Contaminated Pain

Originally Written 5/23/2020

“Contaminated Pain I”

When Rosie was a young girl, young enough to play with dolls and make small talk with her teddy bears, she often heard voices screaming behind her closed door. The roaring tide of what seemed like a hundred people all raising their voices at once into a chorus of soundless static that permeated around her. Sometimes things would roar behind that door and dear little Rosie would stare at it with soft locks trembling into her overly large eyes and wonder just what was happening behind it. Sometimes things would thump hard against the wall, making the whole structure shake. Rosie would hunker down and close her eyes, hard, under her blanket and pretend that a dinosaur was stomping outside her room and she had to be absolutely still in the darkness, with only her Minnie Mouse night-light to guide the way to morning. Sometimes the sounds of glass shattering or doors slamming would make their way in. Mommy would scream out and cry and Rosie would shake in her bed from head to toe. Her heart pummeling in her chest like a jackhammer and sweat rising on her brow. Even if she managed to sleep, her dreams would wake her with the terror of giant, jagged shards of screaming glass chasing her down endless hallways while she listened to her mother scream in the distance for someone to help. But even when Rosie woke and the terrors behind her door were still raging, no one ever came to help. Until one day, Rosie heard her mother’s screams stop, abruptly.

“Contaminated Pain II”

Danny was not a strong person. He had struggled with it his entire life. Often made the doormat of any person he came across, he did not have a strong enough presence to keep people from doing so no matter how he tried. He met Rosie when they were both around twenty-six, enough into their lives that they were realized people and Rosie had realized herself in a grander way than Danny ever would. While he loved her fiery passion, he feared her aggressive demeanor. Through the years they did fall in love, but Rosie’s love came with a price. It finally came to a head while she was pregnant with their first child. Danny had made the mistake of leaving dishes in the sink, and Rosie did not find it cute or amusing in the slightest.

“You think I’m nothing but a fucking incubator for your spawn and a maid don’t you, you goddamn, selfish pig!” Rosie screamed like a banshee with a voice not unlike her father’s, though she would never admit it.

Danny would go white, knowing she was in one of her rages, and hang his head. He stuttered out in a weak and wary voice “I did… I didn’t… I’m sorry Rose… Please just calm d-” 

“Shut the fuck up, you’re garbage you know that? Pure garbage.” She roared like a lion, her face red and her hands at her sides, balled into fists and ready to strike like vipers in the sand. Suddenly those fists did strike. She screamed and launched herself at him, throwing blow after blow into his face, back, and arms. Danny did not defend himself and let out weak noises as he was beaten. But “for the baby”, he said to himself, for the baby he would endure this and then he would leave.

“Contaminated Pain III”

The noises in the hall sounded like hell was on the other side of the door and in the middle of the carnage was Charlotte’s mother, who had never found empathy. Charlotte had lived with the fighting between her parents, Danny and Rosie, since before she could remember. Her first memory was that of holding a pillow over her head to avoid the harsh yowling of her mother. Fifteen years of screaming, of stepping over broken shards of glass in the hallway to patch up her father, who was often at the kitchen table with a new wound or blood sprouting from his head. Danny would often turn to Charlotte and say in a soft voice, smiling through the pain of a new bruise, welt, or impending scar;

“We’ll get away one day baby girl. I won’t ever let her touch you.” He promised.

But one night, it was finally too much for Charlotte. A resolve took over her as she heard her father’s face be pummeled against her bedroom wall. She closed her eyes at the thump and thought of another ER visit, with another bad excuse. She stood up from her bed with a rigid look on her face, slipping on her sandals and making her way into the hall. She marched resolutely toward the safe in the back, while war waged, yet again, in her parent’s room. In the safe was a Glock and she picked it up without so much as a pause in hesitation. Her steps were aggressive, direct as she marched down the hallway and pushed open the door. Her father was on the floor and her mother was kicking him repeatedly. Charlotte leveled her gaze and before Rosie could so much as make a noise of surprise, she pulled the trigger. Her mother’s body fell to the ground with a thump. The father and daughter looked at each other through the carnage and could do nothing but sigh in relief, heaving breaths they seemed to have held for years. It was over. The sense of a weight being lifted was thick as the beast that had terrorized them fell. With one shot, Charlotte ended the chain of violence with her.