My Dead Husband Walks With An Eyepatch

If anyone bothered to stop and look at the man standing in the middle of the pavement, the first thought which would come to their mind was – Why is this man wearing an eye patch? 

It felt comical to see him, further exemplified by the fact that he was the only one who stood there, motionless. From this distance, it was hard to tell if his one visible eye blinked or not. The pedestrians were small enough in number to navigate their way around him, but big enough to shoot him a look or two for making their life a bit tougher. By the time their days got over, they wouldn't remember. 

I was less sure about forgetting him. You see, he was my husband. And he was supposed to be dead. 

It took me some time to realise that I had been standing on the other side of the road too. People were navigating around me, muttering a few words of discontent as they did so. I shook my head to bring my mind back to my own side of the street. Then, I couldn’t help but look again. 

This time, the pedestrians had become wearier of his presence, and glanced at him for a second longer. He was smiling – he looked right at me as he did so. 

I looked to my left, then to my right. The traffic had stopped for a few seconds, as the red light had been switched on. I walked up to the crossing, and then, walked across it. Soon, I was on the other side. He had shifted his gaze to keep looking at me. The smile had not gone away either. 

It took me a few more steps to be in front of him. And once I was there, I realised it could be no mistake. He indeed was my dead husband, except for the part where he wasn’t dead. 

I also realised his eyepatch was over his right eye. The eye I had shot him through. 

“Hello Maria,” he said. Now that I could look at him better than before, even his smile was the same as it had always been. His one crooked tooth stood out from the rest, but was not the defining feature – his sole dimple, on the right side of the cheek, took that honour. His smile, however, was humourless. 

“Jonathan?” I asked. The memories came back – his funeral had happened more than a year ago. We buried him in his local church, as he would have wished, not that he could ever have anticipated what happened that night. He did not deserve to die so young. 

“I think we should go somewhere ... to talk.” He was taller than me, and even now, he had to peer down at me when he talked. His working eye shifted to our surroundings for a moment. Many more people had resorted to staring at us. I could tell he was feeling uncomfortable. 

I nodded, and we started walking. I felt too nervous to ask where we were headed, even though I got the feeling I knew where we would end up. I wanted to stop him right there, ask him how he was alive, beg him to forgive me for whatever had transpired that night, and if I felt threatened, call the police. They would recognise him. He had been a police officer himself. Many of his friends and colleagues from the police department came to pay their respects at his funeral. The case file remained open however; his killers had never been found. 

But I did not do anything, for the primary desire to not attract any attention towards the two of us. He did not appear threatening. Despite his lanky frame, he never did, even when he was always towering over you. It was a fault of his disarming smile, he joked. There was some truth to it. 

His hand had come forward to meet mine for a moment to lead me. But in the end, he decided not to touch me. Of course, he wouldn’t desire to after what had happened. But did he remember? I wanted to ask him, but thought it would be best not to make any enquiries while on the streets. They had become more crowded by now. After all, it was not only the four walls, but also the pavement which had its own ears. 

It took only a few minutes, but many awkward moments, to reach the cafe where we had gone on many of our dates, when we were younger souls. It was only a block away from where my office, which was where I had been heading to when the morning began. This reminded me to check the time on my wrist. The watch said I could still make it if I left soon. But my dead husband was sitting right in front of me. He had just ordered his favourite, a black coffee. Work was the furthest thing from my mind soon again. I instead engaged myself in thinking of the proper thing to say. But before I could, he was the one who spoke - “I’m sorry, but you’ll have to pay. I can’t seem to find my wallet.” He laughed. I could not say if he was employing his strange sense of humour, or if he truly did not know the gravity of the situation. 

I thought this was some form of hallucination. For a few moments, I even feared I was about to die – I had read about the weird things our brains conjured up before our deaths while on the internet. It was only when he took a lose strand of his overgrown hair and tucked it back into place that I jolted back to reality. At the very least, I thought this was reality. That tuck was too real for my memory to feign. But on some nights since he had died, it was the only thing I could bear to remember about him. Maybe this was how I imagined him to be. 

I was unsure of what to ask. How much did he remember? He had loved me for most of his adult life, after all. For all nights except for his last one, when he came across what he never should have. He did not deserve to. No, he might have had a short temper, but he was too good to die so soon. 

“How are you, Jonathan?” 

“I feel ... strange.” He looked at me with a knowing glance. Yet now, there was a sorrow in it too, for he had failed to penetrate mine like he usually could. “I cannot remember anything.” His hands were drawn towards mine on the table. Out of the corner of my eyes, I could see him withdraw them once more. Perhaps, they were like his memories – on the edge, waiting for something to give before everything came rushing back again. 

“What is the last thing you remember?” 

“Having two eyes.” He laughed. His fingers reached up, and moved across his eyepatch. There was nothing worthwhile underneath now. “And also, looking forward to meeting you at night. I had a gift for you. It was our anniversary.” 

It had indeed been our anniversary. In the blood which soaked the carpets, I had found a box which lay beside him, and opened it. Inside was a diamond ring. I thought of throwing it away, but I remained too shaken to do so. I put it in the drawer of my study that night. In the days and months to come, I hadn’t ever taken out the box, or the ring from it. I didn’t dare to. 

