Archer sat there, in the room that he had been in so many times and yet looked so different now. Peering through his lank hair, he tried to read Rose’s face. Thick, still air. Archer had insisted that the curtains were drawn; he hadn’t yet gotten used to the way he looked.
Rose sat on the sofa opposite him, her hands clenched in her lap, her breath quickening. A pillar of salt, she sat bolt upright, hands coiled within each other in her lap. Her eyes, he noticed, were flitting around the room, only really landing on him when he spoke to herand even then, only for a second.
“Thanks for seeing me, Rosie.” Archer whispered.
His words struck her in the belly. She flinched and turned her head away from him.
“It’s fine…” She stammered. “I….Ididn’t think you’d be out so early, that’s all. That’s why I’m a bit…It’s a bit of a shock to see you.”
She tried to get a good look at Archer, but the tears constantly welling in her eyes distorted her vision.
It was like looking at his reflection in a puddle - no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t seem to get a clear look at him. Then again, she wasn’t even sure if she wanted to. The haze that surrounded him felt like a shield, a third person in the room to hold her hand. She felt drugged.
“I can’t believe you’re here.”
“It would seem I heal very quickly,” Archer mumbled, his jaw tightening, working that scar tissue and gristle loose. “I heard the bastard who slammed into us died. I laughed when I heard that. Laughed, right there in the ward. It hurt so much they had to put me out for two whole days just to cope with the pain.”
As he spoke, images of hospital wards, stained white sheets, gleaming surgical instruments and tubes filled with thick liquids attacked Rose. She would have raised her hands to fend off the images, but her hands were paralysed, stone in her lap. She didn’t wantto know what they had done to him. She knew what state he was in after the accident, and that was enough.
She knew that as he spoke he was scanning the room for remnants of their past life, their life before the accident. What scared her was that she knew he would find nothing; theportraits of them - sitting at a restaurant on holiday, hosting a barbecue, goofing around with next-door’s dogs - had been replaced.
“I couldn’t bear to look at those pictures, anymore, Arch. I didn’t think…”
“It’s ok.” Archer lied.
“I just didn’t expect you to…”
The room fell silent.
No matter how hard she tried, Rose couldn’t stop the fear from rising and falling in her belly. She had known this man so intimately, every corner of his life and every molecule of his skin mapped in her mind. She could create him from nothing, trace his form in her dreams…but now…nothing remained. His eyes were hidden and the downward turn of his head covered the lower half of his face in darkness - but she could see thejoin. She could see where the new, unfamiliar skin became his; the rough, jagged scar under his neck and the livid line that ran from under his left ear to his right.
The realisation that he wasn’t speaking with his own mouth hit her hard and dried her mouth. He was mongrel; something new. Something old. She didn’t know –it didn’t bear thought. She wiped away another tear, but they kept coming, stinging her cheeks.
“I’ll go,” whispered Archer, “I didn’t mean to make you upset. I just wanted to see you. You look good, but this place,” he paused for a stolen breath, a sucking sound, “Is heavy for me too. It’s not the same.”
He gestured round the room with a trembling, scarred hand, “This is not for me anymore. I’m…glad you took those pictures of us down.”
Rose slumped, sobbing uncontrollably as he shuffled around her. He paused for a second in the doorway and regarded his ex-lover in the gloom.
“Did you think I had died?”
Rose said nothing. A scream, mounted on the dawning realisation of what this person in her house was, stuck in her throat.
“Yeah. Me, too.” His forearms, once muscular but now tender and raw, twitched. His fingers jumped and Archer knew he wasn’t making them do it. He pulled up his hood and left. It was another sixteen minutes before the scream dislodged itself from Rose’s throat, striking ice into the heart of her neighbour.
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©2011 Leigh Linley
Leigh Linley lives in Leeds, England, and has previously had his fiction published by 3AM, La Luciole and The Smoking Poet.
http://www.myspace.com/leighsdesk
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