Flash Fiction Friday – Slightly Off Balance

Happy Friday Kindle-ites! It’s been a while since I’ve posted anything I’ve written so I thought…what they hey.  Now, I am posting this one well aware that it is not for everyone. Some of y’all will like it, some of y’all will hate it, and others of you will think I have completely lost my mind.  Rest assure I am ok with all of those, and would love to hear your thoughts either way.  Happy (*cough*) Reading!  – Misty

Slightly Off Balance

It was always the same…bright purple with a hint of sickening green. At first it had been a challenge, covering it up that is.  Sunglasses raised eyebrows, and staying home was out of the question; she had bills to pay, a family to feed, so make-up was the only logical answer.  Salvation in a $3 glass jar. She wondered if the people that spent their lives working tirelessly to attain that “perfect shade of taupe” ever felt guilty about the uses that would eventually befall their products. Yes, its creation and intention was for a vain use, an attempt to cover up life’s little cosmic jokes, blemishes of the fried food variety, and childhood pock-marks, but surly there were just as many bottles purchased with the purpose of shielding reality.  A mask against the ugly side of human nature.  Probably not, she thought to herself, why would they concern themselves with insignificant details? She reached up, gently fingering the corner of her battered lip. God it hurt. He’d hit her before, but Holy Jesus this was a whole new ball game, this time she felt it in her toes, heard the sickening crunch bone makes as it shifts out of place. This time, he’d actually broken her. Simply watching her cower in the corner like a kicked puppy had not been enough to calm his rage, he had to make the hurt stick…make her feel the fire that was burning in his belly.  This time, she could see no blue left in his eyes, only the frightening red of a man past the limit of self control. To be quite honest…the fact that she was even alive amazed her. After his first kick, any oxygen her tiny body possessed was gone, evaporated into the musty air like stale cigarette smoke. All that remained was blood and bone. The first time Martin hit her it was..well…expected actually.  She had watched the man she loved morph into a warped version of himself; cloaked in self-loathing and petulance.  Once a man of power and prestige; he had been belittled to the underbelly of society, an outcast, unemployed. To say he was not thrilled would be an understatement. He was belligerent.  Instead of holding himself together like any gentleman would do, he let himself crack; and before she knew it, the better pieces of him were being swept up with the rest of the household dust. There was nothing she could say to bring those pieces back, instead she had to live with the consequences of the ones that were left behind to rot and fester. She stood there for a good ten minutes more. Staring at her unrecognizable face.  The mirror looked skewed, like one of those obnoxious plexi-glass ones from a carnival funhouse meant to elongate and distort your face, but it wasn’t the mirror, it was just her…crooked and slightly off balance. Today there would be no hiding. How could you hide a broken soul? Her mind raced, painfully, but clear. She couldn’t do this anymore.  She couldn’t stand here, in this spot, applying foundation day after day, defending soulful memories that had shattered with time.  The next time he wouldn’t stop.  The next time he would succumb to his personal demons and kill her. The next time, there would be no chance for change, she would be in a casket, and he would go back to his beer; not caring that his wife, the woman he had once posted high upon a pedestal, was lying faceless on their kitchen floor, their son left motherless with a bastard for a father. The thought of it made her stomach lurch. Before the building bile could escape her throat she grabbed her little glass bottle and walked silently to their bedroom. Placing one hand on the nightstand for balance she dropped her liquid salvation to the floor and reached for the only option she had left.  Carefully she made her way to the living room, courage gripped tightly in her shaking right hand. There was no alternative. No going back. She had responsibilities, people and places that depended on her. What did he have…besides a bad temper and a heavy hand? Nothing, that’s what. He was a waste of human resources, a drain on the goodness of mankind. He was the root of all that was evil, a plague that needed to be burned out of the system. Gathering what little strength she had left she rounded the corner, and lifted the gun. Seconds later the cold steel fell from her fingers, a deafening crack echoing off of the hardwood floor as it tumbled end over end eventually taking up residence by a bright red converse sneaker.  What she saw before her was not her husband laying lazily in his chair, guzzling alcohol like water. What she saw was her 6 year old son Jacob, standing proudly over a bloodied Martin, knife in his hand, smile on his face. “Don’t worry mommy, he can’t hurt you anymore.”