The Thaw (Story)

Marianne awoke groaning. This is how she’s been waking up this whole month – her body a tense bundle of aching muscles. He didn’t beat her, he didn’t scold her…and there were times when she hoped he would – a blow that would leave a cut on her brow or lip, or an angry avalanche of curses would be infinitely more welcome than his cold indifference.
He had stonewalled her.
Nothing reached him anymore.
When he looked in her direction, it was as if he was looking through her, like she was made of glass.
No. glass was classy.
Plastic would be a more appropriate metaphor to describe her.
Plastic, brittle with age;
plastic with stains and scratches;
plastic that would keep rotting endlessly.
He looked at her like she were made of plastic. When she tried to talk to him, he heard nothing. He wouldn’t even bother to up the volume of his headphones. When she poured her heartache on paper and left it on his table, he tore it away, and then told her that he didn’t give a damn.
Marianne was stonewalled.
And yet, she couldn’t give him up. Helplessness swirled around her, pulling her down by her ankles into the dark abyss that promised a vast emptiness. Marianne would be glad to lose herself into that deep well if only the nothingness wasn’t temporary. She had been there, and she knew well that this tempting nothingness would soon leave her in the company of despair laced with self-pity – and that it would make her cry and squirm. Her aching shoulders and stiff neck would twist and turn to the terrible music of her anguish and leave her more broken than ever. She knew that Inside that deep abyss of helplessness, she would be tossed about by self-pity, self-righteousness, self-doubt, self-castigation…
Once or twice…just once or twice, she had even considered suicide.