Craig Atchley was a great guy. Well, his representative was. You know, the persona he puts on daily for the public he deals with; the person people meet at parties, on the job, when he goes to buy a car. That guy. The longer you know him, the more comfortable he gets with you, the more you start to see his true colors, and it's not a pretty sight. Too bad his wife Lyviah didn't know that sooner,or things might be different than they are right now. Breathing is getting hard for her because she's pinned against the fridge with a forearm across her throat, her bottom lip swollen and bleeding just like her stinging nose. His other hand is pulling hard at a large chunk of her dark ringlets of hair as he sprays spit into her face with every other profanity he barks at her. He isn't drunk, he isn't even really mad this time. This afternoon, he's just making sure she understands the instructions he's giving her on how to conduct herself at his client's dinner party coming up on Saturday.
"You pull that shit again, getting so hammered you can't even talk, and I swear to fuckin' Christ, Lyv, I'll haul you outside, take my belt off, and stripe your back like a goddamned child! Don't you dare embarrass me again! You hear me, you miserable twat?"
Lyviah nods as best she can in his iron grip, almost managing to whisper ananswer to the positive, when she notices her heart rate rising,pounding against her breastplate with a desperate pleading for relief. Her reddened eyes being to well up and throb with a dull ache, and she notices how much her teeth have started to hurt. This was light compared to what she got when he was angry about something,but still, she had to try and calm him down somehow. Slowly she slipped her fingers into the back of the waistband of her pants,fishing for...
Damn it! There...!
She eased it out into the open, gripping it tightly, making sure Craig saw it. To him, it was just a crooked stick with weird designs burned into it, part of her mindless obsession with the occult. Lyviah,however, knew exactly what it was: her mother's casting wand, and she found herself in need of it once again. She held it against her blasting heartbeat, held it out between herself and her assailant then closed her red-rimmed eyes and began to sob, "Lupus ad somnum...back, beast, back...lupus ad somnum...back, beast, back."
Her voice steadied as she repeated it, his grip on her throat relaxing when he finally noticed she had the wand out, same as always. For some reason, this always made him let up his assault. Not because he thought it or Lyviah possessed any magic power; no, just the sheer stupidity and pathetic futility of it amused and admittedly empowered him, seeing this pitiful display, his frail wife trying to use something as ridiculous as witchcraft to stop him.
Not only did it strike him as funny and idiotic, but it fueled his raging ego to hear her call him 'beast'. It made him feel powerful and (a very twisted kind of) masculine to be referred to as a wolf, an animal that obviously terrified her, and was part of the reason he enjoyed roughing her up over nothing. With a final shove against her chest,he smirked at her and strode off down the hall and into his den,slamming the door behind him. Lyviah sank to her knees, crying quietly with her face in her hands as the wand dropped to the floor.The Craig she met two years ago was long gone, and he was never coming back.
8:53pm,the dinner party is in full swing, and Lyviah is stone drunk, just like she promised she wouldn't be. She couldn't help it, though. All the other wives huddled around her, talking about how great their lives and husbands are, asking her all kinds of questions about the Craig they know, about their wonderful life together, blah blah blah...and every time she ends up drowning all the voices in margaritas and Xanax. She had no idea why Craig had a problem with it; she was so much better at lying about their relationship and about his being a first-class asshole when she was beyond her limits,and tonight her buzz was on point. Not only that, but it helped dull the constant tension she felt around him. The last thing she was stressing about tonight was the psychotic mess she laughingly referred to as their marriage.
