CreepsMcPasta Creepypasta Radio - "My Wife Always Asked Me If Id Love Her If She Were a Bug" Creepypasta

Episode Date: April 25, 2025

LISTEN TO CREEPYPASTAS ON THE GO-SPOTIFY► https://open.spotify.com/show/7l0iRPd...iTUNES► https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast...CREEPYPASTA STORY► by Saint ZanderCreepypastas are the campfire tales of the internet. Horror stories spread through Reddit r/nosleep, forums and blogs, rather than word of mouth. Whether you believe these scary stories to be true or not is left to your own discretion and imagination. SUGGESTED CREEPYPASTA PLAYLISTS-►"Good Places to Start"-    • "I wasn't careful enough on the deep ...  ►"Personal Favourites"-    • "I sold my soul for a used dishwasher...  ►"Written by me"-    • "I've been Blind my Whole Life" Creep...  ►"Long Stories"-    • Long Stories  FOLLOW ME ON-►Twitter:   / creeps_mcpasta  ►Instagram:   / creepsmcpasta  ►Twitch:   / creepsmcpasta  ►Facebook:   / creepsmcpasta  CREEPYPASTA MUSIC/ SFX- ►http://bit.ly/Audionic ♪►http://bit.ly/Myuusic ♪►http://bit.ly/incompt ♪►http://bit.ly/EpidemicM ♪This creepypasta is for entertainment purposes only

My wife always asked me if I would love her if she was a worm or an animal or even a bug. I'd never given that question much thought. I used to laugh when she said it, thinking it was one of those harmless, hypothetical things that people in love say when they're trying to be cute. I always told her yes. Of course I would. She'd tilt her head, squint at me for a second, then nod. satisfied, and move on to something else. I loved her. Not the kind of loud, fiery love that burns itself out or tries to prove something to everyone else. I loved her in the way you love

your own breath, something you don't even think about most of the time, but couldn't survive without. She made the world feel less sharp and hostile. She had this way of looking at everything that made it seem more alive, even when she was dead quiet, just sitting at the kitchen table with her tea and the crossword. The room felt full. Her presence stretched into everything. She had quirks, dozens of them. She refused to kill bugs in the house, no matter how many legs they had. She always had to sleep on the left side of the bed, even in hotels. She whispered small apologies to every tree we passed when we went hiking, even the ones already dead.

And she believed in things, odd things. Not in a delusional way, but quietly, personally. Things she'd never forced on anyone. She believed certain birds carried messages. She believed in the number 13, not as unlucky, but sacred. and she believed in the protective power of a rosary. She kept that rosary with her every single day. Not once did I see her leave the house without it.

Sometimes she wore it tucked under a shirt, sometimes she looped it around her waist, but it was always there. She never talked about why, at least not in detail. I only knew that something had happened when she had, she was young. Her entire family died in a car accident when she was 14. She was the only one who walked away from the wreckage. After that, she changed, started being the cautious woman I know today. Over time, I came to accept that the rosary wasn't about faith. It was armor,

a thread she held onto so she wouldn't unravel. I never questioned it. I didn't need to understand it, to respect it. She had been the one to suggest the retreat. We talked about taking time off for months, letting the world blur behind us for a little while. But it never went beyond the idea. Something always came up. Work, errands, people needing things. That autumn, she brought it up again.

Only this time with dates, already circled on the calendar. She said she'd found a place, a cabin deep in the woods, just the kind of aesthetic she liked. She told me she wanted to feel air that hadn't passed through vents. She wanted the stillness of pine branches above her, the smell of wood smoke in her hair, a strange quiet that came from being far from anyone else.

I said yes, without even asking, to see the place. When she showed me the photos later, it looked like the place would be cold, no matter how hard you tried to warm it up. The walls were narrow, the windows small. There was a tiny dock jutting out over a dark little lake behind the trees. She clapped when I told her it was perfect. Before we left, she made me promise I'd do the hiking trail with her.

I asked how long it was, and she waved the question away, saying it didn't matter that we'd figure it out. Then she said something I'd think about every day after. She said, Once we get there, I won't want to come back. We both laughed. She meant it as a joke, obviously. I laughed too, kissed her, and we packed our things. The drive out took most of the day.

