Trigger warning: The following work explores trauma through themes of violence, sexual content, self-harm, and other potentially triggering topics. Proceed with care.
We are walking down the street hand in hand.
I glance over my shoulder and see a past boyfriend from 2010. His hair is dark blue and his eyes are the same color. I glance again and we make eye contact and he says hello. I say “oh hi Brody, this is my husband Ethan”. I ask him what he’s in town for and he says for Jan’s funeral. I act as if I knew Jan had died and say sorry I’ve missed it. Brody has a lisp and is towering over us with his height. I blush and I say good to see you, tell your mom I said hello and then we go our separate ways.
Ethan goes on about how cool Brody is and how he wants to be his friend. Then he asks how I know him. I hesitate to say and have several thoughts flash through my brain. The only thing I could get out was “He broke my heart in 2010, I cried for a year straight”. As I was saying this we were walking into a house party.
Ethan’s mood shifted, and he looked like he was going to shut down. My brother comes up and tells me it’s so rude to say things like that so loudly and that I should keep it down. I go to the bathroom and leave Ethan in the kitchen. People are lying down in the living room for a breathwork session.
I go to the bedroom and there are three beds. I plug my phone in to charge and notice a man sleeping in one of the beds. He groans and asks if I can keep it down.
I go out of the room wanting to make my way back to Ethan, but I can’t.
A woman comes over and asks that I watch her dog while she goes to do something. I take the brown Frenchie and watch as the owner sprints down the street. I show the dog around to the people doing breath work, and I seem to be invisible. The woman returns, pounding on the door, demanding that I give her her dog back or she’ll call the police. I give her the dog and remind her she asked me to watch it. I close the door, and within seconds, another knock. The same woman stands there smiling softly. She is the same but not. The other had a deranged look in her eyes; this one exudes peace. She asks how much she owes me for watching the dog, and I say she doesn’t owe me anything; it was only for a couple of moments. She thanks me vigorously and goes on her way. I shut the door, and once again a pounding on the door. I look out the window and see the same woman, but the deranged version. She is screaming at me that she is going to kill me for stealing her dog. She is trying to get in the door, and I’m struggling to keep it closed. There is a tense 30 seconds where I’m battling with the lock to ensure she can’t get inside. I finally managed and sighed with relief.
I go back into the bedroom with the 3 beds and check my phone, which was on the charger. The sleeping man yells at me and tells me that if I wake him again, there will be hell to pay. I feel so scared, and I just want to hug Ethan. I try to make my way back to the kitchen where I left him, but every time I walk through the living room and enter the threshold of the kitchen, I reappear in the hall I had just come from. I start to panic, and the people doing breathwork all sit up and laugh at me.
One woman stops me and tells me how funny it is to watch me try to get to someone who doesn’t love me. She sits me down on the couch and pushes my head back. She pours red wine into my mouth and says that I just need a drink. I start to cry as I begin to feel drunk. I scream at her that she just ruined my sobriety, and she just laughs in my face, in the most hellish, demonic way, as the rest of the people in the room join her in laughter. I finally push my way to the kitchen to find Ethan sitting on the counter between two beautiful women. One has bleached hair and crooked teeth, but the kind that make her all the more endearing. The second is a brunette with a perfect body and fire-red lipstick. The blonde is stroking his hair like I always do, and she is comforting him.
I come in and tell her to stop touching him, and he looks over his shoulder at me with disgust in his face and says to the girls, “Man, I haven’t even told you about THIS one yet! You think my ex-wife was bad?!” They all begin to laugh, and they look at me as if I’m crazy for being upset that she was stroking his hair. She continues to do so as the brunette snuggles up against him. He looks so proud, so happy, and dignified. I begin to scream at the girls and tell them not to touch him. The blonde gets in my face as if wanting to fight. She yells “well maybe if you weren’t such a crazy ass bitch we wouldn’t have to be here comforting him!” I start screaming at her “you stupid fucking cunt, I’m going to bash your slutty fucking face into the counter”. I feel pure rage and hatred. She, Ethan, and all others in the tiny kitchen scoff at me and look at me with disgust and pity. I scream some more and start to cry.
They laugh at me, and Ethan says, “See, what did I tell you?” They laugh some more, and then I begin violently bashing the blonde’s head into the counter until it is bloody and unrecognizable.
Then I wake up.
by Thalia Graves
Purple Vanilla World, 2023
Purple Vanilla World 