My arm’s gone numb under her weight, but I still can’t bring myself to move it.
We’re lying on the couch in the dark, some nature documentary playing on low volume that neither of us are watching. Blue light from the TV flickers across the ceiling. Alyssa’s pressed against my chest, my other arm draped across her stomach, and I can feel the rise and fall of her breathing syncing up with mine.
Dinner was good. Some kind of pasta thing she threw together with ingredients from yesterday’s grocery run.
Now she’s warm and soft against me, her blonde hair tickling my nose every time she shifts slightly.
I should probably feel weird about this. About her. About the fact that she broke into my apartment and now I’m spooning her on my couch like we’ve been together for years. About how she definitely knows things she shouldn’t, how she calls me her husband with absolute conviction, how she oscillates between tender and terrifying with no warning.
But I don’t.
I just... don’t care.
Maybe that’s the depression talking. Maybe my brain’s so broken that I’ve lost the ability to recognize danger, to feel appropriate levels of concern about psychotic women who alter my photographs and know my dead name. Maybe normal people would’ve called the cops by now, or at least kicked her out, or done literally anything besides wrap their arms around her and breathe in the scent of her shampoo.
Maybe it would be fun to ask, though…
“Hey.”
She shifts slightly against me acknowledging me.
“How long are you going to pretend to be my wife instead of just letting me get to know you for real?”
She turns her head. Slowly. Not quite human.
When her face comes into view, it’s completely cold. That expression I’m starting to find weirdly endearing, the one where all the warmth drains out of her eyes and leaves something flat and dangerous behind.
Then she moves.
One second she’s curled against my chest, the next she’s straddling me, hands locked around my throat. The transition is so fast and violent I barely register it before her fingers dig into my windpipe, crushing down with surprising strength.
I don’t struggle. Don’t even try to pull her hands away. I just let it happen, watching her face as the pressure builds.
“HOW DARE YOU!”
Her voice cracks with fury, but I can see her nipples hard through the thin fabric of her shirt. And despite the choking, or maybe because of it, I can feel myself getting hard beneath her.
“That fucking question,” she hisses, leaning closer. Her grip tightens.
I try to speak, but she cuts me off before I can form words.
“DON’T YOU DARE TALK RIGHT NOW!”
I nod curiously, excited to see where this is going. My vision’s starts to blur at the edges.
“Either you believe I’m your wife...” She pauses, her green eyes blazing with something between rage and desperation. “Or I kill you.”
She eases up on my throat just enough for me to breathe. The air rushes back in, sharp and cold.
“So which one, Caleb?”
I smile. Wide. The expression feels almost manic on my face, and I watch her eyes change as she processes it. That moment of recognition, of understanding what she just offered me.
She fucked up with that threat.
“Well, if you're offering…”
Her hands slam back down on my throat, cutting off the word before I can finish it.
“YOU SICK FUCK!” Her voice rises to almost a shriek. “YOU ARE OBSESSED WITH DYING! YOU ARE BROKEN IN THE HEAD!”
Her hands loosen slightly, and suddenly she’s whispering.
“I’ll save you I’ll save you I’ll save you I’ll save you I’ll save you…”
The panic in her voice is wild, completely untethered. She takes one hand off my throat and starts digging frantically through her pocket, her other hand still pressing down on my windpipe but with less force now. I can breathe, barely, watching her fumble for something.
She pulls out what looks like a pen. Thick, cylindrical. She rips the cap off with her teeth and spits it across the room, and that’s when I realize what it is.
A syringe.
“Alyssa.” My voice comes out rough, damaged. “It’s fine. You don’t have to do use that on me.”
She freezes, staring at me like a deer caught in headlights. Her eyes are completely manic, pupils blown so wide there’s barely any green left. Tears stream down her face.
Then she lifts my shirt shoves syringe in my stomach.
The pressure on my windpipe vanishes as she pulls her hand away, both of her palms flying up to grip her own head. The syringe sticks out of my me at an angle.
“FUCK!” She yells, while staring at me with her hands clutching her hair, mouth open in shock like she can’t believe what she just did.
Whatever she injected hasn’t hit me yet. I still feel strangely calm. The panic in her expression is beautiful in its intensity, raw and unfiltered.
She starts sobbing, these harsh, broken sounds that shake her whole body.
“Alyssa.” I keep my voice level, soothing even. “It’s fine. I’m not mad.”
A few seconds pass. We just stare at each other. Her mascara runs in black streaks down her cheeks, her lips trembling, her chest heaving with each ragged breath.
She’s always prettiest when she’s unhinged like this.
I can’t help but wonder why whatever was in that needle hasn’t hit me yet, though.
“How long does it…”
The world goes black before I finish the sentence.