The Art of Disappearing and Reappearing (UNEDITED)

.1.

Even without Sean in the Penthouse Bambi still felt unnerved. Anxious to sit to far back on the swayed couches, to leave a mess in the kitchen so when she did cook- she scrubbed the stainless steel from top to bottom. Bambi moved around what was supposed to be her home like a stranger, and finally exhausted from today's humiliations and constant jabs of insults, she collapses into the silk sheets after a burning shower after mid night. Her husband no where to be found and she knew better than to call.

The shuffling of the sheets jolted Bambi awake, eyes wide and glossy with exhaustion as she turns to look at a disheveled Sean. His own eyes glossy from liquor, her eyes slide back to the clock on her bedside table.

3:37

"Sean? It's so late." A smack echoed in their dark, cold room. White light flashing behind Bambi's eye lids, a whimper slips through as she clutches her throbbing cheek, the force enough to knock her back into the pillows.

"What the hell did you tell your mother?" He spits, slurring his words slightly as he towers over Bambi's shaken form, spit flying at the sides of his mouth, his tie loosened enough to revealed the dark hickey painting his skin that wasn't there before they left the office.

"N-nothin', I-" In her moment of sleepy hazy and shock she's forgotten Sean's hatred for her country accent adopted from the sweltering Georgia heat she originally grew up in.

"Don't start that redneck shit." He growls hands going for her throat but she's quick enough to curl into herself, his hand closing into a fist instead, the force of his knuckles against her delicate flesh makes a sickening sound that she can hear over the roar of blood in her ears.
"You're worthless! A nothing nobody and marrying you would be doing you a fucking favor. If it wasn't for me you'd still be trapped in your mothers house like a puppet, I own you!" The air around her whistles as he tosses her body from the bed like a rag doll.

She screeches out but it's futile, they're on the top floor and even so, no one was going to help. Sean was too powerful, his name held too much weight on New York.

The coldness of the bathroom floor bites into the palms of her hands and bare feet as she scrambled away from her attacker.
"Sean p-please." It felt like someone had stretched a rubber band across her head, her brain felt squeezed, throbbing from colliding with the floor on her way down.

Her pleas only enraged him further, his massive hand flicking on the light momentarily blinding Bambi and he takes her moment of stun to yank her back by her ankle, there's a slight crack that sounds between the joints tearing another scream from her throat.

"Where do you think you'll go hmm? Back to Georgia, surviving on waitress tips-" Bambi can pull a vague, blurry memory from the back of her mind the first time Sean asked her out. In a diner in Georgia before he met her mother and they started planning her life out for her, before she was dragged to New York forced to work in an office. To Sean, it was the slums.

To her, it was home. It was where her dad was born and raised, where she grew up with her brother, where she graduated, got her first apartment, her first car.

How had she gotten here? Crumbling beneath hands of a man who claimed to love her? She suddenly felt like that naive little girl her mother always claimed her to be. Thrashing and fighting- and losing to a man almost three times her size, Sean threw his entire body into his punches the pain was like thunder crackling against her skin and dissolving into a aching heart beat bruise.

"You're ever pull a stunt like that again and I'll ship you right back to where you came from with nothing. You deserve nothing, you're a shitty wife and if we had children you'd be a shitty mother."

Then let me go!
Bambi was curled into the pummeled sack of flesh she felt like, whimpering softly as her body ached with each heart break. Although she was screaming, spitting and thinking of ways to leave her fiancé on this same bathroom floor in the same position if not worse.

Bambi laid there for what seemed like days but was merely hours, Sean drunkenly made his way to the bed at some point and then risen again like the dead after their alarm blared, the sound made Bambi flinch and then wince as her body ached.

She didn't move, inhaling and exhaling so slow you'd think she was dead at first glance. She listened to Sean get ready in their room, shuffling in the closet, she could hear him grumbling because his clothes weren't laid out for work.

Sean steps over Bambi's broken body, glancing at her momentarily before turning to the mirror, adjusting his tie. Taking extra time in brushing his teeth and straighten his silver cuff links on his grey name brand suit. His shined brown loafers inches away from Bambi's blood that's seeping from somewhere- everywhere.

It's when he's in the middle of flossing does he finally acknowledge her crumbled form on their cold and hard bathroom floor. The Minty string pulled between his fingers, the excess wrapped around the rest of his hands. Bambi squeezes her eyes shut at the flashbacks of them curled into fist raining down on her body like a rockslide.

"Your mother and I think it's best we move the wedding up. This Sunday at the chapel," He flings the floss aside and crouches down to her face, her eyes filled with terror and tears. His hand flies out and she flinches violently, sobbing as his large hand softly caresses the side of her face.
She was so emotionally exhausted.
"Don't disappoint me and don't bother coming in, clean yourself up. I'll expect dinner when I'm home. Time for you to be the good little house wife, hmm?" He stands, stepping over her and she listens to his thundering footsteps all the way to the elevator.

Waiting for the ding before she uses the strength built up from resting on the floor, her hands slick with her own blood that smears against the porcelain tub as she yanks herself up. Her body screaming against every move and by the time she's able to sit on the edge of the tub, she's wheezing and every breath she takes hurts.

With shaking hands she flicks the hot water on, staring in the mirror across from her as the tub fills up. There's a split in her eyebrow, a popped blood vessel in her right eye and her left eye is already starting to blacken, dried blood crust under her nose and over the split on her lip.

She looked like she had been in a street fight, not bearing or able to stomach looking at the rest of her body, she strips with her back to the mirror, moving slowly but her body still roars in agony and it stings when she sinks into the steamy water.

Curling her legs into herself, she watches her blood swirl into the water making a pretty velvet color. The still water ripples as her tear drops fall into the scorching water.

'Did I fall asleep or black out?' The water is cold when Bambi jerks awake, her body still aching but she's able to move. Draining the water, tying her robe around her before she cleans away any evidence Scrubbing her blood from the grout of the title bathroom floor, wiping any splatters off the wall and tub.
Bambi might as well be cleaning a crime scene, she thought, 'aren't I?' Isn't this a crime?
Angry tears fall down her face as she shoves the cleaning supplies back under the sink, standing floor scrub the pink tint of her finger tips.

"How much longer before he kills you?" She was glaring at her reflection, self hatred bubbling up in her stomach making her sick. "I hate you." She spits at herself, stomping away from the broken crying girl in the mirror.