[url=https://youtu.be/Op_VJcBp530?si=wgW6z9ewdOdpBRWj]Whilst I typed this… Listen whilst you read, if you want…[/url]

Lorna’s fingertips hovered at the nape of Lars’ neck like a ghost, his hair scratching against the leather of the recliner as he turned to face her. Her chartreuse eyes locked on his, a warmth flooding her body that told her the Chardonnay still lingered in her bloodstream. Her gaze traced across the well-groomed stubble that framed his jaw line, the stray brow hairs that littered his brow bone, the pores across the bridge of his nose… She committed those details to memory, filing them away in the depths of her mind in case she ever needed to call upon them again. His was a face she was oh-so-familiar with. Her fingers had clutched at that jaw, she’d pawed at those cheeks, dragged many an index finger across those lips… But the expression he wore was a stranger to her. As Lars smiled to greet her, the usual light that danced in his eyes was snuffed out. It was as if someone had pulled the shutters down, closed for business. Boarded up the windows. Where were the usual folds that appeared at the corners of his eyes? The singular dimple that normally pinched his cheek? It was less than a smile, more an upturned lip. Absent of any substance. Disingenuous. That realisation was like a pinprick straight through Lorna’s heart. It made the breath hitch in her throat, trapping the “[i]Who are you?[/i]” in her jugular. 

[quote] “[i]Hey[/i],” Lars said. Voice like a ventriloquist; Phantom and displaced. Something haunted her husband and the dread in her ribcage knew what it was. [/quote]

As the gaggle of words in her throat threatened to leap forth, Lars rose to his feet. She watched her husband leave the front room, flicking the light switch as he left. Plunging her into darkness, Lorna drifted in his wake. Like a shadow, she fell into step with him, footsteps thudding in unison up the staircase. The floorboards ached and groaned beneath their weight, the only sound to punctuate the silence. 

Their wordless exchange as they began the ascent to the bedroom reminded Lorna of when they’d made love on these very stairs years ago. So juxtaposed, those people were not the same people that walked single file like passers by. In the alternate universe, [i]that[/i] Lorna and Lars could barely make it to the bed without shredding one another’s clothes to ribbons. She allowed herself to be reminded of that version of them despite the consequential bile that brewed. It was their moving day. Surrounded by cardboard and bubble wrap, their entire lives wrapped in sellotape, they’d climbed on top of one another right there on the staircase. They’d shared laughter layered with kisses, limbs intertwined in a pinky promise, fingers interlocked and pressed into the wooden steps. The ghosts of them were right there, gripping the bannister and shaking the wooden railing with their love. Yet they breezed right past them with barely a nod of acknowledgment. Lorna adverted her gaze. Instead her eyes burnt a hole in Lars’ back, the spot right between his shoulder blades. 

In the darkness, Lorna found solace. The only light came from the street lamps outside as they cut through the blinds. Little slivers of cold white light sliced across the bedroom floor like piano keys. She filled her lungs with the shadows, enjoying the anonymity they graced her with. Here, she could deny the pain Lars had etched into his face. Here, she could deny her own. Darkness and denial held each of her hands and lifted them into Lars’ hair once again. This time, they ate at his locks hungrily and it was the Chardonnay that pressed her lips into his.

Skimming his skin with hers, she plucked at the familiar strings of him. A tune she played with confidence. A song she could play from memory. One breath shared between them, they moved in harmony. She lead Lars with keenness, ever the conductor. Leaning her hips into him, placing his palms at her sides, guiding him further and further into the abyss. Nails dragging the line of his back, feeling each ridge of his spine, she breathed him in. The bed welcomed them into its embrace, clothes strewn across the room, abandoned in the lamplight. Lorna moved serpentine, snaking up the length of him. Palms wide. Fingers splayed. Finding every hidden crevice of him and touching him there, desperate to consume all she could, she left a trail of half-touches across him. 

