Little Glasses

I am an octopus of tubes. Plugged into the wall like a phone being charged. Blankets mummify me to the remote-controlled bed. The room is still, save for the monotony of calculated, high-pitched beeps. I am sick. Dying, in a sterilized room with no reassuring clutter.

I can still feel the warmth of my husband’s hand, holding mine, hours after he’s left and gone home to sleep. Or at least try to sleep, with his arm draped restlessly around nothing, a cold draft coming from the side of the bed I once filled.

I close my eyes and float on the morphine. When I open them, there is a small, be-spectacled character smiling at me from the adjacent chair. His little glasses are poised, as always, in the center of his nose, but the sparks from his eyes shoot right through them to find me. Without those specs, I don’t know what I would have named him. And it’s because of them that I recognize him from so long ago.

“How long has it been?” he says.
“Little Glasses?” I croak, “Is that you?”
“You remember.”
“Of course I remember.”

I hadn’t seen Little Glasses in 50 years. Had he grown like I had, I might not have known him at all. He was still the size of a five-year old, and wore that same precocious look on his face. His bulbous ears sprouted from his soft, cropped hair. He exuded something genuine, trustworthy, and eternal. It shone from him, almost blinding. Some people never change. This is especially true of an imaginary friend.

TO READ THE REST OF THIS 12-PAGE SHORT STORY, CONTACT THE AUTHOR AT STEFANI@ZEEHIVECREATIVE.COM