It was the middle of the night. She was lying in bed. A chill breeze swept through the bedroom making her feel cold. She reached over to his side of the bed in an attempt to share his warmth, only to find nothing. She woke up alarmed because she could not feel him next to her. Where could he be? Where could he have gone? He had just been there a few hours earlier when they went together to sleep. She jumped out of bed and proceeded immediately downstairs to check the living room, the office, and the remaining rooms in the house. But to no avail.

It was a dark winter night, as dark and cold as they come. The wind hit the wood shutters and made a constant cracking noise. It was freezing outside and everything was covered in white, in snow. In the house, the fireplace had burned through all the wood and it had been out for a while, only a couple of shafts of smoke were still waving above the ash which together with the moonlight poked through the window creating a caustic effect on the fireplace's walls.

She felt cold and lonely without him by her side and his protective company, and she started feeling trapped and fearing for the worst because it was unlike him to leave the house in the middle of the night, much less without giving her notice or at the very least leaving a note. She had searched for one but none could be found in the obvious places where such a note could be left. She had looked for him in the house. The only place that was left to check was outside in the garden and in the woodshed. But the freezing dark winter night made it extremely difficult to conduct a search or even get to the woodshed by herself, without his help.

Trapped in fear she had completely overlooked the fact that his mobile seemed to be gone as well. Perhaps she could reach him on the phone. She ran upstairs to get her mobile and immediately called him. In her state of mind the tone seemed to last forever: to her it felt like she had been calling him for an eternity until before the call was finally answered. It was him! It was his voice! And it sounded ordinarily calm, which meant nothing bad had happened. After exchanging a few words, once she could understand that he was unharmed, she started shouting at him asking how he could have worried her so much and she kept shouting until all the panic and the worry were out of her system and unloaded on him, an act that drained her completely. Exhausted she was forced to sit down at the edge of the bed and take a deep breath. He remained silent having realized his unintentional mistake, and allowed her a moment to rest and come back to the call, when she felt it was the right moment.

Finally, she asked the question that she had been meaning to ask all along, but she had been too angry to do so. She asked where he was. She had looked all over the house and he wasn't there. Very calmly and logically he answered that the fireplace had gone out so he went out to the woodshed to chop some wood and bring it back to the house to restart the fire. This made a lot of sense, especially in a cold winter night like that one. Winters had become more severe over the years. There was more snow, the weather was colder, and there was more wind, and the old two wood logs no longer did the trick and were no longer sufficient to keep the temperature warm in the house at night.

Relieved the whole episode was over, she disconnected the call and fell on her back lying down on the bed and spreading her arms occupying the whole bed while staring at the ceiling with a big smile from one ear to the other. It would be less than one minute before he would be back in the house, back in her arms and lying in bed next to her. And she couldn't wait for that to happen so that they could once again go back to sleep in the warmth of the house and wake up the next day and completely forget about that episode.

But something didn't feel right. When she had seen the fireplace it had been several hours since the fire had gone out. Once again she jumped out of bed and ran downstairs to examine the fireplace but this time paying more attention to the details. It was true. The amount of ash and the temperature of the ash concluded that indeed the fire had been out for several hours. This meant, he had been out for several hours to chop the wood, which was not possible because the woodshed was in the garden, adjacent to the house.

She walked towards the glass door that led to the terrace and stood still in front of it. From her perspective she could see more or less clearly through the snowy winter mist the entrance to the woodshed. She waited a minute but saw no one come out. She felt the fear from before take over her again. But before allowing this fear to settle in she immediately redialed and he promptly answered. He was calm as usual. She wasn't. She asked why he was taking such a long time to chop the wood and come back to the house. He explained that he had just gotten to the woodshed the moment she called. Could she have been wrong about her analysis of the fireplace? Or perhaps the fireplace had indeed been out for a long time but he had just left the house. Still, his side of the bed was completely cold as if he had left the bed a long time ago. On the other hand, perhaps he had left the bed earlier and only later gone out to the woodshed.

