Tread Carefully

And then there was nothing.

One moment, her husband had been there. She could see the tears on his cheeks, mixed with grime from a long day’s work, his hands, shaking, reaching for her, retracting when she flinched. The room had been filled with his shouting, voice broken with remorse; the air had hung with the knowledge that she might never forgive him. He screamed, oh how he screamed when she said–

Her head throbbed.

She couldn’t open her eyes; her eyes wouldn’t open. What difference did it make? The house was quiet, now, if there really was still a house, which she didn’t know because her eyes were sealed shut–

Ringing. Was it in her head? Was it an ambulance, coming to rescue them? Rescue them from what, exactly? How could she be rescued from the sight of her husband… how could she describe it? He imploded. Right in front of her? Rescue her from that!

Noise. There should have been more noise. Where were all the people? Neighbors? Where was her husband? Oh, God, her lying, cheater of a husband, where did he go? Why was he hiding? She still couldn’t see; was he holding her eyes closed? Was he shielding her from the explosion like he had shielded her from the truth?

This is more important than your love life.

She was lying on the floor, the hardwood cherry-finished surface she’d insisted they install all those years ago. Something dug into her back, rubbery and uncomfortable, bordering on painful. Her fingers twitched. She could still feel them, that was good. Same with her toes. Her head hurt, but she had read somewhere that pain meant she was still alive, and she should be very grateful for anything that she felt at all. 

Gingerly, she lifted her hand, bringing it up to her rebellious eyes. Though her lashes were dusted with a thin powder, sawdust perhaps, there didn’t seem to be anything forcing them shut. Covering them to shield from the relentless sun, which she now felt like a hot blanket due to the fact that her roof was likely destroyed, she began to blink. 

And immediately wished she hadn’t. Each sliver of light was like an iron, piercing directly into her skull. The remnants of whatever dust floated through the air burned, escaping through her eyelashes and searing her eyes, which immediately began to water. Almost impulsively, she rolled over so that she faced the ground, away from the horrible sunlight. Her headache doubled in size, yet she held still, blinking the dust out of her eyes and doing her best to ignore the nausea that crept up her throat.

The world began to appear in shapes. A dark blob here, a bit of light there. As small details began to refine, she focused instead on what she could hear, pushing aside the ever-present ringing that hounded her head. Still, beyond it, she was met with more silence than answers. Instead of the screaming of a siren, she was met with nothing. No voices, which included her husband’s. Just an eerie lacking.

A blur of blood red hovered at the edge of her vision. Though it had yet to come into focus, she reached out, taking hold of the plastic material. Her fingers seemed to meld together – that was worrisome, indeed – but despite her finicky sight, she could instantly tell what it was. A high-heeled shoe. But not her high-heeled shoe, no, this was a very specific high-heeled shoe. She’d only seen it once before; discarded at the foot of her bed, lying sideways on her floor while that woman screamed and fled, barely stopping to throw on her husband’s shirt in an effort to salvage some of her long-lost decency.

The memory settled like a stone in her stomach. Gritting her teeth, she pushed herself off of the ground, ignoring the second wave of dizziness as she steadied her feet underneath her. It was starting to sink in that her sight was not, in fact, getting better, and neither was her headache. She would have reached for a wall for support had there still been one. Instead, in the blurry mix of browns and greens, she recognized nothing. It was as if she’d been transported to another world, as if instead of taking the tornado from chaos to glamor, it had dumped her out right back in Kansas to deal with all of the destruction left behind.

Where is he?

Infidelity or not, he was still her husband. It was still her duty to look for him in the rubble, to save him if he needed saving. They’d made vows and she didn’t intend on breaking them. Each step forward drained her energy, but it was her mind screaming at her to stop more than her muscles. She couldn’t help but wonder if her lack of any desire to find him was due to her shock. 

What was once her home had become like a crime scene. Through the blur, she could make out the pillars that used to reside inside of their walls, now protruding outwards into the open. Stuffing from one of their couches littered the floor, occasionally caressing her bare toes as she walked– a stark difference from most of the sawdust and wood splinters she’d been failing to avoid. She’d removed her shoes when she got home this morning, like she always did, thinking nothing of it. Now she longed for any sort of protection, even the black heeled boots she’d worn out last night with her friends, the ones she’d only bought because they lovingly assured her the style was adorable, even though she knew they weren’t quite to her husband’s taste. He made no comment when he saw them, the only indication he didn’t approve being a telltale wrinkle in his forehead. She’d felt guilty for wearing them anyway; now she knew why he’d stayed silent.

