On a Dark and Stormy Night.

He had done this to her. The man who stood in the corner, quiet and still, he had brought her to this god forsaken place. She begged for mercy. The tears had long dried upon her face, the pain was too much to even cry about. "I can't...please" she whispered her plea, begging for a reprieve. But he didn't move a muscle, didn't budge from his stubborn perch in the corner. It was his deep blue eyes that betrayed his emotions. They were filled with excitement and a touch of fear, his hands shook at the very prospect of what was about to be. She knew he wouldn't help her, indeed he couldn't.

Her screams bounced off the lime green walls. Their dingy, peeling paint a testament to the hard life they had led and witnessed. The myriads of women who had suffered at the hands of men was a secret these walls whispered amongst themselves years after the screams had faded and the memories were forgotten. The floors, a distant cousin, had tasted blood and known the agony first hand. It held it's own secrets but dare not whisper it like the walls did. Some secrets were better left unspoken.

Her blood pooled under the table beneath her. The woman's agony heard and tasted by the quiet witnesses of the cold, hard concrete that surrounded her. The man had finally moved and stood next to her bedside. He held her hand as the pain rippled through her sore and tortured body. She found comfort in his touch, despite what he had forced her to endure. She gave one final push and her child emerged, his screams matching hers. Suddenly the woman's pain seemed to be forgotten; comforting this squirming, screaming mass was all that mattered. The tears that had long dried up, flowed from her again. Love replaced pain and once more the walls whispered the names of all who had come before them.

Her son was born that dark and stormy night, but it would not be the last time those cold, concrete witnesses would observe the secrets that all women held within them. Life isn't born, it is forced and wrenched into being by a love that knows no bounds. A woman's power can never be matched as it is by her will alone that life is allowed to exist, and indeed, flourish.