Main Character Vibes

Calm the F down

...Ushering in Elias's new dawn, Tilly finally walked in, clanging the door shut behind her...something was different about her. Drastically different.

"Hi," she said coldly upon seeing Elias on the couch.

"Hi," Elias said as he turned to make eye contact with her.

She was carrying herself in an unusually reserved manner. There was some intangible coldness about her countenance. The fact that she did not begin her greeting with a chirpy smile and did not end it with a term of endearment immediately threw Elias off guard. He was discombobulated for a moment as his mind sent out a search squad to find the missing "babe" that was supposed to be attached to the end of Tilly's sentence.

This very minor, yet very sudden, change of tide in Tilly's demeanor sent Elias on a spiral. 'Did she already know about me wanting to break up with her?' 'No-one other than Francis and Wayne knew about me wanting to break up with her.' 'Did Francis tell her?' 'Did Wayne?'

But her mood had nothing to do with Elias she was burnt out from work. Tilly silently made her way to the bedroom without saying a single word to Elias.

Noticing the duffle bag with the corner of her eye. "What's this?"

Lowering his eyes, the pace of his foot tapping increased. "Tilly, we need to talk. Can you come sit down, please?" He patted the empty spot on the sofa next to him.

Tilly stomped into the bedroom for a second before she came out again, her face altogether livid and grimacing. "Are you fucking breaking up with me?"

"I..."

"Do you want to tell me where the fuck you were last night!?" Did you even see Wayne?

Elias' was fretful about the fact that it was clearly going to be the worst-case scenario of all the break-up scenarios he had workshopped earlier. But although he was fretful, to his surprise, there was some relief in her finding out this way. He was relieved that it was going to be easier to break up with her.

"Calm down, Tilly..."

"Don't fucking tell me to calm down."

"Of course, I saw Wayne, this has nothing to do with it, I've been thinking about it for a while..." Elias panted for breath.

The brashness of what he had just said left Tilly stunned silent. His seeming coolness and blatant disregard towards how she was feeling suddenly resurged all of her subliminal insecurity that her abandoning father had scarred deep in her psyche.

The pain, betrayal, and hurt she felt were slowly metastasizing into poisonous anger that was circulating in her body and becoming more prevalent than blood. Words suddenly seemed impotent. They were failing her. They were unable to convey the emotions that she wanted them to carry. Nothing so important was ever so poorly articulated. But then again, such is love. And it took a lot of love to hate him the way she did.

"Oh yah?! for a while? where was this yesterday?!"

"Tilly, I'm just not happy!"

"Oh, you think I'm happy?!"

"Then why are we together!" She had never not been in a relationship. She had never been dumped. Not being happy with Elias was more comfortable than being on her own.

"You, asshole!" Tilly wailed as she began punching and crowding him as he sat on the couch.

Elias shielded his head from her bombarding fists as he slowly shoved her aside. His panic was now taking hold. He rushed to the bathroom and rummaged in the mirror medicine cabinet with nervous hands. He was searching for his prescription pill bottle before he stopped and remembered that he had flushed them down the toilet.

Tilly followed him into the bathroom in a frenzy, crying hysterically as she pounded his chest with her angry fists.

"Three years! and you already have a duffle bag ready! you're just going to leave!" Tilly cried out as she continued to kick, scream, and punch.

"Tilly...you need to stop..." Elias was panting and intermittently gasping for air. His mouth was parched dry and his tongue could not muster any saliva to swallow. It was as if he was choking on sandpaper. He shoved Tilly aside to make his way to the kitchen. This time a little harder. Her body crashed into the bathroom door and she bumped her head slightly as it ricocheted.

He flung open the tap of the kitchen sink with the back of his restless hand, almost dislocating it from its place. As he hunched over the stream of water, he inadvertently knocked over a few plates that fell like coins on the floor, the kitchen knife holder that fell to its side releasing all of its contents out of their pockets, and some dirty glasses that tipped and rolled over to shatter on the floor. He began pouring cold water onto his face

Tilly was in the bathroom, reeling from the shock of having been shoved for the very first time in her life. Although they had fought before, Elias had never laid a hand on her. It exacerbated her fury and only fanned the flames of the medley of emotions that gripped her.

"You fucking hit me!" Tilly yelled out as she came out of the bathroom.

"Tilly, not now..." Elias panted out through a quivering heart as he struggled to take a breath. But his imploration fell on deaf ears. Tilly approached him, still kicking and punching him.

Elias's panic kept intensifying until he could not bear it any longer. And in a disastrous moment of explosive undoing...

"Stop it!" Elias roared out blindly as he swiftly and impetuously turned around, scraping Tilly's neck, as he did so, with something clenched tightly in his anxious fist.

Blood spattered onto the refrigerator door. Elias slowly looked down as the apex of his panting was slowly subsiding. To his shock, he saw that he held a blood-soaked knife, which he immediately let go of in a panic. He looked at Tilly and was immediately paralyzed with disbelief.

Tilly was cradling the front of her neck with hands that were quickly being submerged in darkly oxidizing blood. Her face was spasming in panic, gulping for the air that was too wet to breathe. She looked on at Elias with sad eyes swelling with tears and the existential fear for life.

Elias was unable to move a single muscle.

Tilly kept gulping and choking on her own blood as she slowly reversed away from the kitchen counter, away from Elias. As she did so, she suddenly fell sharply on the floor, tripping over the duffle bag that Elias had hidden away.

Tilly collapsed on the floor over an ever-expanding pool of her own blood. She kept choking and gasping for air...she looked terrified...her hands were trembling and her arms were reaching out...seeking for something that was not there...until her jittery blinking stopped altogether and fixed on Elias...the spark of life in her pupils began sputtering weakly...in a flash of a moment, her sad unblinking eyes rolled back... and there was only silence. The Office still playing on the TV in the background.