James walks through the door, his briefcase in hand.
"Honey, I'm home!" he says, like some husband from a sixties sitcom. Only I'm not waiting for him in the parlor with a lipsticked smile and dinner in the oven.
There's nothing in the oven. There hasn't been for years now. I'm skin and bones, stuck in a home that's shelter as much as it is a cage. I'm the monster the villagers speak of in hushed tones, the ones they've thrown pitchforks at.
"You said you would join me," I say. My voice is hoarse from disuse, weak from chronic malnutrition.
"And I'm here now," he says, stretching out his arms like I'm being ungrateful.
"When do you think you are, James?"
"Alright, I may be a few months late. The matter proved more difficult to resolve than I initially thought."
"It's been five years, James. Five. Bloody. Years."
"A minor miscalculation on my part, then."
I sound mad. Perhaps I am mad. Five years alone would drive anyone insane. They were not five years of peace either, but years of fear and desperation. Waiting and disappointment. The solar roof kept the house powered, but I ran out of food in six months, and water much, much sooner.
It's a struggle keeping the vegetable garden alive, but necessary, because the vegetable garden is what's been keeping me alive. James waves a hand in front of my face, and I snap out of thoughts about my makeshift compost bin and fetching water from the local stream.
"I think the time travel has just gone to your head," James says. "Let's take a seat and make you some tea."
I don't need tea. I need to go back to when we belong. It's near time for the villagers to harvest their crops, and if it's a poor harvest, they will blame me, the nearest witch. Then the pitchforks and angry farmers will come, throwing flaming torches at the house and trying to get past the invisible force field keeping me safe.
I can't blame their misunderstanding either. I speak a strange version of their language, live out in the woods in a strange house, and have objects in my house that seem to work by magic.
"I want to go back home," I say.
"We'll go back to our time," James says with a guilty grin. "But we're gonna have to relocate."
"What did you do?"
"I may have stolen some rather valuable information from the government and sold it a hostile nation for a staggering amount of money," he says. "Our house will return to our time, but onto an unnamed island in the Pacific Ocean."
"A tropical paradise," I murmur out loud.
"Exactly!"
"When do we leave?"
"Departure's set for this evening," James says. "We don't even have to do anything except sit and wait."
I force my face into a smile. "Would you like to see the forest while we wait? I need to gather some water."
"Gather water?" James chortles. "You've really adjusted to this life."
It takes more effort than it should to keep the smile from plummeting into a grimace.
"I have. I've had to."
We walk to the stream. He struggles, his loafers not suited to the rough terrain. He doesn't even carry the wooden bucket I stole from the villagers during one of my first nights here.
"I have to collect some herbs upstream," I say. "I'll be right back."
He chuckles again, probably marvelling at how his city-born wife has become a complete hermit.
Years of getting lost and finding home have made me good at navigating the woods. James, with his dependance on phone navigation and street signs, was as good as blind without me.
I walk back to the house and turn on the force field. When I first came here, the password to unlock it was our wedding anniversary, but I changed it to my birthday. I sit on the front porch with a cup of tea and wait.
The sun falls lower into the sky, and finally starts to set. James stumbles into view. He's panting as he reaches the picket fence, and tries to place a hand on it. His palm meets the force field instead.
For the first time in a while, I feel a real smile on my face.
"Darling!" James calls. "Turn off the force field."
"The password is my birthday," I yell out, taking another sip of the tea. I don't know whether I hope he'll know the password or not.
He taps in number after number and fails. The forcefield glows pink each time he guesses wrong.
"Just tell me! We're running out of time!"
Time. He ran out of time years before. He ran out of time each time he smiled at me, knowing I've spent five years in terror, because of him.
The sun sets, and with the last lavender streaks across the sky, I hope that he remembers. He does not have guilt, but I do not have that luxury.
"I gave you everything you have!"
"I'll let you keep the bucket," I tell him.
With a flash of light, I'm gone.
