"Earlier today, a woman was found dead in her apartment...investigators are looking into various leads...police are still looking for the suspect...in other news..."
April Reese lies in bed and watches the 10 o clock news. Her eyes are cold and blank and her body is pale and frail like a decaying vessel for a lost soul. A cool breeze floats and spreads its wings of fresh cold air. It makes her body swell in an attempt to sustain warmth.
Snowy static then flows from the television set and she absent-mindedly pays attention. Her thoughts are floating elsewhere, searching in the stars for answers. From a window view, a person would see that not only is she losing color but that her sheets are a coarse red coming from her thighs....
Five months ago...
It all happened kind of subtly, no one saw it coming. April was in the kitchen washing dishes. The water was smooth that day and flowed easily like the spring sun that filled life with it's metaphors that made everything seem pedantic. Meanwhile, in the living room of a small apartment, Gregory Dawson reclined in his fancy brown chair and lazily watched the tube. It looked like another lazy boring Sunday for a young couple living together for two years and Gregory being only barely out of college trying to support a relationship and a decent living.
The television blaring in the background and the water running with it. Gregory laughing at his sitcoms, it seemed almost too perfect for the quaint and struggling couple. April found it very odd and surreal that all this was here, existing. She often wondered herself if the dirt she was scrubbing off dinner plates was really coming off or was it merely an illusion to keep her submissive and succumb herself to the sexist role of becoming a young housewife.
"Did you go to the grocery store today, honey?" April called out from the kitchen.
Gregory mumbled a confused reply while still not taking his eyes off the sitcom screen.
April stops her old fashioned dish washing, turns off the water and walks into the room. Her hand is at her hip, dripping wet and she says to him, "Greg, how many times do I have to tell you to do things I ask you for? You're always busy."
At this point, Greg finally stops paying attention to the blur of the screen, "Fine, I'll go to the grocery store. It's not like we're married."
"Well, we practically are after living under the same roof for two years."
"Fine, fine, I'm putting some shoes on."
He was out the door in no time at all and as for April, she simply returned to her menial task and labored over her thoughts wondering.
"I just hope things get better before the summer." She said to herself out loud to thin air.
The television then offered her an answer in an ironic twist.
"...things are certainly getting better these days for the spring and we can only hope the forecast for rain doesn't come because the spring weather can only get better and...."
She heard the weatherman talk for the six o clock news and she laughed. She smiled and laughed herself to wholesome tears. The phone then rang all of sudden as if unexpectedly turning the tables and making everything more than simply foreboding.
"Hello...I told you earlier today what to bring....yes, and don't forget the ketchup...alright, I'll talk to you later tonight, Hun."
She smiled and thought no matter how horrible Gregory could be she still loved all his flaws because it was what made her love him the most. In all honesty, his flaws would be the thing she would miss the most.
It would be two hours later; however when everything would be different and the mood would be longing. April was sitting in his brown chair making her self comfortable for another long and lazy evening, home with her future husband whom she was expecting sometime soon.
The phone rang, she answered it and it was as if time stood still and she would later look back at that moment as being her last truly peaceful and honest feeling in the world. That is until he said those words in the middle of the conversation.
"Oh, hi, Greg... you have got the ketchup and everything else...you do...what do you have to tell me?"
He was calling from a cellular phone in the supermarket and she could hear the background noise of a typical grocery store, filled with cash register sounds, announcements, and shopper’s voices. Then there was the long pause.
"...you have decided to do what? What about everything you were getting? When did you decide this? Greg, you can't do this to me, to us. We had a future. Please, you can't go...Greg? Greg? Are you there?"
She couldn't believe this. She couldn't believe he would just hang up like that. Not only did he just leave her with an apartment to pay for, a broken heart, but without the grocery items she asked for. She thought he was different, after four years of being with him she expected it to last. Everyone did. She slumped to the floor next to the phone and thought long and hard before finally being able to cry herself to sleep on the empty floor, listening to I Love Lucy now playing in the background at 12 o clock at night.
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