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Fiction Short Story

by Linda Williams

What Would I Ever Do Without Him

It's three thirty-nine a.m., and I'm wide-awake. It's that hair raising sound coming from my bedroom that's jolted me out of the clutches of my Memory Foam mattress. The hullabaloo sends me skittering into the living room to turn on my computer. I look around to see if the roof is actually raising off its rafters. Vibrations race across the floor, shimmying the wheels of my office chair, climb up the metal supports and finally dissolve into the padding.

The sound? Why, it's my dearly beloved snoring. And here I sit, totally ticked off, wanting to kill him because he makes me work night shift instead of sleeping like a normal person should—he's turned me into a vampire.

I wait until 4:45; the alarm goes off. I hear his feet hit the floor and the early morning contented yawn of someone well rested and refreshed who's had a great night's sleep. Bastard!

I plant a smile on my face as he stumbles to the bathroom and says what he says to me every morning. "Honey, you didn't sleep again last night?" As if I have some kind of sleeping disorder. Hell, no, I didn't sleep last night, and it's all your fault, I want to tell him. But I don't. Sure, I complain about it, sometimes, but what can he do?

I've tried all kinds of things to get him to stop. One night as I sat on his chest with a pillow poised above his face, he woke up and asked, "Did you want to make love?"

Then there was the time I tried to squeeze his nose shut with clothespins. Okay, desperate as it sounds, I tried it. He got really pissed off that time. I guess it hurt.

I think of all the gadgets I bought off late night television infomercials. You've seen the stuff: Snorzaway and those funky strips you put across your nose? Well, breath freshener and band-aids would have worked better than either of those and would have been cheaper than nineteen ninety-five times two.

I watch as he emerges from the bathroom, freshly shaven; the scent of lavender and spice trails behind him.

I drag myself into the kitchen to make coffee. He gives me that sympathetic look that says, "You look like shit, you really should get some sleep," but he doesn't say it. Good thing for him.

At last, I hear the car start, roar down the street and he's on his way to earn our daily bread. I haul myself back to the bedroom and lie down. I start to drift off, reach over to his empty side of the bed and hope he makes it safely to and from work, the same way I do every day. What would I ever do without him?


About the Author
Linda lives in the beautiful Ortega Mountains of southern California. Her work has appeared in T-Zero: The Writer's Ezine, Long Story Short and Real Eight Magazine. She's currently writing a romance/comedy screen play.