Iridescent Pearls

enough was enough

Enough was enough, this wouldn't be the last day. This wouldn't be her last breath. No! She had to get up off the floor. Her enemy sat at the table and stared at her with such nonchalance, as if her tears, bruises, and blood meant nothing.

"You mock me!" Magdalene screamed, "You will not kill me again!"

Magdalene, or Maggie to her friends, raged and scraped herself up. She knelt on swollen knees, brushed the broken glass off her hands and shirt. She would win.

Her enemy, still sat. A silent oppressor sucking the life out of the room and out of her. This time the fight, this hellish dance, would end a different way. Maggie refused to wake up lost and confused in another stranger's bed simply because her enemy dictated her actions and erased her inhibition through sheer force of will and terror.

Reality, facing the day without him, seemed a long lost dream. Today it would be attainable, because although her body was broken her spirit was not. Maggie could change. Maggie could grow.

Still her enemy sat. With tears of blood streaming from the cut on her cheek and her swollen black eye, Maggie charged at him. She lurched with everything she had from her spot as a sitting duck and took out her vengeance.

Maggie grabbed him by the neck, and swung hard. Her enemy collided with the wall and shattered.

Yes.

Finally her enemy was broken, but there would be many more. Her enemy defeated, but it was only one bottle of vodka. Her real enemy, her true enemy, was within her. The demon that often tried to take the wheel of Maggie's life.

Damn you!

The mirror laughed at her hard. Maggie felt dispersed throughout the room, her little hovel of a home. Traces of her lost dignity and pride littered every surface. The bra in the trashcan, the vomit on the sofa, the used condoms stuck to the floor. Bile rose in her throat and she swallowed it down.

Her fist came back bloody as she broke the mirror. Maggie snatched her purse from off the table by the door, the only decent piece of her past. This was a gift from her late grandmother, "Abuela, I'm sorry..." no more tears fell but Maggie walked away from her ugliness in that room. The only thing in her hand was her torn purse, some cash from last night, and her cigarettes.

She left the open door, it's not as if there was anything left to steal. Everything had already been stolen. Now it was time to rebuild.

Hopefully this long journey ahead could begin with a shower. Cleanse the body, then cleanse the mind. Magdalene would overcome the seething mass of darkness inside. Slowly, and most definitely on her own.

C. Dougherty