Thursday, February 10, 2011

Another Writing Prompt

Prompt: Take the first line of your favorite song and write a story using it as the first line.

Picture perfect memories are scattered all around the floor. The love I once felt is hanging out the window, attached to the end table by a noose of broken dreams. Now all I am left with are tear soaked tissues crumpled into little balls in the garbage can. When it finally came down to it, those tissues were all our four year relationship was worth. To me, at least. To him, I think I was nothing.

When we began, it was beautiful. He was the perfect boyfriend. We made plans, oh, how we made plans. Trips, children, homes, and he promised me everything. Once, he said I could have the moon, as soon as he made enough to afford it. He even bought me flowers on days when I didn’t expect them. And for Valentine’s day that first year, he sent me three dozen red roses. The other girls at the office were jealous, and I felt like I was on top of the world.

A year and a half in, the spark was snuffed out. But I couldn’t let go. Even after the first time he hit me. He’d come home late on the night we had plans, and I asked him what he was doing and why he didn’t call. He didn’t say anything, but he looked at me with those deep brown eyes, so full of a hatred I hadn’t known existed. Where had that hate come from? When I opened my mouth to speak again, the blow came. Right across my cheek. Hard. My head snapped to the side and I felt the blood rush into the place where his hand left a mark. I was too stunned to move, too stunned to say anything. He pushed me to the side and went into the bathroom and locked the door. I slept on the couch that night.

Throughout the next two years, there were little patches of sun that came through the cloudy day of our relationship. Those little patches continued to give me hope that we’d be okay. When things were good, they were really just okay. He never looked at me again the way he did when we first began dating. But we were able to sleep in the same bed and have normal conversations.

The bottom broke when I caught him in our bed with another woman. They just laughed at me, and I was humiliated. Neither of them felt any remorse about hurting me and destroying my relationship. When I voiced this, the girl laughed and in this awful, gratingly female voice, said, “Honey, you destroyed your own relationship. I just picked up the pieces.”

I ran away from the apartment in tears and found a hotel room. For a couple of days, I cried my out until there were none left in my whole body. Finally, the tears stopped and I laid on that bed feeling empty and numb. Then came the knock on the door. When I opened the door to see him standing on the other side, my stomach did a little lurch, anticipating what was going to happen. He stepped around me in the room and shook his head at the evidence of my grief. When I closed the door he turned to me and pulled the slender piece of death out of his coat.

“You don’t need to be here anymore,” he said, and fired. When he left the room, he stepped over my body and left the door open. My body lays broken on the ground, bleeding. His final moment with me was to take away the life he’d already shredded. And now I’m left with nothing but these memories.


The song of course is "Need You Now" by Lady Antebellum.