The warm, damp air of an early spring evening drifted through the screens, carrying the scent of wet earth into the quiet house.
Peter and I were settled into the couch, the living room a cozy pocket of amber light and soft shadows, appreciating the first opportunity to open the windows after a particularly cold winter. We had recently purchased this home together, albeit from my parents, who were looking to downsize… but, in this economy, we would have been foolish to turn down the offer, despite of the work we’d need to put into it. The house was older, but had been fairly well maintained for the most part. A little elbow grease and some paint, we’d be golden.
So it was that the home that I grew up in would be where Peter and I would hopefully one day raise our own children, but for now we were sharing a cheap Cabernet which we were complimenting with some sliced cheese and summer sausage…a treat to reward ourselves for successfully patching that leak above the front porch together & saving a bunch of money by doing it ourselves with the help of a few online videos.
Peter looked completely at ease, settled deep into the cushions in a way that suggested he didn't plan on moving for the rest of the night. His dark hair was pulled into a messy knot at the back of his head and his jaw was hidden under a thick beard, which had only recently started showing a bit of salt & pepper.
He wore an oversized hoodie from a summer music festival we had attended years ago. The merch table had run out of his size early in the night, but his playful stubbornness and refusal to leave without that specific design resulted in him walking away with a fleece several sizes too large. It practically swallowed him, but he loved it. It was very comfortable, I will admit. It was like a circus tent to me, it was so oversized. Since he had nothing on underneath the hoodie, the tribal tattoo on his neck was fully visible, a jagged piece of ink from his freshman year he claims was due to peer pressure, that usually served as a punchline to our private jokes.
The television remote sat between us.
We were in the middle of a low-stakes debate, trying to decide whether to pick a new movie or just finish binging the last season of that vampire drama, which we were probably a decade behind, but friends had recommended it, and it had become a welcome opportunity to spend time together.
We were speaking in slightly raised voices, perhaps attributing to the glasses of wine we had shared, getting quite into the conversation of the telepathic waitress versus a period piece set during the Great Depression, that had great reviews from the critics, but social media was dragging.
“If it sucks, we can change it, let’s check it out…do you really think bots on some endless algorithm know more than a professional critic?” I had always appreciated Peter’s interest in movies, and I couldn’t think of anything to counter his point with. I was in the middle of acknowledging my concession when…
Suddenly
Without a flicker or a sound, the world simply ceased to exist. A silent, terrifying bloom of white light detonated in the center of the room, more intense than anything I had ever imagined. It was the kind of absolute, blinding brilliance I associated with a nuclear blast, a light so thick and heavy that it almost felt like it was pressing against my skin. The walls, the TV, and the air itself dissolved into a singular, humming glare that I felt vibrating in the roots of my teeth. I squeezed my eyes shut, but it was useless. The light bled through my eyelids, turning my entire field of vision into a searing, featureless white.
Then, the world simply clicked back into place. The light vanished as instantly as it had arrived. The room returned to its warm, familiar glow, exactly as it had been less than a second before. The lamp was still on. The TV was still humming.
I sat still, momentarily confused and disoriented by the abrupt transition. I regained my bearings quickly, my eyes looking around the room as the familiar sights of my home anchored me back to reality. Nothing had changed, but something had happened.
Instinctively, I reached out to Peter, my hand searching for the soft, baggy fabric of the hoodie.
“Babe, did you see that? What the hell jus-?”
My fingers met only the cold, empty leather of the sofa.
Peter was gone.
Panic flared in my chest. I called his name, my voice cracking in the quiet house. There was no answer from the kitchen. There was no sound from the hallway. There was only the settling of the floorboards and the frantic drumming of my own heart.
A sudden, rhythmic rapping sound echoed from the back of the house. Someone was knocking on the sliding glass door that led from the deck.
I stood on trembling legs. I moved toward the kitchen, the linoleum cold beneath my feet. The curtains over the glass door were drawn tight.
With a jagged breath, I reached out and slid the fabric aside.
Peter was standing outside on the deck nonchalantly, leaning against the wooden railing and hitting a vape, playing with his phone.
I stared at the device in his hand.
Peter had quit smoking nearly five years ago. It was an accomplishment he was proud of, something he shared with almost everyone we met. When did he decide to start again?
A small cloud of vapor obscured his face for a second before drifting away.
