| Fan Fiction |
by Shweta
After the death of Selina, Joe completely lost touch with the dating world. Love, or any other sort of relationships were banned from his life. The only contact he had with women, was work related, and strictly professional at that!
Joe stood up and headed for the washroom. He tried to make sense of his thoughts. Why after so many years was he thinking of this? It never bothered him before that he didn’t have connections with a woman for over two years. Right now all he could think of was the kiss, and the fact that he didn’t have a relationship for two years.
Why had the kiss occupied his mind? It was nothing. Just a brief kiss. He would kiss his mother like that. It wasn’t intimate. It definitely didn’t mean anything at all.
But did it? It obviously meant something to him if he was still thinking about it.
Did it mean the same to Ariel? By her reaction, after the party was over, he decided that it didn’t mean a thing to her. It was just a meaningless kiss.
But did she really plan on spending her entire life with him? If she didn’t why would she say that? Maybe she didn’t mean anything by what she said. It might have just slipped out. She clearly declared that she hated him. Therefore, he was sure she didn’t really care for him. To spend the rest of your life with someone you hated? Was that sane?
But then again with Ariel, he didn’t know what was sane and what was insane. There was a thin line and she had crossed it already by marrying him just for the sake of revenge.
He wondered what kind of a woman would do that. Sacrifice her happiness, her life, and devote it to take revenge from someone who had made an accidental mistake. The more he thought about it the more the idea scared him. He was living with a woman, whose main aim was to inflict pain upon him. He thought, maybe he should hide the knives and forks of his house and replace them with plastic ones.
After all, it was better to be safe than sorry. Maybe he would safeguard his entire house.
But a small part of him, refused to believe Ariel of anything less than sweetness and sophistication personified. He wanted to turn Ariel over to his side. Make her love him. To be with her, and cherish her.
‘Woah!’ He thought to himself. ‘Where are your thoughts leading up to? Keep her at arms length. Make sure she doesn’t kill you!’
Joe brushed his teeth lazily, thoughts of Ariel started clouding his mind. He pushed away the thoughts with difficulty and concentrated on brushing his teeth. Up and down, round and round, the brush roamed around his teeth. He took an Ariel-thought-free shower, and emerged from the washroom triumphantly with a smile on his face.
However, something was different about this morning. Every morning, Joe would emerge from his shower, and forage for a suit in his closet. As he did this, he would think of Selina, and how she picked out a new suit for him to wear to work everyday. He reminisced in her thoughts for a few seconds, before getting on with his life. He had done this for everyday, of every week, of every month, of every year, since he lost Selina.
Today, however, he foraged for a suit, put it on, and took off for breakfast. Not a single thought of Selina entered his mind. Neither did he notice, nor did he know, that Selina was smiling down upon him, for the very purpose that he had, for the first time in two years, showed the sign on moving on. A sign of getting closure. She could only hold Ariel responsible for this day. She silently thanked her, counted her in her blessings, and went back to quietly observing Joe from heaven.
Joe walked into the living room, and then crossed over to the dining room. Ariel was nowhere to be seen. He stood in front of his favourite seat, which he had occupied ever since he had brought this house with Selina. He looked around the living room for Ariel. His gaze shifted to the door of Ariel’s room upstairs.
As if there was some sort of wordless passing of thoughts, Ariel emerged from her room in a white robe, under which was her full-length night gown.
She slowly walked down the stairs. With out giving Joe a glance, she entered the dining room, and started cooking herself an egg.
“Could you make some for me too please? I’m not in the cooking mood.” Joe smiled at her. She couldn’t see his smile as her back was turned to him, so he made sure his voice sounded extra sweet.
Ariel didn’t respond. She continued cooking her egg. Then she put the egg on a piece of bread, covered it with another piece on top, put it on a plate, and silently passed it to Joe.
Joe took the plate graciously, muttering a thank you in a flushed tone. The fact that Ariel listened to him, made him happy, somewhat.
“Did you have a good night’s sleep?” He asked. Then he waited for a response. When he got none, he asked politely. “Everything happened so fast yesterday, the party, my parents visiting, the big move from your house to mine...you must have been really tired. You didn’t even get any help.”
