Tragedy and error have been two of the forces that have made up the fucked-up Pollack painting she calls her life for as long as she can remember, and she hates it.

She's standing in the middle of an apartment and her nose is bleeding. Franklin (once boyfriend, no longer saint) is rolling on the ground -- groaning from the blow she gave him with a heavy brass lamp -- and she wants nothing more than to hit him again and again and again and again. Pay him back for the shouting, the punches, the teasing and the lies.

Shannon has the upper hand, now, and she knows what she wants to do. She knows that she wants to kill him, wreck damage on him physically and mentally the same way he did for her.  
An eye for an eye, a life for a life. A bruised ego wants equal retribution for the damage wreaked upon it.

It doesn't take much thinking for Shannon to stride over to that filth that calls itself Franklin, whining and whimpering on the floor, and raise her foot.

But then she stops. Reality hiccups, and suddenly Shannon is talking to her father.

"There's no cowardice in walking away," he says to her, weak and frail in the hospital bed, kept alive by machines that just wait for him to die with angry, blinking red eyes. His life is leaving him, pacing irritably in the shell of his body and waiting for the chance to get out and fly.

She tells him she doesn't understand.

He coughs heavily and shakes his head.

"Shannon, sometimes the best man does what he doesn't want to do, and he walks away."

"But you always -- "

"I know what I said," and his voice is stronger now, heartened by the truth he's trying to tell his daughter. "I know what I said. But you have to understand that there's a point where you have to move on, even if someone else won't."

Franklin is cursing now, slightly more lucid than he was two minutes ago, and he feebly tries to get to his knees before his arms give out and he collapses back to the ground. Shannon watches, trying to detach herself, trying not to want to feel revenge on this man, this pathetic excuse for a human being.

She still has the lamp and she knows she cracked his skull.

She could kill him.

But then Shannon thinks for a long moment.

A long, long moment.

Would it be worth it? Would snuffing out a man who beat her, toyed with her, betrayed her really be worth it?

Ultimately, some of the blame for her situation rests directly on her shoulders. She cannot deny her mistakes, and she cannot deny that it was through her own tragedy and error that she chained herself to this parasitic relationship. She put her foot in that pool, and she allowed the leech to cling to her even though it was slowly draining her of her own blood.

But that is where it ends.

That is where she has to move on. Put the glowing cigarette to the leech and watch it crumple away.

Shannon crouches, clearing her throat so that Franklin's unfocused eyes -- rapidly trying to blink away blood coming from a cut above his left eyebrow -- look at her.

"I'm going to call 911," she says slowly, "and then I'm going to leave you. I'm taking my wallet, my car, and anything important to me and I am leaving. Do you understand?"

Franklin's lips curl up in a snarl, revealing red-streaked teeth from biting his tongue, and he tries to curse. The words start, then falter, tripping over themselves as Franklin's eyes flicker shut, and he collapses to the floor.

Shannon rises, gently puts the lamp back on the desk where it came from and carefully, methodically, sweeps the house for her belongings, finding her purse, a few photographs, and other miscellanious junk. It doesn't take longer than ten minutes, but to her it seems like a lifetime of picking up the pieces, and when she's done, she feels strangely exhausted. She hauls Franklin onto a couch and cleans up his face with a rag. She uses the land line to call 911.

And then Shannon, twenty-five, bleeding from her nose, carrying her belongings and hopefully a new life, walks out the door.

She doesn't look back.