Morning came as it always does, gray in the sky as dawn broke free of the chained constraints of darkness. Her eyes fluttered open, her lips parted, her back arched, and the sleep slipped down her body with the satin covers that kept her warm in the night. She turned her head to the side, thinking to see the sleeping face of her husband, and it was not there.

Memories came flooding back, cracked into a thousand burning embers and biting fragments. Memories of her walk home, memories covered in blood, memories screaming in desperation and frozen black at the edges. Pictures merged together in a rapid cycle abstract video of blood and knives flashing in the street light. Pictures of her husbands face sculpted into a grinning devil, features sliding down into a bitter mask of tragedy. Carnival music played as the tears clung to her cheek.

She was paralyzed, though only for a moment. Her limbs locked into place, pulling tighter and tighter as if her joints were all ratcheted. All her struggling to fight with her body for movement, for breath, only made everything close in tighter. Finally her tear slid sickly down her cheek, feeling warm and greasy. It plinked onto the pillow and released her paralysis in an instant so that her body folded out onto the bed, laying her open for more attacks from the sickness floating in the room. She was vulnerable to the stabbing loneliness.

Her eyes slipped shut as she counted her breaths, in and out and one and two, off beat to her careening heartbeat. Slowly she calmed herself, convincing herself with each breath that all she remembered was only a dream and that her dear husband had left to work early. She even managed to remember that he had told her the other night of a morning meeting at the office.

Finally, with the panic subsided and the memories explained away, she set her feet on the floor and lifted herself out of bed, not terribly fond of the nearly frozen feeling of the hardwood floors beneath her feet. ‘Still,’ she thought ‘it’s a good way to get myself going, I suppose.’ and sighing she covered the few feet to the bathroom, thinking about how much easier it was to get up when her husband was there.

Still sleepy and running through a list of things to do (going to drop off a new batch of home made bead work to the jewelry shop, shopping for groceries, a load of her tops in the laundry, maybe some vacuuming), she made her way to the sink on autopilot. Without lifting her head she brushed her teeth. When she was done she spit the blue and white foam out, looking up to make sure her teeth were clean. She stopped dead. She stared into the mirror, her brain stuttering to validate and incorporate this new and potentially horrifying visual input.