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I’ve been waking up earlier than usual over the past few days as though there is an internal restlessness, as though my subconscious is tuned in to something just on the periphery of my awareness. Since I’m already a morning person, this means that I’m up around 5:30 am. There is a stillness at this time that permeates the air, heavy yet comforting. Other than the gentle humming of the central heat and the fridge as they kick off and on, maintaining the ambient temperature of their respective charges, there are no discernible sounds. 

As I walk to the kitchen, my footfalls interject their soft accompaniment. Clip. Clap. The rhythmic sound of my bare feet contacting the cold laminate flooring, adhering for a moment only to be released with that distinctive sound. Clip. Clap. The word padding slips into my mind. I smile inwardly as my mind randomly flashes me an image of Paddington Bear. 

I reach my destination and the thick silence returns briefly before I shatter it by turning on the faucet. The gushing, rushing sound of cold water cascading from a pressurized pipe is deafening and familiar at the same time. A microcosm of a waterfall. An image of Niagara Falls graces my mind’s eye. I smile inwardly again. Filling the electric kettle, the distance travelled by the water is reduced, thus damping the water’s roar. I pull the kettle from under the faucet. Holding it upright, I gauge the meniscus curve. Not enough. Once again, my own Niagara Falls is muted by the return of the kettle under it’s powerful flow. From my previous assessment, I was close, so only a few moments longer are required. There is an audible squeak as the faucet is turned off. 

Replacing the kettle back on it’s base, and intermixed with the sloshing of the water within the kettle itself, I hear the distinct click as the contacts connect the two disparate but dependent pieces. A further click completes the ritual as I depress the on button, completing the electrical circuit and brining the marvel of technology to life. Though I cannot see electricity, I hear the outcome of its work. The water starts to dance, rolling and twisting over itself, communicating it’s joy or its pain. Boiling and bubbling, that familiar gurgling sound that often starts my day. 

The next few moments are replete with the remainder of the morning coffee making sounds. The gentle scratching of the spoon within the bag of Starbucks Caramel flavoured coffee as it’s carefully transported to the French press. The sound of the my Ursula coffee mug being gently placed on the faux marble countertop. The shifting, tinkling sound of white granulated sugar being poured onto the tilted table spoon, overflowing into the mug itself, a transparent act of false measurement that fools no-one. And the final sound of my chocolate almond milk, splashing through the surface tension.

With this ritual complete, I pad over to my usual spot on the couch and pull my laptop onto my lap. There, the returned silence is punctuated by the clack of my keyboard as I punch in my login and password. I fire up the various news sites and start my morning reading, allowing the complete silence safe passage back to being. It is as it was before, caressed on its edges by the faint whir of both the fridge and the central air. Though it is not absolute silence, it is whole. 

Then I hear it before my awareness can catch up, before I can make sense of it, understand it. 

That buzzing. The incessant buzzing. 

And then, without warning, the boom. 

Sudden. Sharp. Staccato. 

It shatters the stillness, breaking the bonds of silence like shears through silk. Immediate and profound.  A sonic boom in its own right, breaking through a different barrier. 

It causes an immediate increase in my blood pressure, my heart rate spiking. Fight or flight. Except only fight exists in this moment. 

It is the sound of death. 

That poor little fly never had a chance. 

And as though it was never disrupted, never broken, silence returns. 

Photo by Nathan Dumlao on Unsplash

We can’t always be unicorns.

Sometimes the zit will come in off-centre and we just have to settle for being a narwhal instead.

Photo by Karen Powers on Unsplash

I almost had a moment of sheer brilliance, a moment so grand it could be written within the books of history: I nearly folded a fitted sheet.

So close.

I feel that if I keep trying, within the next few years, that day will come.

And that fitted sheet will be neatly folded in a shape akin to a flat rectangle rather than a spherical blob pushed into a drawer.

Photo by Justine Camacho on Unsplash

In the end, I have only myself to blame. 

Somewhere, deep in the darkest recesses of my twisted mind, I always knew this outcome was a possibility, my just reward for a life lived such as mine. 

That edge. That precipice. That tantalizing dance of excitement and danger. It had always called to me.

