Hurt
She reads it, reads it over and over again, hoping that eventually it will make sense.
Come see the house...
...pregnant...
She feels like she's gone through a portal and left her stomach behind. She touches the scars through the sweater she wears, lets her cold fingers slip under the warm wool to the thick, ropy flesh underneath. A sharp pain lances through her body and she doubles over, gasping. It was okay, it had been okay. She'd been looking at pregnant women and children for years and nothing, rarely even a twinge of regret. Why does this bother her now?
She knows the reason, even as she puts her head between her legs, tries to control her breathing to keep from hyperventilating. Somewhere in the back of her head, she knows that this is ridiculous, that if she doesn't pull herself together she'll faint, hit her head on the side of her desk, and two weeks later the neighbors will call the police from the smell. She can picture the entire scene, and it isn't pretty.
That gives her enough incentive to look back to the monitor where the words swim. She doesn't know how to respond, whether she should. She closes the window, thinks about making a cup of tea before discarding the idea and instead going to the bottle of whiskey that hasn't made its way back into the cabinet since Tome's visit. She pours the last of it into a tumbler and drinks deeply.
Come see the house...
...pregnant...
She feels like she's gone through a portal and left her stomach behind. She touches the scars through the sweater she wears, lets her cold fingers slip under the warm wool to the thick, ropy flesh underneath. A sharp pain lances through her body and she doubles over, gasping. It was okay, it had been okay. She'd been looking at pregnant women and children for years and nothing, rarely even a twinge of regret. Why does this bother her now?
She knows the reason, even as she puts her head between her legs, tries to control her breathing to keep from hyperventilating. Somewhere in the back of her head, she knows that this is ridiculous, that if she doesn't pull herself together she'll faint, hit her head on the side of her desk, and two weeks later the neighbors will call the police from the smell. She can picture the entire scene, and it isn't pretty.
That gives her enough incentive to look back to the monitor where the words swim. She doesn't know how to respond, whether she should. She closes the window, thinks about making a cup of tea before discarding the idea and instead going to the bottle of whiskey that hasn't made its way back into the cabinet since Tome's visit. She pours the last of it into a tumbler and drinks deeply.