Give 'til it Hurts

CJ struggled through the murky darkness, vainly trying to swim against the terror choking the screams frozen in her chest. She strained to understand the angry mutterings circling around her. She could hear her mother’s voice, but couldn’t make out the words. A dark figure stood over her with a broken bottle in his hand. Desperate to save her mother, she thrashed against the chains keeping her in place. She felt herself drowning in her own fear. Suddenly she sat up in bed, trembling, with sweat pouring off her. The nightmares always ended in the same way: a feeling of suffocation gradually replaced with relief as she realized she was safe in her bed.
Nightmares had been CJ’s macabre companion as long as she could remember.
She shook herself, struggling to rid herself of the wisps of the nightmare. It had been a long night, trying to convince the young mother to move to the domestic violence shelter, away from her abuse husband. As the executive director of the shelter, CJ dealt with the results of violence every day. But she never expected domestic violence to become personal. The web of lies and deceit from her childhood became even more tangled when she married an abusive man. How could God allow such things to happen? And when she is accused of murder, her past threatens to overwhelm and destroy her future.