I recoiled, my back hitting the counter. It was his face, but the man on the deck was a stranger. The thick beard was gone. His skin was smooth and freshly shaven. His long, messy hair had been shorn into a military buzz, the dark strands replaced by a startling, pale blonde. I finally realized that he wore a crisp, blue button-down shirt tucked into stiff denim jeans. These were clothes I had never seen him wear before.
Most terrifying of all was his neck. The skin was pale and unblemished. The tribal tattoo was gone.
I hit the lock up & slid the door open just an inch. My voice was a whisper as I asked who he was and what he had done with my husband, my hands shaking as I held onto the door.
The man looked at me with genuine confusion. He took another pull from the vape and asked me what I meant. He told me he had just been taking the trash to the road like I asked, before we started the next episode of our show.
Stepping forward, he reached for the handle, his movements casual and calm.
I screamed questions at him. I demanded to know where the tattoo went. I asked why his hair was yellow and short. I wept as I described the giant hoodie and the pajama bottoms he had been wearing only minutes before. Most of all, I pointed at the vape, reminding him of the five years since he had quit.
Placing his hand between the frame and the glass, preventing me from slamming it shut, Peter stepped through the door and into the kitchen. He looked at me as if I had lost my mind. He told me I was talking nonsense. He claimed he had never had a tattoo in his life. He touched his buzzed blonde hair and asked if I was feeling okay. He looked at the vape in his hand as if it were as natural as his own fingers.
Desperation drove me to the coffee table. I ran backwards from the kitchen and I snatched my phone, quickly opening social media. I needed to see the life we had built together. I tore through our wedding album from seven years ago.
I stopped breathing.
In the photos, standing at the altar in a tuxedo, was the blonde man with the clean-shaven face. I scrolled to our first date at the county fair. There he was, eating cotton candy, his neck bare and his hair short. I looked at a blurry photo from a party nearly a decade ago. The man in the picture looked exactly like the man standing in the kitchen, without the extra pounds that married men tend to accumulate.
There was no trace of the dark hair. There was no sign of the beard. The man I remembered, the man who had been sitting on the couch thirty seconds ago, was gone. I looked up from the screen, and the blonde stranger took a step toward me. His eyes were filled with a curious, gentle pity. He reached out a hand, calling my name softly, his voice full of concern rather than anger.
I then looked at the wedding photos we had framed behind the TV. It was me in my familiar dress, which I had picked out with my best girlfriend after a bottomless mimosa brunch, and there was the man who looked like Peter, with short blonde hair, smiling by my side. Another photo showed us on horseback together, when we had visited his uncles ranch in Colorado…a blonde, clean shaven man smiling behind oversized sunglasses wearing a wide brimmed hat with me, behind, holding my arms around his waist…I had never rode a horse before that day and insisted Peter and I ride together because I was scared to fall off.
My vision began to spin.
I bolted. I scrambled past him, my socks sliding on the linoleum as I rounded the corner toward the stairs. I flew into our bedroom and slammed the door, twisting the lock on the knob with a sharp, metallic snap. I sat on the edge of the bed, my breath coming in ragged gasps, and dialed my mother.
My mom answered on the third ring, her voice thick with sleep. “Sarah, wha-“ I cut her off, demanding to know what color Peter's hair was.
There was a long, confused silence on the other end. My mother asked what I was talking about. She said it was blonde, obviously. She asked if I was having a joke at her expense, clearly annoyed that I had bothered her for the sake of a perceived prank. I love her, but she had always been a bit rigid in her demeanor. She would never intentionally play a trick on me or make efforts to assist with playing practical jokes. She was not one for games or nonsense.
I stared at the locked bedroom door, the phone slipping from my hand. I backed away from the door, my vision blurring with tears. Outside in the hallway, the floorboards groaned under a familiar weight. Then came the sound of the metal handle jingling, a sharp, rhythmic rattling.
My eyes shifted to the photo of Peter and I during our trip to Saint Maarten, both of us posing, poorly, on a beach as a jet plane flew over us as it prepared to land. I was holding my oversized sun hat so it wasn’t blown away by the the engine thrust, and there was Peter wearing the fanny pack he bought because he was afraid of pickpockets, with one arm raised towards the sky towards the belly of the plane, the other holding onto me, smiling with blonde hair and a shaved face, sunscreen covering his nose.
Peter's voice drifted through the wood, soft and laced with kindness.
"Sarah, please," he said. "Just let me in."