This Month's Story

Wakey! Wakey! Rise and Shine.
You’ve had your fun, I’ve had mine.
Cook’s in the galley, beans on the stove.
Wakey! Wakey! Heave and stow!

Old Royal Navy Reville.

I wonder what it’s like. I mean to be able to just lie there, not moving, saying you are not getting up and meaning it. Think of it. Think of the power, the control over the universe that doing this implies. It’s a staggering concept that’s beyond my capabilities. Yet Stella can do it, and in fact, she does it every morning.

“Aren’t you going to get up?” I say to her, standing there hoping that this day things will be different, that this morning there will be a change.

“No!” This is from beneath a lumpish mass of covers. There is no movement, no twitch or even shape to indicate there is anyone or any thing in our marital bed but sheets, pillows, and blankets.

“Ever?”

Another “No!” perhaps even more emphatic than before, the covers not moving.

“Well, what about my breakfast?” I wait some more.

Nothing, not a pillowslip quivers. Silence.

I’ve been up for at least a half hour, showered, shaved, teeth brushed. I look, according to my mirror, my only witness since I am the only one awake in the house, positively radiant. I go to the door and let Holly in. He was up at four and I let him out as I always do. He doesn’t use a litter box and I prefer this letting out at four in the morning to having to clean a litter box. It’s a small thing and I’m usually asleep on my feet before I make it back to bed. As he saunters back in the house, I go out and get the morning paper. And as I do so, I look up and down the street.

I’m worried.

Now, I know that things are not normal in our house and that Stella’s bending of the natural rules of the universe is a perversion that we someday will have to pay for, so I look and, well, to be frank, I worry.

Now think of it. We all pay for our sins. Nobody gets away with anything. As a good Catholic boy, I’ve been raised this way all my life or at least till I was seven and I don’t believe things have changed since then. And now, I’m married to a woman who swears she is not getting out of bed. Not today, not never! She, I know, will have to pay.

Now, I don’t know how they do it, but there are Get-Up Police. They exist and just because they haven’t been by our house yet, doesn’t mean they don’t exist. They will be here, I’m sure, nay positive. There will be a lot of noise, sirens, screeching tires, flashing light, men shouting, and stuff and they will be here. I look out one more time and then quickly go inside and shut the door.

Breakfast is easy. It’s the usual, toast, butter, a little gorgonzola cheese, coffee, grapefruit, some orange juice, a bit of pie from last night with some whipped cream and I’m ready. I sit down, Holly lies nearby, I open the paper and start reading with one hand and eating with the other.

The noise when I hear it is small, but it’s there. I lower the paper and look up. Stella is there eating one of my pieces of toast and drinking my orange juice. I look at her for a second and then turn to look out the window.

“What are you looking for?”

“Nothing. I just thought I heard a police car.”