Splintered shards of white and pink porcelain exploded through the air as the floral teacup crashed to the bedroom floor. “Oh, my goodness,” Betty gasped, the sudden clatter drawing attention away from her favorite television game show.
She swept the lap blanket to one side and swung her sore body around to the edge of the bed. Not wishing to cut herself, she cautiously lowered her feet, eyes darting to locate a safe landing spot.
She hadn’t been feeling well that day, so cleaning up such a mess was inopportune at best. She gingerly stepped to the bedroom door and exited the room. Her chest felt tight and her neck stiff, which made traversing the hallway all the more difficult.
The hallway revealed the den, where Carl always sat in his favorite lazy boy chair, his eyes fixated on the current televised sporting event. He remained motionless, seemingly unaware of her presence.
It had been some time since she and Carl had spoken. So long, Betty had altogether forgotten what it was that had brought about their current impasse. Whatever argument or disagreement had precipitated this disconnect; she no longer could recall. All she knew was that Carl had become withdrawn and unresponsive.
Refocusing her attention on the more immediate issue, Betty proceeded toward the kitchen. Walking to the small pantry where her broom and dustpan were kept, she observed the unwashed dishes from the previous night still loosely stacked in the sink. “Oh, those darn dishes just never seem to get done,” she muttered, a tinge of anger rising within her. Why hadn’t Carl taken the initiative to wash them himself?
Hastily, she shook off the thought. The situation with Carl was already tense enough. There was no need to make matters worse.
She turned on the tap, running her fingers through its flow, instinctively checking the water’s temperature. Bewildered, she gazed onward, confused by the fact that although she could see the water making its way in and around her hand, she could not feel it. Whatever was ailing her back had now seemingly caused numbness in her extremities.
Continuing with the task, Betty watched as the liquid detergent frothed and bubbled, swirling around the plates and cutlery. Amid it all, a pleasant thought came to Betty’s mind. “I know what I’ll do. I’ll finish these dishes and then make a nice hot tea. That’ll make me feel better.”
The porcelain teacup pinged and tinged as Betty swirled the silver spoon in and around. Near the foot of the bed, a small black and white television, placed precariously upon an old wooden dresser, emanated Alex Trebek’s voice, asking, “Girl with A Pearl Earring is an oil painting by which Dutch Golden Age painter?”
Betty had a fondness for Jeopardy, although admittedly, she rarely knew any of the correct answers. Her life had been a simple one. Married at a young age in the “fabulous 50s,” her future with Carl seemed bright and opportunistic. Try as they may, though, they were never able to conceive, and as a result, the “baby boom era” of the post-war passed silently by their doorstep.
Not knowing, or perhaps not believing any different, Betty blamed herself for what she perceived as her own shortcomings. It undermined her self-confidence, limiting her personal growth and stunting her potential. She felt subservient to Carl, continually seeking his approval. 
Betty glanced at the television, unconsciously setting the teaspoon on her antique mahogany bed tray. “American Gothic, a 1930 portrait depicting a farmer and his daughter posing in front of their house, was painted by which artist?” She wondered aloud, “Who on Earth would know that?”
For the most part, Carl was a good husband. He was loving and caring at times yet decidedly indifferent at others. Routine governed their days, with one moment effortlessly merging into the next. Betty had resigned herself to this reality. “I guess it just wasn’t meant to be, “ she mused.
A life unexplored, devoid of fulfillment, and entirely dissatisfying. Having gone nowhere in life, both literally and figuratively, the television had gradually transformed into Betty’s sole companion.
The old television’s paper-coned speaker had long since worn past its prime, giving the audio a slightly distorted tone. “What school of art grew out of the poetry of Romanian-born Tristan Tzara?” Betty watched with ambivalence; the contestant’s answer suddenly muted by the sound of her porcelain teacup crashing to the bedroom floor.
“Oh, my goodness,” Betty gasped, peering down helplessly at the varying bits and pieces that remained of her favorite teacup. Lifting the bed tray to one side, she slowly pulled back her lap blanket, perusing the chaotic scene beneath. Carefully negotiating her feet to the floor, she was mindful not to step on any of the sharp fragments.
