Ellie watched as the clock ticked away the minutes. Time just  kept sliding away. She paced back and forth in the living room of the apartment waiting for Harold’s footsteps coming up the stairs. It was a sound that she had come to hate. It was a sound that heralded the beginning of what could only be described as hell.
Harold was an abuser.  He took sublime pleasure in hurting Ellie in anyway he could. Somedays, he wouldn’t lay a hand on her, but he would berate her with his words letting her know over and over again how useless she was, how ugly he found her and how she didn’t deserve to live. Other days, he would use his hands to express his cruelty. He knew how to hurt her without leaving obvious outward signs of his abuse.

  Ellie knew that tonight he would mete out the worst of his abuses. He would handcuff her to the four poster bed and rape her repeatedly. He told her that it was his right as her husband to use her in anyway that met his needs. Any other day, knowing what he would do when he walked through the door, would have had Ellie vomiting for hours before he unlocked the door, but tonight would be different. Tonight, Harold would become part of the picture that hung on the living room wall. Harold would become a faceless figure walking through the endless fog of hell. The voices had told her it would be so, and the voices never lied. They sang to her when his hands were causing unspeakable pain and they took her spirit to a place of white light and peace.

  Ellie heard the outer door to the apartment open and slam and then she heard Harold’s heavy footfalls on the stairs. They were louder than usual, which meant that he was in a fouler mood than was normal for him. Her stomach did a flip and she fought to hold back the impulse to vomit.

  The voices said in unison, “Be brave,  child. You  will triumph tonight!”

  The key was slipping into the lock on the other side of the door. Soon, he would be inside and dragging her to the bed of horrors for endless hours of sexual torture. She knew that if she didn’t do as the voices directed, she would soon be dead at Harold’s hands.

  “Why aren’t you dressed up as I told you to be when I got home? What did I tell you? You so stupid you can’t follow simple directions?” he bellowed as he stormed into the room. “Why aren’t you ready for me? I told you to be ready. Get undressed, you cow!”

  Ellie backed away from Harold towards the picture that hung on the wall behind her.

  “What the…?!” he spat out as Ellie backed away a little bit more.

  Ellie had only backed away once from Harold and had not done it again. No one else had seen the burn marks on her upper thigh that he had inflicted with lit cigarettes in reprisal.

  Harold stood looking at Ellie with his hands clenched in white knuckled fists. It was time for another lesson in obedience. He couldn’t have her disrespecting him in the slightest way.  His needs would be satisfied and the angrier he became, the more aroused he became.

  Harold stepped toward Ellie with a sneer on his lips.

  “You can back off all you want, but you know you can’t escape. I told you what was gonna happen tonight and nothing’s going to stop it,” he said in a low growl as he stood over Ellie. Harold reached out to grab Ellie by the upper arms when she deftly stepped aside. Harold lost his balance and started falling forward towards the picture.

  A thousand voices filled the room and a look of horror crossed Harold’s face. Harold started turning into a column of smoke starting at his feet and moving upwards to his head. Screams issued forth from his mouth and curses, vile and filthy were directed at Ellie. She watched as the man she had promised to love, honor and cherish, ten years earlier, was slowly inhaled by the picture. Soon, it was finished and Ellie collapsed onto the sofa.

  It was over. It was finally over. Ellie breathed deeply and stood up and walked over to the painting. She looked at it closely. She counted the figures as she had done so many times  before and smiled. Where once there were sixteen distinct figures, a seventeenth figure had appeared, faceless and dark like all the others.

  Ellie stared at the picture for a long time. No emotion tore at her heart or soul. No tears fell. She turned away from the picture and she listened for the voices that had helped her survive Harold's demonic cruelty throughout  the years.  Hearing nothing, she walked calmly to the door which Harold had not deadbolted for the first time in 10 years. She opened the door, walked down the stairs and for the first time in  a decade, Ellie walked out of the front door into a world that she had believed no longer existed.

  In the distance, a fog was rolling in over the ocean toward the shore, but Ellie didn't even notice and the voices quietly whispered in the far away reaches of her mind.

  "Beware of the fog!"

  Ellie dismissed them because after all, she was finally free and she refused to look back ever again.