A Perfect Life

by Daryn Writer

      “It’s going to be a perfect life!” Joanne said happily to Red. “I’m going to make it perfect.” Joanne held up her hand to admire the ring once again. It sparkled upon her finger. In fact, she had set the bling so high that it cast a blue-white light upon anything nearby. She was determined there would be no mistakes; anyone who met her would know that here was a married woman. There was an almost identical ring, sans bling, on the same finger of her real life body, back in the small, ancient apartment they had moved into the day before.
      Joanne smiled in satisfaction as she glanced around their new SL home, a double storey beach house with an extensive wooden deck that stood proudly on its stumps over rich, white sands. The side facing the sea was walled in glass, the other three walls and the roof were maple. Double doors opened outwards onto the deck, like arms stretched wide, inviting anyone to enter the large room within. It was so new that the prims had barely had time to rez before she and Red had dived into it.
      Their house was an empty shell, ready to be filled.
      Joanne was the woman who was going to fill it. She considered the packing cases piled on the floor, all dusty, made of cheap, knotted wood. She was trawling through them, looking for household goods. Red had brought the packing cases home from the junkyards. She sighed. Her newly minted husband had not been particularly discriminating when he’d picked them up; he’d simply swept through the yards, grabbing everything in sight. It was impossible to tell from the outside what any contained; Joanne had emptied a tractor and a combine harvester out of the last box. She would have settled for a bedside table.
      Joanne crossed her fingers, picked another box, and looked in the contents.
      “It says ‘lamp.’ Wonder what type of lamp?” Joanne puzzled.
      Red said, “Your guess is good as mine, honey.”
      We need a lamp behind the sofa, Joanne thought to herself, one that cast enough light so Red could sit and read at night. She would place pose balls so she could put her