Night on Thursday, 2006

This short story was a winner in Creating Reality's 2006 Flash Fiction competition, and was shortlisted in
Fish Publishing's 2006 One Page Short Story competition.

I'm up late, patching the hole he’s punched in the wall.

I scoop spackle out of the can, and watch it run like slow honey over the ragged gash. He’s taller than I, and his fist hit the wall where my head would have been, if I’d been standing in the right place. Only the red paint is scarred, but I hurt all the same.

He’s watching me. I say nothing. Our nightly dance, resumed.

There’s a shard of glass clinging under my toe. Wreckage. I should reach down, work it free. But I don’t. Pain blossoms like a bright flower under my skin, spreading up my calf until my whole leg is thrumming with it.

In the morning, I will show him the slice in my toe, and tell him it was his fault.

Every man has two faces, and his is as dark as night’s doorstep, dark as the mutters that follow him home from the bars. Now, he seethes, eyes red like torn skin. But tomorrow he’ll wake to sunlight on broken glass and spackle, wearing the face I love, and beg me to forgive him.

I step to the side. There’s more glass, more pain. More little slices of revenge.

He leaves me with a curse, and topples a chair on his way out of the kitchen. I do not flinch, this time. I only force my face into a mask of perfect serenity and grind my toes into the floor.

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