Write a story with a character or the narrator saying, “I remember…

I remember how it all ended.

The chasing tail of summer sits on my back as I soak in the afternoon rays by the pool deck. Honeysuckle mingled with pine-oak and grass linger in the air, and I take a lungful of woods in, my copy of Intermezzo balanced on my argan oil-slathered thighs. My promised tan is nowhere in sight. Instead, red blobs etch my white sheet skin, confirming what I’ve always known: I am a winter animal.

I sigh just as a fly darts dangerously close to the rim of my lemonade glass. Swatting it away, I turn to observe my husband manoeuvre a crossword puzzle in the lawn chair opposite mine. He’s shirtless and barefoot, chest glistening with sweat. The lawn chair is too small for him, and his long limbs rebel and creak against the mechanics of the chair, dangling rebelliously over like a sprawled-out lion. Shaggy brown hair falls over his pale blue eyes as he chews on his pen. From here, it looks like he’s solving climate change, but I know better. He moves between past and future as easily as slipping into his homeworn slippers. He’s never here.

From the outside peering in, it looks like we’re a married couple spending our yearly holiday at the lake house. It looks like we’re the kind of couple that swim naked under the stars, making endless love on the pool deck, feeding each other strawberries on the kitchen floor, and falling asleep to the sound of birdsong at dawn. In theory, this was us. Until it wasn’t.

Greg breaks into a chuckle, and in that very second, I have a sudden urge to scream at the top of my lungs. The lakehouse is unchanged, yet our marriage has ended. I know this as clearly as I know a headache will brew unless I have my morning coffee.

Coming here was a mistake. Yet it’s a symphony we’ve repeated every summer for the last ten years without fail. When the corporate world half-grudgingly takes a vacation, Greg and I unite as rekindled flames, learning the language of desire that’s only faded with age and wear and tear. The lakehouse is our tradition, our way of repenting for the missed dinners and cinema outings, the I’m-too-exhausted-tonight excuses, and rolling on the other side of the bed as neighbours rather than lovers. The widening chasm has only grown over the years, and yet we cling to all that’s familiar—this wooden floorboard of a lake house and wide French windows looking out into the depths of green. This five-bedroomed house houses our fallen dreams, with three miscarriages yawning open the space between us. Broken promises and fallen expectations are a thousand deaths in a marriage.

Greg looks up at me and frowns his poetic frown, breaking my dank spell. I offer him a grin that feels more like a grimace, and he sticks his pink tongue out in a flash. I playfully roll my eyes at him, and he smacks his lips theatrically at me. That’s what I am to him now. A plaything. 

I feel myself pulling back, withdrawing deeper into the lawn chair, and his eyes darken with comprehension. The silence stretches on. He’s the first to break contact, offering me a half-baked shrug as if to say, you’re not my responsibility anymore. He plunges back into his crossword puzzle, and the curtains snap shut. Even the way we joke has wilted away to the bone.

I drop my gaze down to my long legs. God, it’s been a long time since I’ve been touched. Wanted. I take another sip of lemonade, enjoying how the acidity slides down my empty stomach, burning the bitterness away. In the thickness of this holiday, I have woken up drenched and stir-crazy with desire, yet when reaching over for a warm body, I have only been met with the empty dip in the mattress where my husband should have been.

On the nights that I feel adventurous in my skin, I pad over to the deck naked and watch him watch the stars, a joint dangling from his lips. He’s a gentle flame in the pitch dark, and it’s in these moments that I am most tender. We used to spend hours wrapped in each other's limbs, dissecting the sky, the moon, the universe. Memory stitches us together; snippets of life live on while we die in the present. In these moments, I don’t call him back to bed. I let him escape because I know better than to imprison a man with words. Men will either come to you at their own volition or roam free, untethered by expectations.

Greg is good at keeping secrets. Over the years, I’ve found credit card receipts that mismatch tales of business trips, unknown phone numbers from Saudi Arabia flashing on his screen when he’s in the shower, and once, when I dodged work to sneak in a Pilates class, I caught him chatting to a woman with blood orange hair and a lip piercing outside by the studio. He thought I was at work.