Entering the den, Betty quickly took note of Carl, her husband. Uncertain about the cause of the impasse they were undergoing, she observed Carl, who took no notice of her as she passed by. His eyes fixed on the television, which blathered on endlessly as he reclined in his favorite lazy boy chair.
Reaching for the pantry door, she noticed the sink filled with dishes in her periphery. “Oh, those darn dishes just never seem to get done.” It annoyed Betty that Carl didn’t have the gumption to get out of that darn chair and lend her a hand.
She filled the sink with hot water, the temperature escaping her notice as detergent quickly foamed into undulating bubbles. “I know what I’ll do,” she thought to herself. “I’ll finish these dishes and make myself a nice hot cup of tea. That’ll make me feel better.”
Betty nestled the down-filled duvet around her thin legs. She hadn’t been feeling well of late and, as a result, had found herself reclining in her warm bed most days. Careful not to spill her tea, she gently lifted the reddish-brown bed tray over her body, placing it gently on her duvet.
Pouring the milk methodically into the porcelain teacup, Betty glanced back at the television. “Girl with A Pearl Earring is an oil painting by which Dutch Golden Age painter?” Unconsciously, she raised the teacup to her lips and tepidly responded, “Johannes Vermeer.”
Betty placed the teacup back down on the gold-plated ringed saucer, its floral pattern an exacting match for the accompanying cup. “American Gothic, a 1930 portrait depicting a farmer and his daughter posing in front of their house, was painted by which artist?” Without hesitation, Betty quietly murmured, “Grant Wood.”
It took a moment, but gradually, an odd realization began forming within Betty’s mind. “How did I know that?” She reasoned that perhaps she had encountered that knowledge at some time in her life. After all, “American Gothic” was a very well-known painting.
She was less sure as to why she knew the first correct answer. Her artistic acumen had never progressed much further than whatever Woolworth happened to have on sale anytime she felt the need to adorn one of the apartment’s walls. Surely, it had to be a coincidence.
Inquisitively, she tilted her head downward and to one side in an effort to hear the following question more clearly and concisely. Alex Trebek bowed his head and began to read from the plain white card, “What school of art grew out of the poetry of Romanian-born Tristan Tzara?”
Betty’s throat began to constrict as she convulsed, her stomach gradually tightening in knots. She didn’t want to know the answer. Something unnatural and increasingly frightening was happening. She could no longer suppress the words, as unsettling as they were. They fell from her lips as if another entity were speaking in her place, “The Dada School of Art.”
The voices emanating from the television faded muddily into the backdrop. Betty’s jaw fell slack, her dismay transmuting quickly into fear. She couldn’t have known that, yet somehow, she inexplicably did. A quiet despair began to take hold as disjointed memories crept in from the shadowy spaces of her mind. One nightmarish revelation quickly bled into the next, each more telling than the last as they bubbled up unrepentantly to the surface of her conscious mind.
In a harrowing revelation, Betty’s hands convulsed, and her stomach churned as the horrifying realization of how she knew the answers seized her. She remembered. The specter of her own death flooded her thoughts. The pain in her chest had been unbearable. She recalled struggling to get to Carl in the next room. That’s why the teacup had fallen. She had died of a heart attack in the very bed where she still lay. Fear rolled into sudden terror. “It’s not possible,” she desperately reasoned. “I can’t be dead.”
Frantically, she fought to regain some sense of control, countering each turn, each memory the best she could. Logic and illogic spiraling and tumbling, each battling for supremacy and control of her fragile mind. Her back muscles contorted and tightened as tears began to well up. “Please, God help me. Please, I don’t want to be dead,” she wept mournfully.
She gathered her thoughts in a sudden and brief moment of clarity, rationalizing, “Carl. He’s still in the living room.” Fighting for her sanity, she falsely deduced, “I can’t be dead. Carl’s still here with me in the apartment.”
Yanking the duvet off her trembling body, she swiveled her emaciated legs over the end of the bed, touching her feet solidly down on the floor beneath. Acute pain shot up from her soles through the nerve endings of her legs as pieces of razor-sharp porcelain cut viciously through her flesh.