As the road narrowed and the trees grew thicker on either side of the windshield, she grew quieter. She let her hand dangle out of the window, her hair lifted in the wind. The sun was soft through the glass. By the time we pulled up the gravel road and saw the cabin appear behind the trees, dusk had already settled. The porch creaked under our feet, and the door stuck a little before it opened. And there was the scent of old dust and pine sap clinging to the walls, but the place was warm,

proving my assumption about it wrong. She walked through it slowly, brushing her hand along the furniture, looking out each window like she was memorizing every view. Then she kicked off her shoes, dropped into the old couch, and sighed. That night we lit a fire and sat together on the floor in front of it. She fell asleep first. Her breathing slowed until it matched the rhythm of the wind brushing the roof. I didn't sleep for a long time.

I stayed there beside her, watching her face move through dreams. I watched the chest rise and fall. Her hand was still holding mine. There was a peace in that silence that I couldn't explain, and I loved her more in that moment than I ever had before. She looked weightless, as if the world outside the trees had never existed at all. The next morning we started early,

while the air still held a bite from the night before. She wore her boots, lace tight, and carried a canvas bag with water, a journal, and a snack she insisted we'd probably forget about. The trailhead sat behind the cabin, half covered in ferns, with no marker beyond a splintered wooden post buried in the underbrush. She led the way, moving with steady steps, and a small smile I kept tugging at the corner of a mouth. I followed close behind, watching her braid catch against the shoulder strap of her bag. The trail wasn't easy. Roots rose up from the soil and waited for ankles. The incline grew steeper the further we went, winding around slopes where fallen trees leaned together overhead.

A stream accompanied us after the first mile. Thin at first, its surface broken by pebbles and pale green. leaves drifting without urgency. Sunlight passed through the pine canopy in slow-moving ribbons. It stretched across her arms as she walked, weaving through branches that dipped and bent under their own weight. Bird stirred occasionally, but distant. One or two short calls, but nothing that lingered.

Moss crept at the sides of stones in patches that grew thicker as we climbed. Some of it yellowed in the way. that made me think of old wounds instead of new growth. We didn't speak much. There wasn't a need. Her breathing was steady and mind followed suit. Occasionally she'd turn around just the check I was still behind her and we'd exchange a smile.

Then keep going. I don't remember how long we walked. My legs had grown sore and the shadows had shifted enough that it was probably close to midday. The stream had pulled away from the path again when she stopped suddenly and tilted her head to the left. Her fingers brushed aside a curtain of leaves, and I watched her shoulder shift, and she took a step through them. She didn't call for me. She just stood there, still, staring into something just beyond the veil of green.

I moved up beside her, and we both stood in silence. A basin of dark rock had opened up between a ring of crooked trees. The stream had reappeared, pooling into a circular spring, no wider than a small room. Its surface shimmered, slow and patient, catching light and shifting patterns that didn't seem to match the movement of the wind above. The water looked clear from a distance, but there was something unnatural in the stillness of it. No insects skated across the surface, no leaves floated. It almost looked held together by something beneath the surface, some tension that refused to let it ripple.

She stepped forward first, lowering herself down the incline toward the edge of the pool. I followed, careful not to slip on the damp stone. When I crouched beside her and reached down to touch the water, I expected a chill. Instead, it felt thick between my fingers, resisting slightly before letting me in. My skin came away, coated in something I couldn't quite describe. It was an oil, but it clung to me for several seconds before thinning out in the breeze. The air around the spring was noticeably warmer.

The change was immediate and total. My arms, bare beneath my rolled sleeves, felt flushed. The sweat and my back rose to the surface faster, and I found myself breathing just a little harder without realising why. She didn't seem to notice. She dipped her hand in and watched the water turn glassy around her wrist. Her lips parted slightly, but she said nothing. The fingers moved toward the chain at her neck delicately, as though she were undressing in

the presence of something ancient. I watched as she unfastened the rosary and drew it out from beneath a shirt. The metal links had dulled over the ears and a faint green patina had started to creep along the curve of the crucifix. She stared at it for a moment before speaking. It's old, she said. sensitive. I don't want it to corrode in this stuff.

She folded the rosary into a cloth she pulled out from a pocket, worn cotton, soft and faded, and pressed it flat against the rock beside the pool. She smoothed it out with her palm, anchoring each corner, as if afraid the wind might try to steal it. I waited until she was done, then unlaced my boots. The stone underfoot was slick with moss and cooled to the touch, but the air here remained warm, pressing against my shoulders and cheeks, as if we had walked into a greenhouse sealed from the rest of the forest.

