Brown eyes stare at a boring painting on the wall. The huge painting is one color, light blue. Grace sees figures dancing around on a ballroom floor. Her eyes begin to water and then she blinks. The blink seems to last forever as a thick, black cloud wraps around her and simultaneously chokes her. She smells the thick cologne her deceased husband used to wear.

Someone whispers, “You cannot escape,” in her left ear. He loved the color, light blue. Every room of the four-bedroom, house has the color in it. She remembers the night he died before her eyes.

His lips quivered and his eyes were blinking wildly. He was sick and his body could no longer fight the sickness. The week before he died, she rolled him around in his wheelchair. An oxygen tank sat in a specially made pocket on the back of his wheelchair, and it was connected to the mask on his face. She walked away from him to look at the flowers in the garden. He got out of his wheelchair and grabbed a huge chunk of her black hair.

He threw her on the ground next to the chair and she heard a whisper in her left ear. You will never escape. That is what it said. It echoed in her head a few times and she wondered where he got the strength to get out of the wheelchair.

“Is that you? How are you doing that? Are you really sick?” She asked him. He sat in the wheelchair and placed the oxygen mask back on his face. Her husband was a retired biochemist. He was thirty years old, but he had to retire early because of a secret experiment that went wrong at the corporation’s factory.

The corporation gave him five hundred thousand dollars and he did not speak of the company or the incident after receiving that payment. She opened her eyes and she saw a couple dancing on the moon. She smiles but she does not feel happy. She looks away from the painting and she sees her husband looking at her in the painting through her peripheral.

She tries to focus on the wide window showing a tree branch and the night sky. She tries to keep her eyes open but they begin to water again and she blinks. “Do not look away!” A loud whisper says in her ear. She squeezes the pillow beside her.

She remembers the day they got married. She was eighteen and he was twenty-one years of age. Her mother did not like him. When her mother packed the family’s belongings and moved to a different state, he proposed to her. She accepted because she believed her mother did not understand him.

Nothing mattered but their happiness. Two years afterwards, she got pregnant. He was so happy. She lost the baby two months after she found out she was pregnant. “We can always try again, besides it probably was for the best since we are in college, right now.” He told her.

Her eyes opened again. She turned her head back to the painting. The painting is black, now. She gets out of the bed and walks up to it. A blue hand comes out of the painting and touches her face.

She jumps back and runs towards the door. Just as she gets past the bed, she blinks. She heard the door slam shut. She shook her head as she tried to focus on something else.

She recalls the year before he retired. She was pregnant again and they were financially ready to have a child. She carried the baby full term and the she pushed him out. She went to sleep afterwards.

When she woke up, the doctor’s gave her the bad news. Her baby was stillborn. She cried but her husband smiled. Every time she mourned her baby he smiled and laughed.

She did not understand why he was not upset like her. “What is so funny?” She asked. “Nothing is funny.” He said with a smile plastered on his face.

“I hope that you are not laughing at this tragedy!”

“Calm down, there is nothing to cry for.”

“I cannot take it! I cannot take it. I do not think I can deal with this anymore.”

“What are you talking about? Do not be a weakling. You better not even dream of leaving me. I will not let you.”

“We will see about that.”

“You are just like your mother! She never liked me and she still does not like me. No matter what I do, it is never enough for you! Now, you hate me just like your mother!”

“What are you talking about?”

She filed for divorce a few weeks after that argument and moved out of the house. Her mother let her move back into her house. He was adamant about not signing the papers. Her lawyer attempted to serve him papers one hundred times but he would evade the lady. Her eyelids opened and she sees her husband’s wheelchair beside her with no one in it.

It should be in the basement where she locked it twelve weeks ago but it is not. She runs to the door and opens it. Her husband is standing in the center of the hall before the doorway. His skin is light blue and his eyes are bright yellow. Where do you think you are going to be able to scurry to? “Leave me alone!” She says.

She blinks she feels him grab her waist and lifts her in the air. Gravity pulls her body onto the bed. She screams and begins to cry. “Why are you doing this to me?” She asks. It is all because I love you a little more than you love me.

“You do not know that! I do love you.”

You are just like your mother.

“You are dead. This is not real. It is all in my head.”

I am real. Your mother saw me pick you up from her house. Many people saw me in a wheelchair.

“I buried you! I saw your body in the casket. You are not alive. I am imagining all of this.”

You do not understand. This body was caged in that body for a year. I was uncomfortable but I stayed in it to make you happy, but you kept leaving me!

“I only left you once and that was because you were insensitive about our son’s death.”

He had to die. I could not protect you, myself, and him.

“What are you saying? You were crazy and you are trying to make me crazy!”

Maybe I am. Maybe I am.