Carefree to the rules and mores of an obedient, conforming society, I’d always been a wild child with a strong disdain for toeing the line. My mouth, somehow disconnected from the impulse control centres of my brain, disengaged from my prefrontal cortex, had left me with jagged scars both seen and unseen.

Making peace with that thought as it flits through my mind, I reach out gingerly to pick up the phone. There is a bone chilling cold that grips me from head to toe as I feel the heft of the phone receiver settle into my weakening grip. Why is it so heavy? I hope I don’t drop it.

I start to shiver uncontrollably.

Through the open windows, carried aloft by the oppressive heat and humidity, I hear the sounds of life. The birds chirping. The cars’ tires as they rumble along the heaved, undulating asphalt. The joyous cries of children and the rhythmic thumping of music, as the children and the band, play on.

My stiff, rigid fingers struggle to depress the resistant buttons of the rustic phone resting on the rickety table beside me in the dank, foul-smelling bathroom of that decrepit hotel on the outskirts of Havana.

I make the call.

You’re probably wondering how I ended up here; alone, contemplating my future, coming to the stark realization of what little of it I may have left. 

I wondered the same in that few moments after my eyes had opened, the heavy curtains of my eyelids finally defying gravity and allowing me to take stock of my situation. Eyes now open to the world as it is, not as I wanted to see it. How I had seen it.

I thought it was a dream. Or maybe it is. It doesn’t matter, either way, as this is my reality now. A reality that struck me the moment I read that note set down beside the telephone.

I read it at least a dozen times. Each time expecting the words to melt and blend and offer a different story, a different narrative. A better one. They didn’t. They never do.

That is the power of words written so plainly.

---

It all started yesterday in that little cafe called ‘justo al otro lado de la frontera’. I was walking along and heard the riveting sounds of music. 

The moment I entered, I saw her. Instantly, as we usually do if we pause to listen to our intuition, I knew she was dangerous.

She was stunning. 

The kind of stunning that feels like a sharp knife slicing your body open and exposing your insides in a way you never thought possible. Exposed. Vulnerable. 

Even in my current state, she continues to mesmerize me, a force like no other.

As I allow my eyelids to close briefly, waiting for the connection to hold, I can still see her long hair spin about her, a dark halo of mystery and intrigue drawing me in, my event horizon. 

I can still see her hips sway seductively, cavorting intimately with the pulsing Latin beats of Cuban son music; an ecstatic union of physical perfection and powerful psychic being – she would be the perfect ideal to show an alien being what dance represents. 

The hypnotic allure of the forbidden emanating from every magnificent articulation of her body compelled me – there was no other option – to approach to her. It was cliché. But it held to its truth.

Apparently, I wasn’t the only one who was pulled by her gravitational force, men and women both, surround her, creating a wall of gyrating, sweaty bodies.

“ven un poco mas”

With those words, our eyes met, and as the Red Sea parted for Moses, the crowd parted for me. I walked her way, the chosen one, my feet afloat on the ground. 

She presses against my body, her delicate perfume rising up to fill me, she is intoxicating beyond comparison, dwarfing even the effects of the copious amounts of drugs that have flowed through my body during my tumultuous existence.

She doesn’t speak English. My Spanish is limited. But we don’t need words to communicate, we are dancing in that little cafe, our bodies enmeshed, the heat and desire of our flesh intermingling as we twirl and shift. A cosmic dance.

The band picks up the tempo, frenzied, an unsettling pace which my intuition picks up, but my mind chose to ignore.

I slowly slip my right hand into her hair as it surrounds her neck, my fingers entangling with the silky tendrils. I pull gently, fisting a handful of those luscious locks. I tilt her head back and expose the smooth flesh of her throat. I feel her pulse on my lips as I lean forward to kiss her softly.  

The electricity is palpable. It heightens all my senses. Alive in every meaning of the word. I look into her eyes as she returns my gaze, the intensity setting off alarm bells deep inside me. Every fibre of my body, of my being, telling me to get the fuck out of there. To escape.

This one is dangerous. 

I can’t move. 

I realize I haven’t taken a breath.

