Shared Bug

Ralph got home early and saw his wife was in a mood. It was pretty strange, because she was a very level-headed, cheerful person, and Ralph would have never said “My wife is sometimes in those… moods.” And yet, the moment he walked in, he could tell something was wrong.

She stared at the wall blankly, drinking a milky drink out of a tumbler. She was wearing a scruffy t-shirt and sweats. She barely registered his presence. He said hello, she looked up and took about a minute to respond.

”Sorry, honey,” she said, “I haven’t been feeling myself today."

"Nicht zu Hause sein?” he said jokingly. It was what he described himself in weird moments. The feeling of not being at home. He had read about it in a book.

”Yes, you could say that,” she said.

”What are you drinking there?” he asked.

”Milk… with vodka,” she hesitated to admit.

”Aren’t you afraid it will upset your stomach?"

"Should I be?"

"I dunno,” he said, and he really did not know. Also, he began feeling numb himself. A little out of place, but not the usual way. He had never experienced this kind of feeling before.

He sat down in the kitchen, turned on his laptop, and realized he kind of left the conversation with his wife unfinished and he did not feel like finishing it anymore. He stared at his empty desktop and wondered briefly whether there should be any files there.

He was aware of his wife’s presence in the other room. She was silent. He felt she should not be there because we was being visited by a very important guest and having a wife was one of the things the guest hated. Ralph would miss an opportunity of a lifetime if he allowed himself to be married and the guest found out.

He looked up above the kitchen table and the light bulb. It hurt his eyes to look at it, but then he realized why. The bulb was actually the guest’s head, the searing light being his question to Ralph. Something along the lines of “What are you, Ralph, and why the wife?”

Ralph felt himself breathe in more and more spores with every breath which made him realize there was some form of organic insanity machines inside the house and now inside his head. They came in through the nostrils. The guest’s reproductive cells copulated with his brain cells.

”Why the wife, Ralph?” the guest seemed to ask.

”Dunno, I’m sorry."

"No, I’m just asking."

"I’ll get rid of her,” Ralph looked around for a knife. There was one missing from the knife stand on the counter. He looked over the other shoulder into his blind spot. His wife was standing there with a knife in her hand.

”Dunno,” she said, “I’ll get rid of him.”

Posted by: Paweł Kowaluk