Love and Attraction

Chapter 4

Chapter 4:

I stand in the bathroom, in front of the small, old falper shape mirror. It's white prominent frame rusted and no longer reflecting its natural or artificial light, it's colour no longer shinning luminous like it did when the house was modern and newly built.

My left check had a pretty nasty purple bruise just a half centimetre under my eye. Gladly, it may be possible to cover with a thick amount of makeup, but I wasn't sure about my split bottom lip. It was puffy and swollen, looking fat and red, making me feel uglier than I already felt.

My lips began to tremble horrendously and tears began to well up in my hazzle eyes, with dull green flecks scattered around my black pupils, threatening to spill over my olive tanned skin and onto the creamy alabaster basin.

My hands are quivering, shaking as I grab the hem of my shirt and lift it up gently. I turn slightly so the mirror is reflecting my left hip, feeling like crying when I see what is spread up from the bottom of my waiste and half way up my hip.

A huge, purple, almost-black bruise with red blemishes the colour of blood underneath the skin are embodied over it. I touch my fingers to it and feel the softness of it, the skin feeling tender and vulnerable.

Pressing on it was a stupid mistake as a sharp pain shot up my side and through my spine, spreading through-out my body as if an end of an incisive blade were poked in all areas of my body.

I winced and whimpered like a dog thats leg had been stood on. The intense pain I felt is not new to me, as I have had many worse injuries than a humongous bruise on my hip.

Looking down, I frown when seeing Richards fingers imprinted on my upper left arm and my right wrist from his tight, rigorous grip on them. They were an angry, dark looking purple, encircled with a green sickening semblance ringed around them.

I hate him. I hate Richard. He is cruel, barbarous, brutal, fell, roughshod, savage, bestial...I could continue this all day. He is a soulless creature, with no heart, no feelings, the demon inside him has possessed his body, stolen his soul and he is never to return again. I'm sure, to Anna, he is the devil incarnate. Evil and twisted, mean and ferocious. Anna calls him a big bully and sticks her tongue at him when his back is turned. I can never help myself but to laugh.

A soft knock sounds at the bathroom door and I jump with a start. Pain shot through me again and I lean over the basin, feeling as if I need to hurl (vomit), feeling an awful sickness in the pit of my stomach. It must be bruised there some too.

The soft knocking sounds at the bathroom door again. So, thinking its Anna by the soft taping, I quickly compose myself, making sure to try my best to stand straight and hide my pain, hatred and anger and sadness deep inside and away from any parts of my features.

"Yes? Come in Anna. Sweety, what are you doing up? You should be resting. We-" I stopped mid-sentence.

Instead of standing and looking down into those beautiful golden flecked, chocolate-brown eyes, I was looking into eyes so freakishly similar to mine. Hazel with bits of green around the pupil, although they are more dull and lifeless than mine.

These eyes belonged to my mother.

Surprise and anger both fill my conscience, and maybe even a little...hope, I must admit, is still there. "What do you want?" I say, trying to sound fierce but my voice cracked.

Her eyes lock with mine and I can't help but to remember the childhood I'd had with my mother and my father...

**FLASH BACK**

I ran as fast as my little legs could run when I saw daddy's car park in the driveway, him getting out of the car with his suitcase at tow in his black and white suit. He was wearing the toy story tie that I had demmanded him to wear, and he did.