Revenant

The thing is, Tony knows that she's dead. He's known it ever since he saw her, face smashed bloody against the passenger window seat. He had sat there, in the bright, whirling seconds after the crash, and he had looked at her face, and he had known. Everything after that was a blur, a sickening, crunching pain in his side as they pulled him out, the bright blue lights of the ambulance thrown carelessly across his vision. He remembers the face of a paramedic, blurred and soaking with the glaring blue light. The colour had been running off his face in rivulets, tiny streams of pulsing, violent blue. In hindsight, he knew it must have been raining, that the lights mixed with the raindrops had caused some strange, pain induced hallucination, but at the time he had thought he was mad.

        He isn't mad though. Tony is a rational guy. He's never been prone to flights of fancy, always chosen science or history annuals over fiction books. Anna loved that stuff though, it was the one thing they didn't agree on. She loved her romances, her sci-fi, her horror films. She loved books about quests and dragons and fairies, knights and magicians and castles haunted by beautiful, terrible queens. She watched films where the dead came to life and feasted on the living, and TV shows about angels fighting demons. Tony didn't mind it, though. He indulged her with books and trips to the cinema, not even falling asleep while the latest drivel played out across the screen. In return, she never complained about the repeated trips to the local museums, went with him to exhibits of the natural sciences, even went with him to the Maritime in London, once, to look at the boats. She had loved the Cutty Sark. 'Can't you see the pirates?' she had said. 'Can't you just see them Tony, leaping from the rigging?' Tony, of course, had seen no such thing.

        They were on the way back from a reading of Historic War Poems, housed in the Imperial War Museum when it happened. The night had been splendid. They had dinner out in a nearby pub. The food was nothing special, but the pub had a good atmosphere, and cheerful yellow lights that made Anna's hair glow, and her gentle eyes shine. The museum had been great, as usual, both Tony and Anna fascinated by the planes hanging over them. Tony had recited his favourite facts about the planes, and Anna hadn't even looked bored. The poetry was good too, and Tony applauded as hard as any of them when it finished. All in all, it had been a perfect night. As Tony helped Anna into the car, a hand on the small of her back, the warm night air awash with the soft smell of her perfume he had even dared to think that maybe he might marry her. Another night like this, only with dinner afterwards this time, so he could slide the ring across the table, between the main course and dessert. He was sure he had his mother's ring in a draw somewhere at home, maybe that could be altered to fit? It wasn't a diamond, but he seemed to recall the emerald as shining brightly enough when it sat on his mother's finger. Besides, Anna liked green, didn't she? She had that one green dress she always wore—not tonight, it was too cold for silk, but still-

        He had been thinking about Anna, in her green silk dress, smiling at him across a table, her hair glowing like it had in the yellow light of the pub, when the other car hit them. The road was mostly empty—it was a Thursday evening, no one was out—and this car seemed to come out of nowhere, its headlights steadily growing larger, and larger, until they seemed to engulf the whole world. For a moment, the only thing Tony could see was those bright headlights bearing down, all he could hear was the rush of tires, maybe Anna screaming, then silence. Just for a second, as the world shuddered and jarred and -lifted-

        Then he was awake, his ribs lit with pain, and Anna was dead.

        The ambulance came, and the paramedic with the blue face, and Tony was moved onto a stretcher. Pain popped behind his eyes in brilliant white bursts, lighting up the midnight sky. He passed out.

        Tony woke up in hospital. He knew it was a hospital before he opened his eyes. He could hear the monitors beeping. So. He had been in a crash, he had been injured. And Anna-. He opened his eyes, to confirm his surroundings. The walls were white, there was a tube in his arm and one of his legs was in plaster. Definitely hospital. He summoned a nurse, who checked his vitals, administered some pain medication and told him that he had broken his leg and three of his ribs, oh and his girlfriend was in the room next door, if he felt up to a visit.

        That is where Tony is now. Outside Anna's room. He is in a wheelchair, and has pulled on a jumper over his hospital gown. He feels cold. He doesn't understand what the nurse is saying to him, something about concussion. Does he have concussion? He doesn't understand why they haven't taken Anna's body to the morgue. The nurse wheels him through into the room. It is small and cramped, with a monitor that is beeping steadily, and a plastic table with wheels, and a pill cup and some tissues on top. There is a green curtain around the bed, and the nurse draws it back briskly. 'Anna dear,' she coos. 'Your boyfriend's here to see you.' Tony shuts his eyes, tight. He doesn't particularly want to look. He knows what he'll see, remembers it from the car - her skin, pale grey and cold, her hair matted with blood, her eyes vacant and staring. He takes a breath, imagines that they need him to make an ID, maybe the morgue was full, maybe they didn't think he'd make it down there- Tony opens his eyes.

        "Tony!" Anna says. She is awake.

                                                                                        ***

        Tony has gone mad. He knows this, just as surely as he knows that the sky is blue, grass is green, just as surely as he knows that Anna is dead. Except of course, she isn't. Not completely anyway. He is discharged from hospital in a daze, hardly noticing the doctors parting words, or the face of the cabbie who drives them home. What he does notice is the strange, musky smell of his wife as she embraces him, and the cold, waxy touch of her hand. He sits next to her in the taxi home, wondering at the casual way she speaks to the cabbie, the friendly way their eyes meet in the rear view mirror. How does the cabbie not notice? Her eyes are vacant and empty. There is no life there.

        That night as they get ready for bed, as Tony washes his face, hoping the cold water will somehow shock him into reality, Anna reaches out and gently touches his shoulder.