basric

TITLE:And My Color Is
AUTHOR:basric
RATING:r
WORD COUNT: 393
FEEDBACK: On
WARNING: domestic violence, death
SUMMARY:guess my color, not red
PROMPTS:GUESS MY COLOR

He had been becoming more violent over the last three weeks as the multicolored bruises scattered over her body attested. Tonight she’d stood up to him. She had held him at bay with a butcher’s knife. When things appeared to cool off and he had begun to cry and to apologize; she dropped her guard for just a fraction of a second, but it was all he needed to disarm her and plunge the knife deep beneath her right ribs.

The pain was worse as he drew it out than it had been slid into her. At first she thought he meant to stab her again but he only laughed and tossed it on the floor, “Leave me will ya, bitch. You're mine, you'll only leave me in a body bag.”

He popped open a beer and disappeared into the den. She heard the television blare. She had been forgotten. Slowly with her back against the wall she slid to a sitting position on the floor, her hand over the wound as it blossomed not the red color of blood but more like the color of a fresh bruise. She knew then he’d sliced into her liver and it was oxygen rich blood leaking between her fingers. Already she was dizzy, but she forced herself to remain conscious and pulled her cell from her apron pocket. It would be a slow death as her blood leaked out instead of gushing she knew and the pain was indescrible.

“9-1-1. What is your emergency?”

“My husband has killed me.”

“Mam, you say your husband is Going to kill you.”

“No, he has stabbed me," blood gurgled up into her mouth. She spat it onto the floor, “I will be dead by the time you get here. I told him I was leaving him and he stabbed me,” she coughed more blood up and over onto her clothes, the red mixing with the dark blood on her hand. She was so cold she trembled as the icy fingers of death brushed her skin.

Though the operator continued to tell her to hold on, was he still there, asked her to keep talking but she dropped her hand to the floor and as her phone skidded across the floor she welcomed the swirling greys at the edge of her vision that pulled at her like a whirlpool into blackness and to a place without pain and toward peace.

The police found her barely alive, the paramedics shaking their heads; she’d never make it to the hospital. The husband raged and fought arrest finally was Tasered into submission.