The Dark Somnium - My Wife Has Taken Our Roleplaying Too Far

Episode Date: May 7, 2024

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When he told me he wanted to play pretend, I thought it was something to do with sex. And the funny thing is, if he'd whipped out a Wonder Woman costume, I would have gone along with it. Things had been cold between us for years. One word replies, intense conversations had become the norm. I was prepared to do what was necessary to try and patch things up. When he clarified he wanted to pretend to be young, I felt a lot more hesitation. If this was a sex thing, I thought, it could get pretty weird. Even as he explained it all, I just kept waiting for it to turn in that direction.

I figured that's what it had to be, right? But he said it wasn't like that at all. He just wanted some time now and again when he could behave like a child. Nothing too weird. Just sort of therapeutic roleplay. I'll admit, it wasn't what I thought. He wanted me to pack his lunches and kiss his cheek before going to work, he said. He wanted me to give him the kind of things you'd give a kid.

So I packed him a yogurt, a ham sandwich, and an apple. There was also a small carton of juice all tucked neatly into a brown paper bag. His whole face lit up with joy when he saw it. I came up with the brown bag myself, and he told me it was a nice touch. I remember thinking it was the first sincere compliment he'd paid me in years. I felt a rare pain of pride at that. After that, I got the gist pretty quickly. He wanted me to run in baths and sit there beside him while he played with toys.

He wanted to ask me for permission before going out to play in the yard. He wanted spaghetti and hot dogs for dinner and jelly and ice cream for dessert. I did it all with a smile. He never really looked at me all that much as a wife. But as a caregiver, it was like every little gesture was the greatest thing to him. I thought it was messed up, sure, but I don't know. Those first few weeks were actually quite nice. One day he came home and I had the TV set to old cartoons from his childhood and he just

burst out into tears. I bought the DVDs as a little surprise but didn't expect that kind of reaction. I ran over and held him and we stayed like that, huddled on the sofa for hours. I'd never felt that kind of closeness or vulnerability for us. him or, well, anyone else I'd ever met. It was confusing, but I liked it. We'd always been each other's closest friends and now he was spending more time with me than ever before, and he cared about what I had to say and genuinely paid attention to me.

I once baked him a cake and he sat on the counter, kicking his legs, asking me questions the whole time. I told him about the recipe, about how much. My grandmother had brought it over with her when she emigrated, about how had been passed down for generations. And I could see that he wasn't play-acting. He really was blown away by the whole story. But the request just kept coming, as did the amount of time he spent role-playing. It started out as something before and after work.

But he soon quit his job, and without notice. It became an all-day activity. Like I said, it was part of the fun, and I didn't put any limits on it. He did what I imagine most kids do all day long. He watched TV, played with toys and video games, ran around making silly noises. He also wanted to do the less fun stuff. So I had to set him chores, bathe him, brush and cut his hair, make him eat vegetables. He even asked me to start organizing his homework.

So I bought some old exercise. books for low-level maths in English. He was never naughty, but he did like to make a fuss when I told him to do these things. But sometimes I'd catch a sly smile or a twinkle in his eye, and I knew he really liked it. There was something inherently bizarre and actually kind of funny about watching an accountant sit there and struggle when carrying the one. Still, it was a far cry from the very guarded and deeply arrogant man I'd married. I guess I'm just trying to put it. all in order for you, but I'm not sure I can. There were times it felt wrong, I suppose. All my attraction to him went right out the window, but I didn't care because we didn't have sex that

much as husband and wife. And even when we did, it wasn't very good. Maybe if you understood that I'm not a social person, you could see why I let this all happen. I don't have friends. never have, not even when I was in university. His company, this placid warm and adoring company, it worked a kind of magic on me. I think also that I actually quite liked looking after someone. In hindsight, I probably should have just got a cat. At the time, I just liked the change of pace,

and I always suspected there was some dark secret lurking beneath him. My mother had warned me about this with men, and I was just glad he didn't like killing hookers. This seemed safe, harmless, at least at first. As we settled further into a routine, I started to feel lonely again, only it was different. This wasn't the bored listlessness of a day spent at home trying to look busy. It was more like standing over an ocean and looking down. I think it was the way he started to change physically. I thought they were all deliberate changes, things he did to look less like an adult.

Sometimes he looked at me, and I didn't like it. It was a hungry look. I met a boy once when I was younger, and he looked at me like that, and I liked it. But coming from my husband and blue pajamas with a pacifier in his mouth and a rattle in one hand, God, I could have been sick. And come nighttime, the house started to feel different, larger and colder than usual. I started drinking for some reason, I think partly just to unwind. When things broke, it was up to me to fix them, or to answer the phone or deal with bills.

We had plenty saved up, so don't get me wrong, it wasn't like we were in dire circumstances. But there was no one else to share the endless responsibilities with, and I felt it like a weight on my shoulders. Come morning I'd have to go through the motions with a pounding headache, and I found that the days started to blur. Months passed, maybe even a whole year. It's hard for me to remember any of these events in a straight line, and that's not all my fault. I remember thinking that he was a growing boy, but that wasn't true at all. We ordered new shoes for him online, and they were a different size to the usual. Smaller. He said it was a little. He said it was because he wanted the light-up ones.

But he'd been a size 11 as an adult, and the ones we bought were for a young boy. I don't know how, but he wore those new shoes just fine. I pinched the toe and told him he'd grow into them. I have vivid memories of watching him struggle to put a stuffed toy on the top shelf. He'd always towered over me at 6'3. Even now, I'm putting it all back together in my head

and finding little surprises. It was always a sense that if I stopped too long to think, and everything would rush past me and I'd miss it, even trying my best to just go with it. I found myself feeling like a stranger in my own house. Things moved. Rooms were rearranged. And new toys just appeared, all without me knowing how. A whole swing set was installed in the garden without me remembering, but when I checked, my signature was on the invoice. At that point, he began wearing diapers, and I didn't even notice until days passed.

