Khalida

Tendrils of crepe spiraled up a battered leg, and a jagged shadow was shorn from a massive male figure. Table edge tore into soft backflesh; a great darkened husk crumpled. Fingers, hardened and calloused by a lifetime of maintaining barren cropland, came forward to wrench at her billowing khimar, but her trembling little hands grasped at a shimmering knife and instead that was thrown. A quick sidestep and it was avoided; with an animalistic snarl, he struck her. Lunging again, he grabbed at her head, buried his fingernails deep into blackened niqab and hair and tore. Writhing, kicking, she shrieked and she cried, watched through nigrescent eyes as a bloody clump of veil and tresses tumbled to the floor, a little black stone. His fingers dug into her scalp again, raking and sowing blood, and she felt herself being lifted, her flowering face being pressed back. She could hear the growl of his throat, feel the hot breath against her neck as he hissed in tightened Arabic:

“Look at me.”

Her shoulders heaved. Her broken body shuddered. She would not…, she could not… No. She kept her head lowered, staring down at the table through tears glassy like marbles. His fist went back and he punched her.

“Look at me!”

She looked. Dark eyes were alight with rage. His mouth set like stone in a tight scowl on an otherwise expressionless face. Hands went up and grasped at slender neck, the thumbs pressed into the beating, fleeing lilt of her jugular. A choke rendered the back of her strangled throat.

And then he kissed her. Moistened lips pressed onto hers, hard, biting. Her head twisted. A tear, hot and solitary, splashed from a clutched-shut eyelid onto her purple cheeks. Her little hands went up to push at the rock upon her; her tired legs went up to kick: once in the chest; a half-muttered groan told her another in the groin. His grip tightened. She couldn’t breathe. He was sucking the air right out of her. She reached for the hands around her neck, but they continued their gruesome onslaught tauter, tauter harder, harder. Her chest went up. Barely. Her chest went down, just as fast. He was going in deeper, deeper, living off her suffocation; it was an ecstasy: her delicious, delicious, sweet asphyxiation…

A blur, a blur. The world a violent smear…

Her earth drops away…and then… Blackness—

Her chest rises—just a sliver. Her chest falls… Over and over. Quicker and quicker…

She’s dying. Oh dear God, she’s dying…

Her eyelids flutter. Come the comforting death, the peaceful darkness…

Then, from away—so very, very far away—a tiny whisper, a little whimper.

“Ummi. Ummi…”

And she looked. Ya Allah, she couldn’t help but gaze. Down, down across the table, peering at her through brownéd eyes wet with tears, she could see him sitting, sitting, waiting, and she longed out to touch him, to grasp him and to hold him, to shield him from this…this… An outstretched finger moved forward to reach him, to reach him… Her son. Her only son…

A burst of black—

And then: air. A sweet release of oxygen as his tight palms uncurled, and then her terrible body expanded and shook as coughs wracked her fragile form. Tears fell from the eyes clenched shut with her demented choking. Choking on air…

He was on her face now. Kissing the petals of violet bruises. Licking at the delicious bracken tears. Moaning, and moaning, so full of lust. A hand left her neck to dig into the crown of dark tresses, to push her head even more back so she could stare at his brightened eyes that wanted her, ever so wanted her.

His tongue, sticky and hot, slid up and down her throbbing neck, slicking it with coats of glistening saliva. He was moaning now, almost continually, shifting and gyrating his large hips, crushing her more and more beneath his bulk. And from underneath him, with her eyes focused outwards, she could only see her Ahmad. Her little Ahmad…

And with a half-scream, half-heart wrenching sob, she kicked, kicked at him, willed him to get off of her, slashed at his face through gloved hands, twisted and curled her entire body, screamed and spat. He reared back, snarled, lifted his arm back and backhanded her, but she ignored the crack, ignored the scream of her twisting neck, ignored it all, just grasped at the table and pulled herself free. Through eyes bruised half-shut she groped for her child, her little child, picked him up and smashed him to her breasts, rubbing her hand through his short, dark hair, and with tripping, clumsy steps carried him away, burying her nose into the scent of his head, feeling her bloody cheeks against his own.

She tripped, tripped, tripped, fell, and settled him upon the couch. Lifting the end of a blanket green with life she covered him, but not before, through Arabic unintelligent by wracks, she called to him.

“Ahmad, Ahmad…” she said to him, kissing him through moistened split lips so her trembling flesh pressed into his, and her eyelashes, moist with glassy tears, kissed his round cheeks, and then lifting her lips so it left a bloody imprint on his unmarred brown face, “I swear, my little one, one day— you and I—, we’ll be free, free! and we’ll never have to suffer through this…this…again…”

He reached up and grasped for her, pinching painfully at her fevered cheeks like only a child would know how, petting the wrinkled and bloodied forehead glistening from Daddy’s lust, and called her name over and over: Khalida, Khalida. She kissed him, rubbed at his hair, kissed him again until she heard a loud crash and a bellow, and then she covered him up. And then he was upon her, raking at her hair, pulling her up, up, to slap at her and to beat at her, kicking at her tired form with heavy feet till she crumpled, and punching at her until she was sure she was about to break, her face almost pulled under by a sea a blood; but she didn’t care as she lay over her trembling, hidden child. As long as anything didn’t happen to him, she didn’t care. As long as he got the chance to do what she didn’t: to live, to live, to live and be loved…

And then he was upon her again on top of her as she pressed Ahmad’s amorphous form underneath her shaking bosom, and her face was contorted into a shattered remnant of its past beauty as she felt her abaya lifted, lifted, and he reached and stroked the soft, bruised flesh underneath. And Ahmad underneath could feel it all as he clutched to his mother’s chest; he could feel her grip tighten, tighten, as Daddy wrestled to pull down her forbidden undergarments; he remained motionless as her claws dug into him and he heard her shriek and shriek as his father’s thobe went off; and he could hear her crying, crying, whimpering and praying, wishing for it to be over, over as fast as it could. He felt her rocking against him back and forth, back and forth; and his father’s terrible, terrible heavy pants and half-strangled moans as he thrust.