You could prick her with a needle and she would just sit there staring at the wall as if something would suddenly leap out of it. She was not sure what had led her to this. If only there was something she could put her finger on to be the reason for her to feel numb, if there was anything to it at all, it was routine. The same old set of motions to be performed at the same old time of the day...
Rushing back to her workstation after she queasily finished the chores, to log back into ‘New Life’, she would watch and marvel at the pixellated caricature of Poseidon, creating tiny craters in the plasma while running her fingers over him on the TFT, breathing heavily as he moved across the room towards her, lousy, flickering animation notwithstanding.
She had waited long for that rush in her head, making her delirious with anticipation of being touched, shaken with that long forgotten pleasure wave. The large gaping hole between the virtual and the real had long been filled up with the ever piling laundry and unkempt dishes in her kitchen sink. It had not taken them long to find each other in this virtual world and it felt they belonged, even though they had promised never to let the veil of pixels reveal their real selves…
Out there she was a young, blonde, vivacious, polka-dotted Barbie with a magnetic smile to melt many a hearts. Out there she could be anyone she wanted to be, someone she used to be. It was her never land, it was her new life...
A gracious tall Texan, still some years away from resorting to hipsters to cloak the middle aged flab, cognizant of the little twinkles in her eyes that had managed to survive the years of household rituals, anyone could see that she had had a glorious youth. Yes, she still had it, to make a man want rest his head on her bosom and want to talk about his dreams and have his hair caressed by her long slender fingers.
Her confession was hardly a surprise or an earth shattering shock to her husband. And all he was capable of was managing a resigned, dilated look as she packed her bags. They had already run out of recipes to cook themselves any romantic make-up dinners. He wondered at his composure and the unexpected slice of relief along with the expected stabbing pain. He knew the marital mock drills taken their toll and there was not even pretence of promise for her to rejoice. He had work, she had chores. He wanted her to smile again, but knew he had nothing left to make that happen. 'You can always come back', he said, not sure if he really meant the way it came out!
So she set out to find her cozy sunset with nervous yet buoyant strides. She set out to find the never land despite its name. It’s a moment when you just do an ostrich, albeit all the experience and wisdom. A respite from reality and 'what can't be's'…a leap of faith, jumping off from a cliff, hoping against hope, for those few seconds you are suspended in thin air, the rocks will liquefy into a river, before you hit the ground with a thud.
Poseidon was a brawny, hirsute, cow boyish, well-built man, donned in leather jacket and ripped blues. Her mind quickly mapped the pixels to bone and flesh, alphabets to his husky voice and the flickering animated locomotion in the Newlife arena to his long airy strides and she was in love, almost, all over again, despite the oddities.
Poseidon was having a hard time mapping the polka-dot girl to this early middle aged Texan though, in spite of the exchange of statistics over the wire. He was still lost in his fantasy of a petite Barbie enrobed in kilt, who would come running across the lawn, jump into his tight embrace and be lost in his arms. He might not have run his fingers on the screen, but that NewlifeBarbie just won't go off his head!
Wishing it to be a mere sheet of ice which will eventually give away, she grew restless in a couple of days sensing the reluctant hugs and embraces as he sat there on the beach, lost in the distant autumn sunset. It pained her to just look at him trying to be polite and affectionate.
She wanted to stand bare for him to see that inside, she was the same bubbly Barbie of New life. She wanted to smile mischievously at him across a dining table and brush his feet with hers. She wanted to get drunk and pillow fight. Wanted to go beach walking on moonlit nights, wanted him to kempt her hair. She wanted everything she had had in her Newlife.But all those colours seemed to have vanished behind a dismal blue screen...
Continued in comments....
