• The whisper of the rain like tiny fingers on the window panes woke her. She stood near the window as a foreboding, clammy and fearful worry came into her heart. The book in her hand pressed its cover against her as if to lure her into its printed pages but she went on gazing out into the night as if the strange stillness of the man on her lawn had infected her very core.
    The light from her bedroom window mingled with the darkness of the night to reveal that he was staring intently at her with an impish smile on his face. Their eyes met and her heart thudded. Evil was not appearing for the first time in her life but had now returned in the form of her husband. Fear dug its curved and venomous beak into her frozen heart once again.
    Lightning flashed and his form was gone, breaking the spell on her, she dropped the book and rushed down the stars into the baby’s room. He stood there, in the dark corner next to the child’s bed, her only child. He turned slowly with the child in his arms still asleep as tears fell down her face.
    This is what he had promised. If she left, he would make sure she paid for it and now she was. Just as the last of the bruises were fading, he had to go and steal her heart completely. A roll of thunder and she fell to her knees praying to any God that would listen. His impish smile became a twisted tongue of silver that ripped her will from her and tore her mind to pieces. It ate away at her like a living thing. Jagged spears of white-hot lightning shot from the sky as the night swallowed him up like a thieving fox.
    Her cries were as faint as the chirping of a cricket in the vast empty house and were lost in the darkness of her torn soul. As the rain washed the night out of the hem of the sky the air fed one last scream but with little sound that her shredded throat was capable of. Silence welcomed her back and in the stillness she could almost hear little feet running across the floor, then laughter and whispering. Her eyes filled with painful hope but it was quickly extinguished.
    The surrounding house captured her tattered soul and promised to never let her go. She let it have what was left of her as somewhere the flames of fire that stole her life still flickered in the charred house.