The Invader
1293 Words
The front door didn't creak; it glided open on silent, well oiled hinges, the kind that required deliberate care, maintenance someone had taken the time to invest in while she was unconscious, something time had not been taken on before. The heavy door she always struggled with, now slid open almost telepathically.
Malorie ignored it, palming it off as a silly detail, not worth dwelling on.
Everything about the house felt too smooth, too curated, too sterile.
Why was she feeling so out of place in what was supposed to be her dream home? Her coma must have resulted from a serious, character-adjusting head injury. She filed that under the list of questions to ask.
It was as though someone had run a fine‑toothed comb through her life and stripped out anything warm, organic, or human. Like her prised flower beds. She was a botanical Illustrator and Archivist for pete’s sake. Where were her flowers?
As Malorie crossed the threshold, a chill rippled through her.
She felt like a trespasser in her own life.
The hallway, once a warm gallery of framed travel photos, mismatched art, and knickknacks from spontaneous weekend trips, was now a pristine corridor of slate grey and cold white. A space that looked like it had been designed by someone who preferred appearances over memories. Her favorite mahogany console table, the one with a tiny dent from the time she accidentally knocked a suitcase against it, had vanished. In its place stood a glass‑topped slab of furniture that looked less like a table and more like a sharpened blade waiting to cut her if she got too close.
“It’s… different,” Malorie whispered. Even her voice echoed strangely, as if the house no longer recognized her acoustics.
Gill stayed half a step behind her, silent. He didn’t offer platitudes or pretend the change was minor. He simply watched her, watched the way her hand trembled as she reached out to touch the wall where her wedding photo had once hung. Now, a large abstract painting glared back at her, a violent s***h of black lines cutting through icy white. No softness. No history. Nothing of her.
Not just the flowers, whispered a small voice in her head.
“I’ll put your bags in the bedroom,” Gill said gently. Then he paused, his expression tightening as he looked down the hallway, toward the master suite. “Actually… let’s check the guest room first. It might be… easier.”
“No,” Malorie said, surprising both of them with the flint‑hard edge in her voice. A spark of stubbornness, of self, flared to life in her chest. “I want my own bed. I want to smell my own sheets.”
It wasn’t about the sheets. Gill saw that and couldn’t hide the small smile creeping into the corners of his mouth.
Her legs felt like they were made of wet sand, heavy and unreliable, but she pushed through the haze of exhaustion and forced herself down the hallway. Each step felt like she was wading deeper into someone else’s version of her life.
How could a hallway feel unfamiliar?
Was she imagining these things? Was she being petty? Was her memory affected so severely? Then why these blaring alarm bells ringing in her ears?
She reached the master suite and threw the door open, bracing herself for the familiar, comforting smell of lavender and old books, the comforting scent she’d fallen asleep to for years.
Instead, she was hit by a wall of expensive.
A woman's perfume, rich, cloying, aggressively floral, hung in the air like a warning. Like a claim.
The room had been gutted.
Erased.
Rewritten.
Her antique vanity, the one she refinished by hand, was gone. In its place stood a high‑tech makeup station illuminated by harsh LED bulbs, littered with gold‑capped serums, lipsticks in jewel tones, and perfume bottles shaped like daggers.
Her grandmother’s hand‑stitched bedspread?
Gone.
The bed was now dressed in deep, aggressive crimson silk that shimmered like spilled wine.
But it was the armchair that stopped her breathing cold.
There, draped over the back, carelessly, possessively, was a silk robe. Emerald green, lacey, impractical.
“She’s living here,” Malorie breathed, more to herself than anything else. Her stomach lurched. Her fingertips went numb. “Bianca? She isn’t just a colleague. She’s… she’s replaced me.”
“Malorie, look at me.” Malorie had been so engulfed in the strangeness of her home, the mystery of her unfamiliarity with her environment and then the revelation of Bianca… She had forgotten that Gill was with her.
Gill stepped into her line of sight, blocking the robe, blocking the crimson bedspread, blocking the evidence of the life Timothy was apparently living in her absence. He took her shoulders in both hands, firm enough to keep her standing, gentle enough not to startle her collapsing nerves. “Don’t let the house win. It’s just stuff. We can get it back. Or we can get better.”
“How could he, Gill?” Her voice cracked like ice splitting on a lake. “I wasn’t dead. I was right there, just… down the street. In a room. Breathing. Fighting. And he-”
The words dissolved.
The dam broke.
For the first time since waking, the tears came, violent, jagged sobs that tore down her throat and shook her entire frame. She hated how weak it sounded. Hated that this house, her house, made her cry.
Gill didn’t hesitate for a single heartbeat.
He pulled her into his chest, arms wrapping around her like armor. She buried her head in his chest while he stood over her, enveloped her, shielded her. He smelled of rain and cedar, real, warm, grounding. The only familiar thing left in her disjointed universe.
Her tears tracked down her cheeks, onto his shirt, they couldn’t stop. All the while, something shifted from heartbroken to tears of rage. Then Gill spoke and his next words solidified something in her.
“He told everyone you weren’t coming back,” Gill said, voice roughened by anger he was barely suppressing.
“He told the lawyers, the friends, the firm. He moved on the moment they moved you to the long‑term ward. Like you were already gone.”
“And you?” she choked out, her voice muffled against his shirt. “Did you think I was gone?”
Gill’s arms tightened. He pulled her back just enough so she could see his face, etched with exhaustion, grief, devotion. His gaze was searing, honest in a way Timothy’s had never been.
“I wasn’t sure but I talked to you every single night, Mal,” he said. “About the weather, the news, the books I was reading. I didn’t care if the world moved on. I stayed right where you left me.”
Before she could absorb the weight of that, before she could even breathe through the ache that bloomed in her chest, she heard the sound of a key turning in the front door.
“Malorie? Honey?”
Timothy’s voice floated up the stairs, far too cheerful, far too rehearsed. Then came the sharp, rhythmic click‑clack of high heels across hardwood, Bianca’s staccato cadence.
“We’re back! Bianca brought organic takeout, she knows you need the nutrients!”
Malorie wiped her eyes, fury burning through the fog of grief, solidifying into something cold and immovable. She looked at the emerald robe. Then at Gill.
“Stay with me,” she whispered through gritted teeth.
Gill’s jaw tightened, eyes darkening with something protective and unyielding.
“Try and make me leave,” he replied.
- Writer
