Byte-sized stories

It feels like waking up in the middle of the ocean floor. Like suddenly, there is no air and your lungs quench for just one molecule of oxygen.
That’s how she felt. The isolation in the house was unbearable. It hurt her nerves like a blowtorch pressed to skin.
It was painful and weirdly pleasurable. The solitude was tasty and painful at the same time. The peace was deafening and pleasant. Is this depression? she asked herself. Or is it something else?

That morning, she woke up like on any other. The children were screaming in the house, the dogs were whining, and her husband barking orders.
‘Get up, Matild! We need to go.’ And he yanked her by her ankles out of the bed.

She was used to it by this point; nothing surprised her anymore.
But this morning her husband was unusually moody. One second he smiled, the second he shouted. Unbearable, she thought to herself, but she did not say anything, just stared at him. This just made him angrier.

‘Why don’t you talk? Did the kitten steal your tongue? You were always weak.’

Matild picked herself up and got ready. James, her husband, kept on shouting and went on his usual morning tirade. At this point it was too late to resist or to argue. All of them would have been late for work and school.

The children went outside and took the school bus. Her husband left.

Matild just sat at the breakfast table and stared at her omelette. She just sat there and was unable to eat. Time just passed. The omelette started to look dry.
‘Why can’t this all just end? Why am I even here?’

She took her wallet and her phone and decided to call a taxi to take her to the airport, when her husband returned.

‘Why aren’t you at work?’ he asked and glanced at her in a sinister way. ‘Answer me!’ He grabbed her by her hair. Matild hated this. What happened to the man who brought her flowers, handpicked from his grandmother’s garden? What happened to the sweet man who caressed her face and massaged her feet after a long day? She could not understand how all of this had happened. How he had become like her father, an abusive, sadistic alcoholic.

She started fighting, but it was too late. He bludgeoned her head into the coffee table in the living room, and she lost consciousness.

Now, as she opened her eyes, something sticky was all around her and it was dark. She tasted sweet blood and salty sweat. It smelled musty, like their basement. Am I in the basement? she asked herself, but she could not move.

She could not hear anything either, just some faint noises from above.

Finally, the sweet, earthy, damp smell of fresh concrete filled her nose and she thought, I have been walled in.

Strangely, Matild felt relief at first. Finally, she was at peace.

But as the hours went by, the feelings of relaxation were replaced by anxiety and dullness, switching from one moment to another.

Then a bright light peered into her eyes. As she tried to focus, she became dizzy and disoriented.

Suddenly, she heard her husband speak in a calm voice.
‘I don’t understand what happened to her. She has always been so cheerful, and now nothing but a mess. She soiled herself the other day and put it in the fridge with the food I made. We cannot live like this anymore. You must help us.’

Matild could not believe what she heard. Did that really happen? How is this possible? And how can I hear people if I am walled in?

James sounded kind, as in the old times. As her kind, strong, mild-tempered husband she remembered.

Then someone touched her arm and she felt the pierce of a needle.
‘Here you go. This will make you feel better.’
A male nurse’s face appeared out of nowhere.

‘Relax, darling. We will take care of you here,’ he said and stepped away.

James asked the doctor and the nurse to leave so they could talk, and he looked at his wife. She looked so fragile. Matild did not look like herself anymore. Just a shadow of someone he once loved, a shell, a ghost of a person. He remembered her eyes lighting up when he invited her to dinner for the first time, her hand in his at the table, the softness of her skin, her insatiable laugh. Now he felt sad and hugged her.

‘What happened to us?’ she asked.

‘I don’t know, sweetheart. Maybe the loss…’

‘What loss?’

Oh no. She did not remember again. What a miserable situation. How to tell her again that their sons had died and she had lost her mind? How to tell her that everything she believed to be true was false, and that they had been living in agony and insanity for the last five years?

She seemed calmer now. The injection worked.
I just want to leave her here. I cannot take this anymore, he thought. I cannot carry the weight of her illness any longer, or I will go insane myself.

James sat down on the bed and held Matild’s fragile hands quietly. All skin and bones, my beautiful wife. He was so sad that he felt his heart breaking.

‘You had one of the delusions again. I will need to leave you here, my dear. I am sorry.’

Matild looked at him, confused, and did not say anything as he stepped away and left.

Everything turned silent. Her senses sharpened, and she realised that she had imagined all of this. She was still in their basement, walled in and covered in her own blood.

Or was it true? Which reality would I choose, if choice still existed?