JUDAS KISS- NINE- HEREAFTER ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔

Helen always wore big, long shirts or big sweater for colder days and either A Line skirt or

pants to college. She never wore jeans, something that was becoming popular among women those days. She saw how other teacher dressed up as if they were going to a party. But she was not going to a party. She was going to work and her only tools were blackboard and chalk. She did not want to attract any of her colleagues or students, nevertheless, as simple dressed as she was with her short dark hair, which in reality used to be long and blond, everyone admired her beauty. It seemed as though the more she dressed down, the more attractive she would become! She wore jeans around the house, shopping, or Friday casual in college. Her grayish blue eyes and short velvety dark hair which cascaded her face like a shinny waves, turned all head, men and women. Her beauty mostly was in her plainness and naturalness.

She was thinking about Steve, when he opened the door and came in. It was almost noon time. During the time he was gone, all the night before and this morning, she had thought to herself:

"What if I can make him to become like Jacob? What if I can love him the way I love Jacob? What if I can change him and reason with him for my pregnancy? What if I can restore him to a new life and new personality? What If I can awaken him and revive him to more befitting aims? I guess he doesn't know the sort of things that I dream about?!"

Steve noticed that she was sitting on the recliner. He still did not know that she had taken this semester off and the college was not open yet:

"I'm sorry I took your car! Now you missed work!"

His tone of voice was consolatory; however, she could not read any emotion on his face. Even though they were married for over three years, they were not like a normal couples that would know everything about each other. In the last three years, Steve had been in Vietnam, and when he was home for a short break, they truly never got to know each other. They fought and made love, nothing else. They did not socialize or go out. So it would be fair to say that Helen, as clever as she was, could not know how he felt about her pregnancy although he had left the home, which was the sign of anger. For now he was acting like a gentleman.

But Steve felt a darkness worse than what he had seen in Vietnam. It was like a storm, yet silent; it was wild, yet unconscious; it was tumult inside, yet calm outside of him! He loved Helen as much as he did the first he had seen her. He loved her to death, but it was a death that he wanted for himself not her. How he felt was like a ceaseless churning of a fierce body of water in him and within him! It was horror mixed with exhaustion. He had come from one abyss to another one. But this one was a ravaging chasm! He had no resting place!!

To Be Continued