I mumbled at my computer screen, sifting through several descriptions in my mind for my new character but the perfect one seemed to elude me. Blonde hair.. Brown eyes.. Maybe Italian descent? No, maybe just have them live in Italy? I don’t know.. Are they going to be a man or a woman? A loud knock rattled at my door and I jumped; an annoying blonde stormed in. Unfortunately enough, it was my wife.
“Jesus woman, where’s the fire?”
“John, can’t you stop working on that book for once? I thought we had an agreement about this. Why don’t you get out of your head and live in reality like the rest of us? Now, get away from that computer like I’ve said and start living in the real world for a change, and come downstairs, dinner’s ready.”
She turned and left before I could say anything. My inner child whined, We never had an agreement, you set the agreement on your terms for the both of us. Ugh, this woman. I swear, I could get published someday, maybe, with the right book. I just had to keep trying.
I got up from my seat and started towards the door; I could already smell what was prepared, and believe me, it wasn’t good. Anything that she cooks is either burnt beyond recognition of what it was initially, or saturated with so much salt that if you threw it in a lake, it’d most likely float. I couldn’t smell anything burnt, and the fire alarm didn’t go off as per usual, so I knew that shortly I’d be taking a bite of what could be substituted in for a small portion of the Dead Sea.
I trudged down the stairs to find my wife and my beanpole of an eight-year-old son, Thomas, waiting for me at the dining room table. It certainly wasn’t an ordinary sight, but one I could become accustomed to nonetheless.
“Hey kiddo, what’s up? I thought you had soccer practice today.”
I took my seat next to him and pat him on the back.
“He’s not feeling well today, and besides, I think he’d rather spend some time with his mommy and daddy.”
She cut in before Thomas could utter a word. She smiled at him with a wide, counterfeit grin. He groaned, curling inward on himself.
“Mom, could you stop with that? I don’t call you or Dad that anymore.”
I hid my smile as she sat back in her seat and pouted. His gaze went back to me.
“Yeah, I’m not feeling the greatest, but I just didn’t really want to go. Alex is having his birthday party tonight and it starts right when practice ends, and I didn’t want to go there all sweaty-like.”
“Ah, I see, yeah it doesn’t sound like a problem to me.” He pumped his fist in the air and made a triumphant noise.
I looked over to see my wife picking at her food and decided to look at my own. Great, her infamous pork and bean soup, I thought, one day she’s going to end up killing me with this stuff. Down the hatch I guess. I took a bite and immediately choked, absolutely inedible, there’s no way anyone could eat this and survive to tell the tale. Looks like she made this batch extra salty. Oh, how yummy.
“Hey, are you okay?”
She looked at me and I gave a weak thumbs up, desperately struggling to get it down.
“Oh, that’s too bad, could you pass me the salt?”
I gave her a strange look and Thomas giggled, I noticed that he hadn’t touched his food, smart kid. I passed her the salt and she started sprinkling it on her soup, and kept sprinkling, and kept sprinkling. Eventually when she stopped, she took a bite and smiled. She actually smiled… and her stomach didn’t feel the need to return it to the bowl.
“Damn, I’d make a good cook.”
“If you’re planning on murdering your customers with it then sure.” I muttered and Thomas giggled harder.
“Well, it looks like you’ll be my first customer then, won’t it?”
She gave me a pissed off look and left the table. Thomas gave me a fist bump. I quickly made my way to the fridge and grabbed a few things. Out of my inert parent knowledge, I concocted a peanut butter and jelly sandwich for him and a chicken sandwich for me. I replaced the bowl in front of him with his favorite snack; he smiled and said a quick thanks before nearly inhaling it in its entirety. I trashed the soup and gladly began eating my own favorite snack.
Picture: “Computer Work” from the Pxhere team licensed under the CC0 Creative Commons license.
Written Realities 