Four Paths with Bigfoot

Chapter 1 Everyone Knows We Never Do Date Night

Tears, thick and silent, would follow, she would squeeze her eyes, to halt them.

She would fail.

 Weeping is noise, weaponized to make him feel bad. 

Crying was visual complaining to him about him. Which he could not stand.

People complaining about him to him.

With the leopard print pillow perfectly placed. Nicey slips out of bed to begin her third favorite thing.

A bronze medal for the day.

 The gold medal was him away for work, the sliver when he went out on errands, and this; the Canadian gold medal (bronze), she is awake while he is not.

Today they are driving to the bush to spend the weekend with his famous friend.

An inventor who owns land and a small luxurious yet utilitarian cabin, deep in a forest.

 She had been there before, the look of the place matched the owner,  a mix of quaint things, flashy things, practical things,  modern things and boyish dream things. She was grateful he even let her enter  his secret location, this was really the only place that the sleeping man and she ever went together. Dates were not a thing.  Nicey going out with her friends was not really a thing either, it usually  caused conflict; she choose her events  carefully with this in mind.

Hoping that he was in a good mood, before informing him. 

Wondering ...

"Is this worth the headache?"

Worth the litany of cruel texts that would eventually rapid fire during her night out.

Whenever he had decided it was time to guilt her into returning.

Her fun would be ruined, anxiety would coarse through her sympathetic system, she would return defeated, a vicious verbal attack would be executed.

She did not cry much anymore, sometimes she would even verbally counter, but that would just escalate things. Now she rarely went out anywhere, with or without him. The invisible chains shortened.

Once in the bathroom, Nicey ponders whether she should close the door.

"Hmmm, well the door sometimes makes noise but peeing with an open door is also loud."

Morning debate.

She gently turns the doorknob as she ever so slightly closes the door. It makes a light metal scraping wood sound, due to the hanging rack that clings to the top of the door.

The best she can do. 

Really.

Nicey flips on the light and cringes.

She looks so haggard. After two bouts of sickness she has lost weight. According to the man on the bed, this is something to be proud of; weight loss achieved by near death, but Nicey just feels weak.

She has heard him boasting on the phone to any random person he knows, as if they would even care that his girlfriend  lost weight.

"Oh my God, she has lost like seventy pounds or something. She has an hour glass figure now."

Icky.

But she knows better than to say anything about it.

Sure, she was trying to lose some weight, naturally, not as a result of sickness.

Thinner, yes but with much dryer skin now. Her usually brown complexion was so much duller, ashen, even grey.

The upkeep of self had degraded significantly these years. So many grey hairs had sprouted on her curly kinky natural hair. Getting sick did not help either, she had become so dehydrated that her hair became brittle and felt like a rough piece of fabric. The curl pattern had mutated with some strands changing colors; burgundy hues, honey yellow shades, so many greys, even some near translucent hairs emerged.