That's not my blood, Dana thinks as she looks at the
spreading, reddish pool. Her next thought is: of course it
is. And the next: no, it can't be.
The floor is cold and hard beneath her chin, and glaringly
white. Her head aches.
Her husband looms over her, a giant with fists of stone. As
Dana turns her head, she can see little smudges of blood,
(she's quite sure its hers now), on his knuckles.
"If I hear you talking about leaving one more time," he says
calmly, and Dana can see that his anger is spent, his red
face regaining their normal color, "I will kill you."
He states that matter-of-factly, and means every word. This
is not a threat.
Dana draws herself up from the floor into a tight little
ball. From nowhere at all comes the voice of her junior high
school geometry teacher: "The sphere is the structurally
strongest form..."
She starts to cry. Not in wails but in small, helpless sobs.
"Please don't hit me again," she weeps, "I won't say
anything. I'll do anything you want. Just don't hit me,
don't hurt me, please."
There's silence in the room for a while, interrupted only by
her sobbing, then her husband crouches near her and pats her
long, black hair.
"C'mon, baby." He says soothingly, moistening the bruise
that has already started to form on her jaw with a towel
drenched in hot water. "Shhh, shh, come on now, don't cry,
everything'll be all right, shhhhh."
The towel is warm and feels good against her swollen, split
lip. She grasps it gratefully. He's so thoughtful, she
thinks, mostly without irony.
After a while, they get up together. "Make lunch." Her
husband orders her. She nods absently. Blood from her broken
lip had oozed down her neck to her breasts, drenching her
blouse and bra and making her nipple stand out through the
cloth. His gaze flickers down her body with a mixture of
contempt and arousal.
"And clean yourself up." He adds. She nods again. When he's
gone, she starts fixing the table. I can't leave him, she
thinks, we love each other, and he's good to me, mostly.
Dana went to the police once, to complain. The officer wrote
down her statements with a blank face, then assured her that
it will be taken care of. When she came home, her husband
knew, and beat her up so badly she didn't get up for almost
a week. He had friends in the police, she understood, men
who grew up with him.
I can't leave him, she thinks again, with a dull certainty.
I'll become a shadow, she decides. I'll move from room to
room, fixing food, cleaning up. People will see me but will
never notice me, never speak to me. Maybe it will hurt less
that way.
And besides, she thinks, the girls need their father...

It was two days later when she passed her daughters' room in
the early evening, and glanced inside. There was a smell in
the air, a faint, salty scent. Oddly familiar, but Dana
couldn't place it. The door was closed, but she knew her
youngest was home. She didn't seem well. I should take her
temperature, she thought, and opened the door quietly, in
case she was asleep.
Inside, her daughter was lying on her belly, on her bed,
motionless. On top of her was Dana's husband.
"Aahhh." He moaned softly. "Aahhh, aahhh."
Her daughter said nothing at all. She just lay there, her
face buried in the pillow, dead to the world, like a meat
puppet, while her father pushed himself into her and
groaned.
Quiet as the shadow she was, Dana closed the door and went
about her business as if nothing had happened.

That night, her husband had ridden her long and hard, and
when they were done, she ran her hand up and down his body,
playing with the thick hair on his chest. This time, she
didn't wait for him to hold her by her hair and pull her
down but went there willingly, sucking and blowing and
licking until he came in her mouth. And when he did, she
swallowed every drop of the creamy, sticky liquid, tasting
its salty flavor she knew so well. So well.
And when her husband was asleep, she got up, went to the
kitchen, took a knife, returned to the bed, and opened her
husband's throat ear to ear. He screamed and thrashed, and
hit her in the face, spraying her with his blood, but the
damage was done. The gash was deep, and she could see the
open windpipe and gullet in his throat, spitting blood and
vomit at her. Her husband managed to get to the phone and
dial, breathing through his open wound, but by the time he
was answered his screams gave way to wet groans, and he fell
slowly and stayed on the cold, hard, glaringly white floor.
That's not my blood, Dana thought detachedly, gazing at her
red-covered hands, at the reddish pool spreading from her
husband's body, that's not my blood at all.