Very Very Short Stories

[marxalot]

Slick as he turned them over, Adam watched antibacterial soap make frictionless surfaces of his hands, inhaling the simple clean scent he knew of the iridescent bubbles on his skin. Behind him Linda lay in the bed, murmuring her way into or out of REM sleep she hovered just below consciousness: later she would tell him about her dreams, the strange turn they took to some suspended reality corresponding with his trip to the bathroom, though neither of them would make the connection. Fingers glided apart for the awkward turn of the handle, trailing suds back to the sink he rinsed them away and rubbed himself with the handtowel, supple skin giving up trails from the old terry cloth, red on the backs of his hands, before he splashed his face and closed the tap, wet palms against the towel he drew from hair to jawline. The light above the mirror flickered, an incandescent silence, and Adam watched his pupils adjusting to the glow before he extinguished it.
Night flooded his bedroom and he swam through faded darkness, willing to wash up beside the anchor of her body, unadrift. In those slow weighty sheets he sank, eyes open, hands and face still cooler than the linen he laid on. The dark took details away, the waterstained ceiling, the mole just below her hip, the wad of clothes still wreathing his dresser, and in that dim perfect room Adam tried to reconcile them, substance and shadow, what he knew and what he only wanted. Before succeeding he fell asleep, Linda's skin warm where they touched, continents in the dark.