This is a flash fiction piece from 2019 that I had posted on an old personal blog.
I stand in the kitchen, washing dishes from lunch, trying not to look at the backyard through the window above the sink. My husband doesn’t believe me when I tell him that it isn’t our yard out there. And I can’t really blame him. If he said the same to me, I don’t think I would believe him. I think my husband is worried that I am succumbing to an early onset of dementia. Sometimes I worry about that, too.
Today is a sunny, humid July day. We grilled out for lunch and my skin tingles from the hour we spent outside, relaxing in the sun. My nose and shoulders will probably be red by dinner. We sat on our patio in the backyard eating from paper plates that never once threatened to fly away. But now, risking a glance out the window, I see that the trees are blowing. Clouds cover the sun, and the ground is covered in shadowy patches.
That’s not right, I think.
I flick water from my hands and wipe them off on the towel hanging from the oven. I open the door leading out to the patio just off our kitchen, and the hot, sticky air forces its way inside, pushing back the cool air of our home. I step onto the patio, and the hot wood burns my bare feet. The air is still. The leaves in the trees are silent. The world outside is not the world I see from the window. I shudder and step back inside, closing the door quickly, in case something might be trying to sneak in.
“Lu?” I call downstairs to my husband. I can hear a podcast blaring, and I figure he probably can’t hear me.
At the bottom of the stairs, I stand in the doorway hugging myself. My husband looks up from his computer.
“Hi honey,” he says. One glance at my face and his smile disappears. “What’s wrong?”
“It’s the window,” I say. “Can you come look, please?” I’m afraid to ask. I’m aware that this is analogous to a three-year-old asking for their parent to check their room for monsters. His head falls to the side as he considers my request. He sighs and asks, “Can it wait a few minutes? I need to finish this email.”
“Yeah, sure,” I say. He’s already typing again, and I head back upstairs to finish the last few dishes.
At the sink, I risk a glance outside again, and I freeze as a shape flies across the yard. My eyes search the area that I can see. Our yard is fenced in by a thick wall of tall cedars, but it would still be possible for someone, or something, to get in. I squeeze my eyes tight and count to three. When I open them again, I see a woman in a long maxi dress in the far corner of the yard, looking up at the quaking trees, like she’s searching for something. Then she puts her hand out and steps through the hedge as easily as if there was nothing there. I turn away from the window and lean back against the counter. Behind me, in the yard that is not my yard, I hear a child’s squeal of laughter. We don’t have any kids. Neither do our neighbors.
I take a deep breath and close my eyes. It’s all in my head, I say to myself. I should go see a doctor. I’ll call on Monday.
“Stop it!” a child yells. Another kid laughs and one of them screams. I press my hands to my ears. Why are their voices so loud? What are they doing in my yard?
In three quick steps, I am at the patio door again and whip it open.
“Hey!” I shout as I slam the door behind me. Two robins that had been searching for food fly into the air, but there are no kids. And just as before, the world outside is not the world I saw. Now it feels like my world. The world my husband and I enjoyed a mere hour before.
I decide to take a walk around the yard to clear my head, go see what the woman in the long maxi dress might have been looking at.
Standing where the woman was, I hear a door open and shut, and I look back at the house. Through the window above the kitchen sink, I see a woman who looks like me and my husband standing behind her, looking outside. She points out the window, right at me. I wave at them and yell, “Hey! Luis!” My husband shakes his head and kisses the woman on the cheek.
What the hell is happening?
I run back to the house and up onto the patio. I swing open the door and leap inside and land on grass, the backyard before me once again. This time, the trees are swaying and the leaves whisper around me. I stare at the window, shivering. The woman who is me but isn’t me stands at the sink, looks at me, and winks.
I must be dreaming, I think. I spin in circles and pinch my face. I look at my watch, and I have no difficulty reading it. No, not dreaming. I try once more to go back inside. This time the door is locked. I run into the yard and run through the trees. On the other side, I expect to see my neighbor’s house, but it is the same yard. My yard, but in some other world or time that only I can see. I struggle to catch my breath and a blackness begins to close in from the corners of my eyes.
“You shouldn’t have come outside,” a voice says behind me.
The woman in the long maxi dress is there, staring past me up at the woman in the house, who is presumably finishing my dishes from my lunch.
“Who is she? What is she doing in my house?” I ask the stranger beside me.
“That is her house,” the woman says. “You shouldn’t have come outside. Now you are trapped here with me and the others.”
“Others?” I ask.
The woman nods. She takes my hand and turns me around to face the yard.