Short Story: ‘Human Stilts’

After waking up from a deep, all-consuming sleep, I leaned forward in a groggy daze to kiss my wife and found only blank space. Believing that I had missed the target of my morning affection, I aimed blindly downward and tried again – only to be met with the same absence. How odd, my wife must have been sleeping at a most peculiar angle. For by my estimation, what with my arms currently being wrapped around her gently heaving body, to miss my kiss her head must have been positioned at an almost complete right angle to her torso.

The macabre unnaturalness of this image disturbed my sleep-addled brain, forcing my eyes open only to be instantly blinded by the bright sunlight streaming into our room from the far window. Blinking, I searched with increasing bewilderment for any sign of my wife`s head. In that space where a human head should have been, where it always was at 7 am on a Wednesday morning, there was nothing but plump and unpressed pillow.

My wife breathed steadily under my arm.

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