It just kind of made sense somehow, and the moment it had felt so natural. And looking back, I seemed to remember my husband as a child, not a fully grown man. I'd been feeding a toddler, hugging a toddler, watching a toddler play games. But at the same time, it wasn't any of that. It was my husband sitting there with his long legs crossed and crumbs in his beard. One morning I woke up to a dog, and the next day it was gone. I searched for hours feeling like I was going insane. But sure enough, there was a bowl and dog food right by the kitchen door,

so it wasn't like I'd imagined it. There was no dog in the house, though, nor in the garden. Exhausted and beaten, I went into my husband's room for the final check. When, at the sight of him, this strange apprehension came over me. I couldn't get the thought out of my head that he'd done something. After all, if he was a child, he was a bit odd, wasn't he? He didn't play with other children. He didn't misbehave.

He barely spoke. He was a good little boy. Sure, but not necessarily all that normal. And of course, he wasn't a child. He was something else. Standing there, I appreciated just how odd he had started to look. His hair was thinning, not just falling out, mind you. It felt downy to the touch, soft like a newborn's peachy fuzz.

And good God, the smell. It was like a baby smell, but foul like sour milk, and it clung to him no matter how much I bathed him and washed his clothes. There were days when it felt like I could choke to death on it, and I learned to breathe carefully through my mouth whenever we were together. His pupils were huge, too large for those small sockets. His eyes had always been spaced far apart, but placed on a child-shaped head. He looked like he was wearing a bad Halloween mask with doll's eyes instead of his own. Sometimes I'd catch him staring at me from around a corner or at the bottom of a long corridor. Sometimes that meant him standing there in the dark, audibly breathing as his shoulders rose and fell, while some unseen thought excited him.

Other times it meant glimpsing his gray head disappearing behind a wall, or door the second I turned. He drooled almost constantly and wiped the excess on his sleeve, but a lot of it landed on the floor anyway. There were times I'd find small puddles of spit and locked rooms, often just behind where I'd been standing. Other times I could hear his difficult breathing inches from my back, but he was never actually there when I turned around. I was afraid of him, I realized, and I nearly cried out when standing in that dark and, standing in that dark. quiet room. He rolled onto his back as he slept in the crib. He opened a gummy smile, and I saw that all his teeth had fallen out, barring just a few. And the closer I looked, the more certain I became that even those were not his original ones. They were too white,

too small, too peg-like to be adults' incisors. I secretly hoped I was going insane. The alternative was somehow even worse. I was on the toilet when the doorbell rang. It was a shrill screech that grated, and I jumped so badly I dropped my phone. I quickly finished up and waddled over to the window with my pants still down. There was a van just outside the front gates, which were open.

There was no sign of anyone walking around down there. Normally this kind of problem would just go away, and they'd leave the package on the doorstep. But something felt wrong. I couldn't hear my husband anywhere in the house. No footsteps. No babbling, no clacking toys or rolling wheels. The van looked strange.

The driver's side door was still open. The engine, still running. I tried to digest what it all meant while running downstairs, stopping only when I saw the front door open. A gust of wind blew through the main house, drawing out all the homely warmth. I had images of our role-playing being found out, and fears of humiliation and embarrassment filled my head.

There was something else muddled in with all the thoughts as well. We'd spent so long locked up together. My husband and I, safe and far away from the rest of the world, how would he react to this intrusion? As if, in an answer, someone cried out from the living room. I ran down the last few stairs and pushed open the door to find a small man shaking where he stood. brown cardboard box clutched to his chest for protection.

What? What? He stuttered. I put my arm around his shoulder and started to move him towards the door. I couldn't see my husband, but he was never too far away from me, and I couldn't help but notice one of his favorite toys lying on the floor. He let me in. The man continued.

Look just like a... Suddenly, he turned to me and gripped both my arms. What's wrong with him? He asked. I've never seen anything like that before. I don't remember what I said, but I kept pushing him towards the front door, out of the living room and into the kitchen. A quick turn of my head, and I saw my husband ducking back down beneath the sofa.

He was the wrong size to be so quick and sneaky. But he had a way of hiding and moving around the house so that you almost never saw him unless he wanted you to. Come on, I muttered. But the delivery man's feet were slow and cumbersome. It was like his head was all muddled up. It was just a child. He cried like it had just dawned on him.

Oh, no. I frightened it, didn't I? He tried turning back, but I stopped him. No, I didn't mean to scare him. I just, I just, his face. He stopped resisting, and his shoulders slump back down. What's wrong with him? He asked.

Why do my eyes hurt? He's sick, I answered, finally pulling him the last few feet to the door. I shoved him back past the door. the threshold then stood, panting to catch my breath. He's just very unwell, I said, stifling a sob, part lie, part truth. It's a condition. The delivery man looked as if he was still trying to sort his own head out, but it seemed like he bought it.

He went to leave, putting one foot down on the porch steps, before suddenly deciding that he needed to make amends. Please don't report me. He cried, and I jumped a little. I didn't mean to come off as rude. My heart started to race. I could smell my husband, the stench nearly overpowering. He was so close I could practically feel him. But where he was, I couldn't say.

I just needed to get this man away before something terrible happened. He was babbling endlessly about offending me. Please. I said, on the verge of tears. Please leave. Did he understand? I wonder. Sometimes, when I think back, I see a flickering of understanding in his eyes.

It looked like empathy. I can't be sure because it all kind of just blurs together. The shock in his eyes as my husband's arm grabbed his ankle cannot be understated. Neither of us expected him to be down there. I still don't know how he did it, but he was down there, giggling in an unhealthy, false subtle rasp. Before anyone could speak, he yanked so hard the delivery man fell down backwards and his leg disappeared into shadow. With one hand the crying man clamped down on the thigh as if to soothe some unseen pain, and with the other hand he tried to push himself back out from between the

wooden slats. But my husband was always a big man, and now he had a strange sort of air about him, a quiet, crackling power that followed him from room to room. The struggle was one-sided, and the delivery man screamed and howled. He gave up holding the one leg and tried using both hands to pull or push or drag himself away. I didn't know what was happening out of sight, but his face drained of blood and his screams just kept getting worse. I've never heard a man make a sound like that before. Not an adult man. It was scary, in a way, I wasn't prepared for.

