text: C/W: domestic abuse Another morning that she woke up from a nightmare. This has become a well-known ritual three weeks ago. She struggles to recall the last time she had a peaceful sleep without it being interrupted by someone she dearly loves dying. He is still asleep, waking him up to ask to calm her down would cause no good. He would get angry again, as if it was her fault that she is crying every time she wakes up. She reached for the tissue that usually are on the bedside table. ‘They are not there this time, where did he put them, but most importantly why? How am I supposed to clean up before he wakes up? Did he plan this, so he can hit me?’ a usual strain thought crossed her mind, while she rubbed her forearm with an old bruise from his grab on it. When you are in an abusive relationship for a long time, you start to suspect the worst even in the most innocent actions. Assuming it is just thoughts that she got used to overtime under manipulative actions, but it doesn’t answer the question, where the tissues went. An unordinary thought ran across her mind, ‘Should I leave him?’ but it was stopped as immediately as it appeared. Was it the first time she considered leaving him? No, she kept this option in the back of her head for a few months now, but she never acted on it. Clear thinking was shut down by her mind every time it came to putting an end to this relationship. She was scared of being left alone, like most people in similar situations do. However, this one seems to stand out. They never had a conversation about ending the relationship, she never brought it up, and he never tried to stop her. The only thing that continued to prevent her from having this conversation is her own bruised thinking. She laid on the bed and proceeded to look at the ceiling to let tears flow back into her eyes. She noticed a spot that wasn’t there previously, that kept her occupied for a certain amount of time before that annoying thought crossed her mind again. She shook his arm. A loud slap on her cheek deafened her for a second or two. ‘What do you think you are doing?!’ he yelled at her hardly awake but already very angry. ‘Where did you out the tissues?’ holding in the tears from the slap, she replied. ‘What in the actual hell are talking about, huh? What tissues?’ he answered as if he didn’t understand what she was talking about. With this response his voice sounded more awake than last time. ‘The tissues that were on the bedside table, so I could wipe my tears after waking up from nightmares,’ now more calmly she responded. She tried to stay in line and not have a go at him, she knew it would end much worse than just a slap. ‘Do you understand what nonsense you are talking right now? There were no tissues on ‘the bedside table,’ he showed quotation marks with his hands and made the nastiest giggle possible. ‘Yes, there were,’ now with a strength in her tone she replied, ‘I put them there, so I am asking where you put them.’ ‘I did not put them anywhere, what don’t you understand from my speech?’ he rose his voice and started saying the words slowly, mocking her, ‘I d-i-d n-o-t p-u-t y-o-u-r t-i-s-s-u-e-s a-n-y-w-h-e-r-e.’ ‘I want to break up,’ she said not expecting herself to say that. ‘You want what?’ he began yelling. ‘To break up,’ almost silently she pronounced. ‘Okay, aright, if this is truly what you want, go ahead. Just don’t cry about me when I kill myself.’ The manipulation, that he attempted to make, was done so many times before and portrayed in so many scenarios in countless amount of literature pieces and films. She could not have reacted better, ‘Fine,’ she attempted to leave the bed. Absolutely shocked, he grabbed her by her hand and started crying, ‘After all this time, you have nothing better to say?! You never loved me; you are a horrible person!’ While her mind was bright enough to act and not look back, she silently stood up and got dressed. He kept on screaming about committing suicide and about how ungrateful she is for leaving after everything that he has done to her. He truly considered himself to be a good partner, even after screaming at her to the point of losing his voice, even after beating her to the point of her fainting, even after all the lies and avoidance of confrontation. This caused him to shout and beg, after a while, he fell onto his knees and grabbed her arm while looking at her from beneath, ‘Please don’t go, we were so good together. ‘We really were not, good-‘ ‘No,’ he pulled her arm with more force, ‘Stay!’ he commanded. ‘I will no longer stay with you, you hurt me, you abused my trust in you and in people in general!’ she was on the verge of crying. ‘Okay, go,’ he let go of her arm. She turned around and walked out the bedroom door, put on her trainers and pulled the doorknob of the front door. She glanced at him for the last time in her life as she hoped, ‘Goodbye.’ She closed the door behind her and walked towards the stairs, it would have been easier if he started chasing her. Looking back with every step down, she reached the ground floor. There it was freedom, or so she thought. She left through the main entrance door and looked outside: the leaves on the trees never seemed greener, the sky was never a blue as at this exact moment. She made five steps into a new single life when she heard a scream, ‘You really thought I’d let you leave like this?’ A whistle cut the air and the toaster fell right onto her head, killing her instantly. The passer-by woman, who was walking a dog, stood completely shocked after witnessing such horror. After a few seconds, she made a disturbingly disgusting noise that is hard to be imagined to be made by a human being. The woman was dead, lying on the pavement in the pool of her own blood. She was murdered almost not painfully and with almost a free heart. She escaped him and his influence, but he still did not let her experience happiness and live a life if it wasn’t with him.