The Elias Anomaly

One

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The first sign that something was wrong in the world of Joseph Elias left him a little perplexed. Even so it appeared to indicate no more than the need for a good chat and maybe a bunch of flowers.

Joseph realised that he may have appeared distant, distracted and even rude to Eva the evening before. In his defense, he had never been attacked in the street before. It was entirely possible that he hadn't known how to process the incident. He suspected that he had made some sort of mistake.

Eva had sprung out of bed on the alarm. Joseph, experiencing a headache along with his morning dash of consciousness, had hit the snooze on his alarm. He slumbered on for another twenty minutes oblivious to all.

On the second alarm he had come to terms with the facts of the matter. Nothing short of a further four hours uninterrupted sleep would stand a chance of shifting this soupy malaise. A non-specific fugue had him firmly in its grasp. He rolled out of bed and stumbled into the shower.

The shower had made him feel a little better. Unfortunately the awakening of his senses to a new level of alertness brought new anxieties to the surface. He couldn't shake the strange prickly pins and needles feeling. No matter how much he prodded at himself it continued to bristle all over his body.

This strange sensation centred on the crown of his scalp. It swirled about his body. Every so often it gave rise to a finger twitch or an unexpected straightening of the spine.

The feeling wasn't exactly painful. It was in that region of annoying discomfort a little south of actual pain. Joseph couldn't help ransacking his memories of alarmist conservative tabloid health scare stories. If it weren't for the vagueness and confusion he might have found his way to feeling the anxiety cut more keenly. Maybe, when he was less tired, he would. For now he just wanted a coffee, and maybe some buttered toast.

It was as he was pouring the coffee that Joseph first began to notice that there was something off about Eva. She was sat at the breakfast bar, eating some diet cereal that looked like wood shavings peppered with bits of wet red fluff.

Joseph did not consider either he or his wife morning people. Even so, as Joseph entered the kitched she didn't acknowedge him. As he opened the door he caught the tail end of glance in his direction. By the time he was at the coffee machine she was back to the magazine open at her elbow. This moment made for an instant atmosphere of emotional discomfort. One that found little difficulty trumping that of the continued mobile pins and needles.

"Morning," Joseph said. He made an attempt to pitch his voice bright enough to be friendly. At the same time he wanted it low enough to communicate tiredness, lack of well being and maybe an edge of fear and confusion. The echo of his own voice in his skull told him nothing about how well he'd managed this.

"Hello dear," Eva said. "Busy day planned?"

"Not really, just the usual," Joseph replied. He hadn't even got as far as thinking about work and its associated difficulties yet. "Hey, listen, if I was a bit odd last night I do apologise. Something very strange happened to me on the way home from work."

"This cereal is good," Eva said, not acknowledging Joseph's comment. "Fruit, oats, low fat. A twenty seven gram serving is only eighty-nine calories."

"Um, yes," Joseph said. "But, like I was saying. The thing is... on the way home from work... I was attacked, on the street."

A predictable silence fell. Eva looked up at Joseph and didn't say anything. The expression on her face told Joseph that she had no idea how to respond to the news of her husband's ordeal. Not a surprise really.

"I'm fine, physically, fine," Joseph said. "I think I was a bit shaken up, you know, in my head and everything. I don't even remember most of last night, if I'm honest. So if I appeared to be distant, or ignoring you or whatever, well, I'm sorry."

Joseph stumbled to a stop. He guessed he was expecting that Eva would have had time to process the news by now, but she continued to sit, fixing him with a blank stare.

"It wasn't even a real attack I suppose. This man, he ran up to me in the middle of the street. He jabbed me with something, you know, like one of those taser things that women use to fend off rapists. Only, I don't think he'd charged the battery or whatever, it felt unpleasant but... I didn't fall over or anything.

"What was worse was that the guy fell over onto me, grabbed me round the neck and then just slid down onto the floor. I staggered back a bit, I was in shock, I suppose. He, well, I looked about and he'd gone. I never got an explanation or anything. It was terribly strange.

"Now that I come to talk about it I don't suppose it seems like a big deal but... It was the look on his face, he didn't look well at all. He looked scared, if I'm honest, sort of, haunted. Had these massive dark circles under his eyes. His movement was twitchy, unnatural, like something out of a horror movie. I think it was more a psychological thing than an actual physical threat. So, yes. I'm sorry, I should have brought it up last night, I... don't know why I didn't. Sorry."

Still nothing from Eva. She stared up at him as if she couldn't even understand what he was saying. Joseph almost said more but now there was an irritation stirring in him. He had said his piece, he didn't even care if Eva was angry with him or whatever. He just wanted some acknowedgement that this incident was a thing that had happened. That everyone knew.

The silence stretched from the uncomfortable into the agonising. Joseph was on the point of going over and waving his hand in front of Eva's eyes. That would be something. Get attacked on the street and then, the following morning, encounter your wife having a stroke over breakfast.

Before he had to make the move however Eva dipped her spoon into the cereal bowl and took another mouthful of the milky sop.

"I thought I would do meatloaf for dinner," she said. "Would that be okay?"

Joseph didn't know how to reply to that. Generally speaking he wasn't a person given to fits of temper. On the other hand he had dropped a bombshell over breakfast and his wife had only made two comments, both about food.

Maybe it was a coping mechanism. Possibly Eva needed some time to digest this traumatic news in her own way. Maybe Joseph was being insensitive expecting an instant reaction. Perhaps with time she could find her way towards a display of some obvious emotion. She had, after all, only just encountered the news that her husband had been accosted in the street.

Joseph sipped at the coffee he had poured himself. He usually took it with a little milk, it tasted strange. Strange appeared to be a good motif for the day.

"That's fine," he said.

Eva smiled at him as if this two sentence exchange was the only communication that had, or needed to, pass between them this morning. Her head swung back down to look at the magazine she had open at her left elbow.

Joseph began to feel a curious sense of forboding open up in his stomach, he couldn't exactly tell why. His elbow began to itch. He put his coffee cup down and scratched the elbow. After a moment he began to believe that watching his wife eat her breakfast while reading her magazine was making him dizzy. So dizzy, in fact, that he might pass out.

"Going to work," he mumbled and stumbled his way out of the kitchen.