Promises of Distortion
He promised.
He promised and he lied.
I can almost find some dark humour in all of this. Surely there’s some higher being looking down on me now, chuckling in glee as their marionette is tugged along by strings of despair. Watching as once again I make the same mistake over and over again.
Or maybe there isn’t.
Maybe I’m as alone as I fear in this sinister world.
Raised voices that haunt me through the night are continuously drowned out and hushed by the fear of confrontation. No one wants to get involved. No one wants to face the truth that their flawless view of their own world is defiled by what lays behind my door.
***
He comes and goes as he wishes. My door, a welcoming entrance whether locked or barred. I would be safe were my mind not a traitor and his words were not painted pretty pink in deception. From his mouth flood promises of care and tenderness that I yearn for, promises that reduce my defensive walls to nothing but rubble.
Those promises are lies.
There is never any love or care waiting for me behind that door.
Only lies that raise ink blots on my skin and crimson streams upon my lips. His words fracturing and splitting the already fragile glass laying beneath my cage of flesh. Slicing the porcelain covering of a girls body I used to know.
Recognition is unattainable. My mind has become unable to perceive this body as mine. Adamant that these sunken eyes glazed with anguish do not belong to me.
The cacophony of pounding fists and distorted cries evade me as consciousness hands me over to the inky void.
I’m safe here.
I think I might stay a while.
***
I wake in an unfamiliar place, a bleached lifeless surrounding greeting me along with a steady staccato of high-pitched beeps.
A woman walks in, her unblemished skin and compassionate eyes taunting me. She begins to talk, I don’t listen because I don’t really care. I stopped caring a long time ago.
At some point, she leaves the room and I left with the acidic smell of disinfectant and growing hope as my only companions.
He hasn’t come.
Maybe, just maybe, I am finally free.
***
The click of the opening door wakes me, my eyes struggling to adjust to the piercing lights. The pretty nurse enters, flashing me a dazzling smile that sparks something long-forgotten in my chest. She is confidently wheeling a cart stacked with objects I have no name for, and then behind her…
Oh no.
No, please no.
I had been free, I had finally tasted the sweet peace of freedom only to have it savagely ripped from my grasp.
A toothy grin splits his charmingly deceptive face in two, his teeth like gleaming white knives, shredding any ounce of hope my broken mind still harbours.
He is fear incarnate, nightmares cast into human flesh.
And I couldn’t wake up.
***
Weeks pass, the seas of blue and green that once laid upon my skin are swept away by the passing days. Red cascading rivers form ivory mountains upon the plains of my flesh.
Words of adoration and compassion spill from his lips in a never-ending flow of promises. Words that tie my torn heartstrings together and meld my splintered being whole again.
I knew it. I knew it all along.
He really does love me.
Unfamiliar smiles grace my healing face more and more often as tender words and actions follow my every breath.
He’s changed, I know he has.
He won’t do it again.
I can forgive him and I can forget…
Until I am shown again, how he lies.
