When he was strangling me, I considered if he was really trying hard enough, if he was actually strangling me or just showing off that he could do it if he really wanted to. I had a few things cross my mind then, like ‘I was going to go to the shop’, and then, ‘he has his hands around my throat but is he trying to kill me?’
     My neck bent back over the side of the bed, the rest of me lying horizontal. I shuffled as far back as I could and lay very still in the hope this might put him off and stave any escalation.
     So in a way, it was boring. Me lying there reaching back into a corpse pose that would enable him to back out of it without having to cover up the body later. I like to be helpful. Him with his mad eyes that I couldn’t see, as my head was tipped back, but I knew them too well. The mad eyes that turned him from an average person to believing he was a vampire, or the devil or the messiah. Both hands on my neck. Doing some kind of ‘look how evil I am’ power move.
     Like one time he shut the bedroom door and had his mouth half open like he’d swallowed something hot. Nuclear pizza. Boiling tea. Something like that. He started hissing, I thought, this is different.
     ‘They’re coming.’ He said. And he didn’t mean people.
     ‘What are?’ I asked and he just hissed.
     Still, I had no idea. Turned out he was a vampire. I had to believe him or he’d ‘try and prove it’ which would just make it go on for longer. So I asked him relevant questions like, ‘Do you suck the blood of virgins?’ and ‘Is this a recent evolution or have you always had fangs?’ None of the above, apparently. It took an hour or so for him to calm down. The fangs didn’t descend as he had predicted and we went back to normal life for a few months.
     But now he’s strangling me. Both hands around my neck, not pressing too hard. It doesn’t seem to be a sexual thing or linked to vampires. But my neck is uncomfortable stretching back like this and I’m a little concerned it’s restricting my ability to breath. Of course, you’d fight back like you’ve seen in the movies, but what do you know?
     I try to speak but it comes out all squeaky and dry. ‘Can you stop please?’ was the intention.
     At this point it does occur to me that this as an actual attempt to kill me. Struggling makes him tighten and my arms pin under me. I wait. I probably save my own life by waiting him out, I rationalise. Float out of my head and wait for the physical sensations to stop. Give him no drama to play with. Slide the panic down my throat.
     The things we do to be loved.
     My desperate soul reaching out to be held is stretched out and tied down. Of course he isn’t killing me. The lack of strategy is clear. I wouldn’t be there to help him dispose of my body. He has no clue how to tidy up after himself. He lets go, as if he can read my thoughts. I cough the way I’ve seen on television but then I’m grabbing whole breaths, stealing air in desperate gulps, like I only have a few left.. I don’t run. You would probably run, but I don’t. Because the door is behind him and he could reach it before me. Despite the obvious issues I have with life, I don’t desire to die today.
     I wait for the inevitable switch as he rants. I don’t hear what he says. You probably would write it down and call the police. But I don’t because they would only say it’s a domestic and none of their business. You would say they don’t do that now. Now they care. But I’m doing what I need to do. Waiting for the tears to come. And when they do he cries all night as if he is the victim of his own crime. You would think he had a terrible childhood and that he is a victim too, because you are an idiot. But not as much of an idiot as I am. When I sleep, when he has no murder left in him, I wake and forget it even happened. The way your brain blanks out childbirth, because the pain was too high, I blank out reality.
     And I’m down in the dirty place again. In hell. Because he’s so nice now, he’s fetching me coffee and planning our day. And I wish he’d finished me off instead of dragging it on. I wish he’d stop telling me he loves me.
     Because that’s when I can’t leave. This is where I belong.