Mirrored in Between

It truly was something to witness... the way the ice splintered under her feet. That deep aching crack that sprang out from her body to the edges of the lake. It was so blue beneath her that it was almost black; the water absorbed all the light the overcast sky had left to give.

She hovered in a space of in betweens, this was nothing new to her...the waiting for the desired or undesired outcome. It was like floating in air a second before you fell or you flew. She had stopped holding her breath decades ago. Through her youth she held her breath; around her family, around men, even around herself. She felt if she could keep it in it would buffer the outside world.

Which is nonsense, of course, there is no buffer for reality. She had known that as a child when she watched her favorite pet run into traffic and be overtaken by a tractor trailer. She had known it as a young woman when it amused her high school boyfriend to backhand her and kiss her wounds from his class ring in the same minute. She had known it as a woman who lost baby after baby in tidal waves of blood. There were no buffers for reality, at least none she could find.

So as she grew older she stopped holding her breath in between places in her body. The one between her third rib and her heart; where the air trapped like a bubble threatening to burst. It never really did burst through, but it did ache like death by a thousand cuts. She had watched old kung fu movies as she recuperated from her lost pregnancies; it fascinated her in these alternate worlds. She took to studying the Art of War, understanding mindset was ninety percent of every survival skill.

So she trained her mind, and her body to take beating after beating from her husband. To take the lost babies and the heartbreak. When he was at work she would follow the moves of the professional fighters on the television; making it a perfect science. She would lift large tomato cans then make his spaghetti and meatball supper heated to perfection.

His mandatory glass of wine poured half and watered, he never did notice his ego was far too big to allow for anything less than perfect. Except where she was concerned, he found flaws in many things about her. Her body was too thin or too thick around the middle where their children had lived. He would squeeze and comment on the stretch marks here and there. When friends or family would come over she would make sure to use her heaviest pancake makeup to cover his misdeeds; for what was makeup but armor.

As his drinking became more pronounced and his ego more shattered by every lost promotion, every failed child, every unpaid bill, or lost dream he would blame her. As so many did in her life before she bore the brunt of other peoples failures. She did so by holding her breath, shallowly around him making as little noise as possible. Yet still he noticed her,...

And she noticed him more and more seeing the truth of the coward he was in every instance. For who is someone who will not face themselves, but look to another for their troubles. He did not seem to notice however her muscles that had lengthened and elongated, her poised stance as she poured yet another glass.

All he saw was what he wanted to see, all anyone saw was what they wanted to see of her; and that was their worst mistake. She was the mirror, Alice in the looking glass in the upside down world. She was the red queen underneath the cracking ice waiting for her moment. The moment came one evening her husband became particularly violent. Slurring on about one problem or another, as he went to grab her she could see his intentions were to go farther than he ever had, his anger was up and this was war.

So she made it an art, as she had every moment of her life, letting out the scream of anguish she had been holding beneath that third rib next to her heart. For all the lost babies and lost moments to this man who could not even fathom the wonder in front of him. She screamed as a banshee would, drawing her hand back and aiming with two fingers directly for his heart. She had learned there is a point where if the heart is hit just right it will induce heart failure. As her husband had slept in his wine induced slumber many nights she tested it out on him over and over and over again. Until she was sure.

He went down like a demolished building. Hitting the floor so hard if he wasn't already dead he would have had brain injury. But she knew. the moment her fingers touched him in between place he was a goner. He did not have a buffer there as she had built up over years. As her neighbors came, after hearing the scream she explained he had collapsed; ruled as a heart attack no one knew the lethal weapon within their presence.

Everyone saw what they wanted to see from the looking glass. So she took her husband's pension and bought herself a quiet cottage near a lake she had seen in a magazine. Hid herself away for many years in a small town, not that she was afraid, more that she was seeking the quiet within her own mind. During the winter the depths of the lake would freeze solid and she would wander out to the middle and sit. Occasionally she would dig a hold and go swimming, the cold did wonders for reviving the body.

As she came to her later years she noticed again and again her mind would wander. She was not as sharp as she used to be, one day the doctor took her in and told her she had early onset Alzheimers. He would set up an appointment to have a caretaker come to her home; eventually she would be put with the other doddering fools until she fell off the mortal coil.

Early in the morning the following week she wandered out onto the ice; free of all human attachments, unclothed, with her graying hair whipping in the wind. She did not feel the ice on her feet for she had trained herself not to; she did not even feel the bite of cold. Knowing it was just before spring long thaw and the ice was not as sturdy as it once had been, she stood there at the center of it all.

Three taps was all it took... directly to the ice, directly to the heart, to the center beyond the place in between. She fell and took the breath she had been holding.