Bang | Short Story
Had they always fought like this? With their claws and teeth against soft underbelly and armour alike? Had they fought for hours, their screams, rising, falling, echoing in the street like Tarzan calling in the jungle?
They had fought like that for years?
One time he’d almost killed her with a frisbee’d plate, catching her in her mouth, knocking out a whole row of molars, turning the whole side of her face into red raspberry jam. That was a diamond apology. She smiled lopsidedly into the mirror, pawing at the sparkling trinket as he wrapped it around her neck.
But tonight. She’d won the jackpot at the local. Coming home was a daze. Her eyes swum with visions of her new future. Coming in the door, she stood quietly and looked at his sleeping form on the couch and did not see him in any of them.
She felt the gap in her mouth.
She touched the side of her caved in face.
And the hardness of the diamond around her neck.
Could she really leave him?
The answer, most decidedly, was.
BANG.