Into The Echo

Stormy Days

Athena drove to Kimberley's place, finding her still in the corner, shaking from shock. Bundling her friend up, Athena took Kimberley back to her own home that night and held her friend while Kimberley told her sorry tale.

The next day Dan had appeared, after bombarding Kim with multiple phone calls to talk to her, wanting to know where she was. Eventually, she crumbled under the onslaught and told Dan where she was. It wasn't long before he showed up at the door, full of remorse. He begged Kim to return home with him and promised that he would never hit her again. Kimberley had agreed but told him that if there ever was another time, it would be the last.

For the next few weeks, things went back to normal, but the worst was yet to come.

The first instance came when Kimberley was at the store buying groceries and was forced to return the items when she found that her grocery allowance was missing and she only had enough smaller notes and change for a few basic items. When she got home, Dan yelled at her for being so stupid as to have spent all the money he gave her. When she argued that she hadn't spent it, he grabbed her by the hair and forced her into the kitchen to cook his dinner. He reduced her food allowance after that and forced her to beg or worse, suck him off for more money.

Then, when Kim was gathering the laundry to do one Saturday, she found a small square of tinfoil in Dan's work clothes. She looked at it curiously but slipped it into her own pocket, needing to get the laundry started before he got home from the gym, expecting lunch to be on the table.

He came home, earlier than Kim was expecting and went straight into their bedroom, rifling around for his pants.

"Where are my pants, Kimberley?!" he yelled.

"They're in the wash," she explained, only to have him backhand her across the face.

"What the fuck did you do that for?" he yelled, pushing past her roughly and sprinted for the washer, yanking the lid open and pulling out his sodden trousers. "Fuck!" he yelled and fished into the wet pockets. "C'mon...c'mon...where is it?"

He stalked back to her after being unable to locate the item and yanked her to her feet. "Where is it?"

"What? What are you looking for?" she cried, holding her face.

"There was a package in my pocket," he spat out. "Where is it?"

"No package, Danny," she snivelled, reaching into her pocket, "only this." She held the square of tinfoil in her trembling hand.

Dan snatched it away and left the apartment as quickly as he'd arrived. She didn't see him for the rest of the weekend and when someone asked her about her swollen face at work that week, she brushed it off with an excuse about her own clumsiness and running into the door frame while carrying something large enough that she couldn't see.

There were times when Dan was normal and loving, showering Kimberley with gifts and praise, making love to her every night. But they were becoming fewer and far more infrequent as his descent into drugs became even more evident.

She started feeling ill in the mornings soon after, only just racing to the bathroom in time to throw up into the toilet bowl. She brushed it off as just the stomach flu and thought nothing about it until Kim realised that she had skipped her period for two months.

After taking a pregnancy test, Kim excitedly broke the news to Dan that night, thinking that a baby would make things right again, only for him to accuse Kimberley of having an affair and demanding to know who the father was. He shook her until her teeth rattled and dragged her through the apartment to the bedroom. He pulled her clothes from the hangers and threw them at her, dumping all the contents of her drawers onto the bed.