He filled her. She emptied him. Lars lay beneath her with everything and nothing behind those vacant eyes. Even as she wound her hips in devastating circles, the hard line that formed across his face remained unbroken by the supposed pleasure. Lorna wanted to scream. Something shrill and banshee-like. Her eyes burnt, blurring with the tears that threatened to burst from her ducts. And through those wet eyes she saw the marks of another puncturing her husband’s skin. Suddenly the scent of a stranger filled her nostrils and she knew her lips were not the first to dance along his neckline that day. Hands on his chest as she rode him harder, she wondered if she’d feel a heartbeat beneath his sternum. The lights were on in Lars but no one was home and Lorna kept knocking, kept knocking, but the door never opened. She screamed his name inside her. Begged for him to let her in. But that closed door stared back at her, wordlessly. His silence save for the rugged breaths that escaped his lips grabbed hold of her throat. Squeezed. 

[quote] [i]“Look at me…”[/i] she choked.[/quote]

But Lars’ dilated pupils stared straight through her. Gaze piercing a hole right through her skull. He said nothing but angled his hips deeper in her still. The disconnect didn’t suffocate the pleasure. Spiritually, he was elsewhere. But physically? He filled her to the brim. Just as he’d filled someone before her. Hips rocking back and forth in unison, a sound quivered from her. She imagined him elsewhere; A faceless, nameless woman straddling him just as she was. The image took hold of her mind with both hands and shook it violently. She convulsed. It wrecked through her, shattered her. Then Lars was crying too. Watching tears trickle down his cheeks, pooling the pillow beneath him, Lorna’s jaw fell slack. 

[quote] “[i]No[/i].” Broken. Fragmented. Spoken like a petulant child. She turned away, squeezing her eyelids shut in an attempt to erase the image of her husbands heartbreak.[/quote]

[i]‘I love you, Lorna’[/i]
‘[i]God, I love you too.’[/i]

Ghosts. Only ghosts.

Then it fell from her. Slipped through her fingers like water and crashed over them in a big, bawling heap. Lorna’s cries cracked through the night air, window panes aching with the effort of containing her sobs. Juddering from her like a spluttering exhaust, this was not a movie cry. This was an ugly, unbridled, uncontrollable stream of sadness that gripped her wholly and completely. 

[quote] [i]“I don’t know what to do, Lars-“[/i] she choked out through heaved breaths.[/quote] 

Crescent moons carved into her forearms from the nails that gripped her skin. If she tried hard enough, perhaps she’d break through her shell and reach bone. Perhaps then she’d feel this pain physically instead of in every corner of her soul. 

[i]‘Will you always love me?’
‘Like I’ll never love again.’[/i]

A crying toddler’s outstretched arms are a plea for comfort. Lorna’s nose pressed flush against Lars’ neck was hers. She saw the evidence of his infidelity, as well as and in spite of hers, littered across the same neck she sought comfort in. Someone else had felt this body in theirs. Someone else. 

[quote] “[i]Tell me what to do. Please.[/i]” He went limp inside her. She flopped off of him, crumpling at his side, the wet pillowcase kissed her cheek. [i]“I can’t see you like this. We can’t be like this. How can we? How can we be… Like this?”[/i] Hands flew to her face, covering her eyes. Pressing into her sockets, Lorna’s broken words lay in pieces along with their clothes left scattered on the floor. [/quote]

A car alarm blared in the distance. The wailing siren mimicking Lorna’s not-so-distant cries. This bedroom that had the fragments of a love story bricked in beneath wallpaper and it suddenly felt like a shallow grave. How did that happen? How did they get here? This wasn’t meant to be them. This story was someone else’s. Some other fucked-up marriage. Some other poor unsuspecting husband and a troubled wife. Not them. The bed that had welcomed them so naively almost tipped them out. A bed frame ashamed to cradle the broken pieces of a marriage, haunted by the happiness that used to live in it.

[quote] “… [i]I don’t want him to touch me[/i],” she whispered her denial. Barely there. Barely audible. It had been a lie, once. Now she meant it. [i]“I [b]don’t[/b] want him to touch me,[/i]” Lorna said again, louder. [/quote]

[b]But he had.
Oh, he had. [/b]