I think he asked me to help at one point. I contemplated calling the police, but never did. I was so terrified I couldn't even bring myself to move. Occasionally, one of my husband's thick-knuckled hands could be glimpsed as he pulled more of the man inside. Those hands looked so large, so pale, so deeply unhealthy. I could hear what he was doing, but that didn't really come to my attention until I unpacked it all mentally long after it was over. But yes, I could hear. bone crack and something like paper being torn. Was it an hour or just a few minutes? I don't know.

The man just kept crying and pleading. And my husband just kept pulling and pulling and pulling. Stair started to buckle, but the wood was thick and strong. Final question came down to what would break first, a pelvis or a post. The delivery man's cry. The delivery man's cry. told me what he thought would happen. He was right, with a tremendous yell of joy, just like a child on their birthday. My husband latched another fist around the man's other leg and pulled so hard that there was a sudden crack, and his victim fell limp like a toy losing power. What followed was a silence so heavy had hurt my ears, broken only by the faint, wet sound of my husband and dragging the rest of the man into the dark.

The space between each step couldn't have been more than six inches, but Brufforse won out. The last I remember of the man's face, he was pale with bulging eyes. The arrangement of his arms and legs didn't even make sense anymore. He looked like a spider after you step on it. I stayed there for a while longer, hoping to hell and back I'd hear an ambulance or police siren.

But like I said, we lived far out of town. By the time it occurred to me that no one would rescue that man, or me, the blood on the steps was congealing. My husband was still out of sight, giggling and clapping like a kid making mud pies. Come on, I finally managed to say, speaking like the doting mother I was. Put your new toy away. I'll make you some lunch. I was washing dishes and staring into the yard. It resembled somewhere I'd seen before, but I couldn't remember where or why. My husband was somewhere upstairs, and I was alone.

I'd often hear him thunder around up there, doing God knows what. His bare feet slapping on hardwood floors he'd once picked out in a turtleneck and chinos. That seemed like a different person's life now. Hard to believe it was the same man who'd brought me something just days before that made me sick. He'd made it himself. and it had hung on the fridge for a whole afternoon, like just another piece of macaroni art. It's that thing where the dog ended up, I wondered, running a dishcloth over the same plate for the second hour in a row. Movement caught my eye. Out in the garden, something floated down

past the tall hedges that walled in our yard and landed plainly on the overgrown grass. It was a bright, luminous yellow that glowed like a safety vest. For some reason, I held up the plate in my hand, looked between the two. God, I was so out of it. It was like a worm in my head. I could feel it, maybe even reach out and grab it if I could just focus on it for long enough. But each time I closed my mind around it, each time I started to feel out the shape of this intrusion, this rewriting of my own brain, slithered away.

"'Prispy,' I muttered. "'And then just like that, she was there. "'She was maybe nine or ten. "'How had she wound up here?' I wondered. "'Maybe she was lost. "'She was looking around like she didn't know where she was. "'I could see she was scared, "'and my heart sank as I realized

"'how awful our home must have looked to her. "'There was a time I was house-proud. "'But now we lived in decrepit filth, Of course the little girl looked scared, I thought. This was the scary house every child feared, with broken windows and overgrown bushes that choked a yard filled with rusted swings and abandoned toys. And this poor girl had lost her frisbee and... No, I said.

First to myself, then once again to the room. No! But it was too late. I could hear him scuttle around before the house fell into quiet. From outside. The girl started to say something. Greeting, perhaps. There was a knife in my hand that I didn't remember taking,

and I was outside before I had time to even think. The little girl looked to me and instantly burst into tears. I was sprinting towards her with a knife in one hand and a murderous look straight out of a horror film. But before that, before she'd seen me, she'd been looking towards a thicket of grass with disgust on her face. No! I screamed.

Not at her. but at him. I picked her up in my arms even as she battled me away. I didn't care if this girl thought I was Satan himself. If she ran back home and told her parents about the mean, creepy lady, and they called the police, and this all ended with me safe and warm behind bars. I didn't care. I clutched my arm around her waist and willed it to be a band of steel to keep her safe.

She squirmed but could not break free, and I ran towards the gate as fast as I could carry her. It's okay, I cooed. He won't get you. I was halfway there when her screaming and wiggling stopped. Her head was over my shoulder, and all of a sudden she gripped me like I was a life raft. The change was instant, and it made me falter. For a brief moment, I heard his feet pulsing towards me. I turned brandishing the knife like a torch against the darkness, but nothing was there.

The girl started screaming again, the sight of my husband sinking. And she held on to me with dear life. I backed up to the gate carefully and began to wonder what next when. Out of nowhere, he leaped into sight and grabbed the girl's hair, yanking her head back while she screamed so hard her face turned, beat root red. He jumped up and down, hollering and crying like a giddy toddler with a Christmas present. His misshapen face was grinning. His gums black and bloody, but his hands threatened to tear the girl's scalp right off.

I started to feel nauseous at the sight of him. His sigh seemed to change with every glance. I couldn't make sense of it, and I felt that worm inside my mind wiggle and dislodge more of my thoughts. Sometimes he was waist-high, sometimes a full-grown man. But always those hands were too large for his frame, and the brown flakes of blood still trapped beneath his chipped nails reminded me exactly what he wanted. No! I screamed and lashed out with the knife.

The motion that came to me in the moment was a downward thrust, and the knife was left embedded in my husband's right shoulder. He let go immediately and started to howl and sob. He seemed to shrink before my very eyes, and I quickly set the girl down and pushed her through the gate. I pulled the bars shut, screamed at her to run, then quickly turned back to my husband, who was sucking his thumb and trying to pull the knife out with his remaining hand.

