What you're about to hear is based on actual events.

Listener discretion is advised.

The Sun pours itself into the deepest insertions of the canyon beyond the far horizon, thinning

to a bloody meridian that melds sky to earth.

It is beyond beautiful.

But she's not looking at the setting sun.

She's looking at Robert.

His eyes have a way of wandering off that she doesn't like.

Not as though his thoughts are trailing away or that he's daydreaming, but rather like

there's some effort involved in keeping them moving, keeping them real and warm and human

and most of all, there, present, above the surface.

She'd been to an aquarium once where a peculiar species of enemy was on display.

Living as it did in a sort of false coral bolted to the bottom of the tank, the thing would

lay there for hours until some disturbance triggered whatever dull receptors made up

the thing's brain.

Then it would writhe and wriggle and wave, reaching out its dozens of stubby little arms in search

of food or to protect itself or whatever.

But the second the disturbance subsided, which would relax and slide slowly, slowly, back

inside its false habitat.

She thought of this thing sometimes when she looked at Robert.

She'd loved him so much when they married or so she'd thought, so she'd told herself.

But the problems between them had been deeper than she originally knew.

...