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Maybe he just didn’t want to believe it. If our positions were reversed and the only person I had to count on in impossible circumstances suddenly didn’t remember me or anything that had happened to get us to that point, I’d be pretty upset about it, too. Maybe his anger masked loneliness. Or fear.
“I’m really scared,” I said.
“Yeah? Join the club.”
“I can’t believe my husband would act this way.”
“Well, I can’t believe my wife would climb around on an unstable pirate ship like a monkey despite how unsafe I told you it was. If you hadn’t done that, we wouldn’t be in this situation!”
“I’m sorry.”
He snorted. “No, you’re not. You can’t remember doing it, so how can you be sorry? You’re just trying to appease me. And I fucking hate that even more. I hate that you’re afraid of me.”
“I-I’m not afraid of you.” I was so glad the lights were out, that the darkness that enveloped us was so total and complete. He would have seen in my eyes that I was lying. Iwasafraid of him.
I was pretty sure by now that he was being honest about being my husband, but that didn’t make him a good guy. Millions of women were married to abusive men. And he seemed to have a short fuse. More than once, I’d already been afraid he’d just grab me and shake me or something.
Even if I couldn’t remember him, if he was the kind of man a normal woman would want to be married to, wouldn’t I at least feel safe with him? Instinctively? He was definitely good looking. I couldn’t imagine it would be too much of a strain to take comfort in those arms going on appearance alone. But something felt sooffabout him.
“Like I said, I’m all you’ve got. And there’s only so long I’m willing to wait for your memory to come back.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means what it means. The only good thing I had in my life was you. The only comfort I had at night was you. And now you’re ripping it all away.”
What a selfish bastard. He should count himself lucky I’d agreed to marry him to begin with.
I heard him scoot back down on the bed and felt him jerk the covers over his body, ripping them half off me. I didn’t say anything else. I was too busy going through the horrifying idea that he’d put a deadline on my memory retrieval, and if everything didn’t come back... if I wasn’t in love with him, he’d just... take what he felt was owed? We really were back in a pre-civilized world.
“T-Trevor?”
“What?”
“We can’t... I mean... I can’t get pregnant out here without a hospital. Women died in childbirth before hospitals. They sometimes do even with them. But my odds wouldn’t be good without a doctor.”
“You won’t get pregnant. I got snipped.”
“W-why?” Didn’t he want kids with me? I mean, don’t most men want kids with their wives? Isn’t that part of the dream of normality?
“I just did. I didn’t think the world was worth bringing kids into even before it pretty much ended. I’m glad I did it now.”
Yeah, I could feel his smugness oozing over to my side and hoped it wasn’t contagious.
I scooted down back onto the bed and stared out into the blackness. I jumped when Trevor’s hand landed on my waist.
“Relax. I’m not trying anything. I’m sorry for how I’ve been today. I just can’t lose you again.”
Again? When had he lost me the first time?
2
Iwish I could say the next day felt more hopeful, that the birdsong filling the air awakened a sense of adventure in me, but it didn’t. I woke up sore and tired and still feeling weak. I was beginning to wonder if I’d caught some exotic illness out here, a thought made more terrifying by lack of hospitals.
Looking out the window of the tower, I wished it was still night so I couldn’t see outside. Much of the park was overgrown with kudzu, the aggressive vines winding and twisting through and around many of the rides and shops.
It crawled over the concrete, determined to let nothing stop it in its quest for total park domination. I had my doubts that this would be a feasible place to stay for another year. Kudzu is like The Blob. The humidity paired with the kudzu almost guaranteed we were in the south.
How did I know that?
