[F4M] Redemptive Forbearance

As the darkness enveloped the streets, and silence shrouded the night, one could have mistaken the city that never sleeps for another, yet the skittering shadows could not conceal the shady characters populating the seedy underbelly of New York. There, a young woman nowhere past her 30’s approached one particularly unscrupulous looking gentlemen, clutching her purse in one hand and a wad of cash in the other. One could tell from a glance that she was not a denizen nor a regular of these parts, after all the body language of a somewhat frightened, shook, yet determined young woman, who strode with all the naivety of a newborn child could be sensed for miles around; like sharks drawn to the stench of fresh blood letting pray, they who were of lurkers of this bog, began to slowly swarm around her, waiting for her to make a false step, waiting for her to stumble, so that they may devour her.

But the fates would not have it so; the money had seamlessly departed her empty hand, and in it’s a place an ebony zip locked bag had found a new home. Just as the darkness of the seedy underbelly was scattered by the city lights, so did her resolve bolster, and all shadows of doubt vanished in turn. The incandescent street lights paradoxically foreshadowing that which had yet to come.

Just as he did so many nights ago, she approached him in that darkened alleyway, visiting upon him the darkest of intentions, those which he had visited upon her so long ago. Revolver in hand, she approached, she who had once been pray, would become the predator, she would once again regain the reigns of her own destiny by putting an end to the torment, the anguish that she had endured he would have to live through; if only for a moment as the brief spark of life was snuffed from his eyes, if the eyes of someone capable of something so inhuman could harbor any semblance of light, that is.

She knew that with her weapon in hand, she was prepared to slay the beast which had wrought madness upon her being, but as she drew closer to the harbinger of her pain and sorrow, she could only but feel that something was gravely amiss. She felt it, she knew, that he was fully aware, yet he did not plead, he did not stir, this was enough to give her pause, even as she cocked the gun and placed the tip against the back of his head, and the only sound he made was a sigh. A sigh of relief. She could not comprehend, it. She would not. For it was too painful to bear. Her tormentor had taken that which was her last reprieve, her last chance to choose her own destiny, by taking like she was taken from. She could not bear it. Granting him salvation after all he had done. So, she slumped to the ground, defeated. Her tear soaked face betrayed her anguish, and for the first time in six years, she saw his face, almost as if for the very first time.

Greatly pained, greatly strained, dark circles around his eyes, thick wrinkles and the signs of aging had etched themselves upon him like historical landmarks of shame. His young physique and toned frame betrayed his aging complexion.

She cleared away the tears blurring her vision with the sleeve of her hoodie, and spoke in agonized whimpers “How could you!? How could you do this to me!? Beg for it! Beg for your life! Tell me… tell me that you want to live! I want you to cower in fear! I want you to run! I want you to struggle!”

“Struggle the same way I did all those long tortuous years ago!” “When you yoked me up and dragged me by my hair, put my shirt over me and dragged into an empty lobby. Where you pinned me down on the ground and kept screaming “to shut the fuck up and stop moving around.” Remember? Remember how I screamed and clawed? Remember how you stomped on my face until you’d broken my jaw? How you kicked me until you cracked my ribs and I stopped moving? Ripping me up and choking me until my throat burned? By the time you were done, I was lying there bloody, broken and bruised.”

“Yet all you offer me is this meek look of surrender! must you toy with me till the very last moment? must you take the resolve I had mustered and shatter it with such ease?”

“Is all you can do is stare at me dumbfoundedly? I just… I just can’t deal with this right now” Exhausted, she collapsed on her bed as soon as she got home.

The next day, she steeled her resolve once more, in the vain hope that he would heed her plea, and play the frightened lamb. Yet once again all he would offer her is surrender. Just as if the glacial pace of time had taken grip of her soul, she would, as a woman possessed, repeat the same day with him, over and over, day after day, week after week. It had become almost comical in nature… well, as comical as meeting your rapist, and holding them at gunpoint daily can be. Then one day she began to bring her own lunch, and she would sit there quietly, with the gun dejectedly, limply pointing at him while she ate.

She had finally come to the realization that the reason she could not go through with it was because the man she was seeking had left the world long ago.  He was gang-raped in prison and that seemingly, perhaps rather fittingly, whoever he was died, then and there. The man who stood before her, quietly eating his lunch was different. Nothing more than a docile lamb, who volunteered at homeless shelters and entertained at a nearby orphanage as a clown.

There was something positively alarming about a behemoth of a man who was nearly 7 feet tall but stared at you as a lamb does a lioness. Yet she could not understand how she felt, nor did she understand how was she was meant to understand. He stood up abruptly for the very first time in 3 months, he faced her, and asked her out for coffee, to which she reluctantly agreed. Perhaps she thought that this opportunity would elucidate the way she was meant to behave from then on. The unknowable intentions of the heart are truly mysterious.

Much to her dismay, and later when she got home, disdain for herself, she enjoyed the coffee greatly, they had met as two other people do, and for the very first time, it felt as if, they were something different, or at least as if they could be. The very next day, he invited her for lunch, she found herself less reluctant than she had hoped. The hatred by which she was so self-bound felt so distant now, the seasons, unbeknownst to her, had begun to change in her heart, and the icy throes of misgiving had begun to bloom a delicate flower in the spring of love.

He for the very first time since they met had borne out his true intent. He spoke of regret, he asked for atonement, he approached her as a sinner approaches a priest, confessing his sins, asking for forgiveness, offering his life as payment. Yet that which had been so delicately wrought and nurtured had come to grips with thorns of a vile past, she could not find it in herself to keep his company, and such as it was, she left. Yet later that night, she’d found herself at his door, the doubts that plagued her, the pain of the past, had given way to new light, to new truth.

The redemption she sought in vengeance would now be visited upon her in love. The emanations of the past giving way to the future, an impossible future, laden with burgeoning desires at the forefront of an erupting volcano, the lava, like an avalanche cleansing all there was before her, her hatred burned away, the bitterness she was, the fears of her heart, they began to fray. That day, to one another, a solemn oath they swore, to love and hold, to cherish and protect, in sickness as they would health. Just as the covenant binding them with words was, so did the lips pursed with hope unite the two hearts, in embrace, that connection between the two was real and effervescent.