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Bacon frying. That's the first thing I smell, every time I wake up on a Sunday. Sunlight's filtering in through the blinds, and it looks like it's a beautiful day out there.
I'm glad I'm in here.
I slip my jeans on over my boxers as I slide out of bed and the chilled air hits me. I yawn as I amble into the kitchen and Shayla turns from the stove, smiling at me as she taps at the pan with the spatula. 'Morning, Sleepyhead!'
'M-morning.' No matter how many times I wake up to see her in one of my shirts cooking breakfast and brewing coffee like some kind of miracle, I never think I deserve it. I never think it's going to be real. She grins at me and focuses on the stove as my hand reflexively goes to my ring finger, feeling the gold band that means this is all real, all good.
Shayla's belly is already starting to show. Normal development, I think, for someone as far along as she is. I make a mental note to make an appointment at the doctors. I stare at the tiniest of bumps that shows from underneath my shirt, and wonder what the person inside it is going to be like. Tall or short? Green eyes, probably they'll have green eyes. I know I don't carry the recessive gene for blue eyes, and I doubt Shayla does. Dark hair, definitely.
Even with a bedhead, she's still fucking beautiful.
I'm trying to convince myself to go over there and kiss her while she's sliding the bacon and eggs onto our plates, She's my wife and it's fine she's my wife and it's fine, when an unexpected lump crashes into my legs.
'Daddy!'
I look down at the lump of giggles peering up at me from behind dark bangs and a pink princess hat. 'Hello there, Princess!' I instinctively pick her up and place her on my knee, inwardly focusing on not tensing up at the physical contact as my daughter wraps her arms around me. I kiss her on the cheek. 'What did you dream about?'
She thinks hard, her tongue poking through the gap of her two front teeth and her golden-brown eyes searching the distance for words. Have you ever seen anything more adorable?
'I dreamed that Peter Pan came through the window and flew away with me and took me to mermaid lagoon with Wendy and we turned into mermaids and they were really nice and sparkly and we swam to Atlantica and Ariel said hi and...' - I'm listening intently, friend, that doesn't mean you have to.
Shayla winks at me as she slides the plates over to me and Olivia, along with a damn strong coffee for me, while she tussles Olivia's hair. 'Wow! So, you basically went everywhere last night, huh?'
Olivia nods, ecstatic with an energy I don't remember having at that age- was this what Shayla was like as a kid? 'Uh-huh!' She wolfs down a forkful of eggs. 'And Peter dropped me off right at sunrise and he said that he's coming back for me tonight and he's even gonna bring Tinker Bell!'
'Tinker Bell, really? Wow! Well, I guess we'd better get you to bed on time, then!' Shayla chuckles and Olivia pouts, her four-year-old logic having been defeated.
It's Sunday, which means it's also date night. We drop Olivia off at Angela's at four, promising to be back by 8 (at the absolute latest) and go to Starbucks.
It's not so crowded on Sundays at late afternoons. I can handle it. Shayla helps, I think. She knows what it's like to not want to be touched, or seen, or anything involving other people. She smiles at me constantly and isn't afraid to order two vanilla lattes so that we can both feel normal. I'm so goddamn lucky to have her here with me.
It's quiet enough for us to just talk. We sometimes don't talk at all. Sometimes Shayla does the things that she doesn't post online- the things that only I know about. Not just sewing, but she also sketches and writes when we come here and she knows I can't talk so much. I'm happy just watching her looking down at the paper with such a serious look of concentration.
Sometimes, like today, I want to ask her what the writing is about. Today, she says it's called 'Fuck Society'. She tells me she's been inspired by the old hacking movement that went underground so many years ago. She wishes she could meet the people who tried so hard to change the world. A poem is a way to change the world, she says. Shayla always believes more in regular people than I do. That's probably an advantage of not being able to hack anybody.
I don't even have to fight the urge to ask her if I can read it when she's done. She smiles and hands slides the scrap of paper over, slurping down the last of her latte.
It's a good poem. That's all I can tell you, friend. There's a reason I haven't been talking to you so much recently- all this stuff? It's gone now. I'm a family man. I'm normal. For the first time.
Okay, I know you're not going to buy that completely. But, I am as happy as someone like me can be. I'm as normal as someone like me can be.
Sometimes, like now, when I take Shayla back to our apartment and we undress each other, I don't even think about the past. It's like whatever it is that's wrong inside of me is asleep when I'm this close to her. It's the only type of closeness that I confess I have absolutely no problems with. That doesn't make sense, does it? Well, the truth doesn't have to make sense.
When we're both finished, she drapes herself over me and rests her chin on my chest with her eyes closed. I'm ready to fall asleep or just watch her watching me before the wrongness wakes itself up again, but I feel her tensing beside me and all of a sudden her fingernails are digging, ever so slightly, into my shoulder. Her warmth is pressed up against me as she breathes into my face- 'Elliot!'
'What is it?' She's panicking and that's making it hard for me to stay calm. 'What's wrong? Is it the baby? What-'
'Elliot!'
There are tears in her eyes.
'Elliot!'
Oh. Oh shit.
She's being pulled off of me now, clawing to keep ahold of me as I sit bolt upright in our bed, reaching for her as the bedroom door swings open and swallows her into blackness.
I gasp as I jolt awake, my hand instantly reaching for where her hand always is, where it always has been when I've woken up from a nightmare. It's dark as my hand pats the cold and empty sheets. My head swings round to look at the other side of the bed, and that's just what I find- the other side of the bed. No Shayla.
Why would there be?
Shayla is dead.
I killed her.
Oh.
I'm alone.