Digital Bereavement Inc.

Waking reluctantly, Will propped himself up on an elbow and reached into the darkness for his glasses. He pulled them on and depressed the button by his left ear before dropping back onto the pillow. They took a few seconds to fasten into place; he lay completely still, recognising the emptiness of the black room around him.

A long, flat beep stopped Will from drifting back into sleep, and he pulled himself up against the headboard. The room, now lit, felt foreign. His eyes were sore and tired under the glasses, and he felt a heaviness not altogether physical. He felt for the swelling of sheets that now rose and fell beside him. On cue, it shuffled slowly and turned over; Jessica's face smiled up at him. He didn't smile back.

'Morning,' Will said instead, 'breakfast?'

His words registered after a slight delay, and his wife smiled wider. He didn't feel her exit as she lifted herself elegantly out of bed, her body dancing to the door where her dressing gown hung over his. He watched her naked body slide into it, like a spectator in a zoo watching some animal from a distant land. He wanted to grab her and pull her back into bed, wanted their bodies unite like they used to. Jessica looked back at him and winked before leaving and closing the door behind her without a noise.

Will stared at the door for a time. The ache was strongest in his chest, though it infiltrated his whole body. He removed the glasses and dropped them on the bed. He needed to get ready for work.

***

Suited, Will moved down the stairs slowly, surrounded by the silence of the house. He moved into the kitchen where Jessica was working on breakfast. Eggs, bacon, toast. She never learned how to cook anything more complex.

Will found his tablet forgotten in a drawer and connected it wirelessly to his glasses and read the day's news. It felt so irrelevant and foreign to him as he scrolled through, melodramatic even. He had taken a long break from it and was finding it hard to readjust, to insert himself back into that reality.

He looked up and watched as Jessica pirouetted around the kitchen, the hem of her dressing gown revealing the curve of her behind. That felt real to Will, the way his wife's gown fitted her. The way she moved. He laid the tablet face down on the table.

'What are you up to today?' he asked. He was out of time but was desperate to involve himself in this scene.

Jessica began to dish up his breakfast, and he could see her arranging the eggs and bacon into a face like she always had. She grabbed at the toast as it popped out and threw it on to the plate quickly before it burned her fingers.

'Sorry, it's a little well done!' she said cheekily. Will couldn't smell the burnt bread; couldn't smell the breakfast at all. The line was jarring and would need to be changed.

'Today?' she said, eventually answering his original question. 'Your sister said we could meet up today. Do a bit of shopping, maybe go and see your mum. Make sure you call her, you haven't spoken to her all weekend.'

'I will,' Will managed, ignoring the fact that it was Wednesday. His heart accelerated and his eyes grew uncomfortably warm.

Jessica put his plate down and sat across the table, grabbing at a newspaper and spreading it out before her. He couldn't see the date but knew what it would be. He looked down at the tablet that he had laid on the table.

Will pushed up from the table with wet eyes and moved into the corridor. He felt like he was swimming, drowning in the emptiness of it all. He grabbed his coat, clambered into it violently. He pulled an umbrella from the rack, the sunshine he could see through the hall window a lie.

Will pushed the button on the other arm of his glasses and turned to see his wife peaking around the corner of the kitchen. She was smiling and waving at him. He was really crying now, tears piling where the lenses hugged his face. He felt like he was wearing a goldfish bowl, like he was seeing a distorted view of the world.

'Have a good-' Jessica began, but the glasses finally reacted to his touch and froze his wife in place. She was a sculpture, the most beautiful he had ever seen. The tears blurred his vision of her as she slowly faded and became one with the darkness. He ripped the glasses from his head, threw them at the wall.

Will's flat was dark and the light that crept in around the curtains revealed the dust and mess of it all. Heavy rain battered dismally at the windows, and he looked back to where his wife had been standing only a moment before.

He missed her so much.

Will went to leave but stopped himself. He took a long, shaky breath, and picked up the glasses from the floor. His eyes were drawn to the letters written indelibly on the side.

He checked the glasses over in the dim, grey light to make sure that he had not broken them. He would need them when he got home.

He placed them carefully on the side, wiped his eyes with his sleeve, and left for work.

Billy lives and works in London. He was a police officer for several years before deciding he had exacerbated his fair share of emergencies and he now teaches English (excitedly) to Secondary School students.

Find more by Billy Forshaw in the Author Index.

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