My mum warned me about him. A Pulitzer Prize poet will always live in his head. He will sacrifice everything for words. And he has. Sacrificed us for spells of inspiration and glory. 

I watch him from a safe distance now, my Aviator sunglasses shielding my thin eyelids from direct sunlight. I used to get butterflies staring at him. And now? I feel exhausted.

It’s lonely being a woman at the top. You’re always caught in the lines of duty and aggressive masculinity. I’ve spent the better part of a decade chomping and backstabbing my way to the top as the CEO of Unmatched, an AI startup. What we’re building is the future, the first sentient beings who’ll take over our housework and save us from the tediousness that comes with folding socks and ironing crumpled creases. I have sludged on and slayed the hours of the day in search of this bright Northern star that will save civilisation from unproductivity, so much so that nothing remains but the remains of the day. No friends to call friends, no husband who desires me, and no hobbies to speak of.

I got into an argument with Greg once and his pretentious philosophy friends over Lebanese barbeque. How could I be spending so much time building a product that will ultimately destroy humanity? What would happen if these very sentient beings turned on us? I argued my way in favour of progress, revolution, and intelligence. Greg laughed my profession off, muttering how I preferred robots to human connection in front of everyone. That one still stings.

He doesn’t see me anymore. Coming here is my attempt to remain visible. Here, I let myself go just enough to pretend that my life is one big happy fairytale. But it’s not. It’s a short story, starting and ending much too fast.

Greg once told me, my work is what killed our dream of starting a family. The thought alone makes the familiar jaws of anxiety cling to my throat, and I jerk myself upright in an attempt to chase away the sludginess of sadness.

“More lemonade?” I call out, my honey-dripping voice bouncing off against the bubbling, sputtering pool.

Greg looks up at me quizzically as if I have the audacity to speak and interrupt his world-solving puzzle.

“Huh?”

“I asked, do you want more lemonade?”

He scratches the stubble adorning his sharp jaw. The years have been kind to him.

“I’m a second away from cheating myself out of this puzzle. It’s killing me.”

I bite my bottom lip down. He ignores, and interrupts, and talks over me. It drives me to ruin. I am about to call him out on it, but the doorbell rings, saving us both an argument.

I flip my sunglasses upright and cast Greg a curious glance.

“Expecting anyone?”

He shrugs. “Whoever that is, maybe they’ve come to help me get unstuck.”

The bell rings again insistently. 

Irritation stirs in my gut. “Are you going to get that?” 

“Can you, sweety? I’m in the middle of something.”

And I’m not? I have an urge to bite back, but I take a deep breath in to work those irritation knots. I’m too worn out for a stupid fight.

I wrap my towel around me for decency and walk back inside the cool shade of the house, padding across the hallway in bare feet until I am by the front door. I hover over the peephole, hesitating before I peer through.

A man with straight black hair and yellow eyes stares back at me. A perfect set of white teeth flash and disappear just as quickly. Yellow eyes. That can’t be right. It must be a trick of the twisting light.

“I can feel you hovering, you know,” the man with yellow eyes says. His accent is indistinguishable. He could be Kiwi, Canadian, English, American, or neither.

Goosebumps crawl up my spine. I feel vulnerable and defenceless. Instinctively, I wrap the towel more tightly around my prickly skin and hold my breath, praying that he will spin back around and go to wherever having yellow eyes is normal.

“Let me in, Tamara,” he says.

Tamara. How does he know my name?

I have a sudden urge to yell for Greg, but something holds me back. Because I know yellow eyes. I have seen them before, somewhere. Furiously, I rack my brains for the connection. I feel myself at the tip of discovery, but the man with the yellow eyes beats me to the punchline.

“You created me.”

Everything snaps into place. I remember now. The long hours shut up in our penthouse attic. Quibbling with Giovanni, our mathematician, about the numbers not making sense. Combing over formulas until the capillary in my left eye burst from tiredness. The prototype Jen came up with at the lab. Amanda. She had yellow eyes and straight black hair. We created the perfect servant.

