Flickr Fiction: Close Calls

"I'll do it, I swear!" She shook the bottle of pills at him, a strange gleam in her eyes reflecting from the sun weakly filtering in through the kitchen window. Her voice was so raw and rough it made his own throat constrict.

Anyway, he didn't know what to say. It wasn't like she hadn't done this before.

Yelling back was what she wanted, some twisted confirmation of her own low self-image that, perversely, made her feel calmer, vindicated. Soothing, placating tones only provoked rage, only increased the likelihood of the cap coming off the little plastic safety canister.

He didn't want to go through it all again—the ambulance with sirens screaming, the emergency room with its odor of fear and blood, her sleeping face the color of ashes on the white pillow. He hated hospitals. They were full of serious bad vibes.

But he'd never tried silence. In their two years together, it had somehow not occurred to him. It was so easy to talk; not as easy to stop talking and hear.

The silence was involuntary this time. His throat simply would not function. Usually, his first instinct was to turn to those meaningless platitudes that rolled so easily off the tongue. He clung to them himself like a daily regimen: It's just a bad mood. Sleep on it; you'll both feel better in the morning. She doesn't really mean it. It's a cry for help.

But the quiet was like a fog that rolled over both of them, muffling the screaming, the rattling pills, the shuffling of his feet.

"Say something," he barely heard her whisper, and then she put the pill bottle down and bent forward, arms hugging her stomach, resting her forehead on the cool tile counter.

***

This week's piece was inspired by Day 53 - Soma by Flickr user Miss Emily goes bananas. I seem to only write angst-ridden pieces these days; sorry. I'll try to be more amusing next time. Check the usual suspects for more Flickr Fiction: The Gurrier, Isobel, Elimare, Chris, TadMack, Neil, Valsha, and Mari.