Beauden

Union between Palestine and Israel

The air in the room hung thick and heavy, the scent of sex a cloying perfume. I lay on the bed, the sheets damp and tangled beneath me. A sticky warmth pulsed between my legs, the remnants of my father-in-law’s seed slowly seeping out. The sensation was sickening, a constant reminder of what had just transpired. He had gotten off me a moment ago, his breath still ragged, moving to the edge of the bed with a strange detachment. I could see my reflection in the mirror across the room, my hair disheveled, my face flushed, a stark contrast to the numb emptiness I felt inside. Looking at the pale, watery mess spreading across the sheets, the words slipped out before I could stop them. "You’ve released water inside the uterus," I said, my voice barely a whisper. A bitter laugh caught in my throat. "Now my stomach will swell." My eyes searched for his, wanting to find some flicker of remorse, some acknowledgment of the enormity of what he had done. But his gaze remained fixed on some unseen point, his face impassive. It was like looking at a stranger, a man who had just violated not just my body but the foundation of everything I had believed in. The silence stretched, punctuated by the soft sigh of my breath as tears began to prick at the corners of my eyes. The reality of what this meant crashed down on me. Everything was irrevocably changed. My marriage, my family, my life...all tainted by this one awful act. I turned my head away, staring at the ceiling, trying to hold back the tears that were welling. There was no way to undo this. The truth lay heavy in the air, as thick and cloying as the smell of sex that still lingered, and nothing would ever be the same.