The Big Jump

Every night, I listen for my wife’s breathing behind me. Her fragile hand curled around my waist. Her breasts, cold from the winter’s kiss, pressed against my back. And it’s at these points I lay awake in fear, one hundred engines revving through my skull silently. I wonder what I should be scared of more: the idea that one day when she stops breathing, when she’s finally gone, I’ll be alone again.

Or that I’ll slip out of bed, only to be dragged back into the covers by her talons, painted sanguine just as the day she died. As she coos in my ear about how she loves me too much to let go. "I'll take the wheel," she gurgles.

The coarse seatbelt still bites at my chest.