The Deer

I open my eyes. 

My body is sore and stiff from sleep, and a hardcover book pokes into my side. I check the watch on my wrist, heavy enough to be made of lead, and hum. It’s late in the evening, late enough that the numbers themselves are blurry. 

I suppose my book wasn’t really that interesting.

Silence has settled over my room like the smoke of a sleeping dragon. It billows out in puffs of eerie stillness, and the lack of sound rings in my ears. I feel completely detached, shuffling towards my bed. The thought of brushing my brittle teeth crosses my mind, but my stone limbs bar me from the bathroom entrance, and I crumble onto the thick mattress. The covers are scratchy, and the pillows are bricks, but at this point, my body is no more than a puddle on a sidewalk, rippling with the yearning droplets of sleep that tether me to my dreams. The Sandman waits with open arms. I feel my legs begin to go numb, as I lay alone in my bed. 

“Hey sweetie!” says my dead wife next to me.

My heart rate spikes, and my eyes turn into saucers. I pull myself up, kicking at the covers I never bothered to go under. Sharon is lying on her side, beaming at me with her gentle smile. She’s wearing the dress, the one from that night, where we laughed like aristocrats, and stole dances from the young. Black, with no sleeves, and long layers of mesh. Earrings of pearls. Her red hair is bouncy with loose, stretching curls.

Her eyes are as wide as that distracting deer, darting across every inch of my face, like a poor creature on the road. That damn deer. The echoing purr of the car slowing down still sits in my bones. The yellow headlights of the roaring semi-truck dazzle my world in confusing stars, sinking its voracious metal teeth into our car.

Fate is cruel. In order to let one deer go, Death clutched its scythe and killed another.

My lungs are inadequate, as I stare back at her. Why do people breathe at all, with these useless things in our chests?

“Sharon,” I mumble, my voice hoarse. “Sharon, what…” 

“Don’t blame the deer, my love, or the driver, or the night.” She sits up against the lumpy pillow, laugh lines creasing as she dips her head to meet my gaze. “Don’t blame yourself. I am here, don’t you see? You are my husband, and I am your wife, and I am here, as full as ever!” 

But her voice is distorted with a saccharine sweet honey. My hand clutches my screaming heart. Struggling, I meet her eyes. Her eyes of pure darkness, like two orbs of a dark brown abyss. 

My Sharon’s eyes were as green as the leaves she tended to in our garden. As loving and fervent as the feeling that soulmates existed. 

“Who are you?” I whisper, my wretched and unfaithful voice pitching with fear. “I thought you were dead.”

“I’m your wife, Steven.” She pats my hand. Her claw-like nails tap against my skin. “And I will be your wife forever. The soil will not keep me still. Now sleep, won’t you? Tomorrow is so close, my dear. Can’t you hear it?” Her eyes are electric, shining with a fluorescence that I didn’t know our room possessed.

An image of a repugnant Greek Fury salivates in my mind. 

I shake my head against the thought of it, or against her question. I can’t tell anymore. Everything is spinning, growing darker by the minute. 

My heart pounds its head against my ribcage. A sharp, tinny beeping sound grows louder in my ears. My throat closes up. My eyes glue shut. Sharon’s hand stays on mine, digging into my flesh. I hear her bones elongate. “Sleep.”

Then, I am nothing at all; muted, and full of pain. 

—

The red-haired lady watched as the heart monitor beeped. Doctors fluttered like the butterflies hanging in balance in her chest. They flapped their broken, worried wings, and burned tears behind her eyes. 

Her husband looked blue under the weight of all those tubes. His face was bruised, stark against the sheer death of his skin tone. Her knees sat against the bedding, rough and sterilized. Blinding white lights blared through her skull. She was careless of the throbbing in her wrist, or the bandage above her eye. Her bleeding was out of the body. It had amalgamated into the pain of a whole person. Her person, her one and only.

They had questioned her about life support.

The hospital room acted as a microcosm of her terror, tucking the rest of the world under its sleeve as if before hadn’t existed. Everything was crinkly and thin, much like her breathing and the waning rushes of hope she got from every breath he took. 

The numbers spiked. The monitor wailed. 

Her hand sheathed his, her short, bitten fingers gripping a still arm as if it was her only tether, and her breath shuddered in the wake of the machine’s sobs. The doctor moved with urgency, but her eyes were too dazed with tears to know how much. 

The sound shrieked, drawing out in one final cry. 

The doctor slumped, his face defeated. “I’m so sorry, Sharon. I'll let you say your goodbyes.” 

The woman keeled over her husband's body, gasping for air that he would never breathe again. She cursed the bleary driver, and the bitter night. Ached like the wide-eyed deer, stuck on an earth that wrought her soul with agony. Her heart bled as if her organs had been flipped inside out, exposing those oozing arteries for all of the world to stab.

Sharon stayed there for hours, dying as a living woman. Eventually, her hand slackened. She leaned over to slowly kiss his head.

“It’s okay, Steven." Her mouth was dry–empty. “Sleep now, my love.”

Her eyes darkened, a void of the life they once held, and that bright vibrant green sunk into a shadowed hue of black.