A Million More Tomorrows

Chapter 7

CHAPTER 7

There was a dull scratching noise first. Somewhere, the soundless dark was being punctuated by the repeating friction of one object dragging itself across another. It pulled him slightly closer to being awake, but Paul's eyes hung shut, his mind glued together. He began to worry that he might miss a deadline in his work. He worried about his tax return, that he hadn't done enough exercise recently. He wondered if he should buy some new running clothes to serve as inspiration. He didn't know where his current ones were. Did he even have any? Maybe Lola would know where they were. He pictured the delicate crescent of skin that connected his wife's neck to her shoulder, and his eyes opened.

He was home, lying on the sofa in his living room. He was 34. Canvases were stacked up against his easel in the same place he had left them; the coffee table had a mug on it from the tea he'd supped a couple of days prior. Sunlight filled the room as it normally did in the afternoons, but instead of glowing warmly it felt sharp, like a cone of concentrated light pointing towards his eyes. He shut them again. All he could hear was the scratching. He let out a moan and it stopped. Then there were arms around him.

"Oh thank fuck! Jesus, thank fuck..." The words were desperate, squeezing past thick globs of relief. "You're awake. Thank Christ."

Lola had sprung from the next seat. She poured herself over him, legs continually shifting to stay on the sofa. She began weeping quietly, her head pushing into Paul's collarbone. He hugged her back tightly, unsure what was happening or why everything hurt so much. He ran his hand up Lola's back, underneath her clothes, then around her waist; it wasn't truly her until he could feel the toughened skin of her scar.

"I love you, Cope," he said earnestly. The end of the world and yesterday's events were slotting back in their right place in his brain, though he wasn't sure how to properly broach the key subjects: how he had gotten home. What had happened in the shop.

"I love you, Everett," she replied. "Are you ok?" She was suddenly very mindful that she may be causing her husband discomfort, so she lifted herself off of his frame, supporting herself along the length of the sofa on elbows placed either side of his chest. "Does your head hurt?"

It very much did, but Paul never hastened to show her much weakness. "El...What happened?"

"He hit you. He hit you on the back of the head. You were knocked out." She hugged him tightly again, burying her face away from the emotion of it all. "And I thought you'd died."

"Would I do a thing like that?" There followed a lengthy pause; Paul and Lola lay on the sofa and held each other in complete silence. He breathed better when the oxygen passed through her hair first. It flavoured each sip. It was his nicotine. "El. What happened? Who hit me?"

She pulled herself further from him and sank off the sofa until she sat side-on to it, on the floor looking up at him, and began to recount how the events of the previous day had played out from her perspective. From the other side of the fence, she explained, Paul had told her to be quiet. He had then somehow shifted the patio door open and entered the house. She'd not been able to see. All she could detect was the low hum of flames still pouring upwards from the car in the road at the end of the alleyway. She had been terrified. The world was ending and the first thing she had seen anyone do, in broad daylight, was to wantonly attack an inanimate object. She feared all mankind would soon enter the streets and join in on the destruction. After all, the best person she knew, her own husband, was now breaking into a house to steal food. Something about that sent a chill up the length of her.