You Don't Know Me (part one)

Melissa woke up suddenly, barely cutting off the scream that had risen in her throat. Shaking, she rolled over towards Paul, meaning to wake him up and tell him about the horrible nightmare that had awoken her. He would grumble a bit, but he would hold her and she would be able to fall back to sleep knowing he was there.1

She reached for him and realized he wasn't there. Of course he wasn't. He hadn't been there in over three weeks. Three weeks, two days and (looking at the clock) six hours, to be exact. Every night it was the same. Sometimes it was a pleasant dream that woke her, and she rolled over to put her arm around him. Other nights it was horrible nightmares about that day, leaving her trembling and crying.2

The dreams all had one thing in common. She woke up and for one moment, one sweet, fleeting moment, thought that he was still alive. Still laying beside her. Sometimes she even imagined that she felt his warmth next to her and heard his quiet snores. For those five or ten seconds before her mind threw off the last lingering bits of slumber, she forgot.3

Then reality came thundering in, dragging poor, protesting memory along behind. The mind was cruel, Melissa thought. Like a bully taunting a younger child, it waved happiness in front of you; "What, this? You want this? Does the widow want her life back?" He let you look at it just long enough to think you might actually get it, then chucked it over the fence. On bad days, she sometimes thought she could hear a cruel chuckle somewhere inside her head, and thought maybe she was going insane. On really bad days, she hoped she was. Maybe she would forget.4

She wondered how long this would go on. Weeks, months, years? Every day she would have to come face to face with the fact that her husband was dead all over again. Eventually, he would have been gone long enough that she would wake up with that knowledge. She would no longer have even those few seconds of blissful ignorance. She didn't know if she wanted that. 5

She pressed her face into Paul's pillow, breathing deep of his scent, and cried.6