This new voice presented the case in a different light and it told her that, in fact, she was the one who had started it all by complaining about her job.

What if…

What if…

What if…

Gabrielle shut the voice in the back of her mind, not to hear from it again. She wasn’t ready for all those what-if questions right now. She just wanted to be alone, lick her wounds and rise like new tomorrow. That was all. Was what she was asking too much? No. Of course not. Cut out from the world and her inner restless voices battling over her mind, she spent the whole day on the cold floor without moving.

As a result of that, her whole back was crying out in pain. She felt the fiercest backache in her whole life, tearing at her spine like a venomous animal trying to eat her from inside. However, that wasn’t everything that was hurting her. The morning headache that had troubled her only increased as the night crept in. Her stomach was asking for a bite or two. Her extremities were arguing for a comfortable bed and some stretching. Her heart wanted a drop of consolation, love, and peace, which she absolutely wasn’t going to get that day.

Too tired from crying and tormenting her soul, she fell asleep in a daze. Her mind was desperate for some sanctuary where it wouldn’t have to think of Michael Good, their fight, her job or her wishes. It entered into a black space that drove away all those sinister kinds of thoughts.