She’s right here, she really is.
Her presence ever so warm, her smile warming the despair of three-thirty in the morning, peeking at him beneath their covers.
“What’s wrong, big dummy?”
To hell with reality and reason. For the first night in three months, he could bear to fall asleep, accompanied by the fairy tale dreams, like the ones he had before, instead of maddening nightmares. He slept all the way to noon, smiling in his sleep like they used to.
Setting everything aside that day, they cuddled on their armchair, with his head buried in her shoulder. He cried and cried about how much he had missed her, while she planted gentle kisses on his cheek, reassuring him it’ll all be okay. They went for a walk in the afternoon, hands clasped together while both couldn’t resist themselves from teasing and flirting to the other. Their favorite Haidilao place was more delicious than ever. She would only eat with the sauce he had mixed, pouting when he didn’t feed her enough. Sleep found itself to him quicker than ever that night, with her tucked tightly into his arms.
Everything was going to be okay, just like how it used to be.
Right?
It was only the second day, and he wouldn’t stop seeing things.
Sometimes, the house would spout a raging river of crimson red, its very foundations producing a piercing wail, the walls buckling and tearing beneath an invisible force of malignity. Other times, he would be hauled awake in the dead of night to find that she was gone again. Instead, in his arms, there lay a bloody, humanoid foetus, gently cooing and pulling at the buttons of his pyjamas. Ah, he remembers now. It had happened just before she came back too, he had seen the doctors about it. Some pills, yes, the pills. The pills would make everything alright again. Where were they, where the hell were they?
His head was going to burst. Where in the love of god were they?
A sensation of warmth radiated through his hands. There she was, an angel like always, her eyes filled with a worry he’d never seen before. With a gentle hand and a kiss on the neck, she guided him, step by step, to a cabinet above the sink. The pills! Euphoria coursed through his veins like a drug, beads of sweat erupting from his skin in a joyful frenzy. The visions would stop plaguing him, she would truly be beside him again, and everything was going to be okay. Happiness had consumed him to such a great extent, he could barely hear her gentle whispers.
“…and our wedding’s going to be so so big the next time, and our son’s going to grow up as dashing as you! Don’t miss me too much, my biggest dummy, the wind will cuddle you for me…”
As eerily as it had all came back, it was all gone again—gone after he had downed the pills with a glass of water. He didn’t know why burning tears were streaking out of his eyelids, nor why he was mumbling incoherently to the air in front of him.
“Biggest? So I’m not your only big dummy…?”
A month was all it had taken for the tears to dry. He stood on the bridge’s footpath, traffic and gulls bustling around his solemn silhouette. Grasped in his palms, two tiny white boxes lay motionless, lightly stained by droplets of tears. Never would the image of his first happening upon what had seemed to be an angel erase itself from his thoughts. It was exactly here, atop this very bridge, exactly where he stood. Almost, he thought, at least he had almost got to see her beaming smile, their love unsullied and indelible.
Four months after she bled out on the operating table, he hurled their engagement rings into the bottomless stomach of the harbour, and managed to turn back without looking back a single time.
With the solemn tenderness of an executioner speaking to their victim, the chilling ocean breeze guided their future further and further away from them, as it had bound their lost souls together in the past.
Writer – Daniel Kang
Editor – Areeba Zabrina
Artist – Cindy Zhang
–August 2024–
