The Other Side of Love

    Under a lone candlelight, Annabel Louise Smith reads a historical book at the foot of her bed. The overhead bulb is so low it flickers erratically like a pounding heartbeat, it is a marvel to cross the room without banging a knee or an elbow into something in the small clustered room. The room serves as both her sleeping area and her mother's storage room. Not that there is much to store, and none of any real value since most everything of value has already been pawned for money.     She catches her bottom lip with her teeth as her eyes snap to and fro, devouring the book much like a starved man devours food. Her breath comes fast and shallow as the brave, witty maiden in her book is nearly captured by the vile, cruel villain and there! The daring duke marches in on his gallant horse, the perfect knight to carry the maiden to safety. Her grin is wide and beatific, as proud as if she had as much hand in the gallant rescue as the duke himself. She is about to settle in for the celebrations of the characters when she hears the front door bang open with a screech of hinges.     She lunges from the foot of the bed and looks around the room. Her gaze falls on the nearly burnt out candle and she wants to weep. She has saved up all the little money she could hide from her eagle-eyed mother to buy the candles and this is the last one. Blowing it out quickly, she shoves the little stump of a candle under her pillow and throws her book under the narrow bed. It would be disastrous to leave them around where her mother can find them, she'd have alot of explaining to do. She jumps as her mother calls out from the sitting room.     "Annabel! Did you not hear me enter? Come out and greet our guests."     She stumbles out of the room, moving to the door by sheer memory. The overworked bulb has shut down completely, a weak thready light gasping out every now and then. Her mother's 'guests' terrify her. They are big, lumpen men that grow louder and lewder the more they drink, and drink they do, enormously.      There are two of them tonight, and her mother sits on the lap of one of them. She recognizes him as Simon Albert, a notorious drug dealer that used to frequent her house until his interest in her grew too great for her mother's comfort. That was long ago, when she was secure in her mother's love and protection, no matter the road of self-destruction her mother had taken. A pearl of unease slithers down her throat, what is he doing here? The men look at her and sneer. The second man already looks half drunk.     "Darling, do get our guests some beer." Her mother doesn't look at her as she calls out but there is something in her voice, a hitch or a tremble that causes her to ignore the command and step forward, brow furrowed. She notices that her mother's face is angled away from her and cannot tell whether it is coincidence or deliberate.     "Momma?" She calls out.     "Do as your mama says." The second man says with a grin. He rakes a lecherous gaze down her body. "Or are you feeling disobedient? I have a punishment in mind, for disobedient little girls like you." And there is no mistaking the leer in his voice or the insinuation. Her stomach knots, little butterflies stirring and making her sick. Her mother's men have never been so interested in her, nor so blatant about it. She stops walking and calls out again.     "Momma? Are you alright?"     "Stop questioning me and get the beer. Now!"      She is hurt by the curt dismissal but pivots and strides to the refrigerator, pulls out a tray and piles as much beer as it can hold for as poor as they are, beer is something they always have in abundance. The nature of her mother's visitors calls for it.     As she takes the tray of beers back to the them, she approaches from an angle where she can see her mother's face and her mother is forced to either let her see or be blatant in hiding her face. Her mother hides her face. Her heart is pounding so hard she wants to press a hand to her chest lest it gallop right out of it. She looks as terrified as she feels and has to swallow back sick bile as she draws closer to Simon Albert. Her reaction to him is as visceral as a prey to a predator.       Drawing on her natural defiance, she sets her chin and drops the tray on the table with a bang. Her mother startles and darts a gaze at her from where she had been nuzzling the brute and her heart stops in her chest. She is unrecognisable. One of her eyes is swollen shut, her slender nose is entirely black and blue, and she fears it might be broken and her lips are swollen and red, crusted with dried blood. She has slowly been losing her youthful beauty as the drugs she abuses ravaged her body but right now, her face is swollen and truly grotesque. Simon Albert holds her eye as he slowly slides a hand up her arm to her neck, curling his fingers around it and squeezing minutely. Her mother shudders delicately. Her good eye catches her daughter's with an intensity, banked with terror and a desperate plea that Annabel cannot make sense of.     