English assignment to write a thousand word story about one moment.

She was sitting on the bed with the mementoes of her life strewn across the floor like broken pearls from a necklace. Pieces of paper, photographs and hairclips. Twenty-seven years and all she had to show for it were possessions that she could fit in the palm of her hand. A corsage sat between her fingers, the dried petals prickly against her skin. Throwing the flowers to the ground she watched the white daylilies flutter across the hardwood floor, like pieces of falling snow. The blanket was wrapped around her; she was cold, despite the spring April weather outside. Slowly she moved off the bed the springs creaking from the loss of her weight. Dragging her bare feet across the floor she stepped on an earring and winced. Her footsteps left prints on the small area rug. Finally across the room she opened her desk drawer and pulled out a stack of papers that meant nothing. She moved aside a litter of paper clips and pencil weights and unearthed a shiny silver handgun. It was covered in dust; it had been sitting there since she'd moved in. She hadn't wanted to touch it, or to use it, or do anything with it. But now the glazed metal and the feel of the trigger brushing against her fingers felt right. The anxiety twitched back and forth in her mind, electrical waves playing ping pong with each other. Reaching the gun up to her head she paused then changed positions, moving it in front of her chest like Lucrezia raising the knife above her breast. A beat of silence. Her finger grazed the trigger and the door opened; one second too late.

“What are you doing?”A voice bellowed at her and she balked, clutching the gun tighter. If it had been cocked the bullet would have sprung and her head wouldn't have been facing the man in the doorway. Her lower lip trembled as she spoke.

“Nothing.” The gun still poised in front of her. In one swift motion the man knocked the gun away.

“You don't want to do this,” he soothed, running his hands through her hair. She felt the hairs on her arms stand up straight and her breath catch in her throat. Not again. She wouldn't let it happen again. She wrenched the gun back into her grasp and cocked it this time, ready.

“Oh yes I do,” she pulled the trigger and her wrist snapped back, if not broken it was surely sprained from the force of the shot. For a moment the air in the room was holding its breath, the seconds on the clock slipped and the pinball playing neurons paused. Eva felt the breath in her lungs catch a yo-yo stuck in her throat. Each memory exploded in her mind tiny water balloons releasing pain.

She had let him stay just for the week. When Friday rolled around he was to pack his bags and catch the next bus to Boston. He had asked to stay one last night. It would be less stressful for her for him leave on a day she didn’t have to meet a deadline for work; why not just stay a few more hours, the bus probably left hours ago. The excuses piled on top of her as he set his bags down in the threshold of the door and took two long stride steps towards her. First he kissed her. And then he asked her permission. Eva could feel her resolve breaking as he curled his fingers around her neck, holding her just a little tighter and a little longer. When he let go she could feel the imprint of the pads of his thumbs against the bottom of her chin. One more night, she told herself.

She had said what her mother had told her to when she didn’t want to be in a situation. Eva had said no. She pushed him away and tried to explain that she had something to tend to when in fact she just wanted to get away from his alcohol drenched breath and wavering frame. He asked her, teased her, and begged her to stay with him. She shook her head and he took another step towards her, his feet crashing against the floor. No. No.. He reached for her and she shoved him away again, darting up the stairs and locking herself in the bathroom. It was just the drinks. That’s all.

The third time he hurt her she had used up four boxes of tissues. For the blood and her tears. Her face was blotched and puffy but nothing remained of the damage that his fists had done to her nose or his nails to her back. The circles under her eyes were magnified by the smeared eyeliner that she had thrown out after he had said it made her look pretty. The tissues littered the floor of the bathroom and she refused to clean them up. When she thought of telling him to leave she remembered him taking a step towards her and she flinched. She wouldn’t let it happen again.

When she had woken up her first thoughts had been that he hadn’t come back the night before, which meant the house was empty. Eva would clean the rooms and pretend that the nerves swallowing her stomach were something new, instead of a daily torture. She got up and moved around the bedroom trying to steady herself. Today, she would do something.

Her head snapped back as the bullet hit its mark, square in her chest, tearing through her shirt. The bones in her body snapped, one by one and the muscles surrounding her ribcage tore. The marrow disintegrated and the bullet charged on. Past the protective layers of her ribs the ball of lead lodged itself in her heart. It stopped beating, suffocating around the small weapon. Eva was on the floor while hundreds of arteries and veins burst with the contact of the foreign savior.