As life giving air rushes into my lungs, my eyes are able to focus once again in the dimly lit café. It’s at that moment I notice a distinct mark on the pale skin of her throat that seared my lips. 

A tattoo. 

Four simple letters.

In clear, expressive black ink, they snake along the sultry curve of her neck, dancing with her pulse. A cursive metronome to her heart. 

J.O.S.É.

Again and again, I wonder why I didn’t turn around and run at that moment. My feet, which only a few moments prior had been floating, were now cement blocks, tethered to the dance floor, a masochistic bondage which pushed my ever extending boundaries into realms unthinkable; always needing more, chasing that next delicious taboo. 

I wish I could tell you what happened over the next few hours, but those memories only come to me in snippets and flashes, incomplete, surreal. 

The night is a blur, a twirling, writhing escape with that raven-haired vision who kept entreating me to come a little bit closer, the tantalizing son music, and la fée verte; nary a more deadly threesome have I imbibed in my lifetime.

I had been sent the warnings so many times. Repeatedly, I disregarded them. A foreign man in a foreign land. Immune in my youth and my hubris,

I was immortal.

Was.

In the end, we pay the piper – this idiom, used by my parents in my youth -now seems so apropos.

It is my time to pay up. The ultimate price. 

---

I’m brought back to my current predicament, jarred back from my reverie by the Spanish voice on the other side.

“Help, I need an ambulance.” 

I don’t recognize my own voice, it’s weak, tired. Strained. My parched lips stick together, slurring my words. My tongue uselessly darts out to try to moisten them. It doesn’t work. I struggle to sound coherent.

The Spanish words are repeated in my ear. They are clearly spoken. Enunciated with a steely calmness. Rehearsed through practice and experience. My own words fall heavy in the thick air as my body slowly starts to shut down.

The shivering, relentless, causes my teeth to chatter.

My words, for once in my life, fail me.

I hang up the phone knowing the language impasse is too great and that my time is too limited. 

Without thinking, my fingers automatically dance along the buttons. Pressing here. Pushing there. I am dialling a number I had committed to memory many years ago, a number I had refused to dial for over a decade after we had both been unable to see it from the other side, a fight where words that couldn’t be taken back were hurled with the fiercest violence, as only words between loved ones can be used. Weapons. Poison tipped, jagged spears to the heart.

Back then, I couldn’t see the truth in her words, only the lies I wanted to see, wanted to believe. I saw the world as I wished it to be, not as it was. Now, I see them clearly. As clear as those four letters. If only I had listened to her. She had been trying to keep me safe.   

I call my mother. 

She answers on the second ring. Her voice. 

“Son…?”

How I’ve missed it. 

I hear a soft splash in the tub full of ice water where I sit naked, exposed in every way, my legs stretched out in front of me. I can’t stop shivering. 

Another soft splash. And then another. My tears are flowing freely now, meandering down the salty paths forged by their predecessors. Splash. A decade of sorrow unleashed with that one word.

“Mama. I’m dying. I need your help.” My voice cracks. The reality of my situation hitting me. Over and over. 

“Son…?” Her voice softer now, asking the question without wanting to know the answer. 

She had long ago warned me about the dangers of women with tattoos. Especially those with neck tattoos. But ever since I was a young boy, I was drawn to them. The designs, the shapes, the colours…a human tapestry that wove a web of tales so fecund and varied that let my imagination soar to heights that left me dizzy with lust and wanting. 

We had fought about it that fateful day, and I had left home, not looking back. I never thought that the woman who had given me life could be the only one who could give it to me again.

I should have known. That neck tattoo. Those four simple letters that burned my lips as I kissed them. Sealing my fate.

José. Bad man José. She belonged to him.

Why hadn’t I listened. Even my buddy Jay, and his group of American friends had tried to forewarn me.   

“Mama, they took my kidneys. I’m in a bathtub full of ice in Havana.”

Photo by Max Hofstetter on Unsplash

“Your package has arrived.”

We hear the distinct voice speak to us clearly from the advanced cyber home system that we’d installed over 10 years ago. 

It had cost us a small fortune back then, but damn, it was worth every figurative penny.

This now aging system linked all of our household electronics together through advanced artificial intelligence (AAI) and our own securely encrypted supercomputer, that we’d cheekily named Brain. 

