Shocking Pink

Whimpering, she did as he asked, removing one garment after another, her movements halting. She peeled away the last and stood before him, naked and trembling, head bowed.

“The ring,” he said. “Remove it.”

Raven pressed closer to the sliver of space, upper lip wet with perspiration. She saw Mrs. X struggling to get a ring off her finger. Her fourth finger. A wedding ring, Raven realized. Mrs. X was married. To somebody else.

“You belong to me,” Mr. X said, taking a step closer. “Don’t you?”

The woman lifted her face to his. Raven saw that she was crying. “Yes,” she whispered.

He reached out and curved his hand around her breast, but not gently, roughly, as if asserting his possession. “You’re mine.”

“Yes,” she said again.

“And I can do anything I want to you?”

She nodded.

He caught her other breast. “Say it.”

“Yes. You can do anything you want to me.”

“Even kill you.”

The words landed flatly, harshly, between them. They reverberated in Raven’s head. Her mouth went dry. She flexed her fingers, her heart pounding heavily.

Suddenly, her father’s voice popped into her head, clear, accusing. Cheating whore. Disloyal bitch. I’ll kill you before I’ll let you leave.

Raven shook her head, trying to clear it, trying to force her father, the memory, out. Sweat dripped into her eyes. It stung, and she rubbed at them, rubbed until they burned. When she dropped her hands, she was at another door, her bedroom door. She was twelve again, peering through a different sliver of space.

She heard her father. And her mother.

Their last fight.

They had been going at it, on and off, all night. It had finally escalated to the point of no return, and Raven had known from hundreds of times before exactly where it would lead. She had tiptoed out of bed and to her bedroom door to listen.

“I’m going to ask you again,” her father had shouted, “where were you today?” Raven had rolled her eyes and mouthed her father’s next words, knowing them by heart. “I called and you didn’t answer the phone.”