Coral Hull: Prose: Gangsters: 5. bleeding in the relationship

I MACKENZIE KNIGHT I A CHILD OF WRATH A GOD OF LOVE I FALLEN ANGELS EXPOSED I

CORAL HULL: GANGSTERS
5. bleeding in the relationship

Each time we fought I bled. Frazer said, 'What are we going to do about it?' I said, 'I don't know'. I felt shredded inside. The psychic attack was specialised. It was like being beaten by the police so that the bruises didn't show up in court. Frazer was becoming like the parents that burnt their children's backs with cigarette butts and never lifted the T-shirts. He was an expert, in the way that he got me to do it to myself. He simply provided his hatred like an invisible knife. When he turned nasty one day, I started to bleed heavily. It had been near the ocean and far from the city. We rarely left the city. The city was his. Once outside its limits he was small and subdued. We stood amongst trees and birds on equal ground. It was after Frazer had said, 'This is too beautiful', and then he said my name in the way that I liked to hear him say it. It was as though he described the very beach that we stood on, in one word that was my name, and in this way gave me existence. We had this really close moment on a windswept beach down along the Victorian Peninsula, where we held each other under a rotting wharf. It was a cold southern beach that seemed to call along its own sand. It was very pretty and strewn with seaweed. The dogs chased the surf, their tails tossing up the foam. For me it was the first time that I had ever viewed a full-length beach as an adult, without being completely lonely and swept along it. During this moment Tammy, Flash and Frazer were all I needed to be a fearless speck in an immense dark universe. Frazer felt the same. He had left the gun behind, his cheek against mine. His fair skin was stretched tightly along his chin bone. It felt weathered and smooth like a shell that had been lying in the sun. The kind of joy I experienced during that moment, had been only previously felt by having a dog's face that close to mine. But the moment, that felt like five years, seemed to have passed in a few seconds. The huge beach became that little bit colder. The big surf rolling in and the sand falling into shadows. The dogs looked at us in anticipation of a movement towards home. Their thick coats were greasy and matted by the salty ocean and dog-sleep was streaming across their cheeks, from eyes that had been opened wide by the sea. On the way back to the car I began to bleed badly, after Frazer made an offhand remark. He was gnawing at his thumbnails and craving nicotine. I wondered if a cloud had passed beneath the sun or if this darkness was occurring inside me? The new blood had been the result of a nasty little cut from his mouth as we left the beach behind. I knew that I was too close to him and it was killing me. A slither of blood ran down the inside of my thighs. It dropped into the sand on the way up the wooden salt-eaten stairs. It was a big sullen drop like first rain or a first tear. Once we got past the thick stand of tea trees and in sight of the car, Frazer seemed to relax. He said, 'What are we going to do?' He held on to me around the waist. I didn't know. I wasn't prepared to leave him, and I wasn't prepared to die in order to stay with him. Later that night I was horizontal in the emergency section at Box Hill Hospital. They were unable to diagnose it properly and the bleeding continued. They thought I may have been pregnant and that it was a miscarriage. A child appeared in a dream after I had allowed Frazer to abuse me. He stabbed a dagger into my womb. He was an angry little boy. I tried to comfort him. But his eyes told me that I was betraying him. Perhaps it was his blood that was coming from my body, mingled with my own. I was slowly killing myself to be with Frazer. I was slowly bleeding to death. Meanwhile Frazer was all fidgety and anxious. He kept worrying the nurses outside the door. He attended the bed, touching my hair and forehead. 'Crystal, can I get you a dry biscuit or a cup of tea?' As I lay on the hard white bed I remembered my mother's touch. It was frozen and infrequent. She only touched my body, when I had tripped over my own two feet, causing injury. It was only when my knees and legs were bloody that she would tend the scabs and wounds. Badly twisted ankles, nausea and headaches were not good enough. It needed to be openly physically damaged or run the risk of dismissal and neglect. At first she would tenderly place the bright green gauze against my screaming skin. I didn't know whether the pain was from the wound or my heart. I looked up into her soft face as she did it. When there was no response I focused on my bloody knee. The new gauze fully absorbed a combination of blood, pus and powder until it all twirled in green, white and red. Then she left me to do the rest on my own. Later, I would remember her touch whilst slowly peeling the green bandage off. I would begin periodically powdering and cutting that green gauze to the size of the diminishing scab. The flaky brown crust becoming smaller and smaller. My frightened skin was already preparing itself for the next big fall. But there was not enough room on my skin for all the wounds that I wanted there. The skin was itchy underneath the scab, as it healed into a soft pink scar on the surface. The scars inside were deeper and more prominent. But she would only tend the open bloody wounds or the surface cuts. Each time she attended to them a good feeling would tingle along the back of my neck. I didn't know what the feeling was, but I soon became addicted to it. I began to hurt myself more and more often. The larger the wound the longer she would stay. When Frazer cared enough about me to be waiting around like this at the end of the hospital bed, it was divine. I felt fully loved for the first time in my life by another human being. By this time I was in my early twenties.

    

This website is part of my personal testimony that has been guided by The Holy Spirit and written in Jesus' name.

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