Chapter 1: The Last Straw

Chapter 1: The Last Straw

Clarissa Herrington

Blood pooled from my stomach. I gasped, trying desperately not to touch the shining blade in my stomach while wanting nothing more than to tear it out. My skin throbbed, burned like fire, while my vision blurred.

This couldn't be happening. Not really. No, this is all just a terrible nightmare.

"God damn it, Clarissa! Look what the fuck you made me do..." Chris cursed at me, pacing the kitchen floor. I tried to follow him with my eyes, but his single large figure became two, then one again. I closed my eyes.

"Fuck! What am I supposed to do?" There was a crash of something hitting the floor. Probably a plate left on the table from dinner. I made pasta.

I cracked an eye open as far as I could, hardly seeing my phone on the ground next to me. The thin device felt heavy in my hand when I grabbed it, and I felt the screen shatter from its fall.

I clicked the power button. "Five times,” I told myself, but I lost count after the second or third when my eyes drifted closed again. I could hear Chris's feet tromping through the kitchen, some glass shattering and plastic bouncing from the floor.

The phone rang. I couldn't hear it well, but there was a mumble of a woman's voice on the other end.

"Stabbed-" I choked out, feeling warm liquid slide from my mouth, down my cheek.

"He stabbed me," I managed to say. The woman on the other end spoke, but I couldn't tell what she said. I didn't care. I tried my best. If I was destined to die right here in a kitchen of a shitty rental apartment in Los Angeles, California, then so be it.

"What is that?" Chris's voice made my skin tighten, and my heart begin to hammer viciously in my chest. He didn't speak again before stomping towards me and bringing the heel of his boot down on my phone that I clutched inside my palm.

There was cracking, and I couldn't tell if it was from the phone or my fingers. They had gone numb several seconds ago.

His long, bony fingers laced into the collar of my shirt, hovering his face above mine. There was a vein bulging beneath his right eye. It always happened when I pissed him off.

"You will not ruin my life more than you already have." It was the last words I heard him say before he drew back his arm, took hold of the flower vase on the table, and shattered it on the side of my face. He was the last thing I remembered

d before waking up in this God-forsaken hospital bed.

"Are you sure you don't want to talk to the police again?" The nurse says, writing something on the clipboard while checking her watch. She's not much older than me, seeming to be around her mid-twenties, but she had the drooping eyes of a ninety-year-old woman who has worked her whole life.

"Yeah, I'll be fine. He hasn't shown his face here, so I don't think he'll be looking me up anytime soon," I tell her with a soft smile. She doesn't see it because she is too busy with whatever is on the clipboard, but she doesn't argue my reasoning either.

"Well, if you do have problems with Andy again, please call them. That's what they're there for." Oh, yeah, I almost forgot that I told the hospital the man who stabbed me was named Andy. I didn't really want to ruin Chris's life. Besides, I was the one who started the fight that ended with a knife in my stomach. A smarter woman would have just let him talk down on them.

I guess I'm not very smart. 

I took the paper from her hand when she showed it to me, signed the bottom release section, and situated my purse on my shoulder. A new purse, that is. Bought from the very convenient miniature store the hospital has. Of course, there is nothing inside it but the credit card I had inside my jeans pocket a month ago. Those jeans couldn't be salvaged, though, with the amount of blood that stained them. The purse also rattled every time I moved it, with anti-inflammatory medicine and some sort of sedative that has helped with the nightmares.

Being stabbed by someone you thought you were going to marry is evidently pretty traumatic. That's what the psychiatrist said, that is.

The moment my nose hits the warm California air, I sneeze, then groan at the pain in my stomach. Six inches of stitches stretch across my lower abdomen, and each step feels like they are being torn apart.

It took me twelve blocks and thirty-five minutes of very slow walking to reach Los Angeles Airport. After waiting in line for almost an hour, taking two hours to get through TSA, which I found odd considering I had nothing on me or with me, I finally made it to Seattle. Why Seattle? It's cold. Not right now, because it's still summertime, but it will get cold, and rainy, and grey. I crave that.

Chris never liked it, and it's the last place he'd ever come looking for me. I'd be lying to myself if I said the decision was made because I wanted it that way. It was a logical, strategically thought-out location to avoid ever seeing him again.

I check the digital screen as soon as I disembark the plane. 11:23 pm. Other passengers push past me while I force my way forward through the airport, hoping to find a hotel room soon.

A very large, solid shoulder jams into me, sending me stumbling to the side with a small cry of pain. My hand instantly covering my stitches.

"Sorry," the man mumbled without stopping. I watched as he approached another, similarly solid-looking man, wrapping his arms around him in a tight embrace. Normally, I wouldn't have cared to see the sentimentality in the airport, but this time was different, because the man he embraced was not at all accepting of his hug. Instead, his piercing black eyes were focused directly on me.