By design, it makes everything easier – we simply offload our tasks to Brain and with its AAI capabilities, it does the needful. For those who can remember all those decades back to Alexa or Google Home, think of them as the germ line of this brilliant advancement, which as time passes, becomes the germ line for even greater advances.

We could be anywhere in our apartment pod and with a few simple spoken commands, all of our daily work, leisure, or home activities like ordering meal packets, undertaking medical assessments, sending emails, paying bills, or doing banking is processed through Brain in real time through its vast network of suppliers and vendors, the bits and bytes being deftly shuttled through highly precise algorithms.  

Though a decade old, it was one of two items which we had spent vast sums upon, scrounging up our valuable Q bucks – the new world currency that replaced the failed Bitcoin and the now defunct U.S. dollar as the global benchmark for trade. We had been lucky as early adopters back in 2018 when those emails had gone around coupled with a few fortunate investments (and subsequent well-timed sales of those shares) in tech companies.

The other item was the package that had just arrived.

It was delivered via same day drone service, as all packages are now delivered, and it came in nondescript packaging, as promised.

The two of us manage to hoist the surprisingly heavy box into our small space. It was bigger than expected, but I suppose the manufacturer has to protect the precious cargo inside. 

Sure enough, as we unlatch the biometric controlled release valves on the reusable protective case, the actual item is significantly smaller than its durable exoskeleton.

It is exactly as ordered.

We stand there looking at the exposed device, knowing what it represents, what it costs. My shoulders slump. I’m unable to set them, to hold them in place against gravity. My arms hang limply by my side. I feel her warm hand reach out and envelop my cold, shaking one, blunting the tremors.

I feel the shame and embarrassment start to creep into me.

I feel a tight squeeze on my hand, comforting, reassuring. 

For me. 

For herself. 

For both of us. 

It doesn’t matter. 

I look over at her beside me. Though she tries to hide it, I know she feels the same.

Battling hard, we force those thoughts and feelings back down – with all the technological advances science has come up with, you’d think they’d have figured out a way for us humans to absolve ourselves of guilt by now?

After safely untethering and gently removing the item from its protective case, we carry it to the small side table beside our bed and lay it down carefully. It fits perfectly in the space beside the old photograph we had printed out. Our smiles were so big back then.

“Brain, initiate PED start sequence.” I say this quietly, thoughts tumbling through my racing mind. She holds my hand tighter, her fingers fitting perfectly between mine.

Intertwined. We are one.

“Confirm, initiate PED start sequence?” Brain’s questioning voice cuts through the incessant chatter in my head.

Am I ready for this? This is my last chance to send it back because once the start sequence is initiated, there is no going back – there are no refunds. I will have to live with this decision for the rest of my life. So will she.

I hear a soft sight escape from her. 

This is now our reality, no longer a meal packet conversation.  

I close my eyes for a moment, a pause before responding. 

On the screens of my eyelids I can replay some of my fondest memories from my life – I can smell the ocean, feel the cool, clear water on my feet as I walked along the beach with her. Being a drowner, rather than a swimmer, I never went in, but dabbled at the edges. I still hear the sound sometimes in those quiet moments of contemplation. Rhythmic and calming. Woosh. Woosh. Woosh. 

I remember looking back at our footsteps as the surf erased them, as if we didn’t exist. As if we were never there. 

Impermanence. 

Laughter. I can hear it vividly. Myself. Hers. My loved ones. My little nieces when we used to Skype before holograms came along, before they grew up, living their own separate lives, plugged in and connected. Too busy or too cool for their old uncle.

I see my friends. My family. Many have passed. Many, like me, struggle to keep up with life, assisted by tech but our failing biology still limiting us. Oh how I miss them all so much. We used to get together. Hang out. Meet up. We used to do this in person, but with all the technology, no one leaves their apartment pods anymore. We live in a hyperconnected society devoid of any true, meaningful connection. 

Together but separate. Starvation in the midst of plenty.    

Memories of that dinner party, tasting chocolate cake for the first time, that moment when the distinct sweetness touched my lips, how she tantalized me in that kitchen.  

