Trace of Love

His athletic arms tightened around my upper waist, and the stronger he compressed me against his naked chest, the more I felt an acute pain on my side. A snap of one of my ribs abruptly stopped the shooting ache. As I expected the pain to submerge again, I could feel some bone fragments scratching the inside of my skin. The torture that exploded in my entire body made me violently sick. As my whimpers drowned in a warm sea of blood, bubbles popped out my mouth like a toddler playing with vowels for the first time. 

One of his hands held the back of my head so he could kiss my forehead, but the faint light of the nightstand reflected small pieces of crystal glass shinning all over my face. Tenderly he took out some of the diamonds incrusted in my flesh, taking out my shine. When his lips touched mine, the taste of his burning breath carried the bitterness of his tears. Lightheaded and slowly suffocating in his arms, his voice sounded far away:

“Look at what you made me do.” 

With his devotion, he squeezed my corpse against his stone chest like a three quarter empty bottle of ketchup. By this demonstration of his true passion for me, he pushed in a thick fragment of his baseball bat that was already half way in my lower back, killing the five months old fruit of our relationship that was growing in my entrails. I swear I could hear it scream in pain, or was it me who shrieked?His heart was still beating, reasoning into my whole body, but slowly the vibration got completely silent. 

“I love you so much it’s painful,” he said fiercely circling his hands on my arms, “you love me, right? Tell me you love me! You do, right?”

I did not get the chance to answer him, neither to spit the blood that was in my mouth onto his face. My heart stopped beating at last, but as strange as it might sound, my heart didn’t stop beating for him. I loved him, and now isn’t any different, even if my love was hided beneath a duvet of hatred and anger. His jealousy of our unborn child killed us, our family. 

The room was swallowed in monstrous shadows covering the naked and colourless walls. The dirty white paint was crackling on the corners and the bottom of the door.

A magestuous Victorian style mirror remained, on the left hand sidewall, which cried its reflection all over the oak floor. As only one night lamp survived in the fight, the other was lying, crushed and twisted around. Sheep dust were floating and dancing under the bed, and covering some boxes containing old pictures of a time that seemed really far away now. Moisture started to eat those memories at the same time jealousy ate our love, destroying it all without pity. 

The white silk sheet, dampened in blood, covering an empty matrimonial bed. On it, wood chunks of a destroyed baseball bat were forgotten. 

A strange smell of sweat and humidity was intensified by the warmness of a summer night. As the rusty and salty smell of blood came around to mix itself with the strong odour that was stuck in the walls for years now, frenzy began amongst the flies. 

“You are beautiful, you know that, don’t you?”

My milky skin emphasized every bruises he imprinted on me. With broken nails and his bloody skin under the intact ones, it showed the strength I’ve putted to defend myself.  My eyes were injected with red liquid as some of the blood vessels pooped out. The contours of my eyes were of a blue-black purple. He brushed my hair with his fingers, smudging my strands with blood and sweat. I noticed my body looked bizarrely twisted; my left arm was completely dislocated; and my knees we incredibly stiff and swollen. As for my lips, half open, they were of an aubergine colour, with blood that started to dry on them. Black bruises all around the bites highlighted the traces of his teeth. I couldn’t remember him doing them…

One day I was bewitching; the next day I was his girlfriend. One day I was a pianist; the next day he broke my fingers. One day he admired me; the next night I was nothing more than a carcass being eaten by larvae and sucked by flies. 

Am I still beautiful now?