The noise inside her brain was giving her a headache as each riddle sprang like tentacles creating more riddles. The complexity of the decision tree was growing with more questions than answers. She decided to eliminate the problem at the root and asked him if he was still going to take long. The reply never came. So she repeated the question but before she could finish repeating it he said that his head hurt and that he did not feel well. She said she would come to him. He didn't reply. Without disconnecting the call, she put on a long overcoat and long boots, opened the glass door that led to the terrace and started walking in the direction of the woodshed, which was located at the back of the garden. But getting there was going to be a challenge because there was at least one meter of snow and not only she did not have the strength to plow through the snow with a shovel but also it would have been impossible to do it while still holding the mobile next to her ear. It would take several minutes for her to finally get to the woodshed, but eventually she would make it there.

As she was making her way through the snow, she would say soothing words over the phone to reassure him that with every step she was getting closer and in no time she would be next to him. He would on occasion mumble something back over the phone. In truth she was struggling to get to the woodshed quickly. With each step she would bury one leg up to the knee only to pull it back out of the newly dug hole and repeat this over and over again. It was exhausting. Her overcoat dragged over the snow and quickly became drenched. It was freezing. But nothing was going to stand in the way of reuniting with him and so she pushed through. As she was getting closer to the woodshed she could see an intermittent dim light like that of a candle coming from the window that stood next to the woodshed's door.

When she finally made it to the woodshed she opened the door and entered. There was no light on and no candle. She pressed the electrical switch and the ceiling light was switched on to reveal a perfectly normal woodshed with its garden tools and the usual dusty looking wood furniture and walls and doors and ceiling. Over the phone she asked where he was. A weak voice came through. He said he was inside, close to the wood logs and the axes in the back room of the woodshed. She walked over to the next room careful not to bump against any of the tools and opened and walked through the door that divided the entrance room from the back room. This room too was dark. She couldn't see anything.

Over the phone she asked him again where he was. He said he was right in front of her. She said she couldn't see him. She started getting angry and threatened him not to play any pranks on her because it wasn't funny. His weak voice now struggling to say the words reassured her that it wasn't a prank. He told her to switch on the lights using the switch to her right. And again the ceiling light switched on but this time to reveal a body lying on the floor unconscious and bleeding from a wound on the skull caused by an ax. The picture arrived at her brain instantly but it took her a whole two seconds before she could process and finally realize that her husband was there lying on the floor unconscious dying or even possibly dead already. She panicked, she cried out loud, she begged, she jerked his arm, slapped his face, but nothing she would do would bring him back to life. She kept crying and shouting but he couldn't hear her.

A gentle weak voice seemed to call her over her loud cry. At first she couldn't hear it over her stressed state of mind. She ordered herself quiet, but still remained silently sobbing and crying. She realized that she was not imagining this voice but instead this voice was coming from somewhere in the room. She turned around quickly but she couldn't see anyone else besides her and his body. The voice whispered once more and finally she realized that the voice was coming from her mobile, which was lying on the floor, and from the call that was still connected. She immediately jumped to grab her mobile and quickly brought it close to her ear. She said hello over a cracking voice a couple of times and the voice whispered once again. She couldn't understand what was happening. Her husband was lying on the floor dying and at the same time he was still on the call.

In disbelief of reality and incapable of understanding what was happening to her, a stream of unfinished questions "Why?" and "How?" flowed only to find no answer from the other side. This weak voice seemed to grow more and more confused. She explained to him that his body was on the floor, he had hurt himself with an ax while chopping wood and the wound was extremely severe. She shouted in between sobs and cries that he was dying and she couldn't say any more words but simply stood above his body with one hand on his face and tears falling from her face to his. The still confused voice seemed to understand what was happening, the reason for the headache, the reason why the room was so dark despite the light being turned on, the reason why he couldn't move, and the reason why his wife was shouting and crying incessantly. And once the voice understood what had happened a tunnel of light appeared in the realm where the voice was, and the voice acknowledged it over the phone. Then the voice said it was time to go but the wife refused to let him go. The voice reassured her over the phone that everything would be alright but the wife didn't believe it.

As the wound bled more and more, the tunnel of light grew stronger and brighter. The voice had come to understand and accept its fate. It understood what had happened and what had to be done. So the voice said a final goodbye and prepared to ascend to the other side, but the wife refused to accept it. When the wound had bled all that it must, and the tunnel of light had taken over all the darkness in the realm where the voice was, a harsh blow of wind hit the woodshed like a tornado, shook its walls, threw its doors wide open, and sent axes and tools flying in the air. The woman cried loudly and painfully, the ceiling lights went out, and the call disconnected. The wife's last thought was whether she would see her loving husband ever again.

Tags: scifi