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» Book Reviews » Features » Short Stories
| SHORT STORIES Listen to me..... Ruth Bradbury-Horton
Standing in front of her mirror, she stared at her body. She stood motionless feeling untold amounts of immense anger and pain pumping through her veins, flooding every ounce of matter that made up her physical and mental body that was otherwise known as woman. A voice groaned, emanating from the depths of her stomach, repeating over and over again, “Dear Lord, why do I stay, why do I stay?” She refused to cry or scream out loud, but that’s what she really wanted to do. She wanted to let the pain out, she wanted to verbalise how she felt, the frustration and agony of living a life that was not true to herself. But she was scared to. She was afraid that if she started to scream then she would never stop, her emotional suffering would come forth as an endless torrent of rage. She looked around for something to smash against the wall; against the newly painted blue walls that she hated. Snatching a china figurine from her dressing table, her pulse quickened at the prospect of destroying something. Holding it gripped above her head she struggled to release the beautiful object, knowing full well it wouldn’t have the desired effect. She knew it was useless; it wouldn’t make him listen to her, to hear what she had to say. She didn’t want him to listen to remember to bring home milk each day; after all, if that was the problem then there really wasn’t a problem. She really wanted him to hear her emotional needs to show some genuine interest in her likes and dislikes. And then, if it wasn’t too much trouble, she’d like him to recognise that she was quite capable of making her own decisions with her own voice. Returning to her reflected image, she barely recognised her outer body, it didn’t resemble the person she wanted to be. She touched her face, now dry and showing signs of premature ageing, and tried to trace the lines that resembled contour lines on a map. She often thought if she were to trace them all she would find it was one continuous line of despair, looking for an end, seeking out a final place to stop. She saw a mouth that had once laughed so rapturously, but now remained pursed. And then there were her lifeless eyes, just holes within dark encompassing circles in a dark abyss. Running fingers through her hair, she bit her trembling lip at the sight of grey strands coming through. Her shoulders were arched and her other hand was clenched as a fist, as if she was trying desperately to hold on to something. She saw a person without a soul, she saw despair. Moving away from her mirror she wilted into her old familiar armchair, the one she spent so many stolen moments sitting in, trying to understand why she let him get to her. She longed to ignore his routine and cantankerous ways. If only she could find a way of preventing him from worming and squirming his way into her. Sitting alone was a rarity; whenever she was out of his sight he would came looking for her. He just couldn’t understand that if she was upset, she needed time to get over it, to not see his face for a while. It nauseated her when he was so abominable and then expected affection instantly, as if everything was fine. But it was never fine; it just gave her an even deeper feeling of hopelessness, as if she was sinking deeper and deeper into the quicksand she so often dreamt about.
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