Strength in Numbers

[alaterdate]

Title: Strength in Numbers
Rating: G
Wordcount: 596
Genre: Lit Fic

Gina sucked in a breath deep enough to feel like her lungs were about to burst. She exhaled slowly—slowly now—as she crept down the stairs. Each footstep deliberate. Meticulously placed in order to keep the boards from creaking and waking Ryan who slept in the room right off the landing. The only thing she could count on him to do was sleep until late afternoon. Her arms ached under the weight of the box she carried, but her heart ached more.

At the bottom of the staircase she took another gulp of air and turned to look back upstairs. To see if Ryan’s door was still closed. It was. She could breathe for now. Gina maneuvered through the living room past the couch Ryan’s mother had given them when they first moved into the house, its pattern of thousands of little flowers had already faded and yellowed before it even crossed their threshold. She didn’t bother looking at her reflection in the television when she passed it—not this time anyway—she knew well what she would find there.
A woman, withered and worn.

Stale air blunted her lungs when she stepped into the garage. The room had been closed tight for years, only used for storage, but she opened it up to make a passage from the house to her truck. A black pickup sat in the driveway with its tailgate down, like outstretched arms just waiting to take her burdens from her. She slid the cardboard box onto the bed and positioned it next to others, another step in solving the puzzle of her life. How many boxes and bags were left? She should have counted before coming down.

Returning to the bottom of the stairs she took yet another deep breath. Going back up was the hardest part. She slipped into her room where she had wrapped up her whole world and slung a duffle bag over her shoulder. She took another deep breath in preparation for her descent. It was a ritual now. One foot softly made its way down, followed by a horrible creaking sound. Her foot jerked back from the step, but the creaking continued like a siren in a storm. The door to Ryan’s room continued to creak as it opened right in front of her.

“Gina? Where are you going?” Ryan stood in the doorway of his room with eyes squinted in sleepiness and confusion.

Gina’s world rocked, it rumbled beneath her and inside her. A storm indeed. She bolted down the steps. Ryan thundered behind her. Downstairs—only with the length of the yellow couch between them—she dared to look back.

“Gina, stop acting like a child. Making me chase you. You can’t leave me. What makes you think you can survive without me?”

“Millions of women do.”

Ryan shoved the couch with a howl, leaving the wood floor scarred forever. Gina leapt away. Ran through the garage. Through the stale air that refused to leave. Tossed her duffel bag onto the truck bed. Slammed the tailgate closed. Hopped into the cabin and locked the doors. In the rearview mirror a backwards Ryan gawked at her things piled in the truck bed.

“What the fuck? How long have you been planning this?”

How many years had they lived together? She started the ignition. She ignored the pounding outside the door and the pounding inside her chest.

“You’re nothing without me. You hear me? You’ll never be able to make it without me.”

She gunned her truck onto the dirt road and never looked back.

I wrote this after reading Henrik Ibsen's A Doll's House. I really loved Nora's dialogue at the end.
To quote:
Torveld: No man would sacrifice his honour for the one he loves.
Nora: It is a thing hundreds of thousands of women have done.