Tied.

She watched him as he slept.
His boyish face looked even younger in sleep.
An older version of her little boy, curled up and fast asleep between them.
In blissful sleep, he looked so gentle and beautiful.
What had gone wrong?

She remembered the time she loved that face.
And the sweet boy that lived inside that shell.
Yes. Now that was what he had become.
A shell.
A cold cruel one.
One given to bursts of temper. Violent anger and raised voices.
Deliberate hands that hurt. The hand that once held her tenderly bruised her lovely face without care.
She could not understand why. How fast the love had died and given way to cruel contempt.
Someone new had come to stay in that body as boy turned into man.

Maybe it was her fault.
Maybe she had been inattentive.
Perhaps she had been harsh to him in speech and provoked his anger. Or fallen short.
Or was it her now inflated body, ripe with motherhood and heavy with milk for their child that was pushing him away? She didn't like how she looked anymore. But that could not explain his wild, almost punishing passion on certain nights. And when she asked him to be gentle or refused him, she would wake up to a day of hiding her fresh stripes.

The maids were getting good at being blind and deaf but he was becoming louder.
She wondered when the next blow would come and if she would be kicked again.
She was learning to avoid 'being in the way' as he explained later. Getting good at it, even.
Some days she felt like returning the blows, measure for measure. But most nights she was tired.
She hadn't slept properly in days. Her son was teething and in pain. Sleepless.

He taunted her when the baby wailed.
Laughed at her mothering skills - her lack of it - he was wont to point out.
She could and would die for her child. 'Die! Die!' he chanted.

She knew he had other women. He had boasted of his new conquests.
Of women who would love to warm his bed and serve him.
Better than she would ever be, he said. And her anger would give her courage to pack up and walk out. But when she tried to leave, he would bind her up and keep her locked inside their house and say she couldn't be set free.
Never. Ever.

Her son's whimpers brought her back. She put him to her breasts to suckle.
He fed in contentment. She forgot her pain. Her bruises. New and fading.
This was her reason to go on.
This was why she put up with the madness.
No one would understand why she stayed on in her hellish world and yet they would judge her if she left. She lived in hope. She smiled at the way her little boy gurgled. Her heart bursting with love.
He was her joy.

'I love you. I love you and I will never leave you.'
She whispered into his tiny young ears as he slept, oblivious to the storm around him.