Reach for Me

Ellen O’Brien

She takes his phone and buries it in the compost barrel at the bottom of the garden. He doesn’t say anything, and neither does she. That night, when they lie side by side in bed, it is back in his hands and she looks for traces of leaf litter while he scrolls.

The next time, she buries it deeper, beneath a front-end-loader’s worth of dirt where the neighbours are putting in a swimming pool. That night, when he rolls over to plug it in, she waits for the crackle of sand in the charging port but hears nothing.

That week, she flings his phone into the back of the kiln at her pottery class. Later, coiled beneath the duvet, his fingers caress the slick blue glass, which throbs and pulses with light. She throbs and pulses in the dark but is left to caress herself.

She grows more creative.

She drops it into the porridge-wet concrete footing of a new high-rise block then carries on down the street with the swagger of a mobster who’s put in a good day’s work. Later, he reaches for his emails and she bites down a story about her day. It will keep.

When they go hiking, the only place he sees the sky is in the reflection of his screen. On the second day of the walk, she silently posts it through the planks of a suspension bridge.

Each night it is back in his hands, and each night, she scans quietly for damage.

Well, if she cannot banish the object, she will destroy the means. That evening, she finds a pair of scissors and when they eat their pasta, she twirls her fork through ribbons of USB-C cable coated with glossy alfredo sauce. She finishes the entire bowl.

And yet.

His face grows pallid, drenched in blue light.

She develops collaborative, loving relationships with a legion of power tools that, until recently, she never knew existed.

She learns the precise rust-filing-to-aluminium ratio to solder railway pylons. And incidentally, to obliterate titanium. An ASIO officer, alerted by her browsing activity, raises an eyebrow and adds her name to a database. He doubts she’ll get far with it, but it doesn’t hurt to be cautious.

Halfway through a serious talk about having children, his Podcast finishes and he takes out his Air pods.

The lifeguards at the local leisure centre follow her quietly, especially near the diving pool.

He slumps in the passenger seat, catching rare forest Pokémon.

She learns about rotor blades, and chemical corrosives, and terminal velocity.

His eyes glaze over, and his thumbs claw at the screen like arthritic shrimps.

Perhaps, she thinks, it is time for a different approach. To diversify. To upskill.

She brushes up on the war in Europe; on tariffs; on trade deals. Delivers witty, seven-second precis of the latest political fuckups. She is scathing, blistering, scornful. On occasion, uplifting. She offers craft demonstrations in their kitchen, using just three household items he never knew they had. She finds a stray bird for their cat to befriend. Look at that, she says. With some effort on her part, the cat helps to unpack the dishwasher. Look, she says. The cat learns to enunciate with the vocabulary of an eighteen-month-old. Do you want to watch it again? she asks. The cat gets sick of her shit and tries its luck with the neighbours. She informs him of the cat’s betrayal, but he looks up and asks about a five-letter word that starts with a vowel and ends in B-Y-S-S.

She learns how to squirt with her tiny, wet pussy and asphyxiate without leaving bruises.

Her eyes grow darker. She grows full of misogyny, and fascism, and residue.

She is lonely. And the worst part? So is he. She sees it in his glazed eyes and constant need for distraction. He takes little sips of LinkedIn and Reddit and Twitch, like a drunk with a flask in his pocket. She is right there, waiting for him, and he can’t see her.

That night, while he sleeps next to his empty bottle of melatonin capsules, she orders some new parts through his Amazon Prime account. Lots of couples are doing it, she reads. Next day delivery.

It is surprisingly easy to install. It is cutting edge and promises instant connection, human to human upload. ‘Achieve true digital intimacy.’ Thankfully, there are instructions on the kit. She thought there would be pain, perhaps, or more blood, but she manages it neatly enough. It’s no bigger than a Moon Cup, really, and it certainly makes it easier to get the latest system updates.

She expected more resistance from him. He is surprised at first, because after all there are certain body parts that a man grows attached to. There are new cables to wire in, which is never pleasant, but once he realises how much better their lives will be, the screaming stops.

True Digital Intimacy. Achieved.

If only she had thought of this sooner, she says to herself, laying with his arms wrapped around her. She wriggles her pelvis against the intimate hum of their connection, and his thumbs gently stroke her temple. She gazes back at him, sated, secure, and casts a surfeit of blue light into his eyes.

He will never look away from her again.

Ellen O’Brien is a secondary teacher from Boorloo (Perth), whose groaning bookshelf is full of historical and speculative fiction. Her work has appeared in History Through Fiction, and Night Parrot Press.

More tantalising stories are waiting you… Return to Issue 5!