• The incessant dripping began to tear through her fragile nerves, one delicate plop at a time. Drip...drip...drip.....drip
    "Goddammit shut up- shut up- Shut up!" placing a hand underneath the table and pushing, she flipped it and kicked at the underside, skinning her shin with a sharp, cutting pain. He remained silent. drip...drip...drip. Crimson blood clung to her hands, her hair, her clothes, its metallic smell raking her nostrils. Her treacherous eyes wandered, landing on his face, then sliding to the ragged, gaping hole in his chest. A wavering smile flickered over her features, the hangman's horror still clinging to her mind, she began to wash her hands, the blood slipping off in venomous tendrils, hissing with reluctance,
    "Blood will out..." she murmured, "Blood will out..." in a dreamlike state she looked around the kitchen remembering the times he had beaten her, the times she had sat it the corner gasping for air while he loomed over her, the time she had pissed herself from fear, the slicing pains, the knife, the iron. So many times, paralyzed with fear, now he was frozen in time; pinned to the counter top, drip, drip dipping onto the floor bit by bit. A sickly excitement filled her stomach, bloating it and making it heavy.

    In her mind she thought it over; he came after me, I had to defend myself...No manslaughter. I just came in and he was here...too suspicious. Then what? Runaway? yes! A grin split her face: freight train it, fly, run. Just leave. Glancing down at her hands she noticed the blood again, but now her wedding ring was clean, shining just as brightly as when he had first given her it. He had been good to her once, hadn't he? A memory, vivid and bright flashed across her minds eye; he lifted her from the ground, swinging her round faster and faster until she felt she would be sick, then put her down gently as a newborn babe...the newborn that would be theirs within a year... the sadness in his eyes when they were told that their child could be disabled. How he had held. Then how things had turned sour when their son was born mentally and physically disabled. Living only four hours. Glen had blamed her, blamed himself. First came despair, then alcohol, then unemployment...then the beatings.

    A sharp pain brought her to her senses, a ragged hole was appearing on the back of her hand. But the blood was still there, the wire scrubber wasn't taking it off. The dripping was ever present; God would it end? How much blood could one body hold. The answer was cold and quick: Enough to drown you in. Enough to stain you for life.