“And then?” 

“Nothing comes to my mind. Nothing at all.” 

Jonathan didn’t remember. I sighed into the cup of (cold) coffee I was holding. This fogged my glasses. I realised a second too late that this would only arouse suspicion in him. 

“Am I supposed to remember what happened?” he asked. It was less of a query, and more of a plea. 

“How did you land up on that street?” I asked. 

“I woke up in a strange bed in a strange house. I was in the clothes I wear now – I could not remember ever wearing them before. It felt like a part of the house. And I could not remember how I had landed up there. No one was in the house. I got out through the front door and left. I asked around for the time. I could only remember you, and how you must have left for office. Then I asked for directions. I got where you found me. I stood there for God knows how long. But now, I’ve finally found you again.” 

His hands moved towards mine once more. This time, there was no hesitation. He enveloped my palms in his. But I was too shocked to respond. 

I was looking at his clothes carefully only now. They were not his. Rather, they belonged to the man who might have been the reason for his death. They were the clothes of my lover. 

“What was... the house like?” I could only muster the courage to ask this. I tried to stop my hands from shaking, but they inevitably did while I was comprehending the improbability of it all. He must have felt my nervousness. His eyes were peering into my soul. 

But still, he answered me. He loved too much not to. “It was quite strange... Crimson in colour. The bed felt a tad bit too hard.” I knew how it felt. “But the strangest thing was the living room. Not because there was anything too different about the room, but because I felt I had been in that house, many times before. The sofa was green, had been that way for a long time. But how could I know...” 

He stopped. He must have remembered. His eyes widened. “It was my brother’s house!” 

And then, I could no longer hold myself back. The memories came rushing back to me. They had been buried in a corner of my memory. They would never truly go away. They had been eating away at me for too long. 

It had been nothing more than an innocent fling between me and his brother. This did not justify what happened, but it had always buried me with further guilt. None of it had been worth it. 

His brother was an attractive man, but there had never been signs of something more between the two of us. It was only when my husband went to a different state for a crucial case for three months and I broke my leg midway through that time, when his brother was the man who was called upon to help, since he was the closest relative who lived in the same city. His wife came too, of course, but there were glances which begun to be stolen whenever she went to the kitchen and we found moments we spent alone. Soon, he came to my house without telling her. And once my leg healed and even my husband came back home, the visits did not stop. 

No one ever knew about us before that fateful night. As I sat there, crying, I did not know what to feel. If things had not happened the way they had, maybe I would have fallen out of love with my husband. Maybe, I had already fallen in love with his brother. But maybe, I could never stop loving either of them. 

The two men must have loved me too. When he came home early that day to surprise me, he was not a pleased man when he caught us in a compromising position. It did not take much explaining to understand what had been going on, and it did not take much time for either of us to realise things could never be the same again. 

Soon, the two brothers came to blows. My brother’s short temper and an inherent dislike for his brother meant he become too violent on that night. His gun fell on the floor while they found themselves a scuffle. In the heat of the moment, I had picked it up, without really knowing what I was doing. If one asked me now about what I intended to do, I would tell them the truth – I had aimed for his leg. I could think of no way other way to stop them before someone got hurt. 

I knew enough about how to operate the gun, being the wife of a policeman, but I had never used it myself. I could unlock the safety. Once I had, I pulled the trigger. But my hands shook, and I shot my husband right through his eye. 

I had fallen to the ground not long after my husband. His brother had stood there, with blood all over his face. He was too complicit to think of doing anything except helping me clean up; I was too scared to think of the consequences if anyone ever found out. 

Now, I looked at my husband again. Here he sat, apparently alive, in front of me. We had done everything we could. In the end, both me and his brother managed to distance ourselves from his corpse, which was eventually found in a remote location of the city. 

And yet... and yet. Here he was, a year on. A year since his funeral had taken place. A year since I had last talked with his brother. I never thought I would ever talk with either of them again. 

“What’s the matter?” my husband asked, bringing me back to the present. 

I could no longer look at him clearly. The tears had obscured my vision. I saw only a silhouette of my husband, with his eyepatch reduced to an outline too. 

“I... I killed you. I killed you,” I said. I confessed in the middle of the cafe. I could no longer live with myself without doing so. “I didn’t mean to. But I killed you.” 

I tried to wipe away my tears, but they kept coming. I could not see my husband or his reaction. All I could feel were his hands, which brushed against mine. After what he had heard, he was still trying to comfort me. 

“I still love you,” he said. “But will that ever be enough now?” 

And then, before I could think, before I could answer, before I could look at my husband one last time, everything started to disappear. The tears were no longer there. Neither was anything else. It was one sudden moment when I realised there was nothing else in the world except for myself. And then, I disappeared too. 

My second last thought was a realisation – this indeed was a dream, perhaps the last one I would ever have, because rather than waking up, I felt the sensation of drifting away. And my last thought made me smile in another world, the one where I had truly sinned, for as I died, I realised even I could not remember the reason of my death.