GHOST KISS
Kris Ashton

“I can’t do this, John,” she said, tears welling up in her eyes. “I’m sure you heard what I just said, and I think I really do mean it. But I can’t live this way. It’s like the craziest long distance relationship that ever existed. And as it stands, I have no option but to run around behind my husband’s back. I’m not going to divorce him and spend the rest of my life having conversations with a pen and paper.”

I understand.

Her hand was motionless for a long time, then: There is a way we can be together.

Amy thought she grasped the meaning of those eight words right away, but she couldn’t quite believe it. She was dumbstruck, the ends of her fingers throbbing from the pressure she was putting on the pen. Finally her tongue unlocked and she had to confirm her suspicions. “What do you mean we can be together, John?”

It is possible for us to be united on a single plane of existence, to share ourselves and experience all that the universe has to offer. But you must be prepared to make the ultimate sacrifice.

“You’re saying...I have to kill myself?”

The price of love is always high, my dear Amy, but the benefits far outweigh the costs. Not only will we be able to consummate our affection as equals, we will be able to raise our child–

“No, enough!” Amy screamed, pushing away from the table so hard that it marked the wall. The pen was still in her hand and she flung it away as though it had turned into a small poisonous snake.

Shaking all over, she collected her handbag and got out of the motel room as fast as she could. She drove up to reception, pulled aside the sliding door and threw the key at the man behind the desk. Before she turned away she caught a glimpse of his stunned face. He looked like one of those plastic clowns at the fair, the kind you fed ping-pong balls to try and win a prize. Rather than strike her as amusing, the image was inexplicably terrifying and once she was back in the car she had to close her eyes a moment or risk going into hysterical free-fall. When she rolled out onto the highway, she copped a blaring salute from the man she had cut off. Waving an apology, all she wanted to do was get home—return to the safe assurances of her mundane marriage, wrap herself up in the tedium of domestic life.

While driving on semi-competent auto-pilot, she tried to tell herself it was John she was afraid of, that his asking her to do such a thing proved she had misjudged him gravely. No sane person even suggested that a loved one should take their own life. Only mental corkscrews like Charles Manson said such things and really believed them. Amy told herself these things over and over. But in the back of her mind, hidden away like a dribbling, demented relative, was the real reason she had run screaming from room 49 of the Quik Stop Motel.

For just a fleeting moment, she had considered doing it.