Numb. It was a strange sort of numbness, tempered with seething anger and hurt. And there was lust; was there ever a lustful desire that she couldn't shake. All these things she felt at once, and then in turn one more then the other, standing outside his bedroom, walking back to hers, each wave of emotion growing stronger each time it arrived and swept over her.

Walking down the hallway and back to the darkness of the bedroom that housed her sweaty boor of a husband might have been the most difficult thing she ever had to do. As she sat down gingerly on her side of the bed, sick rejection seeped through her body like a poison. Flashes of herself whirled through her mind's eye: vomiting in the bathroom, dragging a stake knife across her skin, throwing herself out of the second story window onto the chain link fence below. A world of opportunities. In one brief moment she had touched perfection, brushing her hands along his skin, crushing her lips into his. Her body had screamed out; this was all she had thought about since he had arrived, and when it was finally happening, she had wanted more, her desire rushing through her like a wave.

And then it was over, and she saw on his face the disgust and abhorrence she so often felt in herself, she so often felt was reflected in others when they looked at her. Coming from him it was another thing all together. For days she had watched him, had bided her time, feeling as though the sheer want she felt would burn holes in him, or conversely, incinerate her from the inside out. His mere movement, full of both grace and introversion, filled her with visions of cool sheets and his long limbs entwined around her; and in the darkness, in the quiet, the sound of him breathing next to her…

It was there and then it was gone, and the repulsion on his face seemed almost more then she could take. Moving slowly, she shifted to lie down on the bed, rigid and straight like a dead person. After a while, Roy rolled over and threw a heavy arm across her. Pinned, and seething with self-loathing, the events of the last ten minutes replayed themselves in her head. She hated herself, and her mundane existence and her husband and everyone who thought she was nothing and especially the fact that they were right. But most of all she hated him. Hated and wanted at the same time, the hatred sharpening the desire all the more so that it seemed to stick into her body like a cold knife. Looking at the man next to her and seeing nothing but a huge waste of a life, she suddenly realized what she had to do. Roy grunted and rolled over again, removing the offending arm from her body that was quivering with excitement. 'Yes', she thought, feeling the desire rise up in her like a flame. For the first time in her life, Sara Winters felt as though she was in control of her own life. And for the first time, she was going to get what she wanted.

He awoke with a start the next morning, sitting up slightly in bed and looking around. He didn't know when or how he had fallen asleep again, but somehow he had and his dreams had been thankfully free of his regular nightmares. Somehow, that godsend seemed small in comparison with what he now faced. He dressed quickly, grabbing whatever clothes were close at hand and glanced at the clock. Six in the morning seemed early enough to avoid running into his foster parents, so he slipped out of his room, pulled on his boots and jacket and quietly left the house through the backdoor.

He wasn't sure what he expected. At worst, things would be enormously awkward and embarrassing for a long time. Or they would send him elsewhere, to another foster home, another way station along the road leading toward his 18th birthday. He preferred the latter, though a new foster home was always an opportunity for a new variation of hell. He hoped that Sarah would allow him to stay and would quit doting on him. His best-case scenario was to be utterly ignored until the time in which he could step out the door, autonomous.

There was though, a flickering shadow in the back of his mind, sparked by the memory of her face at the door before she turned to leave. Something dark there, and untouchable, and he didn't know how deep and far that darkness would extend. He had seen this same darkness before, in another place and within another person. A different mask, but the same darkness nonetheless. And he knew how it could engulf, and destroy.

A Red Guitar

An explosion

The blossoming of colour—

He stopped and pressed the heel of his hands against his eyes. In the harsh white light of the morning, between the piles of dirty snow, the memories were easier to suppress. He wearily made his way over to a bench along the frozen pathway and slumped down onto the sodden wood. Leaning forward onto his knees, he ran his hands over his face and through his hair. Why was this happening to him? It wasn't the first time the question had scuttled across his mind. He reached into the pocket of his leather jacket and removed a carton of cigarettes, pulling one out and lighting it in a fluid motion, protecting his face against the harsh wind. As he inhaled deeply, he pushed the thought away angrily. It pissed him off, these moments of self pity, the whining voice inside his head, echoing 'why me?'

Still, with everything that had happened within the last year swirling around his head, he couldn't help but wonder. It might have been the smoke settling into his lungs but suddenly he found it very hard to breathe. And to his alarm, he felt the familiar pulse of tears behind his eyes. He stood up swiftly and kicked the bench in irritation, his foot coming down through the layers of graffiti, obliterating the seat. He stood for a moment taking another drag of the cigarette and looking down on the destruction he had caused in the cool light of the morning. The tears were gone. So was the pity. It felt good to be destruction for a change, instead of the destroyed. He turned and continued down the path, wondering how else he could kill time.

Hours later, he was standing in front of the house again. The two stories of grey concrete loomed over-head, staring him down with black window eyes. He shifted his feet and looked up and down the road, the countless other matching houses looking like an army, stuck together in endless rows, ready to turn and crush him into tiny pieces. The wind snapped at his face and he hunched down further into his leather jacket. He almost wished they would, he wanted to be obliterated so that he wouldn't have to go back into the house in front of him. It was Sunday. He didn't think of Detroit as a particularly religious town, but instead something built on blood and ash and steel. Yet, somehow, this godless city was a ghost town on a Sunday morning, all buildings dark and deserted until the afternoon. It was eleven and he had been walking around for five hours in the frigid February morning, and when the soft creases of his jacket had become rigid and frozen, he decided that he had had enough.

So here he was. Home sweet home. Shifting his weight from foot to foot, and trying to decide if freezing to death was better then going back into that house. He saw the curtains in the second story window twitch and he sighed. He had been seen. No other option now. He slowly made his way up the path to the front door, his mind becoming as numb as his body.

