I’ve already died when the book starts, but I’m featured in Chapter Two in an extended flashback. My husband and I were going to see the world together, and the author lingers on descriptions of our travel map with its blue pins waiting to be pushed into cities.
The chapter ends with the pins scattered across the floor, and my husband crying because we’ll never see any more places together.
I fall out of the book after that and ended up here, at the Fridged Wives Book Club with all the other dead wives who’ve exited their narratives. It’s just a far-off corner of blank, white-page emptiness, where we all found ourselves blinking in shock at our abrupt end. Each of us carries memories and a book to read—specifically the book we just departed. We just keep reading, hoping to slip back into our narratives.
“Maybe I’ll be alluded to again somehow,” I mutter.
Jane snorts. “Won’t ever happen.”
I can’t make out Jane’s expression. A sardonic grin? She’s blurry, and her hair is a nondescript shade you forget about when you stop looking at it. Her author never described her. Jane isn’t even her real name; she’s just “my wife” in her book. After she came here, she decided to name herself.
Jane also carries a knife and makes stabbing motions as she reads, muttering things like, “You just met her two chapters ago, you bastard.”
I tread carefully around Jane.
Some wives share memories—favorite foods, careers. Madge over there formed a knitting circle, all their needles clacking while they turn pages.
I read another chapter. The travel map pops up again. He shoved it in a closet, but it lingers in the dark corners of his mind, especially when he sees a woman in the coffeeshop reading a travel guidebook.
My teeth grind. The author’s story arc for my husband is so obvious. My husband will clearly find love, probably with the coffeeshop woman, and travel again. Our travel map will re-emerge to be filled with pins. I try to read ahead to see if I’m right, but those pages are stuck together. I can flip to earlier in the book, but not the end. Do I have to read in order or something?
I nudge Jane. It’s hard to focus on her face, so I stare at her knife. “Hey, have you finished your book?”
“Oh, you shouldn’t ever finish your book. We disappear when we reach the last page. I’m not ready to go, so I keep reading the same passages.”
“Oh god. Is this hell?” I’m going to read about my husband moving on from me forever and ever?
“Why’d ya think I got the knife?” Jane’s eyes, dark and furious, come into focus for a smidgen of a second. “Makes me feel better.”
We were each written to love someone, and our loved one was written to move on. Who would create something like this? My heart feels like it’s being crushed between pages.
“How’d you get that knife?” I whisper. I also feel the need to stab at something.
“It’s a metaphor. Ya know? Like, he stabbed my heart by moving on, so I made a real stabber.” Jane’s blurry hand stabs the air, her silver blade glinting. “We can make literary stuff here. Like Madge’s knitting: her yarn represents the threads of her life, all knotted up.”
I look to the knitting circle and see Madge’s hands, veined like a marble statue, shaking as she navigates yarn. She’d been written to have had 42 years with her love, but now? Well, she’ll never see him again except in her book.
We’re all reading in our little corner of nothingness, just a bunch of used literary devices for character arcs. I’m merely the story behind that map in his closet.
Still, I hadn’t realized we could use literary techniques to our advantage. As I look at Jane’s knife, I think about what metaphor I’d like to create, but not as an angry, dead wife. There’s more to me than that.
I close my eyes and focus. A door appears in the nothingness, engraved with patterns like a map.
Jane’s eyes widen. “What’s that?”
“My metaphor.” I was written to love travel. I was written to leave him behind. Dropping my book, I open the door. On the other side, I smell salty ocean and hear waves crash.
Faces look up as a gentle breeze dances through our home of empty white-nothingness, nostrils twitching as they smell something for the first time in god knows how long. I can’t leave them behind.
I shout to the wives, “I’m ditching my story. You all can come if you want.”
Books flop to the ground, pages bent and flopping like a final gasp. We’re all ready for a new tale. Even Madge abandons her knitting. “It’ll be so nice to do something else,” she says.
Jane comes into greater focus as she walks toward the door. Then, she turns and asks, “Should I leave this?” She holds up her gleaming knife.
“No, bring it. If we ever encounter the authors who fridged us, it’ll be good to have. Just in case.”
About the author:
Carol Scheina is a deaf speculative author whose stories have appeared in publications such as Diabolical Plots, Escape Pod, Flash Fiction Online and others. You can find more of her work at carolscheina.wordpress.com.
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