The first blow always took me by surprise. Even though I spent both days and nights waiting for it. Even though I counted the hours, minutes, seconds. Even though I knew it would come, sooner or later, it always took me by surprise.

 

The second blow always took me by surprise. After months of experience, I still thought one blow would be enough. That one blow would be sufficient to get his anger out. I always thought that maybe this time, he would realise what he'd done. Maybe this time, he'd be done hurting me just once. So even though he had never stopped after the first punch, the second blow always took me by surprise.

 

The third blow always took me by surprise. The impact of it, combined with the impact of the two previous blows, was always worse than the previous two. Every time I thought he would lose power, strenght, after the second blow. But he never did. The third blow hurt more than the first and second, and so the third blow always took me by surprise.

 

The fourth blow always took me by surprise. By now I was always on the floor. No way I stood up after three blows. And every time I thought he would stop then. That once I was below him, crawling before his feet, he would stop. But he never did. He punched the fourth time, when I was on the floor, and the fourth blow always took me by surprise.

 

The fifth blow always took me by surprise. The fact that the fifth blow came even though I was on the floor, looking up at him, begging him to stop, was never expected. Even though I had lived through the exact same story line time and time again, the fifth blow always took me by surprise.

 

The sixth blow always took me by surprise. By this time I always thought I would be unconcious. But my body endured more than I thought. I don't know if he counted the blows, if he knew he had punched me five times already. I often hoped he didn't count, so he wouldn't be aware of how much he hurt me. But then that would also mean he didn't care about how many times he hit me. Maybe he didn't. These were thoughts that went through my head as he hit me. And because I spaced out, the sixth blow always took me by surprise.

 

The seventh blow always took me by surprise. No matter how many times we'd been through it, I thought he would stop before I lost conciousness, and the seventh blow usually took me out. The seventh blow always took me by surprise.

 

The eighth and ninth and tenth and eleventh blows were all a blur. And after those, I didn't feel anything. My body shut down, and didn't start working again until the doctors fed it medicines to make it remember that it was a body. Even I sometimes forgot my body was a body. Usually I thought of it as an object that wasn't connected to me. Something I had to drag around so that my husband could fuck it and hit it whenever he felt like it. Something that wasn't really mine. It wasn't until right before I died that I realised that if my body dies, I die too.

 

But then it was too late.