A short story for Ania Walwicz

“You look like a ... something,” Yvette said to her husband as he coated his face in sunscreen. Something she remembered from a long time ago. She watched his cheeks fold and stretch under his petite hands; white lotion sank in through his pores, and tiny streaks of it nestled in under his long fingernails. His eyes diverted to her face for a moment, and he briefly laughed through his nose. She couldn’t quite discern the method of his movements, or how they reminded her of the bizarre, disquieting feeling she got. She suppressed her repulsion. She didn’t believe that Douglas repulsed her.

It felt strange to be home. In a way, it felt wrong. Yvette’s parents’ place in Tasmania had stirred something in her that felt nearly like a separate identity. All the thoughts that were drained by the years had settled in her old home, and when she revisited them they felt like they didn’t fully make sense. Like they belonged to some other child, one she knew but never understood. Her parents kept saying she looked so different. It made her wonder which version of her was the one that made sense.

She stared out from the back step. The sun was concealed at intervals by thin, fast-moving clouds, and flickered weakly through the interstices; Yvette took a hand to her brow to see the garden. The weeds had run amok after all the winter rain; they had burst through the gaps in the stone path and wriggled their way between the old planks of wood that held up the house. When the light fell weakly on it, the backyard looked confused, even ashamed. While Yvette and Douglas were in Tasmania, the garden’s pubescent growth had mangled its allure. Yvette hadn’t realised she was going to have to come back to such an awkward mess. She wasn’t expecting it to rain so much.

Douglas dropped against a rotting wooden slat and began to tug at the weeds. His brown pants blackened around the ankles from the wet soil. Had his face changed? Her feelings for him, once potent, were now vague and slowly dissolving, like patches of pale mist through a valley. She watched him heave the clumped roots of oxalis out of the black dirt as she thought about this.

At that point she began to feel a tingling between her shoulderblades. It was a sort of long, localised spinal chill. Light beamed down on her hunched figure. It had been nearly a month since the last time she was lifted. Tremors began to invade her body. Her limbs prickled with itching pains, and a gentle force began to pull like rope through her chest. She arched her spine to ease the pressure, and she breathed in very deeply. She had practiced this technique before. This was the third time. She knew it would ease the discomfort if she relaxed her body. She focused on her shadow expanding beneath her, watched its borders slowly smudge into the warm white light. The process was completely silent. Douglas didn’t even notice until she was a metre off the ground.

***

When she returned, it was dark outside. Douglas had left the weeds as they were, sitting in clumsy piles around the vegetable patch. He had thought about making some dinner, but he couldn’t know when Yvette was coming back down, so he just waited. He’d seen her lifted enough times now to anticipate her mood when she came back. He was preparing himself for a night on the couch.

He watched her from the kitchen table. She padded in through the back door, looking exactly like she did a few hours before; she wore the same straw hat and carried her gardening gloves in her hand. Without so much as a glance to Douglas, she went straight to the couch and sat with her legs outstretched, resting her feet on the coffee table. He wanted to say something to her, but the more he thought the thicker his words became. She looked like she could see through the entire universe. She looked like all she saw was the black. He took a few deep breaths and got up. When he sat beside her he still had no idea what it was that he should say, so he just put his hand on her thigh, hoping she would understand.

Perhaps she understood, or perhaps she didn’t. She pulled her leg decidedly from his tender gesture. He looked over to her, but she just stared ahead at the empty television screen. “Sorry,” he said slowly, retracting his hand. Suddenly a gust of wind swept through the open window, chilling Douglas’s narrow shoulders. Then, finally, it came to him. “Do you need anything?” he asked, as gently as possible. It was satisfying to hear himself say what he thought a considerate husband would say in some sort of movie. She didn’t turn to face him. She didn’t lower her crossed arms. Her head gently sank as she whispered “I think I just want some space.”

“Do you want me to leave?” Douglas felt a little weak.

She nodded. Yvette is still in there somewhere, he thought. She’ll come back when she’s ready. He went to his study and tried to distract himself from the thought of what they did to her up in the sky.

At around nine o’clock, well before usual, he heard her going to bed. He waited until the room was silent before he left the study to get ready himself. It was at times like these that Douglas had no idea how to act. Everything felt disrupted. They had not spent any time together, and she was already asleep at nine-thirty. All the other rooms of the house were dark and silent. Douglas hated the silence of it more than anything else. That night, their sleep was so still it seemed apnoeic. Douglas dreamt that he was in the driver’s seat, rolling downhill. He thought about all the momentum he had gained leading only to the fat, unflinching trunk of a large tree.

The next morning brought little change. Yvette drifted through the house like an apparition, eating nothing and staring through the windows. Douglas tried many times to understand, but his hands went straight through her. He had noticed early that she had started to become invisible from the waist down. That day was a Sunday, and not one word was said in that house until the following morning, when Douglas left for work.

“I have to go now,” his dangling head declared from the side of the bedroom door. “Do you want me to call you in sick?”

After a pause, Yvette replied; “No, I’ll go.” Douglas wondered if it meant anything that the first thing she said to him after all that was “no.”

“Okay.” He took his coat and closed the door behind him. Of course it didn’t mean anything.

***

That night, it happened for the fourth time. It was dark early, and she was walking down the driveway with the bins. The whole street could see the lights stammering around her like flash cameras, and the big silver disk spinning over her head. But nobody could interfere. They could only watch and click their tongues as Yvette sailed up through the ghoulish light and into the alien craft.

Douglas had stared through the TV until midnight, but she still hadn’t come back. He was drinking, because he felt small. If they want to take his wife, they take her. He had thought about pulling her down, or diving into the beam to follow her. He would ask her to wear weights if he thought it would make a difference. Nothing makes any difference; every time she comes back, she’s quieter, lighter, and less perceivable. It’s like she’s made of glass. Douglas wept.

Two hours after midnight, he couldn’t wait any longer. He stretched his arms out across the bed and felt the coldness of the sheets. He watched the edges of the curtains. Only now that it was too late, he realised what all of this could mean.

When she came back down, sometime while Douglas was asleep, her face was bloated, wet, and rubbed red. She didn’t sleep until very late in the morning, on the couch with the television running. When Douglas woke up he knew he would never see Yvette again.