Author(s): Matthew Steven Condon

Fiction

No matter how dark it is out here, amongst the mangrove islands, I can still see my own blood sprayed across the white wall...I am fixed in my canvas chair, the same as every night, and I look across the white wall of the dining room in my house, a thousand kilometres away, a warm and thin constellation that has come from me immediately after the blow, and I am as numb now, at the thought of it, as I was when it happened. The Pillow Fight opens on the wedding night of a couple, Luke and Charlotte. As Charlotte sleeps in the bed, Luke sits watching the sunrise, feeling his eye blacken, wondering whether his life is ruined. Far from the blissful wedding night of his dreams and fantasies, reality has dealt him a different hand: he and Charlotte end up having a disagreement which results in her backhanding him across the face and blackening his eye. The anger and violence she unleashes terrify him and reveal another Charlotte, one he knows he will see again. At first Luke tries to help Charlotte, but she refuses to face her problem. The anger and violence continue without warning. He still loves her, pities her, but now he also fears her. Her attacks on him have diminished him as a person; he begins to think of himself as weak and unworthy, as deserving her punishment. He will do anything to make her happy, anything to avoid the inevitable and terrifying explosions of rage. He is living in a nightmare, one that is being played out in countless homes all over the world. The Pillow Fight is a bleak, brutal and uncompromising exploration of domestic violence and the destruction of a marriage. It is told from the point of view of a male victim, so should provoke controversy and debate, but its basic point is terrifyingly clear: domestic violence affects both men and women, both as victims and perpetrators...and the capacity for dark and rage-driven violence lives within us all.