The toothbrush

In the evening, she serves chicken soup with big chunks of carrots and celery — it's her husband's favourite. The brothy steam rising from his bowl fogs the thick lenses that make his failing eyes look owlish.

"Fantastic, love, we should have this every night!"

She accepts his praise with a close-lipped smile that uncomfortably tears on the sore corners of her mouth. Every spoonful of soup is spiced with the metallic taste of her blood. They continue to eat in silence but for his soft hums of delight and her quietly swallowed moans of pain.

She is already in bed as he carefully crawls on his side of the mattress. His hand feels for hers and when he finds it, he gives it a soft squeeze. He won't see the falling expression on her face as she reaches for the book on her bedside table. Again, she marvels at the weightiness of the book, literally and figuratively, as dry as a treatise and just as entertaining. It's fitting he likes it so much, she thinks, and opens the page where they stopped the previous night.

Her reading lamp pushes against the darkness of the room, as does her levelled voice against the silence. The merest whiff of air against her gums is like tiny needle pricks. Her dentist found nothing: no disease, no infection. Yet her mouth is destroying itself from the inside.

Her eyes meander along the pages as she reads, but she doesn't care for any of it; her sole focus is on the changing rhythm of his breath. The stuttering snore that ends in a whistle is the signal he has drifted off and reassures her that everything she says stays between herself and the oblivion of his sleep.

Like every night of these past dreadful months, as his eyesight had dwindled along with her freedom, her gaze stays fixed on the page, the words blurring into meaningless shapes as different words escape her lips — her words, breaking from the dark place inside her mind that she always holds under lock and key.

She hates the heat that evaporates from his heavy body; it smothers her beneath the blankets. There's this faint old-man-smell that, however often she scrubs him in the bathtub, seems to cling to him like an evil spirit. The urge to vomit her regret on the burden of his existence almost chokes her.

Her voice wavers between velvet and rust when she whispers to his sleeping form about holding his head, so close above the water while she washes his feathery hair. It would only need one finger against his brow to keep him down. A thrill runs from her heart to her fingertips at the delicious vision: water bubbles bursting as they reach the surface, the thrashing of his frail limbs. It burns through even the constant ache in her mouth. Her muscles finally relax, her gums stop bleeding. Smiling, she falls asleep.

In the morning, the pain is worse than ever. She stares at the toothbrush in the cup on the bathroom sink. Some weeks ago, she changed the electrical one for a manual, but to no avail. With the lightest pressure she brushes her teeth, but the bristles feel like talons, every gentle circle like the slashing paw of a tiger. The pain is so intense that it brings tears to her eyes and as her tongue flicks against a front tooth, it wobbles in its socket. Dread washes over her. 

She shuts her eyes, taking a steadying breath. As she opens them, she jumps at the sight of her husband's face reflected in the mirror, right behind her. Toothpaste mixed with blood squeezes from the cracked corners of her mouth, snailing down both sides of her chin, whilst the rest of the disgusting concoction runs down her throat, making her gag.

His useless eyes never seem to waver from her face, but there's a gleam in them, a strange sharpening. His look has the same effect on her as headlights on a deer at night. She can't rip her gaze away from his reflection, while her blood drips into the porcelain sink below: thick splashes, violent red.

For the span of a heartbeat, it seems to her as if his lips twitch into something lucid and cruel, as if her suffering was exactly what she deserved. Suddenly, the bathroom light above them flickers, and again a dull sheen overcasts the awareness that had twinkled in his eyes.

Still shaken, she thinks she must have imagined it — the light, the smile, all of it — as he firmly grabs her by the shoulders.

"My beautiful girl," he says in this feeble tone she has learnt to hate, before he presses his lips hard against her bloody mouth.

It hurts.

Just as it becomes unbearable, he lets her go.

She watches him totter out of the bathroom, his hand gliding over the wall for direction and support.

She hesitates, but just for a moment, then she steps to the bathtub. Blood is still running from her mouth. She turns the taps, watching the steady stream, her mouth still dripping, his bath water mingling with her blood.