And sex. From those first rapid yet exciting awkward fumblings in college dorms to the tender, exalting moments that left me connected in visceral ecstasy with another human being. All those beautiful women. Every single one of them who touched me in ways I can’t even put into words.

They all start to fade. Vanishing. A mist clearing.

I blink and my eyes open.

They’ve gone.

I close them again slowly. The heavy weight of my decision pulling them down. Gravity. In every meaning of the word.

My mind is taken back to the last 10 years. 

I remember the day of diagnosis. How we had asked Brain about the strange symptoms I’d been experiencing and how we had uploaded samples of my blood and urine for analysis. 

I remember how Brain, more efficiently and precisely, and with greater accuracy than any doctor from the past, by virtue of having infinite information access at its beck and call, had given me the news. 

My brain not computing Brain’s words. Disconnected synapses.  

I can remember exactly when my body started shutting down. When the ravages of that insidious beast took its toll, advancing science no match for millennia of fallible biology. My muscles soft and weak, progressive atrophy taking away my independence, often leaving me gasping and struggling, a shell of my former self, relying more and more on Brain to do even the most menial tasks. 

Over time, I lost my purpose, my meaning. I merely existed. Simply going through the motions of barking commands into the air. Sure it was easy, but it brought no joy like before. I no longer had anything to be proud of.  

It was an excuse of an existence.  

I had always promised myself that I would go with dignity, holding my head high, on my own terms. My pride. My arrogance. My last stand.

As I lived, I would leave. 

We had talked about it, she and I. 

We had always known, even as far back as 2019 that this could be our future. That’s why we had saved up for the Personal Euthanasia Device, the PED, through the Dying with Dignity Foundation. This way, the ethics of helping someone pass wasn’t shouldered by another human, a progressive evolution of the Physician Assisted Death movement of the early 2000s.

I know my body can’t carry on much longer, it tells me every day and every night. The messages are clear, distinct; in those quiet moments they reveal themselves.  

And even more frightening is that I don’t know how much longer my mind will last. I don’t want her to be the one who has to make that choice, that hard decision, for me. Or for herself. For us.

That’s what brings us here. To this moment. 

So now I have to make the decision.

My final answer.  

I turn and face her, my aching body giving me that final strength of conviction. I hold her beautiful face in my hands and press my lips against hers. Soft. I pull her body against my now frail one, the vigor of my youth evaporated, the power I once possessed, a mere shadow in my memories. 

All the other stuff no longer matters. The little things. The wasted energy. The petty squabbles. Fights. Only here. And now. Only that matters.

I hold her tight. 

I feel her melt against me, her head against my chest. Her arms wrapped around me, squeezing hard. She always did that. She always turned and pushed her ear against me, to listen to my heart beating. Her soft voice in time to my aging ticker. Lub dub. Lub dub. Lub dub. I smile.   

It felt right. 

It always did. 

She always did. 

In all these years, that’s never changed. 

That feeling of her body against mine. Real human contact. Real human touch. We’ve gained so much, and yet, we’ve lost so much. Our lives get easier and so much harder at the same time.

The double edged sword of technology. 

I break from our embrace and, still cupping her face in my hands, kiss her forehead softly. Tenderly.

It’s time. 

She looks up at me, her eyes glistening, a mirror of mine. She knows it. I know it. I take her hand in mine again and with renewed confidence in my voice, I speak the words.

“Confirm initiation of PED start sequence.”

“Confirmed. PED start sequence initiated.” I can’t be certain but I hear a tinge of sadness in Brain’s voice. Perhaps I’m mistaken, anthropomorphising Brain while I know it’s nothing more than advanced artificial intelligence coupled with super computing. Technology.

It can’t feel. 

My voice, though it quivers, matches the biometric voiceprint security so there can be no mistake, there can be no accident. It was my freely given command. Un-forced. Un-laboured. Un-coerced.

The device on the bedside table, sitting quietly beside that old smiling photograph of the two of us, whirs and buzzes, given the gift of life as it is about to take mine.

A trade. 

As the machine prepares for its final deed, I take her by the hand again. It fits perfectly into mine. Soft. My tremors have stopped. She is squeezing again. I never get tired of holding her hand.  