She stepped in first, her barefoot breaking the surface without a sound. The water accepted her without resistance. She waded forward slowly, arms outstretched for balance. until she reached the centre of the spring. The surface rose to her hips. Her skin shimmered slightly where the water touched it,

coated in something that caught the light unevenly. I followed, placing one foot, then the other, into the water. My breath caught in my chest. It felt strange, almost gelatinous. It didn't seem to resist her entrance as much as mine. The surface tension pressed against my ankles. With each step, the water wrapped around me. When I reached her, she turned toward me with her hair pulled back

and droplets resting on her collarbone. She smiled then, wide and bright. I cupped some of the water in my hands and let it run through my fingers. It left a residue behind, faint but unmistakable. something thicker than expected. I didn't say anything. She wouldn't have wanted me to ruin the moment with concern. I kept smiling.

We stood there for a while, surrounded by trees that never moved, in water that never rippled, as if time had paused just for us. Her shoulders relaxed, her breath steadied. She dipped under for a second. And when she rose again, her laughter broke across the surface like something sacred. Later, back at the cabin, I would need to scrub my skin harder than usual to feel clean. But in that moment, standing beside her in the spring, all I could see was the woman I loved,

glowing under filtered sunlight. We eventually got out of the water and started making our way back. She grew quiet on the walk. At first, I thought it was the fatigue from the hike catching up to her. The trail had been long, and the heat near the spring had left us both flushed and thirsty. Her steps became shorter, slower. I offered her water, and she took it without speaking, holding the bottle against the forehead before drinking. Her hand trembled slightly when she handed it back.

By the time we reached the cabin, the light was falling behind the trees. She sat down on the edge of the bed and rubbed her temples with the heels of her hands. When I asked if she was all right, she nodded once, but her lips stayed pressed together. A few minutes passed before she spoke. I don't feel great, she said softly. My head's pounding, my stomach's off. I just need to sleep for a little. a bit. I helped her out of her shoes and pulled the blanket over her. She curled an aside,

knees pulled in, breathing slow and shallow. I sat beside her until her eyes closed, brushing strands of hair from her face. Her forehead was damp. The fire pit behind the cabin sat unused, the logs untouched. I didn't bother lighting anything inside. The last stretch of daylight filtered through the curtains in dull stripes across the walls. I found myself standing at the window, watching for nothing in particular, only listening to the sounds of the house breathing around me. Later that night, once she'd fallen into a deeper sleep, I stepped outside for air. The trees rustled gently, wind moving just enough to stir the ferns.

On my way back in, I remembered the. the rosary. We had left it beside the spring, carefully folded in that cloth, resting on the flat rock. I wondered if she had maybe forgotten it. I moved through the cabin and checked the counter where she'd set a bag earlier. I opened the pouch she kept smaller things in. No sign of it. Eventually, I found the cloth, folded neatly on the nightstand beside the side of a bed. the same fabric she had used to protect it. It had been smoothed out, edges aligned, but the rosary was no longer inside.

I picked it up, turned it over in my hands, then opened the drawer beneath it just in case she had moved it. Empty. She stirred behind me, but didn't wake. In the morning, I made a tea and sat at the foot of the bed while she drank it slowly. Her face was pale, her eyes heavy. When I asked her about the rosary, she took another sip before answering.

I'll just get another one, she said, voice thin but calm. It's just a thing. I can't think about it right now. I didn't say anything. I think I'd just blinked at her for a moment, waiting for the rest of the sentence, the reason, the part where she'd laugh and call herself forgetful. But it didn't come. She had never treated it as just the thing.

For as long as I'd known her, that rosary had been something sacred. She slept with it, travelled with it. Once she turned the car around halfway to her friend's wedding because she realized she had left it on the kitchen counter. And now it was gone. and she didn't seem to care. I stared at her longer than I should have, trying to decide if I was supposed to let it go.

Her eyes remained in the mug in her hands, and her mouth didn't move again. Something in the room felt thinner than it had the night before, as if something had been peeled away. I woke up to cold sheet the next night. Her side of the bed had been stretched out, untouched since I'd fallen asleep. The blanket lay flat.

Her pillow held no shape, no weight. The small lamp on the dresser still glowed faintly, casting dull collar against the wall. I sat up, blinking through the quiet, listening for footsteps. A creak, a sigh, anything that might tell me where she had gone. The cabin didn't answer. I called a name once, then again louder.

Nothing came back. My feet hit the floor before I had fully registered what I was doing. The air felt sharp against my skin, the chill already collecting in my chest. I pulled open the bathroom door. Empty. Check the kitchen. Empty. Even the front porch was still.

