“Don’t touch me.”

“There’s a leaf in your hair.”

“I can take care of myself.”

Steven remembered when they cared for each other. He’d cook dinner on nights she got home late. She packed a lunch when he had fieldwork, a chocolate bar hidden at the bottom of the bag.

Those thoughtful gestures became less frequent as the fights occurred more often. She perceived every request as an assault on her freedom. She likely had her own side, but he’d stopped caring long ago.

An icy breath of air hit me in the face, whispering something in my left ear.

I looked up at the staircase, narrow and active, only to see its black hair dangling over the banister, and its face blank.

I froze yet was intrigued.

Am I going mad?

I called out to it, “Who are you?”

Then it was gone.

I started to think it was the same thing that “pushed” the towels off the banister, even damp ones!

I called him “the towel man.”

A woman with meaty thighs and blonde hair grabs his attention. Not too slim, not too heavy. Right in the middle. She is the one. Time to work his magic. He jogs beside her.

“Hi I’m John. Let me just say that even if there wasn’t gravity on earth, I would still fall for you.”

“Smooth, but cute. I’m Kathy.”

They jog together. His mind wanders. How is he going to kill her? Stabbing? Poison?

She cradles her dead baby in her pale arms. Hair as white as a ghost. Lips cracked and bleeding. Her body fragile and weak.

She sings a familiar tune. Rocking back and forth, as if trying to put the baby to sleep.

Her watch beeps. Medicine time. She throws the bottle out the window.

The Devil calls her name. She stops her singing. Her body freezes.

“He made me do it. He made me do it. He made me do it…” She repeats.

The aquiline nose stands out from the sunken skin, triggering a disconcerting recognition.

“It can’t be,” he thinks.

Sensing his gaze, the woman looks over.

The shiny dome where once was hair, the double chin, the beer paunch, are a disturbing parody of the man she’d known.

“Lawrence?”

They’d been passionate lovers a generation ago.

Overcoming mutual revulsion, they chat a while, no chemistry between them now.

She waltzed out of the house, across the field in view of the adoring workmen, and down to the muddy cliffs onto the sandy beach. Her feet clomped to the rocks, where she climbed the coral.

Maybe she shouldn’t have quit work. Never built an apiary. Would’ve been better joining a gym. Cooking. Reading books that lived in corners of her home. Would’ve been better to speak what he said in the elevator, his voice curling green, twisting to lick her ears.

He tiptoed to his office cubicle ignoring everyone. They ignored him. Except for Anne who monitored his quota. It must’ve been adequate for he continued to pass me at the reception desk.

One day, I didn’t notice the scent of his signature aftershave. Nor saw his forlorn face staring at the patterned floor as he entered.

A radio news feature announced him as a “person of interest.” Missing. His apartment trashed.

Two shadows, a woman and her child. She reaches down, ruffling the boy’s hair. That’s when the boy skips off the road, slipping from the woman’s hold. He sinks into the marshland, cries out and is submerged completely.

You rush forward and grasp the child.

It is not a child. Eyes roll back into the skull then flick forwards. Slight hands clamp tight.

“We’re sorry,” the woman murmurs.