A rough snort emitted from my sleeping husband beside me. I sat up in the coarse wooden bed to better observe him. His body smelled of harsh soap, and his feet retained the dirt collected in the mines he work at. His features were appealing enough to a woman. His eyelids concealed his eyes, the windows to his soul.
The windows into the devil himself.
I was young, and naive. Mama had warned me of men. She said they were as good as animals for all they ever do. All men ever do in life is eat, sleep, defecate, have sex and die, as she once told me with harsh contempt in her voice. I believed her. Its not hard to when your own father abandoned mama and I for a vixen half his age.
Mama did whatever she could to earn a few coins, even if it meant inviting men to her bed. Mama always came out with a haggard look after they left, and then she'd send me off with the few coins the men had paid her to buy some bread at the marketplace.
This was our life for many years, until the day I turned twelve, when he walked through the door of our wooden hut on my birthday.
Mama met him at the door, and demanded to know how much he was going to pay. He named a price which seemed to satisfy her, and she jerked her head towards the room near the back of the hut. They were halfway across the hut, when he pointed at me and asked my price.
Mama's face stiffened visibly. 'You can't have her,' she replied flatly. 'Come.'
'I'm the one paying the gold, woman. Remember?' he sneered as he shook his pouch, coins tinkling within it. 'I will ask you again, how much is she worth?'
I remember mama spinning around with her eyes flashing as she grated back at him, 'Its either me or nothing. Choose!'
He took nothing.
I dearly wish that I had not left the house later that same day to the marketplace, or at least bade mama a proper farewell, for I never saw her again after that day.
I was walking along a lonely stretch of road to the marketplace, when I heard the sound of an approaching horse and buggy. I took no notice of it, and waited for it to pass. Moments later, I felt rough hands on my waist and my feet were lifted off the ground and into the buggy. No amount of screaming and struggling availed any good, and I was taken to a town far away from the place I knew as home.
He brought me to a church, where he paid a priest to marry us against my will. I was bound and gagged in front of the altar, and a coarse metal ring was forced painfully onto my finger as the priest solemnly pronounced us man and wife. My gag was soaked with tears as I cursed him, that damned priest, and most of all, the God that condemned me to this fate. A wild image of mama praying in front of the window with tears pouring down her cheeks flashed through my mind then, but I discarded it ruthlessly. Where was God in all this?!
For years, he'd keep me in his cellar, and that is where I lived. I now know the cellar like the back of my hand. The only time of the day I leave the cellar is at night when he uses me to satisfy his appetite. That is my purpose. That is my only purpose, as he always reminded me with a mocking smile every night.
As I lie in bed now, terror has been part of my feelings for such a long time, that I can't tell if what I'm feeling now is fear, or exhilaration.
Cheap tapestry adorned the whitewashed walls, and dirt from the mines filled the cracks in the wooden floorboards. A chest of drawers stood in the corner. I quietly got out of bed and made my way to it slowly, lest the creaking caused him to wake up.
It was a mercy that he did not realize that I had salvaged through his mining tools in the interval of his toilet earlier in the evening. I stuck my hand beneath the chest of drawers, where I had hidden it in a hurry. I took it out, and gazed at the cylindrical object in wonder.
He had only told me of it once, after the time he used it to take revenge on a fellow miner who had wronged him. Glee filled his face as he described the explosive power of this object, and how it caused the unfortunate fellow's demise.
'Dynamite' is the name he gave to this object, if my memory serves me correctly.
I opened the top drawer, where a candle and a box of matches lay. I took out the matchbox, and looked back to the sleeping figure on the bed, and felt nothing but loathing and hatred for the man who lay snoring there.
I thought longingly of mama, yearning to speak to her one last time, but I knew that was impossible since a long time ago. I bit down on a sigh of regret as I opened the box and took out a single match.
No, I may never see daylight again, but I'm going to see something much better than daylight. I am going to see heaven's light.
A spark of light illuminated the room for a few seconds as the fuse lit. I only wish I could have heard him scream.
*This essay was written by the procrastinator for his English test. Several editions were made to make up for the mistakes he made in his haste when writing it in the exam hall, and he begs pardon if it is deemed to be an unsatisfying read. Constructive criticism is welcomed.
