Invocation

The first time it happened, she thought it was a fluke.  A trick of the mind.  A grief-induced hallucination.

A year after his death, still mourning, she suddenly remembered a game she used to play as a child.  She would sit in front of her mother’s tall mirror in the dark, one dim flashlight bulb illuminating the reflection in front of her.  Sometimes she played with a friend – but often, she was alone.  She would repeat the name of someone she knew who had passed over and over again until she swore that their face had replaced hers in the mirror.  She stared at the hard shine and watched them watching her, alone together.  She should have been afraid; instead, she was just fascinated that she could reach beyond.  That they came to her when she called.

She was soused when she saw her husband in the mirror.  She’d brought home a stranger from the bar, needing to fuck the pain away.  She lit candles, put on soft music, and asked him to bend her over in front of her boudoir mirror, yank her panties down, and fuck her.  As he railed her, the physical pain overtaking the mental anguish, she looked up at his face, and wondered.  She whispered her husband’s name.  Jayden.  Again.  Jayden.  Inaudible replications, building on themselves, tumbling out of her mouth.

And then she saw him.  Her mouth opened into a silent O that trapped her; she blinked, looked down.  She was drunk.  The room was swaying.  But when she looked back, his face was still there, staring back at her with a familiar combination of love and longing.  Her walls shuddered against the stranger’s cock; his voice gave guttural groans as her husband squeezed his eyes shut, then smiled.

“Oh, god – did I hurt you?”  The pick-up asked.  “Wh-what?” she stammered, jerked back into the moment.  “You’re crying,” he said.  “I guess I just needed some release,” she said and smiled, wiping the tears away.  She thanked him for coming, said she needed time alone,  and rushed him out the door.

The next night, she dressed up in a way she hadn’t done in years.  Put on makeup, straightened her hair, dug her one pair of heels out of the back of the closet.  Not that it took a ton of convincing to get someone to come home with her, but she wasn’t taking any chances.

He was, after all, the love of her life.