Broken Connection

1

It was burning again. I was about to go up in front of the class for a presentation and I could already feel the burning pain of a punch to the gut.

I walked slowly to the board as the pain intensified. Pet peeves. I had to present my speech on pet peeves. What were my peeves again? I was nervous as it was, but the slow burn only made it worse.

"Hello! My name is Eve, and today I'll be talking about my pet peeves," I chirped to my drab classmates.

They didn't want to hear my speech, and they certainly didn't want to give their own after I had gone. I could feel my mouth spilling out the rehearsed words, but all I could feel was the pain.

Suddenly, my body jerked back and my face was pushed to the side. There would be a bruise on my chin soon. There were bruises all over my body, and I only had one person to blame. My soulmate. He was the cause of all of this.

If you're lucky enough to have a soulmate you can feel all the physical pain that they do. You also get to share bruises, though broken bones don't transfer. Apparently my soulmate was really into fighting.

When I meet him I'm going to kick him in the balls.

I don't have those, so it's not like I'll be able to feel the pain.

My class is interested in me now. Most people that had a soulmate connection didn't have the unfortunate experience of also having an idiot as a soulmate. My pet peeve speech had turned into a horrifying little show for them.

There was another punch to the gut and then a searing pain across my right knuckles. I guess he finally decided to fight back.

The thing about my soulmate was that he could handle much more pain than I could. I could already feel my vision fading as the knuckles on my left hand and then my shin started burning.

I knew I would wake up with more bruises than I had been conscious for, but now I had to go. I couldn't bear this pain inflicted on my body.

The last thought I had before my world faded out was that I was going to make sure that swift kick to the privates was enough to put him on the ground.

I woke up in one of the hospital beds in the nursing classrooms on campus. Typically if you were injured you would go to the hospital, but I was a special case. They knew I wouldn't die from my bruises and that there was nothing they could do to help, so they brought me here to rest. Most of my teachers were understanding about the situation, but it was getting hard to miss so many college classes and keep up.

I groaned in pain as I sat myself up in bed. Like I had predicted, more bruises were blooming on my skin than I had felt being created. I wasn't as banged up as some previous times, so I guess he had won this one. Collecting my bag, I threw my legs over the side of the bed and pushed myself to my feet. I had to be at work at the coffee shop in just under an hour, so I should get going while I could still make myself stand.

As much as I was annoyed with my soulmate I hoped he had someone that was helping him bandage his wounds. I knew it would be extremely hard for me to bandage all of mine when I got back to the apartment that I lived in alone. The college life was a lonely life for me.