Emmett Davey

God, if only she knew. Vladimir did his best to keep a healthy distance from known alien haunts for the sake of the continued wellbeing of his memory, but the strange and unusual crept in anyway.

“I’ve lived in many cities and I will tell you something. Maroa? Strangest. Was in the 80s, still is,” Vladimir says. “I worry about it sometimes.”

Which is to say that he worried all the time.

Maybe that really cemented it, that Maroa was so out of the ordinary. How many close calls had Emm had before the worst one? Could anyone in Maroa have gone their whole life without an encounter?

“They are.”

A slight smile, small but present. The crash that took his husband also took away much of his ability to emote facially. Forty years and scores of surgeries to piece him back together improved what they could but doctors weren’t miracle workers.

“We have been together a long time. A very long time,” he continued. Paulie and their relationship was something he very rarely spoke of with other people because the fear of losing each other cast its shadow over everything else, but Vladimir was so tired. Just this once, he and Jean-Paul could be regular people living as regular people do, unafraid of things so small as simply mentioning each other too much lest the wrong person get the right idea.

“We met around here, actually. Moved back a year or two ago, I do not know, time passes too quickly. It’s…different from when I lived here before, when they lived here. Not a bad thing. I hope it is kinder to Jean-Paul this time around.”

Emm felt that undercurrent of stress, a little static tinging every other emotion with just a bit of a bite to it. It felt worn and well-trodden. She was familiar with such things by now, the reflexive kind of feelings that were almost ingrained.

Now that was the question of the hour.

How could you possibly describe the situation at hand?

‘My boyfriend has been keeping secrets and playing strange games and vanishing to who knows where and I’m afraid they’re brokering deals with the vampire mafia?’ Yeah, best outcome of that is people thinking he’s crazy and the worse outcome is he wakes up with half of his memory gone.

‘My partner has been keeping secrets and playing strange games and vanishing to who knows where and I’m afraid she’s brokering deals with the non-vampire mafia?’ Haha, no.

‘My partner has been keeping secrets and playing strange games and vanishing to who knows where and I don’t even know what’s going on with him but every time someone knew walks in, I hope it’s him?’ Well…accurate. Did make it sound like his wife was cheating on him and he really did not want to explain certain details of their relationship to strangers.

“Ah…no,” he said. “No. Maybe silly but every time I see someone with white hair like that, I think for a second that maybe it’s my partner.”

“Not silly,” Emmett replied with a shake of their head. It didn’t happen so much to them anymore, not since noticing how unique everyone’s empathic signatures were, but someone tall and broad-shouldered out of the corner of her eye could still play tricks on her. “Especially if they’re always on your mind.”