Screaming out in agony yet undeterred, she placed her left hand on the bedroom wall for balance. “Carl!” she yelled. “Carl, help me.” Her shouts rang out clearly, yet no response came as Betty stumbled her way through the hall, blood painting her every step along the planks of hardwood. “God in heaven, Carl, I’m begging you, please, please, come here. I need you.”
Betty’s trembling hand clutched the couch’s backrest as she staggered into the living room. The momentary relief from the agonizing pain came with the shift of weight from her feet to her hand. Gathering what remained of her strength, she lifted her swollen, red eyes and searched dartingly for Carl. Across the room, he remained in his beloved easy chair, unmoving and seemingly oblivious to her desperate plight.
“Carl!” she screamed in agony, her voice echoing through the silent apartment. “Damn it, Carl, what the hell is wrong with you?” Desperation driving her and agony coursing through her cut feet, she stumbled forward, each step echoing in the tense silence, making her way closer to Carl, who remained eerily unmoved.
Puzzling over his unresponsiveness, she tilted her head to one side, a flicker of unease crossing her face. “Carl?” she queried hesitantly; the air thick with suspense. “Carl!” she repeated, leaning her face closer, desperately trying to pierce through the eerie stillness. Yet, Carl remained steadfast in his unsettling silence.
Thinking him sleeping or, worse yet, dead, Betty hobbled closer to toward Carl, balancing herself precariously as she stepped gingerly from one piece of furniture to the next. Finally, she stood at Carl’s side. “Carl” she vainly spoke. By now, she knew something was deeply wrong. Her fear amplified her senses at their peak. She leaned in tighter to the chair where Carl sat. Slowly, methodically, she pushed her hand out toward him. “Carl?” she tentatively whispered.
Initially, a wave of dismay washed over Betty the moment her fingers made contact with Carl’s shoulder. Yet, that feeling swiftly transformed into sheer terror as her touch extended beyond his plaid shirt, penetrating several inches into what should have been his body. Betty recoiled in horror, falling hastily backward. “What in the world is happening to me? God, please help me,” Betty gasped, her mind reeling with astonishment and terror. The apartment seemed to pulse with an otherworldly dread.
Betty’s mind spun with confusion and fear. Each revelation, each encounter with her own inexplicable reality, further unraveled the fabric of her understanding. The pain in her chest, the shattered teacup, and now the ghostly encounter with her husband—all fragments of an enigma she struggled to comprehend.
Carl’s body began to flicker and flutter like a shimmering mirage above a sun-soaked highway on a hot summer day. His silhouette started to dance and spin, swirling like a miniature tornado, creating a mesmerizing display of motion. Gripped by terror, Betty stood frozen, witnessing the surreal scene in horrified disbelief.
Twirling and gyrating on its axis, the apparition of Carl morphed into a cyclonic fusion of vivid colors and convoluted shapes. Gradually losing its form, it disintegrated into long tentacles of atoms and molecules propelled by centrifugal force.
Betty’s jaw dropped open, overwhelmed; she collapsed to the floor, her eyes still fixated on the spectral display. In a moment, seemingly detached from space and time, the apparition began losing density and shape until it vanished altogether.
The apartment was now deathly still and hauntingly quiet, sporadically interrupted by Betty’s gasping sobs. Her chest heaving, Betty gulped and gasped, fighting for each breath. She struggled to make sense of the surreal scene that had just unfolded.
Her heart sank further into her chest, realizing Carl hadn’t been there with her all this time. The last tenuous thread of reality had slipped through her hands. More unnerving, she began to deduce, “If Carl wasn’t real, then what is?” The shocking realization settled in as she questioned the nature of her own reality.
This single thought unleashed a torrent of memories in Betty’s mind. A haunting terror overtook her as flashbacks played out vicariously in her mind’s eye. “I remember,” she murmured to herself. “This has all happened before. The broken teacup, Jeopardy, Carl sitting in his favorite chair. Everything.” Betty barely had time to comprehend the magnitude of these frightening revelations when her nightmare broadened even further.