They’d have been impossible to find in the mess. If she wanted to keep looking for him, she would have to endure barefoot. 

It struck her then that something was off. She couldn’t see anything wrong, nor could she really hear at all, but there was something there. Something else.

An acrid smell filled her nostrils, immediate and striking. She recoiled, but the smell followed, filling the remains of her house until it surrounded her on all sides. It was then that she realized she knew this smell. She knew it when she left her hair in the curling iron too long, or left the dinner in the oven for more time than instructed. Burning. And there was something else underneath it that she couldn’t immediately place. It was strong, almost nauseatingly so. The smell of diesel and exhaust, large trucks and cocky drivers. Gasoline.

“You need to check it out,” she had warned him. Though he had finally paused his video game to talk to her, his eyes kept stealing away towards the screen, fingers twitching in anticipation of the moment when she would finally stop pestering him over frivolous things and let him be. “I swear I’ve been smelling gas around here. We should call someone and get it looked at, just in case it is something.”

He assured her there had been no such smell.

It filled her nose now, a cosmic reminder that she was foolish for not getting it checked right away, regardless of the idiocy she had been dealing with. She hoped his video game was worth it. Stepping forward, where most of the light was coming from, she realized she’d been thrown towards the front door by the blast, but the actual explosion had come from the back of the house. It now bore almost no resemblance to its former state, or a house of any sort. Everything in it was completely exposed; the walls and roof utterly demolished. As she got closer, the stench of gasoline strengthened, with it, the burning smell. It must have been a gas leak, like she’d suspected.

For not the first time, she wondered why she was searching for him. What did she owe him, other than an “I told you so”?

The sun beat down on her body on all sides. She glanced quickly upward to see that her whole ceiling was gone. Their house was only one story, which meant that the harsh light of day now exposed almost everything in their modest home. What was left of it, anyway.

And then she stopped. Her heart should have dropped; it beat steady. Her eyes had caught on something. Someone. Without needing to come closer, she knew who it was. They’d been married five years, and she had grown quite accustomed to picking him out.

It wasn’t obvious whether he was alive or dead. Coming closer, she felt a surprising lack of anxiety at what she might find. He lay splayed on the grass, apparently having been thrown sideways out of the house and into their yard. A couple of feet further, and he’d have collided with the neighbor’s fence. Though he was on his back, his right arm lay twisted underneath him. What she could see of it had begun to turn a strange shade of purple. His legs, bruising, didn’t seem broken. As a cool breeze sent a chill down her spine, she noticed the lack of clothes he was wearing, limited only to his favorite boxers and a wifebeater he’d hastily thrown on after she’d walked in. Fully clothed, she was fairly warm. She supposed loyalty had its perks.

He didn’t move as she watched. Somewhat certain that he wouldn’t miraculously wake, she knelt down in the grass beside him, leaning in closer to gauge whether his chest actually rose. It was hard to tell with the blur in her vision, harder still with the gas that reeked around her, warning her of a potential second explosion. Her body itched.

There. It was slight, but she was almost certain she saw it. His chest had risen, just barely, before lowering again. Breath. 

She rocked her weight backwards, pushing herself away from his body and onto her feet. For a moment, all she could do was stare. He was alive. The explosion hadn’t killed him. He was hurt, sure, but he’d won himself a second chance at life. He’d won himself redemption.

Her body moved on its own. Within a minute, she found herself back inside the remnants of their house, clutching something as as tightly as a life ring. Her mind was nearly blank as she reapproached her husband, kneeling down and reaching for his free arm. She tucked the object into the palm of his still-warm hand, and she could again feel his pulse. The bastard had lived.

She only needed one last look at him before she stood, satisfied, to turn over her bare heel and take her first steps away. Unsure where to go, but equally unsure if it really mattered where she ended up. There was nothing left for her here.

A sharp pain stabbed into the skin of her foot, stopping her instantly in her tracks. Bending over, her fingers made contact with rusted iron, a pointed tip. A nail, probably dislodged from some part of the house. A drop of her blood fell into the grass.

Nail still in hand, she turned back one last time. Her house was in shambles, and she now saw the fire she’d been smelling. It ate away at the side of the house, moving not quickly, but thoroughly. There wouldn’t be much left. Tucked in her husband’s palm was the red heel, now pressed against his chest as if holding it tight.

The nail fell to the ground. She turned. Ignored the pain in her foot as she began walking.

Somewhere in the distance, a siren began to wail.