Out Of The Light Appeared The Darkness

The following is a piece of fiction and was not intended for any particular person.

“Child’s Play”

He whispered her name twice softy, waiting for a response
“Gabrielle, Gabrielle my love are you awake?” No reply.
He complicated his decision to get out of bed for breakfast, when he realised his hand was still around Gabrielle. He waited another several minutes before finally making the assumption she would wake up.

After a few minutes of birds singing in tune with one another, Gabrielle finally rose from the bed, gave Jacques a peck on the cheek, then proceeded to enquire about his concerning and distressing facial expression.
“I hope you weren’t waiting long, last night was fantastic we should do it again sometime although this time without the formalities…You looked stressed, what’s wrong?”
Her curiosity started running her mouth.
“I mean, what happened last night? We enjoyed ourselves, had a few glasses of their finest wine…I don’t underst-…oh, was it that tall man in the pinstripe suit? Don’t worry about him honey, he was a jerk”
Jacques anticipation over-powered his conscious.
“No, No, No! We’ll talked about it later I’m hungry for breakfast, Matthews is making pancakes with salad and yes, it was that man that annoyed me but I’m not going to let it affect me”

At the breakfast table Matthews prepared the meals and promptly left the room to continue his house cleaning duties.
“Is it nice dear?”
“Yes, isn’t it always?” replied Gabrielle.
After a mouthful of salad Jacques explained the current status of his employment.
“You know that merger that my boss wanted me to push? I said to him I need more time for family, you can’t keep me locked in my office like a lab-rat. So he agreed and now I have a month off. Isn’t that great?”
Gabrielle looked directly into his eyes and simply opened her mouth gently. “Yes”
Jacques finished his breakfast and took the plates from the table and then started washing them. “I guess this means I’ll have more time for the kids”

Midway through the evening Jacques went upstairs to the children’s bedroom.
“Edward, make sure you clean up after you play with your toys. You don’t want them to get dirty because you can’t play with them later.”
Edward began protesting.
“But dad, Violet said she would play with me and she didn’t. I wanted her to play with me, it’s not fair and I always play with her when she wants me too.” He said almost in a whisper. Jacques lifted Edward onto the top bunk-bed. Violet by this time was asleep on the bottom bunk.
“Edward my boy, that’s life, sometimes you don’t get what you want…Maybe Violet and you could go to the park and play there together?”


Edward pulled up the doona and rested his head on the pillow. “No”
“What do you mean no?” Jacques was surprised now; he had never seen Edward act like this before.
“I don’t want too”
“She’s your sister and you only have one”
“No… I like it here better, it’s safer… None of that dirty stuff you find in the park” Edward spoke with triumph.
“Ok but what will happen when your sister wants you to join in her games?”
Jacques was now trying to pierce his argument.
“I’ll think about it, and then say ‘maybe’ if she plays a game I like then I’ll join her”
Jacques conceded.
“We’ll talk about it more in the morning; you have a big day tomorrow, your back at school”

Jacques headed out of the bedroom, paused at the doorway looked back at Edward and thought. *You know, when you’re a bit older you’ll learn to love your sister very much* He paced himself down and up the stairs to collect his paperwork and brought it to his office next door to the children’s room, he wasn’t getting any younger.

He logged on to his computer and brought up the search engine. He typed in ‘puberty.’ To his amazement, he sat quietly flicking and scanning over pages of FAQ’s over this topic. Jacques always enjoyed the quiet time he got, ever since he got his new job at the firm he rarely had time for his wife, kids and more importantly himself. After an hour or so, he logged off and crawled into bed beside Gabrielle . He whispered to Gabrielle;
“The kids… the kids grow up so quickly…it wont be long before the kids have kids of there own and we’ll be much older”
Gabrielle agreed. “And forgotten…”