Bruises

Early Mornings

Alex awoke to her phone loudly blaring. The groan that escaped her mouth was anything but enthusiastic. She quickly turned off the obnoxious noise and pulled herself off from her bed. Alex through herself into her bathroom. She sloppily through her long green locks into a messy bun, and through on a few layers of makeup. Alex slowly put on a Nirvana t-shirt and tribal leggings, before grabbing her bag and walking out the door.

Alex was about to walk into her class when she felt her phone vibrate in her math books. Knowing how Michael would respond to her being slow with replying she quickly pulled out her phone to make sure it was just her mother, or something. Unfortunately, it was Mike, "Where R U?" Was all the message read. Alex quickly responded with, " Algebra section two, why?" She sat down in her seat and started going through her notes and homework, and general class things.

As class began, she sat paying close attention to the words coming out of her professors mouth. She'd always worked hard in school, but now with her being nineteen and on her own, she was determined to get to where she deemed acceptable. She began to zone out, staring at the notes on the never ending board in the front of the room, only to be thrown back in reality by her phone vibrating again. Mike," How long til you get out?" Within seven seconds of reading she replied, " About 15 minutes." The routine was, she'd go to class, Mike would wait outside, he'd be angry seeing her with another man, she'd get "punished," apologies we're said, things went back to the beginning. An endless cycle.

After the class dragged on for another twenty minutes of speaking about trigonometry ratios and other useless math facts, the course ended, and Alex exited the huge room, to see Mike sitting across the hall. Mike was a larger guy, muscle packed, 5'11", total douchebag, "cool." As he saw Alex exit the room he lifted himself from the ground so he could quickly wrap his arm around her waist. It wasn't anything romantic at this point, it was more of a domination thing.

"Where were you?" He said with a hint of anger in his voice.

"Class, I'm always in class, just like the past five months, and for the next five." Obviously annoyed. This was also part of the routine, the daily shame game.

"Whatever, you need to get out of class early."

"I'm sorry."