JR Mercier

That Time You Choked Her by JR Mercier

jr mercier

I don’t remember what you fought about, and I don’t think she would remember either. I doubt you do. 

We were all in the kitchen, with the big black marble counter.

She’d bake cookies on there, frantic energy rushing everywhere as she tried to combat her unemployment. We’d walk to stores, arms full of little bags she painstakingly tried to make pretty and fancy. Something stores would sell. 

Only one store took up her cookies. I don’t think it helped. But she tried. 

That Time You Choked Her by JR Mercier

It’s only now, years later, I see that she never loved you. She was a mother and I was a mouth to feed. She was an animal, trapped by an instinct stronger than love or fear, the instinct to survive and protect her young. So she stayed for the shelter and food but she was wild and it bled everywhere she walked, leaving streaks on the walls, on my skin and yours. Maybe she loved the blood because it was the release of all she bottled. 

Her eyes would glisten when that wildness got close to the surface. The whites of her eyes would bleed to a tainted gold. It’s what I pictured Otherness to be, that possessed and intense gleam. 

That day, you were picking at the cuts she suffered on her soul. Pulling at the scabs, rubbing salt in her wounds. You always held laughter close in your cruel eyes, revelling in her pain. She held back because she knew you had the power. How would she provide for her cubs without money? How would we survive in the concrete jungle when all she had to her name was trauma and love for the wrong people?

She kept her mouth shut, strong back bowed, while despair crept into her being. It was becoming easier to surrender, to lower her head and let the hands force her down.

She was already so low, her yellow eyes haunted by the gold used to be. 

But

You 

Kept

On

Picking

jr mercier, short story

Her soul burst forth, a thing of old gold and stained glass windows filled with the raging faces of all the women she played for years. They chanted songs of fury and mocked your paper gods and false power and peeled open your eyes, forcing your bleeding eyes to confront the truth of her Everything. Everything you would never be or would never be able to possess. 

It terrified you. Here was a god in the flesh, and she was bigger than your church. 

Your cheeks shook in anger and your fingers, those fat ugly things, wrapped around her throat and when her breath was forced out, so was the gold. 

You reduced her to a weak, begging thing. 

You put her in her place, didn’t you? You made sure to knock her to the ground so that she would be where she belonged. The proper height to bow, to suck dick, to look up at you while you played king of the mud. 

You never noticed her clenched jaw or her heaving chest. 

I was stuck in a corner, held back by young bones and a soul trying to grow. I couldn’t help her. I was so young and even then, you had a hold on me. Your sentences wrapped like steel links around me, making me heavier and smaller. Keeping me grounded.

Brother was there, rushing down the stairs, bringing with him wrath that made the air tremble, for he was also part of her. He dragged you off her and she was lying there, gasping for breath, and you were screaming as brother’s arm lifted and dropped. Again and again and again. You screamed, shrill like a pig and my heart soared. For that one second, the king of the mud could not hold us. 

Do you know what breaks my heart the most? Even then, while you were being hurt and I know part of her loved it, she clutched brother’s arm.

“Stop.”

jr mercier short story

She was a mother and we needed that food. That shelter. If this had been a different time and she’d been a different animal, she would have torn the flesh off all the Yous. She would have savaged the creatures that tried to hurt her or her children. 

But it wasn’t a different time and we were stuck. She lifted you, stroked your arm. She led you upstairs and made sure your eyes didn’t stray to me or brother. Your voices became softer, her gentle crooning drifting down the stairs. She didn’t dare look back at us. 

I don’t remember her coming down again that day.

The next day she was making cookies again. Her frantic energy was dulled and her movements were slow, tired. Her tainted gold only a faded yellow.

Something in me changed the day you choked her. 

I did not inherit money or a home filled with sunshine and laughter. I inherited her trauma. You smothered her power and made me afraid of mine. 

It’s been years and here I am, in a different time. A time of change.

that time you choked her by jr mercier, jr mercier short story jr mercier

I am not able to build up what you caused me to lose and even if I could, I wouldn’t. Nature is about change and those stained glass windows and old gold no longer make me a church. Steel lines my spine. Stained glass is at the ready in my hands. That old gold so weary in her eyes now gleams in mine. 

The next time you choke a woman, feel my breath on your neck. Feel my bared teeth and know that I have no mouth to feed and nothing to lose. 

I am my mother’s daughter and I am the consequences of your fear. 

We are our mother’s daughters.

We are the consequences of your fear. 

Want to read something similar? Try It at the Bottom of the Ocean by JR Mercier

Check out my YouTube Channel for some whacky animations.