By the time, time I realized she wasn't anywhere inside. I had already stepped out barefoot onto the damp boards. The trees loomed in black silence ahead of me, every shape sharpened by moonlight. I ran toward the trail, the ground bit of my souls, twigs snapping under each step, mud slick beneath the fallen leaves. My voice cracked as I shouted her name again, the sound tearing itself away from my throat. I bounced off the tree trunks, fractured and hollow. I kept running farther than I thought she could have gone, breathing in short gasps,

chest burning. My hand shook. Then I saw her. She stepped out from the trees without urgency, strands of hair lit faintly by moonlight, her arms hanging loose by her sides. Her expression was calm. Her soft smile tugged at her lips, quiet and unfazed. I just wanted to visit the springs again, she said.

They were so warm. Didn't you think they were warm? She took a few steps forward and reached for my hand. I didn't move. My body refused to answer. Something in me hesitated, an instinct too quiet to say. speak aloud, but loud enough to freeze my breath in my throat. I nodded.

I didn't know what else to do. She turned back toward the cabin and began walking. I followed. Over the next few days, the fever vanished. She moved easier. Her appetite returned. She no longer clutched the stomach in the mornings or winced at the light near the windows. On the surface, she appeared healed.

But the woman I loved did not come back from the forest. She laughed at the wrong moments. She answered questions without context, skipping the parts in between. When I teased her about something we used the joke about, she stared at me for several seconds before forcing a smile. Her reactions came too slow or too fast, never where they should have landed. She flinched when a bird hit the glass outside.

She jumped when I dropped a spoon. She walked quieter now, steps placed too evenly on the floorboards, as if she didn't want the house to know she was there. Touch felt different. Her hand, once warm in mine, held no heat. Her fingertips rested too still against my skin, more like something mimicking comfort than offering it. She didn't lean into my chest when I pulled her close.

She didn't breathe against my shoulder while she slept, but she was here and she was getting stronger. That mattered. That was something. And so, I decided to make her a gift. I gathered twined from the drawer and pieces of driftwood from near the edge of the trail. I cut them into small segments. sanding them against stone until the edges were round enough to sit comfortably against my skin.

I loop them together in the shape of the rosary she had always carried, threading each piece carefully, whispering her name under my breath each time I added a bead. I tied at not last, tight and clean, and held the makeshift chain in my palm. It wasn't beautiful, but it had weight. that evening. I offered it to her. She looked at it for a long time before taking it. Her fingers ran across the wood.

Her mouth folded at the corners. Not into a smile. I don't need things like that, she said, voice low. She set it on the table and walked past me, leaving the gift behind without another word. I stood there for several minutes, staring down at the loop of twine and wood. The knot I tied held firm.

I told myself, it was fine. Maybe she didn't feel like herself. Maybe she needed time. I brushed it off. I had to. That night, while we sat on the couch with a blanket over our legs, she turned her head toward the dark window and said, We should go.

Tomorrow. I looked at her, expecting a smile. There wasn't one. Her eyes stayed on the glass, unreadable in the dim light. I want to go home, she said. I reminded her that she'd begged for this trip, that she had joked about never wanting to leave. She didn't answer. She just repeated the words again, slower this time, as if they meant something I couldn't hear properly.

That night in bed, I reached for her hand under the covers. Her fingers rested in mind without pressure. Her skin felt cool, even beneath the warmth of the quilt. She didn't close her eyes when the lights went out. I know, because I opened mine hours later and saw her still awake, staring straight ahead. In the morning, I watched her brush her hair in the mirror. The light through the bathroom window called.

water face, but her eyes didn't shine. They took the light in and gave nothing back. No reflection, no shimmer. Just that still surface I had first seen in the spring. The banging started just after three. I'd been lying awake, staring at the ceiling while her breath moved slow and even beside me. I hadn't touched her. I couldn't bring myself to.

Something about the stillness in a body didn't invite warmth. It only reminded me how long it had been since I'd felt it. The first sound shook the front door on its hinges. A low, wet slam, followed by silence. Then another, louder, as if something with weight and mass had thrown itself forward. Not with rage, but intent. The third knock rattled the wind. windows, sharp enough that one of the pains groaned against this frame.

She didn't stir. I slid out of bed, feet hitting the wood with a dull thud. The hallway stretched out in front of me, dim with shadows that shifted with each movement I made. My hand trembled on the door-knob. The cabin hadn't felt safe in days, but this was different. knock came just as I pulled the door open. And then I saw it.

