Christian A. Schlubach
You feel it. That icy hand on your back while drying your hair. And your first instinct is the same: to look for Jim, your husband. You poke your head into the hallway and find him, in his socks, calmly flexing in the mirror. You open your mouth but make no sound. It’s something you can’t put words to.
After all, you’re rational people. You a PhD candidate, Jim an engineer. Scientific people, who would perhaps discuss such superstition over a bottle of wine, but not take seriously. No, you couldn’t say what you’ve come to believe — not when the hand pushed you on the stairs, not when the doors bolted and unbolted while the keys were missing, not even when the knife block shook so violently last night that you froze, dropping your plate of lightly-oiled baby spinach onto the tile. Jim just staring. Not at you, but into space.
But then, it must be traumatic, ending. Shedding this world like a skin. You bend to pick up a sock at the foot of the bed, then sit close to the window. An afternoon rain disfigures the world outside. There must be some undiscovered science, of portals, residues. The inward-folding energies of passage. You draw your hand up to the cold window and touch your own faint image, tracing it gently on the weeping glass.
Christian A. Schlubach didn’t send a bio with his story, but based on the editor’s Googling, it seems that he’s from Massachusetts where he plays bass in a band called Anthems MA. His Google+ profile picture features him rocking a pair of dark sunglasses. It could be someone else, but come on, that’s quite the last name.