With a fleeting smile and forced cheer in her voice, her mother says, "That'll be all, dear. Go back to bed, we have a busy day tomorrow." Her cheerful words are counteracted by the intensity of her gaze. They plead for her daughter to leave immediately.     Annabel is not sure she wants to leave her mother to the mercy of the two wolves but is not sure how she can help either. She has learnt, painfully, that the police are useless and not be counted on. Not in the seedy area where crime lives and breathes. The first time she had called the police, an officer had been sent there to investigate. He had entered and taken one look at her mother, Simon Albert and three other men and bade them a very good night. She had paid dearly for that call and all the other subsequent calls had been answered, but noone was ever sent again. Turns out, Simon Albert has the police firmly in his pocket. Feeling helpless and frustrated, she spins around and is about to march back to her room.     "Wait."     The command comes from Simon Albert himself and she halts mid-step.     "Turn around."     She takes her time pivoting until she is facing him. He is a large man, barrel-chested and thick-limbed. In contrast, his head is small, with deep set eyes, a large hook nose and thick oily lips. His ears are large, flopping at the sides of the head like heavy adornments. He is an offensively ugly man and is underestimated at personal risk.      He stands, towering above her. She suddenly feels small and vulnerable and anger at her mother flashes within her, for inviting men such as he into their home. And then he is pawing her, tracing the shape of her face with his large sweaty hands. He grips her chin, tilting her face up and about. Her entire body trembles and she darts a worried glance at her mother. He has discarded her on the sofa, a broken forgotten doll, and she looks the part. She is not looking at her daughter, her lashes are downcast and her battered face is placid but her fists are clenched tightly beside her.     Annabel wishes badly for this man to be swept away like the bad tiding he is, for her and her mother to go back to the old simple lifestyle they had when her father had recently died. But most of all, she wishes her mother to be whole again, she will do anything to give her mother the strength she needs to pick up the broken pieces of herself. If Simon Albert has his attention on her, her mother can be spared.     Glaring up at him defiantly, she bares her teeth.      "Would you like to inspect my teeth next? We have to make sure you haven't missed anything." She says in a drawling mocking tone, ignoring the dread curdling her stomach and the fear pushing at her to run.     There is a sharp intake of breath which she realises is from her mother but she dares not take her eyes off him. Simon Albert's hand hangs in the air as he studies her dispassionately, the moment drawing out and then faster than she can react, his hand slams into her face with the force of a sledgehammer.      She crashes to the ground, tastes blood in her mouth and tongues a loose tooth to be sure it won't be coming out. She winces, her cheek is split. From her position on the floor she sees the other man working his belt out his trousers and panic licks at her skin but he only hands the belt to Simon Albert. Looping the belt around his hand, he crouches so he is in her face.     "You have grown insolent, disobedient, ungrateful." He flings each word at her like a cardinal decree. There is a light in his eyes, a sick hungry light and his eyes practically dance as he grins at her. He lets the remaining length of the belt dangle from his hand as he leans even closer. "I am going to teach you respect. It is high time you learnt exactly where your place is."     Suddenly her hands are clamped down in the other man's vise-like grip and no matter how much she yanks at them, they are held fast. Simon Albert's gaze rakes down her body, clad in a T-shirt and worn-out jeans. Cold fear and apprehensions clamps her heart in a vise and renders her motionless in shock. He grins at her and it is a terrible thing, a promise of pain and degradation. His teeth are nearly black and filed to points. She remembers the rumour that he takes bites off his favourite victims.     Her eyes narrow as a wave of hatred crashes into her. She hates this man, and all the men just like him. Men that prey on innocents and get off on the pain and devastation they leave in their wake. They have ruined her childhood and driven her mother into a mere shadow of her former self. She spits blood into his face and it lands with an audible thwack on his cheek before dribbling down his face.      He wipes the blood off his face slowly with his sleeve, and his nostrils flare in anger. He stands, looking down at her with an unreadable expression and slowly lets the belt hang between them. In a flash, it descends on her back in a lick of fire. She screams and her back arches off the floor. The belt descends again, and again, the other man restraining her desperate efforts easily, and then it clatters to the floor. Her eyes snap open, widening in horror as Simon Albert works his belt off and tosses it beside the other, anticipation written all over his face. She increases her efforts, wriggling and kicking harder, trying her best to wrench free from the other man's death grip.     "No. No. No. No!" She shouts.      Simon Albert moves towards her back and then stops, his expression cloudy with confusion as he topples over and falls on her legs, nearly breaking them in two.     Her mother stands behind the body, her chest heaving, a bloody little knife clenched in her trembling fist.     "I told you. Not my daughter!"      Annabel is suddenly free as the other man jumps to his feet with a shout and attacks her mother. He slams her against the wall and grinds her wrist into it so she is forced to drop the knife. They are on the ground now and her mother doesn't give up, clawing and scratching at him like a wild thing while he pummels her with his fist.     She tries to get up but her legs are pinned by Simon Albert's body. The back of his neck is open with a bloody gash. She shoves at him, levering his body up enough that she can wrench her legs from under his dead weight. The man is choking her mother now, so engrossed in his task that he doesn't notice as she darts forward and grabs the bloody knife. She comes up behind him and too late, he notices the movement but she is already jamming the knife into the base of his thick neck and darting back.     She hears the man collapse, making strange gurgling noises but she cannot look away from her hands. They are steady, almost every inch coated with thick blood, a red flagging evidence to what she has done. Innocent no longer, she has killed a man.      It feels like a eternity before a hand covers hers, gentle fingers tilt her face up and she looks into her mother's eye. She looks even worse than before, both eyes swollen almost shut and her entire face swollen and bloody. She collapses on her mother's shoulder, sobbing with relief? regret? She'll never know.       __________________________________________________________________________________________          She is in the front row of the church, which is empty at this time of the night. She doesn't remember the long walk from her house. She remembers the shock of the shower her mother made her take, supervising it for the first time since she was six and ensuring she was truly clean. She remembers her mother giving her instructions and promising to make everything right.     Despair fills her, an urge to scream until her voice is hoarse that she quickly tamps down. How can anything ever be right again? She killed a man! It is entirely dark and she draws her knees up, hugging them to herself. She rests her head on them and remembering an old song her mother used to sing to her when they were a whole and happy family, sings softly to comfort herself.       She doesn't know how long she stays there, singing and humming, snippets of her old life, scarcely believable after the turmoil of her current life, dancing through her mind like a haunting orchestra. If only her father hadn't died so suddenly.      Slowly, her humming dies down and she becomes aware of someone sitting on the chair next to hers. She startles and looks up into the face of a boy, not much older than her, perhaps 17 and he smiles at her.     His skin is pale and smooth, his hair perfectly combed back and the clothes on his body are tailored to his specific measurement. Every inch of him screams money and entitlement but his smile is warm and genuine.      "I hope you don't mind my intrusion, you have the most extraordinary voice." He says.     He looks at her kindly and she can't help but be embarrassed. She looks ratty and tattered, with her washed out grey shirt and manly shorts. The events of the night crash into her and she is mortified to find tears running down her eyes.     He looks alarmed by this and hands her a handkerchief with which she mutely wipes her eyes.     "I am sorry, I did not mean to distress you." He says softly.     She shakes her head, staring at the blotches of tears on the kerchief but doesn't say a word.     "I can get you home, is that what you want? Just tell me where and I'll get you there." He tries again.     She shakes her head again, a tendril of pale hair escaping from her loose ponytail to brush against her cheek.     "Alright I'll leave if that's what you want. You can keep---"     "I have no home," she whispers, a tear rolling down her cheek, "not anymore."     There is silence as the boy contemplates this and then he stands. "Come on then, you can't stay here all day."      She looks up at him and his hand is extended. She thinks this has to be a dream. She had given up on God for so long and here is someone in front of her, definitely God-sent. Is this His way of making up for all the time He abandoned her for so long?     "I'm Julian. What's your name?" He asks in a voice that suddenly sounds angelic to her ears.     "Annabel."     And she takes his hand and rises to her feet.