/yesod

Tag: wife

  • alarm

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    by

    T.M. Camp
    in

    Last night at 3AM the alarm clock on my wife’s nightstand went off, without any cause or reason. My wife never uses the clock for anything other than to tell time. It’s been sitting there for years. No one had been in our room, no one had any reason to fiddle with it or set…

  • unseen

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    by

    T.M. Camp
    in

    Dozing on the couch this morning… ….I come into the room and see a baseball cap suspended in the air at about waist height, nothing apparently holding it up. It is not frozen in place,  immobile — rather, it drifts and bobs slightly, like a magician’s trick. I reach out to grab it, try to…

  • my phone buzzes

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    by

    T.M. Camp
    in

    Message from my wife this morning… Just another day at The Last House.

  • by the pricking

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    by

    T.M. Camp
    in

    The theater is crowded with people, waiting for the play to begin. My wife and I sit and wait, looking through the program and studying posters for past productions lining the walls. When the show begins, I am transfixed. I’ve seen Macbeth a few times before, but this is just amazing. The witches scene is…

  • pest control

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    by

    T.M. Camp
    in

    Here’s an e-mail i sent to my wife this morning, slowly starting to put together a plan to exorcise the entity that currently occupying our house… What I know (or think I know) about the entity in our house… It is not human. It never was human. It is a conscious, aware entity. It is…

  • nemesis

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    by

    T.M. Camp
    in

    Talking with my wife today about recent events, particularly those involving our daughter. Making plans for when the exorcism should be performed, discussing when she might be able take our daughter out of the house for an hour or two. So I can work. She remarks that we should time it with the next full…

  • not a bat

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    by

    T.M. Camp
    in

    “She says she saw something in the back stairwell,” my wife tells me. Our daughter is eight years old and not prone to flights of fancy or making things up. Also, we have been very careful to not let her overhear any of our conversations about what is going on here at home. When I…

  • Winterly

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    by

    T.M. Camp
    in

    My wife, her best friend, and I decide to drop acid for the first time. We lay back on the couch and each of us take the squishy pink pill and chew slowly. I only eat half of mine. I’m worried about what might happen if I take a whole one. In time, I stand…

  • comfort

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    by

    T.M. Camp
    in

    “You were crying in your sleep last night,” my wife said this morning. “I was?” “You were whimpering. It went on for a while. I couldn’t get you to wake up.” I remembered then. I remembered waking up, her hand on my shoulder. I remember hearing myself crying in the dark. But I don’t remember…

  • forearms

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    by

    T.M. Camp
    in ,

    Napping this afternoon on the couch, I dream… …we’re sitting at the dining room table, my wife and I. I hear someone call “Tom” from the back hallway. I turn to see something there, down at the bottom of the steps — small and pale, almost like a child. “Don’t look!” my wife says just…

  • a fall

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    by

    T.M. Camp
    in

    When I get home after work, my youngest daughter meets me at the door. I’m late and phoned ahead to say they should start dinner without me. A plate of half-eaten food waits at my wife’s place at the same able. But she is nowhere to be seen. “Mama went upstairs,” our daughter tells me.…

  • hard knocks

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    by

    T.M. Camp
    in

    My daughter an I are in my office when my wife calls from the TV room. I hear her but it doesn’t register until she calls again, a rising note of alarm in her voice. “What’s wrong?” She is pale, intense. I can’t tell if she’s angry or something else. “I just heard…” She stops,…

  • beginning of the end

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    T.M. Camp
    in

    …and my wife’s face contorts in pain, her brow furrowed. I ask her what’s wrong but, before she can answer, a wave of distortion ripples through the air like a mirage. “Something’s happened.” I look out the window and see a mushroom cloud rising in the distance. The television fills in the rest of the…

  • a sad girl

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    by

    T.M. Camp
    in , ,

    …lying in bed this morning, I woke to the sound of the bedroom door opening. I hear my wife slowly close the door behind her. I hear her footsteps on the floorboards, approaching my side of the bed. I cannot move, cannot open my eyes. I feel a fingertip on my arm, just inside the…

  • bath time

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    by

    T.M. Camp
    in

    “Will you check the tub in a minute?” My wife comes into the room, a little cross. We are getting our daughter ready for bed. “What’s wrong?” “There was almost no water in the tub and it was cold.” “Really?” She repeats this again. Unspoken is the rebuke — or, perhaps, the fear — that…

  • the short

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    T.M. Camp
    in

    We’re in the back bedroom, my wife and I. Fucking. It’s hard sometimes to find the time, the moment. Children, work, day-to-day life — these things conspire and distract and exhaust. But we find the time, when we can. We find the moments, synchronized, together. And it is good. Perhaps it is too brief, too…

  • a tornado, two corpses, and a leather sofa

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    T.M. Camp
    in

    Inside the house, people are starting to panic. The sky outside is dark and green, the wind bending the trees to almost impossible angles. We can hear the sirens and, in a house this old, there is no safe place . . . every room has windows, the elderly frame flexes and creaks in the…

  • little girls

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    T.M. Camp
    in

    Reported by my wife: A few days ago she and our daughter were in the back stairwell, getting ready to go for a walk. Once she got our daughter into her shoes, my wife sat down to put her own on. While she was doing this, our daughter went down the three steps to the…

  • early morning

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    by

    T.M. Camp
    in ,

    Woken by my daughter early this morning, unable to get back to sleep so I head downstairs to sit in the predawn dark, looking up from my book from time to time as little beads of shadow stream across the floor like dark mercury. An hour or so later, I hear footfalls overhead. They move…

  • peeking

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    T.M. Camp
    in

    Later… Sitting in the living room, talking with my wife while our daughter plays . . . I see someone peek around the corner of the entry leading into the dining room, a brief flash like someone pokes their head out for a quick look and then ducked back behind the wall when I looked…

  • lavender dress

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    by

    T.M. Camp
    in

    My wife went to the market one afternoon this past weekend. The weather was warm and she was wearing a long lavender dress, very lovely. The dress has bare arms and drapes in a style reminiscent of a statue of a Greek goddess. While she was out, a flash of color caught my eye in…

  • precision

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    T.M. Camp
    in

    …with slow, precise snips of the nail clippers, I remove most of my right toenail, somewhat proud to have done it in a single, broad piece. The skin beneath is tender, painful. I hope my wife will not notice.

  • david and mickey

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    by

    T.M. Camp
    in

    It’s night and we’re driving, my friend David and me. I’ve known him a long time. Since we were in sixth grade, I think. We’ve stayed in touch that whole time, mostly. Well, we fall out of touch and then back into touch. We haven’t seen each other in years — almost twenty, I think…

  • the floating eye

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    T.M. Camp
    in

    …and I have no breath to scream as my daughter falls twenty feet to the hard concrete floor, a gasp pressing out of my as I run to pick up her tiny, limp body. “Oh god, her eyes…” I turn away hiding her face from my wife so she cannot see how our daughter’s right…

  • early morning

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    by

    T.M. Camp
    in

    Pushing through the soft fuzz of the baby monitor, my daughter’s cries jolts me awake: “Daddy, daddy, daddy…” I’m up and across the hall before I have a chance to clear the mist from my head. Standing over her crib, I pat her back and tell her it’s okay. Once she settles down I head…