The creature stood beneath the porch light, too tall for the frame of the door to contain in a single glance. Its body glistened, coated in a layer of translucent fluid that moved over its own skin in slow, crawling waves. Each inch of its surface shimmered with a film that caught the light and bent it into colors that didn't belong in this world. We just stared at each other for a long moment. Its head had been split into three long plates, peeled apart from the crown, angled

outward and trembling gently. The plates curved with jagged seams, their inner edges wet and raw, revealing an absence where a skull should have held shape. The face, if it had one, offered no centre. No symmetry. Just those three plates shuddering open around nothing. The mouth moved separately. Four thick slabs of flesh curled outward in uneven petals,

retracting and revealing the tongue within. Black, swollen, ridged with grooves, coated in a sheen that reflected every flicker of motion. The tongue didn't rest. It pulsed against the open air. Tentacles hung low from its chest. They weren't limp or drifting. They twitched in small, deliberate motions, flexing inward and outward, testing the space between them and the cabin's threshold. Their ends were pointed, too narrow for bone to be inside them, and they reached for the air as if it held answers.

Its muscle tissue was bare in some places. the skin torn away or never formed at all. The exposed fibre flexed with each small movement, veins thick and dark, running in webs over the surface. They pulsed under the skin, but the rhythm was irregular, off in a way that made my stomach twist. From several torn pockets of flesh, yellow puss bubbled and slid downward, slow and heavy, pulling around the base of its legs. The liquid hissed where it met the porch, but no smoke rose,

no smell followed, only the sound of dripping. But it was the eyes that made my breath catch. They were set too far apart. From each of them, a viscous substance wet in long, steady strands. The tears were thick, glassy, but not water.

They glowed faintly, trailing down the creature's face in slow, unbroken lines. It looked like it was crying. The creature leaned forward. It tried to speak. A gurgling breath pushed out, rough and slurred, its voice broken by moisture and too many folds of ruined flesh. Wait. please. The sound of rot forming speech,

wet vowels spilling through something that had never been meant to talk. I didn't understand what it said at the time. My legs had already started to move. I turned and ran. I didn't look back. The door swung wide behind me, banging against the wall hard enough to splinter.

My feet pounded the floorboards, slick with cold sweat, each step loud enough to wake the dead. My chest felt caved in, lungs crushed under panic. I shouted a name as I moved, hoarse and broken, the sound cracking at the edges. I threw the bedroom door open so hard and nearly tore off the hinge. Lying flat beneath the covers, arms folded neatly above the blanket. Her eyes open, fixed on the ceiling. She didn't flinch.

The pupils were large, wide enough to swallow the color in her irises, and the whites had taken on a faint yellow tint that hadn't been there the night before. I rushed her aside, dropped to my knees, grabbed her arm, shook her gently, then harder. We have to go, now. Her head turned slightly with a movement, but a gaze. never shifted. Her mouth stayed closed, her chest rising and falling in a slow, steady rhythm. The sound of woodbreaking echoed through the hallway behind me. The creature was inside now. Its weight bent the house around it. I stood, grabbed the door and slammed it shut. The lock clicked

into place beneath my hand, but I knew it wouldn't matter. My heart hammered so hard. I was I could hear it in my ears. My skin burned, drenched in sweat. I pressed my back against the door, staring at her, whispering her name between sobs that had no shape. She didn't answer or move. We couldn't leave. There was nowhere to go. Whatever I'd let in, it had already made its way through to us. The creature reached the door and broke through it with one swing. Wood splintered in every direction, the hinges ripped off its frame. It stepped inside, its form bending as it moved beneath the narrow ceiling. The floor sagged under its weight, its eyes wept in steady streams, the thick fluid falling soundlessly to the ground.

My hand reached blindly toward the table by the bed. My fingers closed around the makeshift rosary I had built for her. A twine, a pieces of driftwood I had built for her. A twine, a piece of driftwood I had cut with my own knife, shaped for her hands. I turned and hurled it toward the creature with all the strength I had left. I was desperate. It struck his chest and bounced to the floor. The creature stood unchanged. Its head tilted, its plates trembling slightly. Then it turned. Not toward me. It charged across the room. toward the bed. My wife, lying there, didn't react until its weight was upon her.

It pinned her down, massive limbs pressing into the mattress. Her mouth opened in a slow, delayed gasp. Her arms flailed once. Then stopped, I lunged, throwing myself at the creature's side, my fists pounding against the muscle near its ribs and sank in, swallowed by soft, shifting tissue. I hit it again and again screaming through my teeth, but it didn't react. My punches had no more effect than raindrops hitting mud. The creature reached down.

