The skin around my eye was a yellowish gray where the blood had settled under the surface.

I remembered his face from the evening before, standing over me in the kitchen while smoke rose from Sloan’s cigarette in the saucer.

He had struck me with the flat of his hand and told me that maybe now I would stop talking.

I took my phone out of my cardigan pocket and opened the camera.

I held the lens four inches from my cheek, turning my head so the bathroom light hit the bruised skin directly.

The blue digital numbers in the top left corner of the screen showed six twenty-two a.m.