Sheer panic suddenly took hold as a wave of awareness washed over Betty. Not only did she recall this happening before, but even more alarming, she realized that it had occurred multiple times—a reoccurring nightmare of monstrous proportions.
Her heart pounded with such force that each beat felt like a sledgehammer against her ribcage, the excruciating pain making her sure she would die right there where she lay.
Contradiction and confusion raced past logic and sanity. ‘But how can I be dying if I am already dead?’
Momentarily paralyzed by her chilling revelation, Betty’s panting breaths echoed through the unraveling dimensions of her consciousness.
The once-cozy corner of the living room, which had provided a sense of solidity and security, now began to give way. It crumbled and collapsed in on itself, disintegrating before Betty’s eyes. It fractured with eerie precision as if the essence of her reality were a fragile puzzle, dismantling piece by piece. The walls and ceiling tumbled into an abyss of ink-black emptiness, a spectral void devouring the remnants of her perceived world.
Instinctively recoiling from the unfolding spectacle, Betty’s feet traced a bloody macabre path on the floor as her hands flailed in desperation. She clutched at the furniture, seeking leverage to retreat further from the increasingly unraveling scene.
Her fingernails now bloodied and torn, Betty grasped onto whatever she could, dragging her disabled body away from the engulfing abyss devouring the familiar contours of her home. Too frightened to look back, she finally reached the door jam and pulled herself deeper onto the linoleum floor. Rolling her body over, she retreated further until her back came to rest against a bottom cupboard door.
Betty crumpled to one side; her eyes affixed to the disintegrating living room. She watched in quiet resignation as the solid foundation gave way to the empty void below. The light receded into darkness as the plunging emptiness inched ever closer to her.
In a fleeting moment of clarity, she hastily concluded, “It’s the apartment. I have to get out of here.” Adrenaline surged through her veins as the fight-or-flight survival instinct took hold.
A final glance toward the living room revealed further chaos unfolding. The ominous, pitch-black, vacuous hollow, now having devoured most of the room, kept advancing relentlessly. Betty needed to act now if she had any hope of saving herself.
Summoning the last of her strength, Betty jolted her body sideways to turn around. Clutching the yellowing laminate countertop, she gathered her last vestige of courage and gradually pulled herself up off the kitchen floor. Her feeble arms quivered as she rotated the last few degrees, coming to rest on her knees. Betty dared not look behind, fearing that the advancing abyss would dishearten her, undermining the final effort to save herself.
“Dear God, please give me strength,” she lamented. Taking one final deep breath, she pulled upward in a last-ditch effort to rescue herself. Her nerve endings erupted with excruciating pain as she shifted her weight to her now-planted right foot. The slippery, viscous plasma oozing from the gashes in her flesh made gaining stability all the more challenging.
She clenched her teeth and steadied herself for the final push upward. “It’s now or never, Betty,” she silently encouraged herself. She screamed out in agony as the full brunt of her body’s weight pushed down on her feet.
Her eyes staring forward, she rose slowly, inch by inch. Never before had she noticed the veneers and varying colors of the wood-paneled cupboard so vividly. Their beauty and polish now all the more evident, contrasting starkly against the horrid and hideous backdrop behind her.
Gradually but surely, Betty rose ever higher. If she could steady herself, she might still have enough time to edge her way to the apartment’s entrance and escape into the hallway. Blurting out a final primal grunt, she hauled her exhausted and disabled body further vertically until the countertop edge finally came into view.
She was almost there; a ray of hope enlightening her mind brought a timid smile to her racked face. The apartment’s front door was now within view, and Betty, encouraged by her efforts, redolently straightened her neck and back.
The incessant sound of water dripping from the tap reverberated, creating a rhythmic pattern. It echoed off the dishes haphazardly piled in the sink, inadvertently catching Betty’s attention and drawing it away from her terrifying and desperate predicament.
“Oh, those darn dishes,” she admonishingly reflected, “they never seem to get done.” A pleasant thought came to mind as Betty reached for the dish soap. “I know what I’ll do. I’ll make myself a nice cup of tea. That will make me feel better.”