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beneath still water
Emma Snow sat on the sofa cross-legged, an unopened textbook across her lap, staring at the front door, listening to him drinking himself into a frenzy. Her dark eyes searched the polished oak finish for the familiar faces encased within the wood grain. Faces of women screaming with gaping mouths, flame-like hair, and teardrop breasts, their bodies nothing more than remnants from when the tree was alive, growing wild with designs of life.
Calmly she waited for what was coming. She had chosen this gamble, knowing she would lose—knowing the price of stolen hours. She had gone hiking with acquaintances on trails leading nowhere through box canyons on the ground, barely released from winter's tight hold. The spring breezes were cold enough to be painful on uncovered skin, yet in the patches of the late afternoon sun, Emma sweated beneath her thin fleece jacket. She followed her companions, walking among them as if she was one of them, knowing she was not.
She is a thief, stealing away moments casually discarded by others. Anything she could carry and stash somewhere safe, somewhere he couldn't reach. Her sins were covered by the sound of the wind rising through the trees. The glint of melting ice in the sun, the weightlessness of the mountain sky, laughter echoing off the rocks, a footstep in the woods.
Yes, Emma had known the price of her actions before she found him standing in the driveway waiting for her. His smirking made her stomach lurch, but she reminded herself to remain calm. She had chosen this moment, and it would be here, and then it would be gone, nothing but a bad memory. Or better still, if she could, it would become forgotten between a thousand other moments. Maybe forgotten is too strong of a word, perhaps distorted like looking through icy water of a stream to the washed and worn peddles below too cold to feel.
He had cornered her coming the long way around the back of the truck. Emma had been gone three hours, yet he argued over and over it had been four. Smashing his fist into the hood, already too drunk to add—but stable enough on his feet to have her pinned without laying a finger on her.
As he ranted, the force of his fist knocked bits of red clay loose from the truck's underbelly. She watched the two of them as if from far away, removed like a stranger at the edge of the driveway. It was easy to concede to his clouded reality. The mountain was icy. It snowed. She was gone for four hours. All of it was true now. And with that, he had let her pass into the house, but it was far from over, and she had known that too.
In the back of the house, glass shattered, followed by lumbering footsteps. The structure swayed with his noxious rhythm as he stumbled through the long narrow kitchen. Emma sat motionlessly as he towered over her. She thought about the door behind him, wondering with more curiosity than emotion why she had not gotten up and left or never come home at all.
His jaw slid numbly side-to-side, expelling drops of spit as he yelled, but she could no longer hear him. She let his hollow eyes and limp muscles rotting with alcohol overtake her as if she was powerless to fight. He quickly knocked her to the floor. Within the darkness, she curled into the tightest ball she could. Her hands clutched around her skull, so fixed within her hair's dark mass, her knuckles glowed white.
Protect your head, she told herself. Nothing else matters; just protect your head. And this moment will be gone.
Emma heard the sounds of her body folding to pressure and force, but she felt nothing. She thought if she was non-reactive, he would grow tired, but she felt his fierceness unfolding. It was too late to change strategies.
The pain would come later. Later she'd be unable to sleep, the sheet of her bed raking across her bleeding wounds, too tired to stir and too hurt to settle. Later, she'd drag herself to the coolness of the bathroom floor, vomit blood, then huddle on the tile within a haunted sleep caught in dreams of icy mountains, dreams of falling.
Beneath the heat of his anger, conscious thought slowed, her mind's clarity fading as the voices in her head were no longer hers. A thousand conversations swirled about, some shouting, others tiny whispers. Words spinning so fast she felt the hot burn of bile in the back of her throat. Most didn't even make sense, items on a grocery list, random elevator chatter, and unconnected out-of-date phrases from an era not her own.
Through the overwhelming buzz, she began to make out the voices jeering, 'What chance do you have to make it here, in this world, when you cannot even open a door?'
She tried to cry out, but it was cut short by a hard blow to her back.
The voices mocked her, 'He is your judge and jury. Who knows what you are worth better than him?'
"No," she managed to utter aloud.
'Don't' doubt the sentence he gives you too much, for you might find out it is truly justified.'
Then ''no'' was a distant thought snared in a childhood memory of afternoon sunlight flooding through a bay window in a house that no longer existed. He landed a firm foot on her side. It hooked around to her lower abdomen. Emma felt her bladder give way. The warm fluid soaked her pants, flowing onto the wood floor. Satisfied with this, he finally stopped.