Ariel still did not speak.
“Are you comfortable?” He tried again.
This time he did get a response. Ariel nodded her head, and mumbled a soft, ‘Hmm.’ She was busy preparing the third egg. Then she turned around grabbed his plate, and flung an egg onto his plate.
“Sorry, we ran out of bread, so you would have to eat it without one.” She said turning around. She said these words so softly, that Joe had to read her lips to understand her completely.
“No problem.”
“I’m going to boil my next egg, do you want me to boil yours too?”
“Yes sure, let me go get the salt.”
“There’s no need I...AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!” Ariel screamed so loud that Joe rushed to her and took her in his arms.
“What! What’s the matter?! Why did you scream?!”
“Cock...cock...cockroach!” Ariel shivered.
“What?” Joe asked astonished.
“Cockroach! The size of an elephant...flew onto the pan...and then on my hand, cockroach!”
Joe tried to control his laughter. Ariel was afraid of cockroaches? So far he thought of her as fearless and cold hearted. He made a memo to himself, to not make judgements so quickly.
“Calm down, it’s harmless.” He tried to soothe her.
“How do you know that?! How do you know it’s harmless? It could eat me up alive!”
Joe almost gave in to his laughter, and tried pulling a serious, understanding face. “I know that because it is just a little cockroach Ariel. I don’t know how it got there, normally you cant find pests in the house.”
“It’s here to kill me! It’s on a mission. It’s other little disgusting cockroach friends sent it to us, they have it all planned!
Joe didn’t have to control his laughter now, the words of Ariel made him think of her as insane. How could a cockroach possibly kill people? He wondered out loud.
“Oh, yes it can! It grows a million times in sizes and crushes the life out of anyone who it wants to destroy.”
“Ariel, there has never been a case reported of a cockroach, squishing people to death.” Joe said impatiently.
“There’s never been such a case because no one’s been alive to tell the tale! I bet there isn’t a single reason against my theory!”
Joe kept quiet. He now concentrated on moving Ariel from the dining room to the couch in the living room. He sat her down, and checked her forehead. She wasn’t running a fever. Maybe it was just stress that was making her say these crazy things. Who had ever heard of a cockroach squishing people to death? He had to give Ariel credit for her vivid imagination.
“Get rid of that cockroach!” Ariel yelped before she collapsed in Joe’s arms.
“Crazy fool.” Joe muttered impatiently under his breath.
***
It was almost mid night. Joe had gone for, and returned home from work. All the while, Ariel was still sleeping on the couch.
Careful not to wake her, Joe made himself a sandwich for dinner, and sat next to her on the couch and read a book.
At mid night, Joe gave up hopes of her waking up, and went into his room. Within an hour, he was asleep. Joe didn’t know however, when he was in a dreamless sleep, that a burglar had entered their house.
The burglar entered through the window of the balcony, and started looking around for things to steal. Dvd players, Ovens, pots and pans, oh my! Everything that would make his wife and children happy.
But unfortunately for the burglar, the little old cockroach from the morning, came and gently seated itself on the tip of Ariel’s nose. As if this wasn’t brave enough, it started moving around, humming a little cockroach song. Ariel woke up to these movements, and when she discovered the little member sitting on her nose, she decided to join in his song and dance, by screaming loudly at the top of her lungs.
Joe quickly entered the room, and turned on the lights, he discovered the burglar, who by now was trying to escape through the open window, and then turned to the petrified Ariel. He quickly called the police and then ran over to Ariel, and covered her in blankets, and started furiously rubbing her hands.
Ariel did not know whom to be more thankful towards. The cockroach that just caught the burglar and saved them from being robbed, or Joe who was trying his best to bring her back to her normal state.
***
Hello all, I tried to make a funny chapter in between. The other chapters will get serious. Please comment, and thanks for the tremendous response you guys gave me on my last update :D *hugz*
I'm going to start a new story pretty soon, after 21st of march, and you can see the details of it in the coming soon section of my site. It is called 'surrogate.'
shwetastories.webs.com