Brutal

I'd come back from a day out with the girls. It was my gap year before I started college aand I wanted to fill it with as many memories as it would hold. Every morning I woke up excited for what the day might bring. There was a possibility of going shopping with my girlfriends, or hang with my family but it was a given that I'd see Jason.

   Everyone had expected us to get together. We'd been dating for only three months, but I'd seen a gradual change in his attitude, in his behavior towards me and his actions. In the beginning he would kiss me sweetly goodnight and when he couldn't be there, he phoned me to whisper gentle words in my ear, sending me into a gentle slumber. My daytime was filled with texts and love notes, each piece of paper overflowed with deep, meaningful words that pulled at my heartstrings.

   However, after a month of the perfect relationship, the notes decreased, the kisses grew hurried as if he wanted them to end quicker and he no longer lulled me to sleep with his sweet nothings. Over the past two months, he changed completely. Recently. he'd been snapping when I asked a question and asking where I'd been all day as if I'd been doing something illegal. Then he was forbidding me to see Zain, my best friend since year one. After that, I was trapped. Barred from the outside world. Cut off from my friends and banned from seeing my family. I was stuck in a place so dark, I couldn't find my way out. There was no way I could escape his control.

   Anyway, for once in my newly constricted life, I'd broken Jason's rules. All I had wanted to do was see my friends for a couple of hours, then hurry home before Jason came in. However, time had left us behind and I had missed my 'curfew' of 5:30. I knew it would be bad as soon as I walked in the door. I hadn't anticipated it to be this bad.