The First Part of Chapter 12: Out

James arrived home at 6:35, hoping for a good dinner, or anything to get his mind off how to find a new job. There were no savings in the bank account; after the wedding, honeymoon, and mortgage, they were all out; at least there was no debt other than the mortgage. Clarissa, beaming, greeted him as he stepped through the doorway.

“Hi honey, guess what?”

“You roasted a duck for dinner?”

“No, I just made a casserole. I’m pregnant!”

The news hit James like a shock wave. How were they going to pay for this? He was fired! “What?” he gasped.

He then clutched at his chest and collapsed in the front hall. He saw lights flashing in his eyes, his vision was going blurry, he could no longer see the living room, and the outline of the chandelier was becoming fuzzier and then was a ball of light; he was also losing feeling at the extremities. It seemed like an eternity, although it was less than a second later, that he had a sudden flashback of himself chasing his sister around the backyard when they were living in Guelph, and then him again, skipping gym class while eating a chocolate bar, potato chips and fries, which he had liberally topped with salt, a common scene from his high school years. What had he read about salt in the past year? He simultaneously recalled Maurice’s voice congratulating him when he was hired at Valoix Consulting. Then he remembered the wedding, with the botched, though still tasty wedding cake; he loved the rich, buttery smell of that cake, and butter cream was his favourite cake for years, and then it hit him: the date written on the wedding cake in icing was October 15th, today’s date. He was finding it hard to breathe; his sight went entirely, then his smell, all very quickly; he could hear his wife’s screaming only as a distant echo. He could hear her faintly crying “James, James!” The floor felt indistinct, neither hot nor cold, and then he felt nothing of the floor, or the air, at all. All the while––really less than two seconds, he was fighting to regain control over his body, which was in a state of mutiny over his mind, which was also in chaos. He lost consciousness. He was a shell; he was no more; he was dead.

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