Free Eye Snatcher by Ryan Casey

him, with her dark brown hair dangling down to her shoulders and her iPad in her hands. She was wearing a peach cardigan with a white T-shirt underneath, which really flattered her breasts. Which were amazing as it was. She had tight blue jeans on as she stepped up to Brian, barely acknowledging him, kissed him on his cheek.
    “Hotpot’s on the table for you.”
    Brian took off his shoes. “You eaten?”
    Hannah stepped up the stairs. “Yeah. Got hungry. And I have some article to finish off.”
    “Interesting article?” Brian asked, craning his neck as Hannah continued to disappear up the stairs.
    “I’ll catch you later, hun. Enjoy your tea.”
    And then she was gone.
    Brian stood there, alone, in the darkened hallway of his house. It’d been like this with Hannah for a few months now. He’d tried to ignore it at first. Tried not to see it. But really, they were just little things that added up and when considered as a whole, were pretty lofty. The times she spent away from him during dinner doing work (she was a freelance journalist, so finding “work” was easy). The friends she went out to meet on week nights that she hadn’t previously seen in years. The little side-glances he’d catch from her when they were lying in bed.
    He was lucky. He knew that. She was gorgeous. Amazing.
    But maybe that was the problem. Maybe she was too gorgeous. Too amazing.
    He stepped through to the kitchen, towards the looming smell of hotpot. Maybe she was falling out of love with him. He was hardly the catch he was in his twenties. Sure, he got told he had some weird macho charm about him—some mysteriousness that women craved—but he wasn’t such a looker.
    Maybe she was tired of him. Maybe that’s why she was making him get therapy again, see a counsellor. Maybe she saw what she was doing to him—the paranoia she was causing within him, and trying to get the therapist to break the news of his deteriorated relationship gently.
    Or maybe he really was just being paranoid. Maybe he really did need help.
    He pushed open his kitchen door. One of the bulbs had gone, so there was a dimness to the room. Pots were stacked up in and beside the sink, Hannah’s leftover coffee half-filling the cups. That bugged Brian. It was his pet hate. How hard was it for her to fill them with a bit of water?
    But he didn’t say anything. He didn’t pull her up for it out of fear.
    He didn’t want to lose her.
    He went over to the gas stove and lifted the metal lid of a pan resting on top. The steaming mush of potatoes, corned beef and stewed vegetables stared back at him, the smell filling his nostrils and making him want to hurl.
    She made an excellent hotpot. But she made it too much. Too often. Not that he was any kind of gender stereotypist—Hannah actually enjoyed cooking. Said it gave her a buzz, like some people got from doing sports, or writing songs.
    But she was making hotpot a lot these days. Hotpot was her “lazy-ass” dish, she’d once said.
    Brian cringed as he scooped a bit of the frothy mess out of the pan and took it to the little circular wooden table in a bowl.
    He stuck a fork into it. Slurped up the mushy potato and stared into the nothingness of the rain hitting the kitchen window, making it rattle on its deteriorating hinges. As he moved a disintegrating slice of sloppy salted carrot around his mouth, he saw Sam Betts.
    Saw his opened belly, intestines dangling out.
    Saw his vacant eye sockets, flies crawling around them.
    Saw his little smile on that school photo of his.
    He pushed aside the hotpot after forcing a carrot down his throat and rested his head in his hands. He wished he was like a normal cop. One of those cold as shit bastards who could switch off when they got home. One of those morally screwed wankers who got a buzz from murder cases, played them like they were a game of fucking Cluedo rather than actual real lives.
    But he couldn’t. He never had been able to switch off. He accepted that now.