The Fun We've Had Read Online Free
couldn’t figure out where they were, it had to be dangerous waters. He half-expected to see enemy ships, sharks circling their little bit of help, this… coffin?
“This,” what he chose not to believe was a coffin.
Words rushed him now.
“The park is still open.”
Drowned the sentence with his frantic paddling, the skin on his arms wrinkling from saltwater.
“The squirrel we like needs to be fed.”
Whose words were these? He looked over his shoulder just in time to see her neck snap to one side.
If she wasn’t well, how could he be any better?
HER TURN
Because her neck snapped in such a way that couldn’t be anything but the final snap, the eyelids remained shut even as she tried to look, tried to give him her best sort of encouraging look.
Senses haven’t completely failed:
She could still hear him and everything he said. How couldn’t she hear that voice so loud, shrill, and terrified?
As her neck snapped, she gave in.
She gave up what she had fought without reason to keep. She no longer fought the basics. She no longer had reason to feel so numb and ineffectual.
It all had to do with denial. It had everything to do with what she felt was her fault.
The disease grabbed her as she reached in to take risk on full-throttle. Senselessly the source of their demise wouldn’t return to her. Everything before seeing her hand reach into a dark expanse of undefined space, she had nothing but him to fill the blankness that now blotted out her memories.
A new worry boiled in that potbelly of hers.
She couldn’t move.
Her neck had snapped. Could she remember?
She couldn’t move because she knew what this meant.
She wanted, at this very moment, even if it was in that gruff male voice, to tell him what she had told him more than anything else. She wanted to say, “I love you.”
Maybe it would sound wrong. Maybe it would fall flat upon her telling him, but then she would lean in, turning to the next sense, the sense of touch, and she would touch lips.
Her chapped, almost bleeding lips, touched his young red lips. Just imagine:
That body, the body that he borrowed. The body of someone she can almost remember, much like the body she borrowed seemed so familiar. But not yet.
For her to believe that her neck was really cracked and broken, none of this needed to work.
No lips touching.
No “I love you” declared.
For it to work, she needed to float in the only sort of sleep those floating toward demise could experience. It was the sort of sleep deemed half coma and half defeat.
It was a brand of sleep that wafted with no breeze, weighed down in the mild pain of dark, sunburned skin.
It was the sort of sleep that only she would experience.
She slept for the full-effect, until senses rose sharply up her spine and it was clear that dead bodies feed on dead thoughts; any pain or pleasure could only be drawn from the filed away mindset called the “past.”
Anything to be said or spoken had already been said.
By the look of the borrowed body, she was a middle-aged man, career-doomed and desperate for legacy.
HIS TURN
Those young impressionable eyes were incapable of holding back what he saw: Vacant seas, hidden depths, and the reflection cast on the calm waters, the one that eluded him strictly because he had wanted it to remain elusive. Blue eyes that saw for a dozen years, little more than that, could not blot out what he now knew, what he distantly held as true.
Look and, indeed, he looked.
Really looked, and what he gave was similar to what she gave. It would be right to say that he gave it all but nothing about what happens between these book covers is even remotely close to “right.” Him and her, a man that in his giving up, at least as much as is needed to admit that his body isn’t his, his
“This,” what he chose not to believe was a coffin.
Words rushed him now.
“The park is still open.”
Drowned the sentence with his frantic paddling, the skin on his arms wrinkling from saltwater.
“The squirrel we like needs to be fed.”
Whose words were these? He looked over his shoulder just in time to see her neck snap to one side.
If she wasn’t well, how could he be any better?
HER TURN
Because her neck snapped in such a way that couldn’t be anything but the final snap, the eyelids remained shut even as she tried to look, tried to give him her best sort of encouraging look.
Senses haven’t completely failed:
She could still hear him and everything he said. How couldn’t she hear that voice so loud, shrill, and terrified?
As her neck snapped, she gave in.
She gave up what she had fought without reason to keep. She no longer fought the basics. She no longer had reason to feel so numb and ineffectual.
It all had to do with denial. It had everything to do with what she felt was her fault.
The disease grabbed her as she reached in to take risk on full-throttle. Senselessly the source of their demise wouldn’t return to her. Everything before seeing her hand reach into a dark expanse of undefined space, she had nothing but him to fill the blankness that now blotted out her memories.
A new worry boiled in that potbelly of hers.
She couldn’t move.
Her neck had snapped. Could she remember?
She couldn’t move because she knew what this meant.
She wanted, at this very moment, even if it was in that gruff male voice, to tell him what she had told him more than anything else. She wanted to say, “I love you.”
Maybe it would sound wrong. Maybe it would fall flat upon her telling him, but then she would lean in, turning to the next sense, the sense of touch, and she would touch lips.
Her chapped, almost bleeding lips, touched his young red lips. Just imagine:
That body, the body that he borrowed. The body of someone she can almost remember, much like the body she borrowed seemed so familiar. But not yet.
For her to believe that her neck was really cracked and broken, none of this needed to work.
No lips touching.
No “I love you” declared.
For it to work, she needed to float in the only sort of sleep those floating toward demise could experience. It was the sort of sleep deemed half coma and half defeat.
It was a brand of sleep that wafted with no breeze, weighed down in the mild pain of dark, sunburned skin.
It was the sort of sleep that only she would experience.
She slept for the full-effect, until senses rose sharply up her spine and it was clear that dead bodies feed on dead thoughts; any pain or pleasure could only be drawn from the filed away mindset called the “past.”
Anything to be said or spoken had already been said.
By the look of the borrowed body, she was a middle-aged man, career-doomed and desperate for legacy.
HIS TURN
Those young impressionable eyes were incapable of holding back what he saw: Vacant seas, hidden depths, and the reflection cast on the calm waters, the one that eluded him strictly because he had wanted it to remain elusive. Blue eyes that saw for a dozen years, little more than that, could not blot out what he now knew, what he distantly held as true.
Look and, indeed, he looked.
Really looked, and what he gave was similar to what she gave. It would be right to say that he gave it all but nothing about what happens between these book covers is even remotely close to “right.” Him and her, a man that in his giving up, at least as much as is needed to admit that his body isn’t his, his
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