There are too many damned women in my life. My Erinyes, my Eumenides. That’s what goes through my bleeding head as I track it into the apartment—on the switch when I fumbled for the light and smear crimson across the faceplate, the new velvet pile carpet, the stiff sheets that I’ve started to hate so much as I collapse into the cool, empty bed.
I’m laughing because it’s all so useless, and each breath lances, pries my sides with pain from cracked ribs. There’ll be an ugly bruise soon, a royal splash of angry violet and yellow up and down my abdomen when it starts to heal, only a little worse than the marks across my jaw. A half-empty bottle of Scotch waits for me on the nightstand by the bed—took it from the lounge this morning; must have known I would need it now, twelve hours later, though the thought hadn’t occurred to me at the time.
I bring the mouth of the bottle to my lips, upend it, cough on the burn as it courses down, alcohol over the raw wound of my throat. Swallow, choke, swallow again, and finally I have to stop, gagging and gasping as a lurch seizes my guts and I wonder if I’ll have to vomit.
Here I am again. Some things never change.
Easy enough to fix the pain, the bruises, the abused hairline fractures running down my marred bones. But where’s the point? I’m finite, I hurt, and there’s grand pleasure in self restriction. Seeing if you can play a game with one hand tied behind your back. Because to Danny and I, this is just game, even if we play in deadly earnest. The stakes haven’t risen yet, not a live-or-die ante.
When they do, the rules change. Either way, I win. And my Furies will help me do it.
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