How Sweet The Sound...

I was feeling...dark.

He blackened her eye and broke her jaw, now he's gone out to the bar for another drink.

The children cried for at least an hour as she held them close, before drifting away to sleep.

 

She watches them now, in their restless slumber, and the pain of a broken bone shoots up her face.

She winces in pain, and heads towards the kitchen for a cup of cold coffee and a valium.

 

It is then that the littlest one whimpers, and crawls out of bed, following behind her.

"Don't let daddy hurt me." he says. "Please. Don't let him hit me again."

 

She picks him up and bites her lower lip to keep from sobbing herself.

"I won't, baby. I didn't tonight, did I?"

 

He shakes his head and sniffles, and touches the shadow under her eye where his father's fist made contact.

"No. But he hurt you."

 

More than once the drunken b*****d's hands had sent them rushing to the hospital with broken arms and bruised ribs.

More than once, they'd lied to the nurses, though the nurses knew damn well.

 

After putting him to bed once more, she decides coffee and valium won't be enough to cure the headache,

and she reaches for the Scotch in the cabinet down the hall.

 

She wakes the children at 4 AM, and gives them each a cup and a pill.

"Take it now," she says. "Just swallow it. It'll help you feel better."

 

"But mommy, nothing hurts." Says the reflection of her, years and years younger, years more naiive.

"Take it, girl." she whispers, places the pill on her daughter's tongue, and tilts the cup back.

 

The little boy follows suit, eager to please his mother.

Then, they both lay down, and drift to sleep.

 

She sits in a chair by the beds, and watches their chests rise and fall, rise and fall...

After a while, she sees movement: little hands grasp the sheets, little mouths open wide, gasping for breath.

 

Small whimpers issue from the dying children,

sweat forms on their brows, and they tremble.

 

It is a full thirty minutes before they are still, and their lips turn blue, golden curls laying on their pillows like glistening halos in the light of the hall.

 

When she can bare it no longer, she screams in anguish, tearing through her own golden locks with her hands, sobbing until she falls from the chair and onto the floor.

 

He will never hurt her babies again. Never.

 

Sometime between then and dawn, she manages to make her way to the gun cabinet upstairs, lay with her babies in bed, and place the pistol in her mouth.

 

Across the room, the reverberation from the shot causes an open music-box to play a small segment of

 "Amazing Grace".

 

Eerily, the ballerina dances, the only witness to a mother's last ditch effort for peace...

Author's Note

Constructive criticism welcome and appreciated.

Reviews

[Lynx]

This was awesome, though I think that there could be a bit more of descriptions. The story wasn't too short, wasn't too long, it was quite fine seriously.

[PianoandPage]

i have to say i love the idea of the ballerina dancing to amazing grace at the end. this is very dark. i think you did a good job with giving the children the pills, at first i thought she was just trying to give them dreamless sleep and then i realized that the "dreamless sleep" was permanent. wow. chills.

my only critique would be that i found it a little unbelievable that she would choose to murder suicide as an escape but that's because there really wasn't any development in character at the beginning of the story. if anything i would give more to us as the audience to explain why she would go to such lengths.

yes the physcial abuse is horrifying... but that didn't carry me naturally to this conclusion. that's just me though. maybe write a bit about how she's tried to deal with it other ways to no avail.

otherwise i think this was a very strong write.

[C.T. Bailey]

Sobering sorrow. Intensly sad with an unexpected conclusion. Critically, I think that the piece needs more detail. I think maybe a lead in that includes more on the abuse, possibly some of his background, some detail on the abuse of the children, and then in conclusion, more detail about her possibly wrestling with herself over the murder-suicide. Possibly a thought on how she might have killed him instead, but then decided to end it as you have written. Powerful. Very well done.
Todd

[Nita]

Wow. I didn't know what to expect from this, but you didn't disappoint. Especially with the pills - wow. Amazing.