I’ve known Tim since high school, we were the perfect couple. He was the perfect man, he had a special power, a power not many can harness. He could build images in monochrome, in a canvas as white as the sky just with his favorite black ink pen. He could write lines at a stretch and leave you in a place, as magical as his words themselves. I remember he wrote me a story about a young girl who lived in the meadows. She grew roses in her garden, and loved her horses. Even though I never confes tose, I still dream about the little girl from his story. I dream about every character he wrote and every story he spoke.
But one day, they stopped. The stories stopped building. I’ve never seen Tim so frustrated about something he loved so dearly. I picked up crumbles of paper every morning as he left for work, pages filled with beautiful descriptions about a girl in a red dress. I wonder why he discarded them;
‘She was a sight to behold, swirling around in the red dress, red as fresh blood, red as the rose petals she caressed with her feet. Her smile enough to kill. She was gorgeous, and I was her willing victim.’
It took me a while to figure out, the 9 to 5 job he confined himself in, killed his passion. He was a writer stuck playing with money, in an industry with no happy endings.
I missed his stories. I knew somewhere inside he did too. I couldn’t let him destroy whatever little of his passion he still kept alive inside his heart.
I have always been a housewife, when I think about it now, that wasn’t something I chose. I just fell into it and accepted it as my fate. My attempts at reigniting Tim’s stories, led me to the path of becoming one. I became the ‘Woman In Red.’ Every night when he would come home from work, I would enact a part of the plot he wrote the night before, crumbled into a ball of paper. At times I would see the shimmer in his eyes, as he would lock himself in the study for hours, writing. On other days, ‘The Woman In Red.’ caused him pain as he reminisced about his failures. It’s been 6 months, 6 months and 120 different plot twists. I was tired. I wanted to quit.
Tim wasn’t his usual self today, there was something odd about him. He did not sleep the night before and did not leave for work. He just locked himself in his study, scribbling.
Late afternoon I heard him come out, his eyes looked tired but his face had the familiar smile of satisfaction. Oh how I missed it. My eyes followed him as he knelt in front of me, ‘Thank you, I owe this to you.’ handing out the 354 paged manuscript of ‘THE WOMAN IN RED.’ He finally did it, he wrote.
That night, I read and dreamt the story just like I used to and for the first time in 6 months, I saw Tim be happy and satisfied about his story.
It’s been a year since ‘The Woman In Red.’ hit the stores. Tim left his 9 to 5 job, for good so he could focus on things he valued the most. I chose to become a teacher, narrating the stories I’ve always heard.
By far, this had been the best story Tim wrote. OUR STORY.
A/N: All characters in this story are fictional and bear no resemblance to anyone living or dead. If they do, it’s puerly coincidental.