After some awkward fumbling, he grabbed the handle and threw the knife to the ground. It clattered to the floor, blood glistening in the sun. You're just like her. He said. His voice breaking and returning to the calm, authoritative man I'd once known. His beady eyes bored into me, and I could have collapsed under that stare. The change in cadence was as sudden as a sheer drop off a cliff.

I just wanted what she never gave me, but you're all the same. Suddenly, his whole face bunched up into a twisted infantile smile, as he declared with joy and delight in a voice. like a child's. I'm going to crawl inside you. Dinner was cold. It was the first meal I'd made him after her little fight. I'd fidgeted over it for hours,

filled with doubts and fears. But it all came to not. He was too smart to fall for that. Whether he'd seen the rat poison or not, he hadn't come for dinner. Now I was left with a problem. I'd stayed fixed to the spot in the kitchen, working away with endless looks over my shoulder.

and night had fallen. The only light was in the kitchen, and it was a big house, filled with inky black shadows that swallowed entire rooms and corridors. Often I would glimpse a sliver of movement. Like a shark's fin cresting a wave, I might see a blue piece of fabric catch the moonlight before disappearing back into the dark. He was out there. I had a new knife, at least. and something about the adrenaline in my veins help me think more clearly. When I looked back in my thoughts, I no longer saw a child, but something twisted and deformed with delusion and malice. A disease had festered not only in our heads,

but the space we shared in the world we lived in, spilling out into reality like a migraine aura made real. I didn't know if it was an intruder, or just something dark that had spread from within. But it belonged to me one way or another. I couldn't let it live. Dinner's ready! I cried.

Come on! There was a shuffling somewhere out front, by the stairs. I don't know why I bothered saying anything. He must have seen me. I cried out again, my voice faltering from fear and exhaustion. I picked the plate up and put it by the threshold at the kitchen. its edge just inches from the darkness. You must be hungry, I said, doing my best to smile.

Please eat it, I added. For me? A single chubby finger peeked through the doorway and slid the plate across. It was so loud in the silence, grating across tile. Something felt wrong. But in the moment, I just hoped it was the sheer panic trapped deep within my chest. The plate whipped out of the darkness and struck me in the face. My nose cracked and my head snapped backwards. Before I knew it, I was on the floor, the plate

rolling to a noisy stop a few feet away. It was whole, but one edge was coated in blood. I became aware of a coppery taste in my mouth, and I realized it was mine all over that plate. It felt like I was lying there for a good few seconds, agony ringing in my ears, while I opened it closed my jaw and disconcerted shock. Slowly, layer by the layer, things started to write themselves. It was a sharp pain in the back of my head, and I realized I must have hit it when I fell over. And there was a weight on top of me, pressing down, making it hard to breathe. Had I broken a rib? I wondered. But it didn't feel much like that. It felt like something was moving around, something sharp and painful. I looked down and saw my husband's cabbage-shaped head

bobbing away at my breast. I screamed and pushed him away, but he clamped down hard, those nasty little peg teeth burying themselves into my flesh and refusing to dislodge. I was overcome with disgust and started beating away at him, scratching deep gouges in his scalp and shoulders. Only when I buried my thumb in his nasty little eye did he relent and let go. He sat up and my thumb slid out of the socket with a pop, and for a moment he looked overcome with naive sadness. But then hatred washed over his face and his remaining high glared at me with murder. He started to choke me, those terrible fists clasping around my throat like bands of iron. I struggled, lashing my hands out of the floor and furniture desperate for something, anything that

might help. Thankfully, my hands alighted on the knife and I drove it hard into the soft flesh of his armpit. For a moment he carried on as normal, but by the time I drove the blade between his ribs. Once, then twice. The blood had already drained from his face. It soaked us both. And to my horror, it stank of sour milk and talcum powder. I watched the realization of his wounds dulled the fire in his eyes. He stumbled backwards, his face scrunching up as he let out a horrific ball. Pink foam seeped from his mouth, and he gasped and choked. His lungs were filling with blood. And I watched him die slowly before me. By the time it was done, he was a man again, a strangely dressed, emaciated wretch of a man, but nothing more. I touched my throat and it felt sore,

my chest was a ragged mess. Was it good for you? I asked, a laugh rising unbidden from my lips. The sound of my own voice scared me. I sounded deranged, but I couldn't stop laughing at the joke I'd made. And before long, my breath became short, and consciousness slipped away in its entirety. It's been some time. How long? I don't know. And I still wonder whether he was ever real. I burned the house down, and I finally got to hear the sound of sirens coming to take me away. It was a weird problem to explain to the police. They had evidence of a child living in the home, but no body. They thought I'd offed a kid and burn the house to hide the evidence.

Later on they found one adult body, but it was the delivery men's, not my husband's, and I was arrested just a few short weeks later. Of course I told them the truth, just barring a few of the weirder details. My husband had gone insane, I said, he'd snapped, started acting like a child, killed one man, then tried to kill me. Unfortunately, there are no records of my husband, nor our marriage, nor our life. life together. I lived alone, unemployed because of a wealthy trust granted to me by family. The mortgage was not paid by my husband, but rather the trust. All of this was news to me.

He was real. I know that much. I still have the wounds to prove it. And they found that little girl who testified somewhat in my defense. She really had seen a man dressed as a baby, she said. Although when asked to give a description of what he looked like, she broke down screaming and had to be sedated. I knew what that felt like. I couldn't tell you my husband's age, his eye color, his birthday, or even his name. It's all worked against me.

I think I'm on my second appeal, but my lawyer told me to lower my expectations. No marriage certificate, no wedding invitations, no relationship status on Facebook, no photos, no plane tickets for the honey, moon, no official documentation. Every conceivable trace of this man's life simply doesn't exist. I managed to get a brain scan, and they say my brain should belong to a dementia patient. Except I'm just 36. It's all full of holes. Lesions, they call them. That's a good name for it.