Upon entering, he felt that something was different. The house was quiet. Looking into the living room, the television sat blankly and silently in the corner. The room looked bizarrely tranquil without Roy's bulky frame sprawled across the lazy boy, the flickering green light dancing across the walls. The whole house seemed hushed, as though it was holding its breath in anticipation, like the sky before a storm, clouds swollen and quietly rolling, waiting to burst open.

He looked down at his boots, frozen and covered in salt and sand and debated putting them back on and fleeing into the street again. He skin had begun to thaw and it stung. His hair dripped dirty water into his face and a thought erupted into his stream of consciousness, 'Is anything in this city clean?' This calm house, his body humming, the wood of the front door creaking as the wind pushed against it, it was a whirlpool of instinct and emotion, sweeping him away. He shook his head, trying to get his bearings, and clear his mind of the bleary, pulsating train of thought. Something was wrong but his tried and snow addled mind was struggling to grasp it.

A sudden noise from the top of the stairs ground everything to a halt. He looked up and saw Sarah standing there, shadowed and still, looking down at him. They both stood silently for an instant, a single, beating moment, and he thought his heart had stopped. She opened her mouth and shattered the stillness of the house, her voice shrill and reedy, calling out for something he couldn't quite comprehend. He realized what it was in the next moment, as Roy's frame suddenly stood in front of him in the kitchen doorway, the artificial light behind him outlining his body, but obscuring his face.

Roy shifted and came toward him. Everything seemed to move in slow motion, and he felt immobile, his mind reeling forward, but his body rigid and planted even though every instinct screamed at him to run away. Everything suddenly snapped into motion as Roy grabbed him by his jacket, the cold leather cracking, and turned, slamming him up against the wall, the drywall shuddering slightly with the impact. Startled, his hands grabbed at Roy's trying to loosen their grip, but Roy only tightened his fingers, shaking him slightly and pushing his unshaven face forward.

"Did you touch my wife?" He breathed it into his face, the words and his breath a sour whisper of air. His mind reeled. What? Roy's eyes narrowed, staring blackly into him, and he shook him again, throwing his body back against the wall with more force.

"Boy! You better answer my fucking question-" Jarred by the impact, he barked out,

"No!" his voice sounding high and unnatural to his ears. Roy paused, looking at him, his mind working, as if weighing his options. He licked his lips and spat, "Wrong answer" before lifting him off the wall and hurling him down the hallway, his body's momentum halting abruptly as it came into contact with a small wooden table.

The wood splintered and seemed to burst as his mind inanely mused at the purpose of such a table in an otherwise vacant hallway. As his mind wandered, adrenaline coursed through his body, screaming at him to get up GET UP and fight, but before he could find his feet, a foot connected with his ribcage. He heard, rather then felt the crack as one of his ribs broke, and he collapsed to the ground again, gasping for air. Looking up, he saw Roy looming above him, and, too late! his fist hurling downwards to connect with his face. He had been in fights before—being a child of the foster care system, fighting equaled surviving—but this caught him so unaware, and Roy was twice his size, he felt a sick feeling of desperation wash over him, as he realized that the time to fight was gone. Never in his life had he been afraid of dying, but as Roy's fist came down, again and again, he thought 'This is it' and he was overcome with fear.

As the pain radiated and numbed him, and his mind buzzed with thoughts of never-ending dark, he didn't even notice when the blows stopped coming. He was brought to his senses when a hand was placed on his face, fingers tracing lines through the blood there, and then running upwards into his hair, slowly, and gently smoothing the wet strands. He was aware suddenly of the incomprehensible muttering of the television and realized that Roy was gone. Opening one eye, he saw Sarah kneeling next to him, looking down at his face, her hand mindlessly wandering over his body. He groaned and rolled away toward the wall, her touch repulsing him. He struggled to sit up, but she suddenly snapped into motion, her long fingers pushing him down, digging into his broken rib so that he collapsed back to the ground with the strangled shout. Her fingers then gripped his chin, smearing the blood there, nails digging into his flesh and turning his face toward hers. She leaned closer to him, and making sure he was looking her right in the eye, said,

"I told you." And then she smiled, and it frightened him even more than the physical brutality of what he had just endured. She looked at him expectantly, but he couldn't think of a thing to say. "I told you you'd be sorry," she continued, as though explaining herself to a child. Leaning closer to him, her breath crawling across his skin, she whispered in his ear, "Maybe next time you won't be so quick to say no." She pulled back, and her words resounded in his ears, echoing like bells, word against word and he felt himself drowning in realization. She saw it in his eyes and smiled again. And then she kissed him. And suddenly dying didn't seem so bad.

AUTHOR'S NOTE:

Hey. So it's been a long time since I updated this. So much has changed, and I lost touch with writing for a while. But recently some people reviewed this story, and it made me come back and read over some of the stuff I had written already…so I decided to finish up this chapter and post it. I can't stand leaving stuff incomplete. If this chapter seems choppy, it's because I wrote half of it about a year ago…I wrote it and rewrote it so many times...i felt like it needed to be amazing because of how long it is in coming, but finally I had to just let it go--so I apologize if it's a piece of crap. I'm fairly certain that I've lost the interest of most of the lovely people who reviewed for the last chapter, but if you are still there, and still reading, I'd appreciate you letting me know. I know I probably don't even deserve to ask that, but I promise that if someone out there is still reading this, and wants me to continue, then I will update it, and it will be MUCH sooner rather then later.

Thank you so much for all the amazing things you guys wrote me previously. I know things might be confusing right now, but everything will be revealed in due course. I apologize again for how late this is in coming. If you're still out there, thanks for sticking with me!