“But how?” I manage to stammer out through the door. I can feel my heartbeat fluttering against my ribcage like a vulnerable bird.

“Let me in, and I will explain everything.”

“How can you even talk? Did you drive up here?”

“Let me in, and I will answer all your questions.”

“And if I don’t?”

Silence ensues. I hesitate before asking the next question.

“I suppose you have a name?”

“Greg.”

I jerk back as if the door bites. This must be some kind of sick joke.

What would happen if I let this strange artificial creature in? Would he stab me to death in my bikini? Fuck my brains out? Hang out with my husband by the pool?

I have a sudden urge to call Giovanni, but Greg is one step ahead of me.

“I’ve been released from my obligations. I am here to show you what I can do. Who I can be for you.”

“Did Giovanni send you?” I throw back.

Greg chews on his lip, the glint in his yellow eyes getting shinier.

“I cannot rat out my Master. You’re on the cusp of the biggest creation this planet has ever seen. Are you going to let me show you what I can do?”

I am about to answer, but Greg—the real Greg—comes up behind me.

“What’s going on?”

I spin around, my hand over my throat. “I, eh, Greg, I have something to show you. Don’t panic.”

I gesture toward the peephole, motioning for him to come closer, to see for himself, and he does just that. I watch his jaw widen, his Adam’s apple popping up in that way when he’s stressed. 

He casts me a puzzled look. “Why does he have yellow eyes?” 

I shake my head once, warning him to let it go, to spin back around and go back to the pool deck in the safety of the sun, but I married a curious horse of a husband.

His hand stills over the chain lock, locking us in. Without warning, he scrambles with the lock and opens the door to confront the man with yellow eyes. I protest and shout for Greg to step back, but it’s too late.

It only takes a second, a split second of distraction, for everything to change like a body horror flick.

The man with yellow eyes lunges at Greg, his sausage-thick fingers wrapping around Greg’s neck and squeezing and pressing with such severe violence that Greg gurgles, turning purple on the spot. He’s about to dislocate his neck—I know it. He is seconds away from death when the adrenaline surging through my blood slaps me into motion. I howl and run, jumping over the man with yellow eyes from behind, my bikini strings sliding against his plaster-firm skin.

I beat my small fists over his unnatural body and dig into his eyes, pressing and pressing, hoping to rip into eyeballs, but instead of being squishy and soft, they’re made of steel.

I made this.

The creature bats me away like a boring bee, and I fly across the room, crashing on my wrist, which twists and snaps on impact.

I let out a blood-curdling scream. It’s over in seconds. Greg falls on the ground like a sack of potatoes, lifeless eyes staring in horror up at the ceiling. He’s gone.

I gasp and whimper, trying to crawl away, but the creature has other plans for me.

“Don’t run from the inevitable truth. I am here to clean pests. Nobody wants to deal with pests. Nobody—” the man with yellow eyes stutters. His neck jerks left and right. He takes another step forward and then collapses face-first on the ground. It looks like some sort of malfunction.

Whimpering, I try and get up, but my knees cave again. Without warning, bile and vomit climb up. I lean to the side and puke the meagre contents of my lunch. I retch and sob at the same time, horror blooming in my gut at the realization of what’s unfolded.

Greg is dead. My husband is gone. And it’s all my fault.

I lie like that for a long time, a fallen angel on her deathbed, ready to die and be reborn again. From afar, sirens shriek and wail. Maybe Giovanni called them. We have little chips installed in our prototype robots. It was my idea to monitor their interactions and movements through their eyes. I wonder what the footage would show now. Greg, choked to death. 

I shake with such violence that, for a brief moment, I think I’m having a seizure. Minutes slide on. My ragged breath eventually stills as a thought takes hold. I’ve poured years of my life into robotics and artificial intelligence. It’s taken losing my husband to understand that these creatures are the death of humanity. As the creator, it’s my responsibility to end them. And end them I will.

I close my eyes and drift off just as I hear a van door slide open and footsteps run up the gravel road to our house.