I said there was a worm, didn't I? It was eating through my head like an apple core. not a literal worm of course well i don't know that for sure but still i think he did something to my head because even now just the thought of him can give me a nosebleed i don't remember much of my life before he wrote over it like a computer file and deliberately blotted out whatever didn't suit his purpose and of course he never did find his body did they bit of a cliche i know i think it was childish of me to ever believe that a few holes in the torso would kill him. It, I should say. After all, he was playing pretend at being human, just as much as being a child. It was my wife who suggested role play, despite what she may say elsewhere. You'll just have to

decide who you think is being honest. When she first suggested acting out roles, I was hoping for pigtails and pleaded skirts, but I should have figured it wouldn't be like that. If I'm honest, there isn't much that I wouldn't have agreed to at that point in our relationship. Things weren't bad, but, well, they weren't good either. One morning, I woke up to a packed lunch and an orange juice on the breakfast table, and when I tried to make myself a cup of coffee, she told me that growing boys shouldn't drink things like that. I typically skipped breakfast and headed right out the door each morning, but the way she sat

there looking at me made me feel like I missed something. It took me a moment to realize that this right here was the start of our little pretend play. So I sat down and ate the cereal and drank the juice. The whole scene made me pretty uncomfortable. I guess I just felt on the spot. Sounds weird, but I've always had a bit of a thing about people cooking for me. My mom died when I was eight and dad didn't really pay much attention. I had to cook and clean and iron my uniform every night before school, and no one ever

did my homework for me. Later on, my dad married some poor waitress half his age and treated her like a servant, and I realized that must have been exactly how he treated my mother. I'm not saying that this taught me to be the perfect man or anything, far from it. I just didn't like things that made me feel like I was becoming my dad. But there was my wife, making me cereal for breakfast, and then handing me a neat little lunchbox with cartoons on it that I'd watched as a kid. Goku.

That was a throwback. And I'd be lying if I'd be lying if I'd be. I said I didn't like some part of it. Driving to work that day, I decided that this role play was probably just some kind of therapy, and that it was best to go along with it, even after I got home that night to find that she'd run me a bath. Not only did she say that she wanted me to be a clean little boy, she even laid out some brand new pajamas.

It was deeply uncomfortable. She perched on the toilet lid while I sat upright in the tepid water, not sure what to do with myself. A grown man with a beer belly hunched over in the water. I felt so stupid. Do you need help washing yourself? I sure. I replied, and she came over and pulled out a fish-shaped bottle of no-tier shampoo. She washed my hair, using a small plastic cup to rinse my scalp. I had to lean back for her to get it all, and she held my head in her hands. I hated it. My eyes wouldn't stay shut. Her hands were too cold, the water too warm, the porcelain of the tub too hard. And every time the water flowed over my head, I would reflexively lurch forward to try to sit up, which of course meant I got

suds in my eyes. Shhh, just lie back. It won't hurt. I won't let it. She kept saying. So I laid back and controlled my breathing and told myself that it was for her sake, not mine. One of my last memories of my mother was of her reading a book while I sat in the bath. And I guess I didn't like how I felt in my wife's arms at that moment. But she just kept on talking to me in that soothing voice. And somewhere along the lines, I let go of conscious thought and focus on the sensation of the warm water rolling down my scalp.

You can let go. She said, wiping some water from my face. And when I looked up at her, I realized that I was shaking and my heart was pounding. All of a sudden, it all just came out. All the tension, all the anxiety, the constant. state of near panic that I had suppressed for my entire life. You're meant to say that this kind of stuff feels cathartic, but I hated it. It made me feel physically sick, even a little ashamed.

She held me in her arms. I sobbed like a baby in the tub, and when it was finally over, all I could think was, thank God, I can breathe again. I let her dry me as I stood dripping wet on the tiles, and then I let her dress me in the cool, dry pajamas she'd laid out already, the silky fabric raising goosebumps on my skin. By the time I curled up into bed, her arms cradling my head like it was a precious jewel, I was exhausted like I'd just gone for a quick 30-mile run. The last thing I remember was the theme song of Ed Ed Nettie and the flood of nostalgia combined with the feel of fresh bedlin and put me to sleep hard and

fast. The next day at work, I felt dirty, and I didn't much enjoy the thought of going home. I knew it was waiting for me, and sure enough she was there with SpongeBob pajamas, brand new in one hand, and a plate of food in the other. At first, I told her I wasn't up for it that night, but she just told me to stop being silly and to sit down and eat. And, well, the food did look good. And stupid as this is, I told myself it was me doing her a favor, you know? Like if I just agreed to have her do all this stuff for me, it would be okay, so long as I agreed begrudgingly. So I ate the food and wore the clothes, and I tried not to cringe when she called me her baby boy. As much as I hated it, she was being really nice to me.

I just wanted her to like me. She hadn't liked me in so long, and this whole messed up business meant that she was being genuinely affectionate to me. For years, she has always kind of looked at me like I was a dick. I don't know where, but somewhere along the line, I stopped being her husband and just became A husband. Just another emotionally stunted guy with a receding hairline. I could have been more attentive, I know that, but nobody told me how exhausting mediocrity

is, and by the time I got through barely surviving work each day, I'd find very little energy left to give her. I feel lonely all the time, and something about being in her arms made me feel a little less alone. I secretly hoped that this role play was about dismantling the walls we'd both put up. It wasn't on my terms. I would have picked literally anything else, but hey, when is life ever fully on anyone's terms?

Being in love really means being held hostage. And yeah, things were bad, but I really loved her with everything I had. So I had to work with what I had. And what I had was this weird roleplay. I figured that it made some sense that some women didn't want a daddy, that instead some women wanted to be a mommy. You see it online all the time, right? Daddy this, daddy that. He can't throw a stone online without finding some pornographic image of woman being infantilized.

So why couldn't it go the other way around? So long as it wasn't sexual, I figured I could do it. I'd wear the pajamas, watch cartoons, and ask for help coloring in the lines. In the end, I didn't just go along with it for a few nights. I went along with it every single day that followed. And I found that every day there was a little more of it to go along. with. The packed lunches became more elaborate.

