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Cari woke up, if you could call it that, in the middle of a crowded room.
She had gone to sleep after packing a small suitcase and stuffing it under their bed, ready to leave. Then nothing but dreaming of blue walls, no real awareness and then all of a sudden her eyes were being burned by the glaring lights and the shifting of bodies, she was overwhelmed by music and talking and the smells of food, the press of skin. It took her a moment to realize she was on a dancefloor, swaying in familiar arms, David in his rented tux smiling like he had touched the moon. It took her a few moments more to realize she was at her own wedding reception, after the wedding she hadn’t planned to attend.
Every moment after waking was excruciating, the fake smiles and too warm hugs, the endless dancing, the heartfelt toasts. Cari felt like an imposter sitting between her father and David. David and his warm eyes on face, his sweet smile, his huge palm pressed to her knee. It burned like a brand through her wedding gown. She was married and surrounded by the harsh apple smell of red roses and felt like she no longer fit inside of her skin, as if it had been stretched near to tearing by someone else and then dropped back around her, different and broken. The worst part was no one seemed to notice. She was a fake and everyone still recognized her as Cari.
The only answer was to keep moving, so she threw the bouquet and let David slide her garter off, laughing with forced good nature at the wolf whistles and approving applause. She pretended that her mind didn’t skip like a record every time she looked at the blue tablecloths she and David had picked out mere months ago, before she had packed her suitcase and hidden it under her bed, before blue walls. Cari had always been a good actress and she was so thankful for it now, no one else knew she had woken up married...stuck. No one else knew she was longing to go back before the blue so she could take her suitcase and run faster. No one else knew she had gone to sleep Cari Cohen and woken up Cari Marcus. No one else knew she had stopped planning on saying “I do”
She dreamt most nights, a blue room with nothing but a white floor, a white table, a gravelly, comforting voice.
Walking, moving in general, felt strange for at least a few more weeks. Cari’s stride felt too short to her body now. She could not shake the feeling of wrongness from it’s place under her fingernails, in her bones. Even David said she was sleeping differently, closed in tight where she had been expansive just weeks ago, her voice quavering out where she had been so quiet and still.
It took several months for Cari to even pull down the album with her wedding pictures, and it took her several minutes to actually push the white satin cover up, turn to the first page. David looked like, well, David. Sweet, dependable David who she hadn’t loved for so long she could hardly remember what it felt like. She, on the other hand, looked wrong. She couldn’t imagine her face twisted into that particular smile, it wasn’t her’s and she absently wondered who she had been when she had married David. If she could maybe find that Cari they could trade lives. Maybe that Cari still loved David, she looked like she might, and he deserved that. What he probably didn’t deserve was her old suitcase still under their bed, packed and waiting.
After a year the dreams began to peter out. What had been almost every night became once a week, became once a month. Cari couldn’t even remember the precise shade of blue when she was awake anymore, and that soothing voice didn’t haunt her. Her skin had begun to feels hers again as well. It was a relief really. Her life may not be of her choosing, but she was going to be herself again. She began to fantasize about running again, giving David his freedom and getting them both out of this marriage...hard won by who knows who. Their anniversary was lost to her, much as their wedding, but this time in her own head....fantasies of just walking out the door. Maybe the voice had been what was keeping her, because as it began to fade she began to feel more and more like she *could* just leave.
After two years the dreams stopped entirely. Cari could look at the blue wall in their bathroom without feeling sick to her stomach. Her bones were her own entirely.
David woke up to an empty bed in a quiet house.
David woke up alone.
He had known this day was coming, and he knew without looking that the house would be empty. The suitcase would be gone from underneath the bed. He took his time in getting up, stretching and pulling a robe on. Each room of the house was as empty as the last, every sign she had lived here gone, even the white satin album with their wedding pictures was conspicuously absent from the bookshelf in their livingroom. He wished he hadn’t woken for a moment, wished he could go back to sleep and ignorance. He knew he would be waking up alone again tomorrow though, and the morning after.
Cari woke up, and this time you could call it that, in the efficiency she was renting two towns away. She dreamed every color but blue, all vibrant as jewels.