Abysm

She felt nothing.

No anger, no love, nothing. Her mind was full and yet it was empty. A whirling vortex of thoughts and emotions straining to be free of the confines of her skull. A maelstrom of uncontrollable feelings and emotions that insisted on claiming anonymity and invisibility. Voices so loud in her head that she spent days and weeks finding ways to silence them to the outside world, and worse yet, to herself. Her body emanated electric signals of warning, an almost palpable smell of withdrawal surrounding her naked form as she lay curled up on her side in the cold double bed.

She wanted to cry. She did not want to cry. She wanted to lash out in anger and hurt. Inertia wrestling with frantic need. She hated him for being there. She longed for him to touch her. She ached for peace and acceptance. She railed against conformity and submission. Her brain was all these things, whirling, spinning, echoing screams off the back of her eyes. And yet her body was still, frozen. A sculptured shape laying motionless under impersonal and uncaring blankets.

She felt his spirit approach her before the weight of his body on the mattress betrayed his physical presence. She could smell him. She could smell his unhappiness and confusion at her behavior. He was behind her. He was in the place in their bed that he always claimed. There was no warmth. There was nothing. He was there and she knew it and she could not care.

A muffled scream slipped through her lips as a handful of her hair was suddenly yanked by an unseen hand. A jolt of adrenaline coursed through her somnolent shape, causing her back to arch in response. She felt, rather than saw, cold silk slam across her eyes, tightly encasing her head and shutting out the world she was so afraid of this night.

She suddenly felt confusion.

She opened her mouth to swear at him. She never spoke a word. Her hands were prisoners. Suddenly and without warning, cuffs were on and her hands were prisoners. Restrained and lifted over her head. Hard. Fast. Without mercy. The combined actions as cold and emotionless as she had been feelings only seconds before.

She suddenly felt anger.

He yanked her body over, rolling her from her side to her belly. He was rough and uncaring, treating her rigid form like nothing more than a pillow that needed adjusting for his comfort. She protested. Angry noises slipped from her throat and her body threw off its lethargy. She struggled against the restraints on her wrists. She struggled against his closeness. Her legs beginning to move against the surface of the sheets, allies now in her efforts to escape.

The cold, anger-charged air of the bedroom flooded over her naked body as the blankets suddenly slid down her body in one swift motion. The warmth of the blanket cocoon suddenly evaporating. Her skin screamed at the insult and she began to roll her hips back and forth, her legs helping to increase the momentum of her movement. She wanted out. She wanted away. She wanted warmth and light and freedom. She suddenly realized that she wanted. She suddenly realized in a flurry of thoughts and feelings that her brain was alive. Her body was alive. She was not empty. She was alive. She struggled.

He slammed his hands into the small of her back. She gasped and grunted simultaneously. Air leaving her body as fast as her will to struggle. Before she could begin to understand his action, before she could begin to plan her response, there was a soft whisper at the edge of her ear.

“Raise your ass. Lift your ass up now. Do it.”

It was a voice she did not know from a man that she shared her world with. The timbre and tone alien to anything she recognized. The unspoken menace as real as the pressure of his strong hands pushing against her spine.

She stopped struggling. She stopped breathing. She lifted her ass.

She suddenly felt fear.

It felt like fire. Bits of molten lava landing one by one on the globes of her exposed ass. Without cessation, without rhythm. Her mind struggled violently to comprehend what was happening, unable to maintain control of a situation suddenly gone amok in an eruption of physical sensations.

She moaned and growled and strained against the bindings on her wrists. Her body writhed in a dance of sheer agony as the blows became heavier each time she twisted away from him. She wrestled with the need to maintain mental control but could only manage to tune into the sound of the crop as it cut through the compassionless air, slamming onto her ass, her back, her thighs. She needed to hear it coming. She needed to expect its visit on her flesh. Fire. Fire everywhere. Her skin feeling as threadbare as old velvet, her nerves raw and even more exposed than her body.

It went on for an eternity. Pain. Pain washing over her and out of her like the ocean’s tides. Pain from her mind. Pain from her heart. Pain from the doubts and fears bottled up in her brain for so long.

Suddenly she felt tears.

It stopped at some point. She wasn’t sure when. Her hands were freed, hands that trembled and convulsively grasped at air. The silk slid from her face in a gentle motion, but she kept her eyes closed. There was no need to fear the dark now. He caressed her body, gently tending to the violated flesh. She was vaguely aware of his touch, as one is aware of the stars at night without looking up to be sure they are there. He murmured words of love to her. Words that washed over her and replaced the cocoon of blankets that had kept her warm. And she drifted away, leaving behind the demons and the emotional void that had gripped her heart and mind for so long. And she slept.

Suddenly she felt peace.