The food I ate grew simplified until it was practically the kind of stuff you'd feed a toddler. And one Friday, when I finally told her I wanted to break, she just told me to stop being silly. She used that phrase a lot during the role play, and this is going to sound stupid, but she made me feel silly when she said it. Her voice immediately made me feel small and ashamed, just like I had in the bath. And before I even realized I was doing it, I was sliding the the pajamas on and booting up my Xbox while she messed around in the kitchen. I had actually planned on talking to her that night about going to couples therapy, but

she spoke to me like a little boy, and I just couldn't stop myself from reacting like one. It was like I'd been trained. That weekend, I listened to her tell me stories as I sat on the counter kicking my legs, and I think I felt something die inside me. On some level, I have to take some responsibility. I ate the food I wanted to eat, and when she asked if there was a little, I was a little If there was anything I wanted, I always had something to say. I watched the shows I wanted to and wore the clothes she put out for me, and pretty soon

I got used to not thinking about those things. Pretty soon every single day was spent with her. Some nights were movie nights, and we'd watch her favorite films while she told me all about the memories she had of first watching them. Some nights were mommy nights, where she'd sit and drink wine and watch her own shows while I played games. She made forts out of cushions, camped in the backyard, played cowboy and Indians using Nerf guns, and chased each other around the house for hours at a time, playing hide-and-seek or some homebrew version of tag.

If I had to describe this time, it was like being in a waiting room. Only I didn't have a number or a clock or any way of knowing how much time had passed. The only way I could even tell the time was passing was that I lost weight. In fact, I lost a lot of weight. My wedding ring slipped right off my finger one day, and where it went after that, I'll never know. I still don't understand this part of it, but I remember that I just kept getting thinner. For about three weeks, I fell ill with some stomach bug, and I spent my days in bed watching TV while she checked my temperature and fed me chicken soup.

And by the time I came out of it, I was wearing a child's large set of pajamas. I mean, how does it even work, right? I started the year weighing 260 pounds, and by the end of it, I got down to 100. Not only that, but my hair started getting thin and downy, and I couldn't even remember when I'd last needed a shave. I asked her about this one day, and she played dumb, like she didn't know what was happening to me. But out of the two of us, she must have known because it was literally right in front of her eyes.

I was changing. She recommended that I stay home until I felt 100% myself again, which of course, The horse meant that I never went back to work because I never felt like myself again. Looking back, it wouldn't surprise me if she forged a resignation letter of mine, or did something similar to keep me at home. Either way, by the time the stomach bug passed, I was trapped in that house, the outer gate that had once barely reached my chest, now towering over my head, and I could barely get my fingers around the bars.

It wasn't a new gate, or at least I didn't think it was, it was just somehow taller than me all of a sudden. Things stopped making sense around this time, and looking back, it's hard to disentangle certain memories and ideas. I don't even remember the crib arriving. It was just there one day, along with a whole new room in the house that physically shouldn't have been there? I checked one late night when I felt lucid, and sure enough, the bathroom and master bedroom

hadn't magically shrunk by fifty percent, but somehow a whole new room had just sprung up between them, and it was painted in baby blue. and the walls were covered in paintings of airplanes. And if I stared at them too long, I'd feel real sleepy, and my head would get heavy and boom. Next thing I remember, it'd be morning, and I'd be staring at a bowl of cereal. Cold chunks of time were purged from my head, and not just the recent stuff either. I was an accountant who suddenly couldn't do long division and struggled with his multiplication tables. Normally, my brain was like a cacophony of fireworks that took every ounce of my willpower

to keep under control. Stray thoughts just pinged off all the time and it was like, it was chaotic, but it was me. But with my wife and with everything going on, it had turned into something more like a cobweb with holes poked in it. You know when you listen to someone and their voice just turns into a drone and you realize that you stopped listening after a few words? It was like that, but with my own thoughts.

As soon as I got any momentum going, I lost interest and time faded, and I'd come to a few hours later, bouncing up and down on my wife's knee. I could practically feel bits of my mind slothing away like candle wax, leaving big patches of nothing behind, and it hurts so bad. It hurt worse than any physical pain that ever happened during that messed up time. Something was cutting my mind up like a scrapbooker going at old magazines, and I could feel it happening in real time. There were times when she'd take something off me like the remote and put it on the counter,

and it'd just hang there over my head. And that... That just didn't make sense to me. And the harder I concentrate to try and figure that out, the more it feels like staring right at the sun. And it wasn't just me. There were a couple of moments when she'd look at me, and I wouldn't see my wife. Actually, that's not right. She was my wife.

Absolutely, 100% my wife. She'd just had an extra pair of limbs. It hurts even now trying to remember too clearly. What I do know was that as time went on, I felt less like precious cargo and more like a leaden weight she had to lug from place to place. Some nights I'd wake up and spot her standing in my doorway, looking at me, and the expression on her face, it was murderous. I'd have to lie there and pretend for hours that I was snoring gently, because on some

level I just knew it'd be bad news. The time we spent together started to change, and more often than not, I'd try to stay out in the garden and play with the toys, only I wasn't really playing. I was just pretending, hoping that if my performance was good, then she wouldn't get any more irritated with me. Without knowing when, why, or how, rules were introduced. I'd go to do something like make myself a drink and stop, and frozen halfway to an empty glass, and remember that I wasn't allowed to get glasses out of the cupboard by myself.

I didn't know how I knew that. I just knew it. I wasn't allowed to play games past seven. I wasn't allowed to get my own snacks. I wasn't allowed in the garden without telling her why I was going. And if I broke these rules? One time I threw a ball and broke a window, and she exploded out of that screen door like a bull. It felt so wrong to feel scared of her.

She was meant to be looking after me. Those were the roles we were meant to be playing. But she grabbed my arm and pulled it so hard it popped right out of the world. the socket, and I begged for the game to stop, but nothing I said could snap us out of these messed up rolls we'd made. She dragged me into the kitchen, and I passed out about the time my head bounced off the third step on our porch. When I finally woke up, I was sitting in a high chair and strapped in real good. Something hurt, but I ignored it. All I wanted was for this pissed-off woman to love me again. I was so terrified I would have done anything she asked.

