FIRST ENCOUNTER : FICTION

I know. I know from the moment the door opens I will be entering a world and that fist impression will stay with me for the rest of my life.

I am twenty-two years old. I have met the man who i want to be my husband, the father of my children. Although I haven't told him this, there is a silent understanding, not yet officially breached.

He has invited me to his former home, the home of his parents. I will be entering their abode with all the foreboding of budding youth, hope, future, stretched out before me.

I am shaking, and the world is turning oh so slightly, spinning in time to the beating of my heart, the pounding in my temples from freight.

Richard stands seemingly disconcerted beside me. He is humming softly to himself as we wait for the answer to his incessant knocking, the sound of a man saying, open up, I belong here. This is my home.

He forgot his keys.

Of all days to forget his keys, the day he is bringing me, his maybe "intended" into the family fold for the first time.

That all-important meeting of the people, his people, them and me.

The door handle moves. Richard turns towards me, his eyes peering slightly over the top of my head.

"Nervous?" he asks.

I think I am about to faint. Am I nervous?

My mouth is dry, my lips feel as if they haven't moved in hours, or is it days.

I am standing next to Richard with his close proximity as my sole support. Am I nervous?

I smile slowly, letting the pull of my feelings force the opening of my lips as I am about to lie, to say "Oh no," in that nonchalant, almost coquettish gesture I've used so often. But I know this time I would never be believed.


Richard sees me struggle and laughs.

"Don't worry, ma petite," he says. "You'll get through it. After all, think of the many years I survived with them".

'That isn't the point,' my internal self rebels against his attempt to soften my edges, to calm me down. You might have survived them but what if... what if they hate me, what if they have no other intention for the rest of their lives than to devote themselves to my destruction, to our destruction, of rendering you and me asunder, finito, gone and done forever and ever...

Oh, can this be happening to me! I moan on and on, internally wishing, hoping this moment would end and somehow it would just be me and Richard alone and then


I hear a lock unlock and a second lock unlock and the door opens and two people, not one, but both of them stand before us.

They are in the doorway, we are still outside

and they said in unison

"Welcome to our home" and they kiss me, they kiss me "hello."

And Richard says, "I warned you."

Linda Zises