Between Stripes

Him

She made me feel like I was in Heaven; she was my fast-track ticket past purgatory. I hadn't needed judgement as even by association with her, I was worthy of Heaven. She made me feel like I'd never before. Clean. Pure. Sterling.

I found her in such similar state. Clean. Pure. Angelic. The only crimson was the silk robe which cradled her. It was unusual. More often than not, I found her scarlet. Her arms - to be specific. But it was okay because I fixed the flow of ruby which would always be leaking from her porcelain arms. I fixed her.

This time I couldn't. Her arms were scarce of the red. She was scarce of red. Her lips puckered. Her cheeks with a purple tint, waxy to the touch. She didn't feel real. She'd been replaced - surely? Whoever this was in front of me had replaced my girl, this person was an intruder. She wasn't mine. Her eyes had sunk in her skull. Her skin was waxen. Her hands almost blue. This was a doll: frail, fragile and frosty.

But she could have once been mine. I recognised certain features. The noticeable childhood scar which carved into one of her unruly eyebrows. The freckles that I'd kissed a thousand times. The slithers of silver which wrapped theirselves round her arms like snakes strangling their supper.

She became more and more recognisable. I noticed it all. Even the new details: the claw marks at her throat (where bitten nails had attacked) and the small, vacant, coffee coloured bottle lying next to her.

I felt a pain deep inside. As though a dozen knives had plunged into me and twisted. As though my innards had been ripped from inside-out. As though I'd shattered into a million pieces. All hope lost. My ticket out of this hellhole had escaped my grasp without me even knowing.

"Georgia, darling, speak to me - one last time."

She was motionless. Still as a statue, if not more so.

Tears landed on her, ruining her robe and pyjamas. "Stop that." I attempted to command but they didn't, and my voice replicated that of a senior citizen. The tears didn't stop. They were relentless.

I soon felt trapped. I wanted to be with her again. I needed it.

The body I was in heaved up and down; it struggled to keep up with me. Our souls needed to meet again and by touching the prison hers had been trapped in only made me need her more.

"I love you Georgia, more than anything." The words felt familiar as they drifted from my lips, but the voice I heard was foreign. It was sad. Croaky. Broken.

I had been broken.