She was the only thing I had to keep me safe in the world, and my head was full of the amazing stuff she did for me. The food, the gifts, the movies, the clothes, the bathing, I could see how tired she was. It was me making her that tired. So I cried and I sobbed and I said sorry so often, my throat got sticky and dry and I started to heave. When her terrible frown finally broke, she ran towards me with her arms wide open and pulled me out of that chair. She told me to never make her hurt me again, sang it over and over again as she sat me down on the sofa. and rolled up my pajamas to show me my chubby legs. Something was jutting out of the skin,

and before I could figure out what it was, she pinched it with her finger and thumb and drew it out in one long motion. It was a needle, a little sewing needle that had been slid painfully into the thick fatty muscle of my thigh. There have to be rules, and there have to be consequences.

But don't worry, I want you to know it hurts me just as much as it hurts you. We both suffer when you bring the rules. I want you to know that you don't just hurt yourself. You hurt me. I watched her she placed the bloody needle on her tongue and swallowed it.

When the doorbell rang, I was looking at the diapers around my waist. I didn't even know when or how they had gotten there, and weirdly I remembered thinking the exact same thing that morning, and the morning before that. And the longer I thought about it, the harder it was for me to remember when I'd actually last used the toilet. realization horrified me. Some of the memories flashing into my head, it was like I was experiencing them for the first time all over.

The timid woman I'd married was somehow suddenly so strong, able to not only overpower me, but able to actually lift me off the ground. To pick me up and lay me down on a small table and hoist my legs up and— Jesus Christ, she changed me! I thought, my whole body flushed with unspeakable humiliation. I think it was that feeling that let me keep my hands. head together when the delivery man came, like I had this little bit of defiance that stopped me trying to hide from the stranger. This is my chance, I thought. Wait, no, I'm not allowed to open

the door, not for strangers, but I can speak to him. Maybe he can help. Someone has to help. But if she comes and finds me, then I'm in trouble. I don't want to be in trouble. It was like being drunk, or like having my thoughts handcuffed to a maniac. I had to fight every step of the way. I had to fight every step of the way to stay a man and not a child, and I pulled at the handle, eager to get some perspective on what was happening to me. Only, I never got to even see the guy, because that was when the bathroom door slammed shut. She's coming. And I knew that if she found me, I'd get one hell of a punishment.

My legs and arms already hurt so bad. I wasn't a very good boy, I knew. I broke a lot of rules, and it didn't help that new ones were popping up all the time. I fled toward the kitchen, turning the corner just in time for the door to swing open and for this delivery guy to get a good look at me. I briefly turned to face him and the way he reacted to the side of me. I expected to feel embarrassed, but I felt scared. Something was happening to me and the fact that the guy could see me made it horrifyingly real.

My body had changed, and no matter what my wife wanted, I wasn't a child. I was changing into something, but it wasn't a normal kid. This wasn't Benjamin Button. Whatever happens when you cram a chubby, middle-aged guy into a three-foot package, the result isn't a cute little kid. It's a nightmare. I ran crying from the look of his eye and got as far as the garden when I heard my wife thundered into the living room.

Who let you in? I have children in this house. Who are you and why are you in my home? The poor guy was dumbstruck. I could hear him stammering away as I ran under the porch steps and waited. I'd learned this was one of the few spaces where she was. couldn't physically fit. The few times I'd hidden under there, she'd had to calm herself down, and that made things

a little easier on me, at least in the short term. Now I hoped it'd keep me safe long enough that I could maybe even make a break for it when the guy left the gate. As she'd child-proofed it with some infuriating mechanism that my fat fingers couldn't work, but sure did take a long time for that gate to swing open and closed, and that right there was the best chance I was ever going to get. Get out of my house! She followed, hot on his heels.

Who's your manager? Who do you work for? I want to put in a complaint. I want you to know exactly how goddamn badly you've messed up. The guy was stuttering and mumbling and fumbling, unsure of whether to run away or turn and give this woman a decent account of himself. I hoped he would leave. I was hidden so well, and if he opened that gate, then I would finally have a chance to get

away from this living nightmare. This guy was still trying to answer when my wife stepped down onto the path and turned to me slyly. raising one eyebrow right in my direction where I thought I was hidden. Jesus, the terror I felt. I thought I'd got one over on her, but she knew the whole time, and she had something planned. Look at this. Look at this step. This wasn't damaged until you came along. The guy looked confused as hell, and I couldn't blame him. He'd been bombarded with conflicting complaints. It was like he was grasping at air to understand everything he'd seen.

It wasn't just my wife going off at him. It was the memory of what he'd seen. The memory of me. He bent down to look, and my wife encouraged him to get closer. I wondered why she was making him get so close to my hiding spot. Did she want to humiliate me again? Did she want to parade the little freak around? I thought she must have known how much my body upset me, and she was going to use that fact to torture me a little bit.

But it was nothing that tame. Without warning, his face slammed into the middle step, his head bouncing off it like a coconut, But only she was there ready to catch him, and before either of us could figure it out, she had shoved his head right back against the wooden step. He started to swear, then shout, then cry, and then finally he screamed, screamed, and screamed. It lasted so long. She never stopped pushing, and somehow, impossibly, he started to give away. The sides of his skull started to crumble.

His eyes bulged. His teeth popped out, and he fell to the floor like coins from a slot machine. I had to pull my legs up to keep them from landing on my bare feet. I had front row seats to the worst horrors show I could ever think of, watching the guy get scalped in slow motion. Only it didn't stop at his head. She kept pushing until his shoulders started to pop and crack. Arms bent backwards, bones snapped.

Muscle and skin were peeled off with a sound like Velcro. In the end, he poured out of that little six-inch gap and fell onto the floor into a quivering pile of flesh and skin. The only thing left on the other side was my wife's face, staring at me right through the gore-coated wood. Come on. She grinned. Put your new toy away.