It picked up the rosary, lifted it above her face, then shoved it between her teeth. She began to scream. It didn't carry through the air like a human voice. It vibrated, folding in on itself, layered in ways my ears couldn't make sense of. It rose in volume, collided with itself, reversed and built again. It sounded like something tearing through flesh made of glass, like insects screaming in patterns that only made sense to the dead. Her back bent high off the bed. The rosary pushed further into her mouth, drawn inward as if consumed.

Her skin peeled in long sheets, starting from her shoulders. The collar ran away first, fading to grey, then pink, then something closer to translucent meat. Her bones cracked beneath her chest. One of her legs jerked, spasming hard, before twisting inward and folding beneath her body. Her jaw unhinged, her eyes rolled back. She let out one final sound. One that didn't come from her mouth, but from the walls, from the air itself.

A sound that made me fall to my knees. Her flesh began to slide. It poured from the bed, dripping in ropes across the wood, seeping through the seams in the floorboards. Her limbs softened, her spine curled in on itself, then disappeared under the sheets. And then... She was gone. Nothing left but the wet stain spreading across the mattress and the weight to my chest that refused to leave. I collapsed backward, knees giving out beneath me.

My chest pulled inward, ripped hollow by something worse than pain. I screamed the name through a throat already torn ragged, and when no sound followed, I screamed it again. It was a sound only grief makes. The creature stood most. motionless, breathing shallow, its ribs expanding in uneven intervals. Then, slowly, it turned toward me. Its mouth moved before the words reached the air.

The sound, once gurgled in guitaral, had softened. The voice still pushed through layers of wet tissue and bone that hadn't grown in the right places. But the words now landed with intention. I'm sorry, it said. I didn't know how else to show you. She's been inside me since the water. It, she took my body and put me into it. I shook my head.

My hands rose without command, fingers bent, desperate for something to hold onto that wasn't dissolving. No, I muttered, no, no. The creature knelt, joint bending in silent, disjointed movements. His chest expanded. One of its tentacles reached toward the floor and unfolded. A delicate object pushed its way out from beneath the surface of its skin. Her rosary. The real one.

Worn at the edges, the silver chain dulled, the crucifference, still scratched where she used to fidget with it during long car rides. It lay down the rosary between us. I... It said. I remember everything. I would never leave this rosary behind. You know this, but I'm so, so scared.

His voice cracked on the last. word. Something in it trembled, not the body, but the soul buried inside it. And for the first time, I didn't see a creature. I didn't see a threat. I saw her, and I stayed. I scrubbed the floor until the stains faded. I gathered the bed sheets and took them into the fireplace behind the cabin. I watched them burn down to threads, felt the heat by my skin, waited until the wind carried the last of the smoke into the trees. She didn't leave. Neither did I. We moved through the house in silence at first. She took small steps through the rooms. Her body dragged wet shadows across the floor. I cooked. She ate when I offered her food. She didn't use you take. You take. You

pencils, her hands moved differently, joints bending in directions I couldn't name. I spoke softly to her. When she wept, I held her. Thick strands from her eyes clung to my skin, but I didn't pull away. Her tentacles twisted around my wrist, loose and trembling. Whatever form she wore now, whatever thing she had become. It hadn't stripped her of what she was. was. She was still here. I brought her tea every morning, the same blend she had loved before,

brewed longer than usual to fill the room with a smell she used to say reminded her of autumn. She sipped from a bowl now. Her mouth didn't work the way it once had, but she drank, and when she finished, she held the empty dish close to her chest as if the warmth meant something. We talked a lot. She asked about things we had done. Her memory was still there, but not fully. She remembered details I'd forgotten. Our first stormed together, the hotel that smelled of cinnamon,

the gas station where we slow danced in the parking lot because her favourite song came on the radio. She remembered things that had left an impact on her soul. Some evenings I sat to come. cross from her and stared for too long. There were moments I let my mind wonder. I saw her again as she had been before the spring. Her hands brushing through her hair, her shoulders soft in the firelight, her feet tucked beneath her on the couch for a heartbeat. I let myself believe that I couldn't deal with it and then she smiled. The expression moved through a face with difficulty.

Her flesh stretched unevenly across too many teeth. Her jaw open from both sides, bending inward in slow, trembling arcs. The smile didn't belong on a human face, but it was gentle. It was hers. And I knew it. So yes, I would love my wife. No matter what she was.