Today was a good day. We drank real wine, like we used to. A strong Malbec. We ate real steak, medium rare, with real grilled vegetables.

We laughed. We cried. We remembered.   

“Brain, play Come Sail Away by Styx.”

The music fills our ears.

And we dance.

Photo by bhuvanesh gupta on Unsplash

Everything you do in life will cost you something in return. 

It may cost you time. It may cost you money. It may cost you effort. 

It won’t come for free.

Whatever the form of payment, you WILL have to pay that price. 

It’s inescapable.

This was the lesson learned by the people of Hamelin, a faraway land, in a long ago time. 

Their town was overrun by rats. An incredible infestation with rats everywhere. The pests were destroying the town. They would get into the food. The water. Homes were ravaged by the sheer number of these vermin. 

These filthy, disease carrying rats were leaving destruction and devastation in their wake. 

The townsfolk tried everything – cats, traps, poison – nothing was working. The citizens were losing hope. They were stuck. There was no solution.  

One day, a wandering stranger dressed in multi-coloured patchwork clothing appeared. 

The messiah.

He promised to rid the town of every single rat quickly and efficiently, but it would cost them a large sum to be paid on completion of the task. The townsfolk of Hamelin quickly agreed to his price knowing that it would cost them more the longer this infestation problem remained unsolved.

So he went to work, walking up and down the streets in his pied clothing while playing his pipe. 

Oh the sound!

The magical sound. Every single rat in town was drawn to his music. Hundreds and thousands of them poured out of every building, every gutter, and every sewer. Streams of vermin gushing like a burst dam from hither and yon. There were so many that they were trampling over each other to follow this man playing his divine tunes. 

He led them out of Hamelin and into the nearby sea where they all drowned, the siren call of his music overriding their innate instinct for survival.

Upon completion of his promised task, he returned to collect his payment, as just reward for doing what he promised. Signed. Sealed. Delivered.

A deal is a deal.

However, the townsfolk decided that since their town was now rid of the rats, they didn’t have to pay this vagrant. They reneged on their deal and violently chased him out of town. They figured they’d never see him again. What could he do? Nothing, they reasoned. He was simply a dirty vagrant clothed in that ugly pied suit.

Boy, were they wrong.

Not long after, the Pied Piper returned in the still of the night and quietly played another melody on this pipe as he walked the streets. This time it was all the town’s children who woke up and silently followed him out of town, drawn to the mesmerizing notes that emanated from his instrument.

The next day the townsfolk awoke from an extra deep slumber to discover that their children were nowhere to be found. They searched high and low. The children had vanished with nary a trace.

In the town square, there was a note.

The price for the safe return of their children was double the price to rid the town of rats. 

The citizens realized that they would have to pay. That putting it off, ignoring it, wasn’t an option. By choosing to chase the Pied Piper out of town without paying him they would end up paying more dearly.

In the end, they had to pay the Piper. 

The only alternative was to live quiet, child free lives.

Illustration by Kate Greenaway for Robert Browning’s “The Pied Piper of Hamelin”. Public Domain.

With those three words, my world came crashing down.

My life would never be the same again.

---

The day started off in the typical fashion. It was a lazy Sunday and my wife and I repeated our standard ritual that hadn’t deviated much over the last ten years of our marriage.

Like clockwork she woke up before me, an early riser her whole life. She started the French press in the kitchen of our cozy apartment and once the pungent odour of coffee had wafted its way to my nostrils, I’d risen. I completed my morning ablutions and then joined her at our breakfast nook to enjoy a mug or two.

Our Sundays always felt right to me – like the soft embrace one would get from slipping on a pair of old, comfy college sweatpants, hugging the hips and leaving enough room to grow. Sure, it wasn’t the most exciting day for us, but we realized long ago that this was exactly what we wanted.

I padded over to where she was sitting on one of the two rustic wooden stools we’d managed to score, a lucky antiquing find refurbished over a decade ago on a past Sunday excursion, when we used to be more adventurous.

As I leaned down to kiss her, I could tell something was off. She seemed agitated. Unsettled.

“Everything OK, honey?”

“Yeah, everything’s fine.”

