Go Muse, GO -- A Foray into Spontaneous Fiction
The tea bag floats like some bloated corpse in that hot water for ten minutes, and by the time she snaps out of it, jerks herself out of staring through the window at the garden (yellow, sickly garden that reminds her how fucked up this all is), it's already too late to fix anything.
There's no sugar in the house. Honey hides in a far corner of the pantry and she has to grope around on tip-toe to get it.
Doesn't work. Never does. She pours the honey into the mug like it's an elixir of life, but when she tips her head back to drown in the tea that bitterness stays, clinging to her tongue and throat like its always belonged there.
She remembers vaguely that she hasn't taken her Valium this morning. The absence of her drug-induced haze might explain the strange, dull anger that beats softly beneath the surface -- a mercury heart hitting the iron nail with eerie rhythm.
Chemistry. Funny word that could probably explain her entire situation right now but refuses to. Chemistry could explain the sickness in all their heads -- the freakish imbalance of hormones that has lead to everyone's demise (except hers, and she pauses on that because it bothers her) -- but it refuses to. Science can't explain what man hath wrought -- though God knows science has tried.
She's in a house in the middle of the winter and snow's dancing and cold is singing and there is a man arriving who might kill her today.
Chemistry can't tell her anything, now. Doesn't explain this.
She found the knife a week before, hidden underneath his nightstand with lion's feet (and their son asked -- "Daddy, was that a real lion once?" and of course Daddy lied and said yes), but when she asked him about it, there was only a bullshit answer she didn't trust and knew that he knew was a lie.
Later that night he touched her cheek and she caught that faint smell of black metal and gun-powder and oil.
"Where were you?" She asked him. He'd vanished like steam in the mirror around six o'clock and though she'd called him, there'd been no response save his quietly polite answering machine and the beep signaling insistently for her to leave a message.
The bedroom was silent and dark except for the eerie glow of light pollution crawling through the curtains and the faintly agitating (and it used to be comforting) tick of the clock near the front door.
"Work called," he responded. She was insulted by this answer -- disgusted by the fact he thought she was just that stupid.
"Work is more important than dinner with your son?"
She'd drag in Robert: the four-year old space explorer, pirate and firefighter was the only slice of humanity in her husband's life, and if there was anything she knew he'd protect, it'd be the son.
He shifted at that, moved uncomfortably like one of the springs had clawed through the fabric of the bed and bit him.
"Sometimes work has to be," he finally said, only slightly reluctant in his retort.
"Never with your son," she snapped back, voice soft but sharp.
He moved again, this time rolling on the bed to face her completely. Eyes were dark (of course they were, in a room with no light), unblinking and the brief hitch in his breathing -- which indicated he was holding something back -- frightened her.
"What do you want from me?" he asked after a long moment. Gone was the bland tone of before, the voice he used on everyone that almost was a monotone but not quite. He was speaking with inflection now, voice rising and falling in question, brow furrowed and lips a tight line of confusion. She could see that -- even in the dark.
She'd goaded him into acting human. She didn't know if that was a good or bad thing, because god knows the creature she'd been living with for five years never really seemed to be a man.
Her mouth opened, closed, searching for the right answer (what did she want? everything that he'd held back for as long as she could remember) and finally only coming up with a word.
"Truth." she said, quiet. "I want truth."
They stared each other down for a long minute, and she could see a shadow dimly cross his jaw as a tic came up.
"I can't give that to you." he whispered, and she could hear him swallow. "I can't."
She bit her lip, fascinated by the fact that she could hear the desperation in his voice and nearly see it in the ebbing-black pitch of his eyes.
And then she let out a sigh and ungracefully rolled around so that her back was facing him.
"Then I can't help you." she said.
The room swallowed her words, smothered them. And strangely, she slept.
Now she sits at the island, catching herself staring through the window above the sink . Their dog -- and the boy named him Oscar after Sesame Street -- prances about outside and plays ball with himself. He's a mutt, mottled, unrecognizable as one distinct breed but still endearing and cute, and she realizes dimly that she does love him.
(She wonders if she loves her husband, but then she glances at the cutting board and sees the .9mm resting like the fang of some prehistoric beast and she tells herself no, she can't.)
The grandfather clock booms four. Robert is at his friend's house and he will not be home for the night.
She is grateful for this.
The husband is late today -- ten minutes late. She originally was going to wait in the front foyer for him, put the gun on the coffee table and sit back with a mug of tea, watching him, but she decided it was too dramatic.
This situation is too dramatic, something inside her snarls, mocking. You're too dramatic.
It might be the truth, but today she's opting for the closest bit of reality she can muster. He's going to walk into the kitchen for a glass of water (he always does) and she is going to sit here silently, hands in her lap and the gun sitting on the island, ugly shadow that darkens both their lives.
He'll notice. He's too observant and smart (and dangerous the something in her hisses again, and she silences it) to not notice the ultimatum she's laying on the island's cutting board.
The thud of shoes being absently kicked into a corner. That faint whispering of a coat being shrugged off. (She hopes he hangs it up on the coat rack this time -- she gets so sick of picking it up off the floor.) When he walks there is no sound.
She doesn't expect him to purposely drag his heels on the herringbone hardwood and the carpet because he is a ghost, and he always has been.
A gun is raised at her head when he enters the kitchen. She blinks at it, calmly and without fear.
(She feels like she's going to puke.)
When he realizes that it's not an intruder in his kitchen, shock rips across her husband's face, tearing off the mask of perfectly cold neutrality. The gun falls from the raised position, fast, like he might drop it, and he stops, jerkily, as if the cogs in the machine of him are chipped and not connecting.
Silence. Oscar barks outside, and the bird-clock in the living room loudly keeps tally of the seconds clicking away.
The hair on the back of her neck is rising, and her fingers feel infused with a strange, sickly kind of cold that burrows into her bones.
Her husband stares at the gun on the island, stares at her with her hands perched daintily in her lap and that anger she's finally letting through her face and he says nothing.
"I want the truth," she starts, then falters. She tries again. "I want honesty."
He bites his lip, swallows. She stares at him with her throat closing up and her hands shaking in her lap and she tells herself don't be afraid.
He raises the gun again.
And she waits.