When The Bed Walked Away [Part 2] – Primordial Muck

When the things around him begin to vanish, Bashir searches desperately for an explanation.

This is part two of a two-part story. Read Part 1

* * *

Cosmic Joke

The afternoon was pleasantly cool, yet sweat poured down his face. He wiped his forehead with the back of his hand and looked toward the curb.

The space where he had parked his Lexus was empty.

He stared.

“No…”

He looked up and down the street. Perhaps he’d parked farther away. He walked half a block in each direction.

Nothing, of course. Someone had stolen his car. What else had he expected? The cosmic joke continued. He spat on the sidewalk, then reached into his pocket for his phone, to call the cops.

His pocket was empty, of course. He laughed weakly. There was nothing else to do. He began walking home.

It took nearly two hours.

By the time he reached his neighborhood, his legs trembled with exhaustion. His mouth was dry. His shirt clung to his back. The familiar sight of his house brought no comfort. He unlocked the front door and stumbled inside. All he wanted was to lie down.

Passing through the kitchen, he saw that the mound of wet food still sat untouched in Georgie Boy’s bowl. Flies crawled over it. No sign of Georgie Boy. The beast was probably hiding somewhere, sulking because Bashir had interrupted whatever pointless journey it had imagined itself to be on.

He walked through the house mechanically, barely noticing that the living room furniture was gone. His mind had become strangely dull. He climbed the stairs to the bedroom on the second floor. Bed. Sleep. That was all he needed.

Primordial Muck

He pushed open the bedroom door and took one step inside, but his foot did not strike hardwood. Instead, it sank. Soft, cold earth swallowed his shoe to the ankle.

He gasped and pitched forward onto his hands and knees. His hands sank just as deeply. Frigid mud oozed between his fingers. He stared in disbelief. The hardwood floor was gone. The entire bedroom had become a pit of dark, wet earth that stank of decay, earthworms and primordial muck.

“No!”

He struggled to pull himself free, but the mud held him. His knees disappeared beneath the surface, and his hands sank up to the wrists.

His breathing came in quick, ragged little bursts. The imam… He squeezed his eyes shut. What had the imam told to say, to repeat? He couldn’t remember the words. His mind, which could recite the ticker symbol for every stock sold on the Nikkei index, and which could recall lightning-fast every fault anyone had ever committed, found only emptiness.

“Sherry…” His voice cracked. “Sherry!”

His chin trembled.

“Oh, Sherry…”

No one else came to his mind. His imagination brought up the face of no other family member or friend. After all, he had stopped speaking to his parents years ago, and his brother had stopped speaking to him. Friends had drifted away one by one until there were none left. At work they smiled politely to his face and mocked him behind his back.

Only Sherry had remained. She had listened to his complaints, absorbed his insults, forgiven his endless criticism, and quietly loved him anyway.

The cold mud had reached his waist. It was sucking the life out of him. He stopped struggling as a terrible calm settled over him. This was it, this was his death.

There was something a Muslim was supposed to say before dying. He had heard it all his life. He opened his mouth, but nothing came. The words had deserted him just as everything else had. Like Sherry, like Georgie Boy, the words had walked away, right out of his lungs.

He began to sob, but no sound emerged. The stink of the mud filled his nostrils, suffocating him.

He tried to draw a breath, but there was no breath. The air itself had gone. He tried to sob, but no sound came. His chest heaved, but his lungs refused to fill. There was no air. It had vanished as completely as everything else had vanished. Darkness crept inward from the edges of his vision, and for the first time in his life Bashir believed, with absolute certainty, that he was dying.

A Voice

Then he heard a voice.

“Honey?”

A warm hand rested gently on his shoulder.

“Honey, what’s wrong? Is it your heart?”

His eyes flew open.

Sherry was kneeling beside him, her face drawn with concern. For several seconds he simply stared at her, unable to speak. The hardwood floor was beneath him, smooth and solid. The bed stood beside him exactly where it had always been. Early afternoon sunlight filtered through the curtains, laying bright rectangles across the quilt. He drew a long, trembling breath, and with it came the familiar scent of the soft floral perfume Sherry had worn for as long as he could remember.

Tears welled in his eyes and spilled freely down his cheeks.

“Are you really here?” he whispered.

Sherry brushed a lock of hair away from his forehead and rested the back of her hand against his skin. “Yes, I’m here.”

He could only look at her. He noticed the gentle lines that had formed at the corners of her eyes over the years, the first strands of silver beginning to weave through her dark hair, and the quiet kindness that had always lived in her expression.

The words the imam had told him to say came to his mind, and he said them out loud now.

“SubhanAllah wa bihamdihi,” he said softly.

Sherry blinked.

Bashir smiled through his tears. “You are the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen. You are a gift and a blessing.”

Sherry’s face went white. “You’ve never said anything like that to me before. Ever. Now I know something’s wrong. Come on. Let me help you up. I think we should go to the emergency room.”

A First

Instead of taking her hand, Bashir took both of them and gently drew her down beside him. He wrapped his arms around her and held her tightly, burying his face against her shoulder. She smelled of shampoo, and that faint floral perfume he had scarcely noticed in years. To him, it was sweeter than the finest perfume in the world.

“I thought I’d lost you,” he murmured. “I thought you left me.”

She pulled away slightly. Her expression was harder than he was used to.

“I did,” she said. “I went to my sister’s house. I wasn’t going to come back.”

His mouth fell open. “You did? But… why?”

She pulled away further. “Do you really have to ask?”

His gaze fell. “No, I guess not. I’m sorry.”

“For what, exactly?”

His voice was a whisper. “For spending twenty years noticing everything that was wrong with you and nothing that was right.”

She searched his expression, trying to decide whether he was joking, delirious, or sincere. At last she smiled, the familiar smile that had greeted him so many mornings.

“Well,” she said, “that’s a first.”

“Why did you come back?” he asked.

Her expression became thoughtful, distant. “I’m not sure. Just a feeling.”

“Are you staying?”

She tapped his forehead with a perfectly manicured index finger. “That, my dear Bashir, is up to you. It always has been. Just know that the first time you call me stupid, useless or idiot, I will be gone again, and I won’t come back. I mean it.”

Bashir, remembering himself sinking into the cold, life-sucking mud, nodded quickly.

“I need a verbal response,” Sherry said, and her tone was steel. “The first time, I will be gone. Not the second, not the third. The very first time. Do you get it?”

“Yes, baby. I understand.”

From downstairs came an impatient meow, followed by another.

Sherry inclined her head. “Georgie Boy wants dinner.”

Bashir nodded. “He didn’t eat the last can I opened for him, the big idi – I mean… The big…” He searched for a kind word. “Sweetheart.”

Sherry laughed. “And after we feed him?”

“Is the kitchen table still there?”

She gave him a quizzical look. “Of course.”

He nodded, relieved. “Then you can make scrambled eggs.”

She gave him a suspicious look. “For dinner? The scrambled eggs you always complain about?”

He took her hand and kissed it.

“Right now, I would die for those scrambled eggs.” He gave one final shudder and stood. A rectangle of afternoon sunlight came through the window and turned one side of his body nearly white. Outside, a squirrel chattered. His wife took his hand, and they went downstairs.

* * *

THE END

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See the Story Index for Wael Abdelgawad’s other stories on this website.

Wael Abdelgawad’s novels – including Pieces of a Dream, The Repeaters and Zaid Karim Private Investigator – are available in ebook and print form on his author page at Amazon.com .

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