Adam jerked awake, that vestigial monkey instinct pulling him from a shallow sleep into the dark of their room. His pulse raced, and then slowed, returning to a steady rhythm. WHUMP. WHUmp. whump. The blood in his temples felt thick, his ears hot. He lay still, open eyes staring to a ceiling he only half-believed was there. The dark felt muffled, the whump whump whump of his temples amplified. She stirred next to him, exhaling with a sigh, warm feet touched his leg. He froze, held his breath and waited for her to settle. These moments, these unconscious acts of affection had once been comforting, or at least welcome. The tossing and turning of his partner, had felt like sleeping acts of love: a hand placed on his back, an arm finding its way to his hip, her ass gently bumping his as she rolled over. But now, as he lay wide-eyed in the dark, listening to the beat of his own temples, he knew they were violations. Slowly, very slowly, lungs still ballooned, he retreated to his side of the bed, sliding first one leg and then the other.

Adam looked up into the muffled dark of the room, breath still held, he flexed his eyes open wide, wider, wider, opening them until they hurt. He imagined them bulging from their sockets like a looney toons character, two TV bloodshot spheres popping from his eyelids and rising from his face. He stretched his mouth open in a silent scream, lips pulled taut, wider, wider, wider, exposing pink gums to a black void. “The dark,” he thought, “that warm muffled dark”. She could have rolled over and stared straight at him as he lie there like a looney toon and she’d see nothing. She could be staring right now, this very moment, silently rising in the dark like a snake, eyelids peeled back, jaw unhinged, her own pink gums shrouded in that muffled dark. But she wasn’t. She was asleep. The curve of the mattress, the rhythm of her breathe, the angle of the sheets, the heat radiating to his side, all whispered to him that she was asleep, deep deep asleep. After 16 years of sleeping ass to ass he didn’t need the lights on to know that. It was his cartoon tonight, not hers.

Lungs burning for air, his eyes poured hot tears onto the pillow and yet he remained a looney toon frozen in bed. He imagined those bloodshot spheres elongating, telescoping towards that endless ceiling above. Higher and higher they rose, two towers of white cartoon-flesh, marbled with crimson veins whump whump whumping their way to heaven. His jaw extended ever downward, past his collar bone and ribs, stretching silently towards his feet, searching for the floor. Mouth open wide in astonishment, the astonishment that he’s here, lying in this bed, in this future, in this dark with these cartoon eyes and this cavernous mouth, waiting for that hilarious moment when his tongue will drop like a red rolled carpet and roll right over his crooked teeth. His whole body vibrated, screaming for air, for relief, for that laugh-out-loud punchline when someone yanks his red tongue like a schoolhouse projector screen and sends his cartoon-slack-jaw and bugged-out-peepers rocketing back into his face. Convulsing, suffocating, chest heaving in make-believe breaths he suddenly wished for light, wished that she could see his looney toon scream, that she could yank that red tongue, deliver the punch line, make everything snap back into place with enough force to knock his goddam teeth down his goddam throat.

Adam exhales. An audible rush of used air swirls into the room. His eyes do not rocket back into their sockets; his jaw does not slap shut. There is no punch line. He is real again, no longer the silly-putty stuff of Saturday morning cartoons. He closes his eyes, rolls to his side and thanks God for the dark.