By Alizé Bland

Tracee had witnessed a murder. Her own. 

She saw it through someone else’s eyes. 

Blood streaked the wall beside the staircase with its chipped white paint. Tracee lay motionless beside the sagging couch. She felt their chest rise and fall. Their bloody fists throbbed. Blue fabric brushed the edge of her vision. 

For two weeks, she’d begged God to tell her she was wrong. To prove she wasn’t losing her mind. Every morning she woke hoping the details would fade.
They never did.
Blood on the wall. 

The sagging couch.
A toy fire truck.
Blue fabric.
“No one cares to listen to you. No one is going to believe you.” Her husband’s words echoed louder each day. 

The month was almost over.
Tracee had to leave.
But first, she had to get Nathan out. 

Tracee’s phone buzzed against the nightstand. Mom.
She let it ring.
Missed Call. 

Missed Call.
Missed Call.
She didn’t reach for it.
Later, when she finally answered, her mother’s voice was already tight with frustration.
“It was a dream, Tracee. If you keep talking like this, then I’m going to have to 3-0-2 you.” “Mom, you would really do that?”
“He said that you—”
“I don’t give a damn what he said. You know me. Why would I lie?”
“Why don’t you just do what he says? If you do that, then he won’t—”
“Won’t what?”
Her mother fell silent.
“Hurt me?” 

She wanted to grab Nathan and run. But what if her mother was right? Nathan deserved a father. 

She knew what it felt like to grow up without one. Everybody wanted to know what she was going to do. Her aunt.
Her cousins. 

Her mother.
If she told one of them, he would know by dinner.
Her family couldn’t hold water.
Sometimes she thought they liked her trapped. It kept attention off their own messes. 

Nathan and her husband came home grinning. 

“We missed you today.”
Her husband carried shopping bags into the house. 

Matching blue sweatsuits. Matching blue sneakers. Nathan held up a toy firetruck. “Look what Dad got me!” Tracee’s stomach dropped. Blue fabric. 

A toy firetruck.
The tan line on his finger. 

Twisted Daydream 

The parking violation.
The perfume on his work shirt. The life insurance policy mail. 

While he showered, Tracee slid birth certificates beneath folded sweaters in a suitcase. Blue fabric.
A toy firetruck.
The life insurance policy. 

The dream hadn’t been warning her about a stranger. “Don’t go.”
Tracee froze.
The shower still ran. 

Tomorrow.
She and Nathan would be gone.
She packed Nathan’s lunches and checked the suitcase one last time. 

“Meowww.”
For weeks, Tracee had been telling the cats she was leaving.
She filled the automatic feeder, cleaned the litter boxes, and changed the fountain filter. 

Twisted Daydream 

The cats watched from the couch, tails wrapped around their paws, as she carried suitcases down the stairs. 

She slipped off her wedding ring and set it beside the life insurance policy mail. “I’ll come back for you when I can.” 

The cats leapt from the couch and meowed after her. As if they knew.
Tracee didn’t look back.
She withdrew cash. 

Then she disappeared into shelters, buses, borrowed rooms, and weeks that became months. 

A year later, Tracee parked across from Nathan’s school. Then she saw him. 

Nathan laughed beneath a rainbow parachute, the fabric rising and falling above him like a sky she could not reach. 

Blue fabric.
For a moment, she watched him smile. For a moment, she almost called his name. Then she turned away.
She hoped he hadn’t forgotten her. 

          *   *   *

Alizé Bland is from Philadelphia, PA. When she is not writing, she can be found drawing in nature, practicing yoga, or taking pictures of her cats, Swiss Cheese and Salem.