Static

You're walking home the quiet way and step to step you stand still while a lick of spring sunlight pricks your skin. Pricks all afternoon as you wait for the sound of bell in your shop to ring out, but it doesn't ring, and it doesn't ring, until at last you throw a kunai at it just to break the silence. And then there's the noise of other visitors, coming in and out in clouds of laughter, and smoke and quick, but promising goodbyes.

But there's not him. He's not coming, again and again, and that fact alone forces you to make the biggest mistake of your life. You marry another man.

...oOo...

One day you find yourself longing for a child of your own, and you know that your husband can never give it to you because of that one mission he took, and he shouldn't have, but still did, in spite your protests. But you love him anyway.

That doesn't stop you from going through the narrow hallway of a building you haven't been in for over three years, nor does it stop you from entering that one room in particular. Coming in, you entrance the man sitting there, all high heels, and dark purple dress - you come into his room and this time you close the doors behind you all the way. Without saying anything you take off your dress and pull him to the bed with you.

He makes love to you in the clear light of the afternoon, with the sun on his back like someone's eyes watching carefully. But that doesn't bother you, because he makes love to you as if you were the most precious thing to him on the whole planet, and he makes you feel beautiful and loved. Just like he always did.

When it's over, with a heavy sight you get up and adjust your clothes, check your waist-band holding the hidden needles, with too much care as if the breaking of your marriage vows must have weakened the zips and buttons of your dress. With a bright smile that never falters, you step outside.

Six weeks later you are bent over the toilet-bowl, coughing and spitting up. You knows your husband can hear you in the other room, and he knows, but he doesn't say anything. Neither do you. It's a miracle, he must think in utter neglect and denial. It's a miracle that has to be believed. And it happens twice, your husband tells you with pure happiness on his face that breaks your heart little by little.

Second time around, when you come home, you drink a glass of wine, and go to sleep, holding tightly to the curve of his soft arm and it feels as if you're falling off the edge of the world.


An: Can you guess who the characters are?

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I'll let you know in the next one. (smile)