The Sunday Scaries
Volume 1, Number 37
Microfiction by Pat Harrigan
Content Warning: Language and Horror

The New Normal

I brought him tea. He drank half of it. Toby wanted to curl up next to him and play Minecraft. Harold didn’t seem to object, but after an hour he got up, brushing past his son as if he wasn’t there, used the toilet, and returned to bed. Toby didn’t understand what had happened to his father, and neither did I.
          Years ago Harold had written novels, though by this time they were all out of print. Later it was short stories, but the magazines mostly went under. For a while he blogged, but he’d given that up too. Still, even last month I would have called him completely normal. Then he started sleeping late, falling behind on work. Eating less, talking less. He even stopped watching his late-night hitlers on the History Channel.
          I drove him to the doctor. I drove him again the next day. His job, after I called them, granted him a leave of absence. Depression tests. Brain scans. Bloodwork. Harold let it all happen, but he seemed to take less and less of an interest. No brain tumor, the doctors said, nothing obviously wrong. But something was obviously wrong. He sat in bed all day in front of his laptop, only eating when I forced him to. At least he still got up to clean himself and use the toilet.
          I watched what he was doing on the computer: Listlessly scrolling through news and social media, never commenting on it, not seeming to take it in. I made a telehealth appointment with a therapist, but Harold said almost nothing to her the whole time. I think he needs to be hospitalized, she told me. But how could I do that? He might snap out of it at any moment.
          He stopped reading the news. He just kept the TextEdit app open all the time, and now and then he would type something:
          Cut his hamstrings with a piano wire back in 88.
          Later: Naked girl in the dumpster behind the 7/11.
          I thought he’d been watching True Crime shows while I was asleep, but I checked the Netflix history and it wasn’t that.
          Woman alone with her newborn terrorized by the stranger on the phone.
          Bar staff trapped overnight while cars burn in the street.
          Down a well.
          Wild dogs and the friendly baby.
          My father killed my sister and then my sister killed my father.
          He started typing in German, a language I don’t understand. I didn’t think Harold did either.
          Google Translate told me: His son he turned inside out. Blood and shit.
          I sent Toby to stay at my sister’s.
          Later, in Polish: I’d always hated that bitch. I watched her sleep and thought how easy it would be.
          So now I sleep on the couch. I watch whatever’s streaming, with the sound turned off. Every so often from the other room I hear a brief flurry of typing.
          I finally fall asleep. The toilet flushes. I jerk awake to see Harold shuffling back to bed. In the morning I put on a cheery face and ask him what he’s been working on. He doesn’t answer, of course, but I look at the screen, and I see, in English: I love my wife.
          As I watch, he backspaces over the last word and rewrites it: I love my life.
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