For years I admired him from afar.  His straight, broad back and smiling eyes looking everywhere except towards me.  Fear stopped me from talking to him directly until one rainy day in November. He came to me asking for directions and I smiled widely thinking that my day had come.  I steeled myself and instead of the customary gibberish of right and left, I took him there myself and we both snuggled under his one umbrella.  He was grateful and he chatted along the way.  The next morning he waved at me and I greeted him back.  We met often after that and the simple chat turned to coffee, then to lunch, then to dinner.

Love blossomed as it sometimes does and I felt blessed until I saw him walking out one day with a woman and two little ones.

My heart turned into a million pieces of cold stone.

We met that same evening, him holding a bottle of wine in his hand.

“You’re married,” I said.  It wasn’t a question. His smiling eyes went cold for an instant but soon they smiled again and pretended that nothing was amiss. The million cold pieces suddenly formed a whole.  I snatched the bottle of wine from his hand and smashed it on his head.  I beat him with it until the glass broke and red was everywhere.  When no more glass remained I grabbed the old candleholder from the mantelpiece, anything that would crush his skull further, and bashed some more.

His back was no longer the straight thing it had been and his face was all bloody when I was finished.  He looked horrid, unrecognizable, but his eyes smiled no longer and my heart was warm and whole again.

—

This fictional snippet is my gory response to the Trifecta: Week Fifty-Four writing challenge where the key word is Crush: to reduce to particles by pounding or grinding <crush rock>