I felt a sudden, sharp stabbing behind my right eye. My eyelids pressed together in a feeble attempt to force down the searing pain, to blink it away, creases and folds rising up, puckering my face as I winced. The intensity stealing my breath, a quiet gasp escaping.

Stumbling and reeling, as though I’d downed half a bottle of cheap tequila, I reached out to steady myself on the counter. In that moment, I was drunk with pain. My wife didn’t move. She didn’t even notice. As soon as it had come, it had gone. No hangover.

I shook my head. Had it even happened? Was it imagined? Surely she would have seen my reaction?

“Are you sure?” I asked her as I put my hand on her shoulder, giving it a reassuring squeeze. As my words and actions unfolded, my mind still considered what I had just experienced.

“Yes.”

Another searing blast of lighting coursed through my face. My hand left her shoulder and the heel of my palm pressed forcefully into my right orbit, bracing against the unrelenting onslaught. I’ve never had migraines before, but could this be it? As soon as the thought entered my mind, the pain was gone. Vanished. She hadn’t moved. She hadn’t noticed.

What the hell was going on?

She looked up at me and smiled, the soft corners of her mouth teasing upward, stretching her full lips. I would recognize her smile anywhere, the way it would light up her face, but this time her eyes looked different. They were full of something I couldn’t quite place. Confusion? Anger? Sadness? Resignation?

Taking the cue that she didn’t want to talk about whatever was bothering her, I figured I’d give her some space. I was sure she’d tell me when she was ready.

I made my way, coffee in hand, to the living room and plunked myself down on the plush couch to start the other half of my Sunday ritual. As I fired up the gaming console and prepared to do battle online for the next few hours, she came by and said she was going to step out.

As she turned to step out the door, another blistering spasm of pain shot through my face, worse than before. Infinitely worse. As with the others, she didn’t notice, and it was gone as though it was a figment of my imagination, the dredges of a dissipating nightmare, present but invisible, only the feeling remaining.

---

After playing for a couple hours, my bladder, in its supreme power, forced me to take a break. We had not scotch-guarded the sofa, so risking incontinence was not an option.

While washing my hands, I noticed something that I hadn’t noticed earlier – my medication was misplaced. I had taken my pill that morning, I was sure of it. It was part of my routine. Pee. Wash hands. Brush teeth. Pop the little blue pill. My bottle was shifted over one spot. Had I taken the wrong medication? I had been pretty groggy this morning, having been up late playing video games again.

I reached out and picked up the doppelgänger container. It was similar in size, shape, and heft but was empty. I spun it around in my hands to read the label.

CognitioVeritas.  

I didn’t recognize it. It definitely wasn’t my stuff. And it wasn’t my wife’s as far as I knew. Where did this come from?

Shit…

I remember taking the last pill. I had turned the container upside down to coax the remaining solitary pill into my palm. I’d told myself that I’d call the pharmacy to get the refill. I hadn’t been paying attention as I popped the little red pill into my mouth, it was such an automatic action.

Shit…

I’d taken the wrong medication. Fuck me, why didn’t I pay more attention?

My facial pain…of course…it was my body reacting to the unknown drugs. I did a quick self-scan but didn’t feel anything was out of place, at least I didn’t feel like I was going to drop dead.

Upon closer inspection, I noticed that the label was one of those peel-back types, the ones that had instructions in the tiniest font printed on the inside. Using the edge of my nail I managed to separate the layers.

Warning: The powerful medication contained in this special pill should only be used under the direction of a trained professional. The effects are permanent and irreversible. Always knowing the truth, and discerning lies, can have devastating consequences for those not prepared to have that knowledge.

I now realized that every time my wife had lied to me that morning I had felt pain. That was the power of that pill. It let me know if she was telling the truth or not. My eyes opened wide in awe.

“This is going to be AMAZING.”

The realization of my power finally hit me, I looked up at myself in the bathroom mirror, still clutching that empty pill bottle, a huge grin had spread across my face.

And then the second realization hit me harder, my smile crumbled.

As she’d left, I’d told her I loved her.

She’d automatically replied…

“I love you.”

Photo by Thought Catalog on Unsplash