Best Day(s) Of My Life

TW: Swearing

Wayne sat on the love seat, wholly unprepared for the verbal assault that had just been launched upon him. It’s not that he didn’t deserve it; it’s just that he had never been held accountable for his actions before, so he wasn’t really sure what he was supposed to do next.

Does he apologize? Considering the tirade that Emily had just inflicted on him he wasn’t really sure if a simple “I’m sorry” would be enough. But again, he didn’t have any frame of reference. He had never been in any kind of trouble; well, not that he hadn’t been able to erase that is.

Emily has her back to him now, and he can see that she is shaking with rage. He hears her take a breath, deep and rattling inside her chest, and she turns to face him. Her face is red and blotchy, her eyes bulging out of their sockets. When she opens her mouth Wayne is surprised that he doesn’t see fangs stretching out past her lips, growing down towards her pointed chin. Despite her lack of sharpened incisors, Wayne does feel that Emily could lunge towards him at any moment. That she may tear him limb from limb. He fears that he may even deserve it.

“How long have you had this?” Emily asks, struggling to keep her voice steady as she grips the black remote in her fist. Again, Wayne is surprised that her nails, short and well rounded, haven’t grown into claws or talons. No, her cuticles are as meticulous as ever. He stares at her hand, afraid to meet her gaze. Afraid to take his eyes off the remote.

“How long?!” she shouts again, stepping towards him. Her socked feet barely make a dent in the living room carpet, but Wayne shakes uncontrollably as he pictures them growing and growing, expanding into hooves the size of dinner plates.

The dishes rattle in their cabinets in the kitchen, or at least he thinks they do. There’s nothing to hold them back, he fears, imagining the fine china with the blue daisies smashing one by one off the linoleum floor. He pictures a shower of roof shingles raining down on their living room as Emily grows taller and wider by the second, her head and shoulders crashing through the ceiling and out past the chimney. She’ll destroy the whole town if she has her way, if Wayne lets this go on any longer.

“Wayne!” Emily is right in front of him now, her nostrils flaring violently, illusory curls of smoke and flame flickering dangerously above her dimples. Or where her dimples would be, had Wayne thought she would ever smile again.

“How long?” she yells.

“I don’t know!” he cries back finally, “I don’t know!”

“Tell me or I’m gone, Wayne.” Emily retorts sharply. “Tell me, or you will never, ever see me again.”

“Emily, please,” he pleads, “it’s not so simple.”

“Make it simple.”

Wayne wasn’t sure how he could. For Emily it was maybe a matter of months, possibly a year. But for Wayne… well, it could be decades. Maybe even a century.

“Years,” he says finally, defeated by the blood he thinks he sees in her teeth. “It’s been years.”

Emily throws her head back and laughs. A cruel and angry chortle. From behind her, Wayne knows that her reptile tail, scaled and thorny, is whipping back and forth savagely. It has to be, though he sees nothing there at all.

“The truth, Wayne. The truth or I’m gone. I mean it.”

Wayne knows she means it. In all the time that he has been with Emily he has never known her to lie. All the times she held him, all the times she said I love you. He knew that she had meant it, each and every time. Now he wishes that she had torn him limb from limb. That would be better than knowing she would never say I love you again.

“You met me on New Year’s Eve, just over a year ago,” Wayne says, finally looking up at Emily, trying his best to keep his voice from shaking.

“Yes, and up until today I thought it was the best day of my life.”

“It was the best day of my life too,” Wayne says, wiping a tear away. “Better than any day I have ever lived.” He starts to get choked up, stops talking, and looks back down at his feet. At Emily’s feet. No hooves. Not yet.

“Keep going,” Emily says curtly. She won’t be sucked in by anything now.

“A few months after that you moved in, and about three weeks after that I, well,” Wayne looks back up at the remote still clutched in Emily’s hand, “I found it.”

“And what is ‘it’,” Emily asks, looking back and forth between him and the remote. She still looks furious, but the colour in her face is starting to return to normal. There is still a chance that his house will remain standing.

“It controls time.”

“How is that possible?” Emily asks, looking down at the remote like she is seeing it for the first time.

“I don’t know,” Wayne says, standing up slowly from the love seat. Emily looks at him sharply and takes an untrusting step backwards.

“I don’t know how it works, Em, but it does. It can pause time, it can rewind it, it can fast forward. Just like a TV.”

“Like that stupid fucking movie,” Emily starts to say.

“Don’t bring that up, please,” Wayne says, exasperated. “It’s already confusing enough without bringing that up.”

“So how many times have you used it then?” Emily asks, looking back down at the remote, rolling it around in her hands.

“Hundreds of times. Maybe thousands.”

“Thousands?!” Emily exclaims, “Why? To do what?”

“Lots of shit, I guess,” Wayne replies. “Just to sleep in longer sometimes. To get through traffic faster. To avoid dinner at your mother’s–”

“What?!” Emily’s face is getting red again, and Wayne throws his hands up as if to defend himself.

“We always went, sometimes I just needed more time to…” Wayne trails off for a second before finishing with “steel myself.”

“Oh, you’re such a prick,” Emily snaps before glancing back at the remote for another look. After a moment, a look of dawning comprehension starts to grow across her (Wayne imagines) serpentine face.

“How many times,” she starts slowly then stops, as if gathering herself for the truth. “How many times have we had this fight?”

Wayne groans and rubs his face in his hands. It was always heading here. It always does. Well, almost always. Emily’s discovery of the remote had happened a little differently this time.

“Every year,” he says simply, before shrugging slightly. “Well, not really, but only because I think I’ve managed to avoid it until now.”

“What do you mean avoid it until now?” Emily is staring at him sternly, her forked tongue snapping out of the corners of her mouth. Or at least it could be.

“I’ve always managed to rewind it before we got here.”

“And how far back do you go?” Emily asks cautiously, expecting another response she doesn’t want to hear.

Wayne smiles at her softly for a moment before holding his hand out towards her, silently asking for the remote. Emily hesitates for a second. Then she reaches out and slowly places it in his out-stretched palm.

“How far back, Wayne?”

“New Year’s Eve,” Wayne replies, closing his hand around the sleek, black remote.

“The best day of my life.”

The End