I'll make you some lunch. I was sitting outside, pretending to watch the clouds go by, aware that she was behind the kitchen window and pretending to wash the dishes. She was looking right at me, even if I couldn't see her. I'd watched her clean that guy up, watched her dump him into an old compost pile around back. He wasn't the only one down there. I saw all my old clothes, my laptop, my phone, my keys, my mail, everything that used to be me. I'd never really thought of it much, but I'd shrunk and changed, and I guess all that meat and bone and fat had to go somewhere.

I just hadn't realized that she'd tied it up in dripping bed sheets and plopped it at the farthest point in our yard. I don't know how to explain it. I just knew it was me down there. Bits of me I'd never get back. I couldn't even begin to tell you how it feels to grieve your own. own body like that. Whatever defiance I had was gone, especially after seeing what she did to that delivery guy, coming to terms with who, or rather what I was, meant that I lost all desire to escape. I would have tried to overdose if it wasn't against the rules for me to go anywhere

near the medicine cabinet. I ran a thumb across the purple and yellow flesh of my thigh. The skin riddled with a thousand infected puncture marks. Can't break the rules, I thought. When a frisbee floated freely over the hedge, I stared at it for a moment, like I was a disinterested cat. My eyes tracked it, but nobody was home upstairs, if you get what I mean. Only when it landed gently on the grass, and I heard the gate clang open, did it dawn on me that I wasn't alone out there. It was a little girl, and her reaction wasn't all that different to the delivery man's. She stopped dead in her tracks and started to cry a loud, distressed wail. I wanted to ask her for help, but I didn't want to face the way she looked.

looked at me, so I quietly scuttled off towards the bushes to hide. Or at least I started to. That was when I heard the screen door bang and my wife come down the steps with a big smile on her face. It's okay. She cooed, reaching out to hold the girl. Only our visitor couldn't see the kitchen knife my wife clutched behind her. I won't let anyone ever hurt you. When she started walking towards our kitchen door, something broke. I felt a special kind of hatred burn inside me. It wasn't a double.

defiance so much as pure spite. The kind of feeling that make you scream, I hate you, over and over at your parents just to see them hurt. It sounds stupid, but as much as part of me wanted to keep that little girl safe, another part of me was just plain old jealous. I started to run towards the two of them, and my wife, spotting me, hoisted the girl up into her arms. Only that slowed her down so much that I reached them both before she even got up the

first step. I tried to grab the girl's coat when I jumped, but I was. but wound up grabbing a fistful of hair. Everything that happened next was a jumble, but my wife slashed my arm and wrist with that big knife of hers, and I pulled so hard on the girl's poor head that a load of her hair came free in my arm. In the end, though, I think I helped because this girl started screaming like hell, and when she got a good look at me, that was when the fear really kicked in, and she started wriggling

and kicking and punching, and my wife, who really wasn't ready for how hard it can be to keep hold of a pissed off kid, ended up dropping the little girl. Once her feet were on the ground, that kid just zipped right out of there, and I did everything I could to keep my wife away from her. It wasn't a whole lot, but I think it helped. I think between the way my messed up appearance got the girl running and the way I managed to hold onto my wife's leg for long enough for her to trip up a little, I think I saved that kid.

Looking back on everything that my wife cost me, I guess that was one of the few little victories I ever had. As soon as the gate clang shut, all that feeling of triumph driveled away. I crawled back towards the porch steps as quickly as I could, and the best way to describe it is that even though I wasn't looking at her, when my wife's eyes found me, I could feel them. Her rage. It must have been what it's like to stand next to radioactive waste.

I swear my shadow got darker, and the ground got a little hotter. And the noises I heard, they didn't sound like they came. from an upset woman. Not sure what they sounded like, really, except maybe a strange kind of clicking. When I finally got under the house, I turned and saw that she looked big enough to crush a man like a bug. I don't know how to describe it, except it was a little like looking at something with 3D glasses, or the way your eyes feel just before big migraine.

I guess, for just a second, I saw her as something that wasn't human, but the part that really hurts my head is that she never changed. It was the same entity I had married on the altar, only now I got the same feeling I did looking at dead spiders or leathery roadkill. She'd never really been human, had she? And with my memory shot to shit, I wasn't even willing to bet that I'd even married this thing. You read about those parasites that lay eggs in their hosts, looking at her as she scuttled

towards me, yeah, I got the sense that that's what she was, some kind of parasite. She stopped just inches from the steps, her face peering at me through the gaps. She blinked with a third set of eyelids and smiled so wide, her skin started to lose its color and break. I will drown you in my womb. She said as calmly as she would ask if I wanted cut up hot dogs in my spaghetti. I believed her. I didn't come out of those stairs for the rest of the day, not even when my wife stood on the porch

and called me for dinner. I didn't fancy my chances with whatever was shambling around up. there and pretending to be a wife or a mother or whatever else it felt like. I didn't want anything she prepared, and as time wore on, I found that the hunger in my stomach sharpened my mind so that I didn't mind it too much. Perhaps I could hazard a guess that she wasn't being honest about what was in my food, and I didn't want anything she prepared. Whatever this was between us, it wasn't really a game now. The stakes were too high, and for me, tucked away under those steps with my stomach growling and my mind growing more lucid

with every passing second, I really started to hate her. I hated that she'd hurt me when she was supposed to protect me. I hated that she'd lied every second of every day until this sick little plan of hers had come to fruition. But more than anything, I hated her for what she'd done to me. I wasn't a man, but I sure as hell wasn't a child. I was more like a monster and a joke, and I just knew that some of the same. Somehow, she'd been the one stripping meat and fat off my bones until my frame withered to this

pitiable state. I had to leave. I had to. She'd since locked the gate, and I needed the key, and if she stopped me, well, I guess I needed a knife, didn't I? I needed something to keep me safe. I waited until sunset and crawled out from under the house, making sure to stick to the shadows.

Peeking through the kitchen window, I saw her standing there with a plate in one hand and a blank expression on her face. She looked a little broken, like she didn't quite know what to do now that I wouldn't listen to her cries of dinner time. She just stood there and shivered until some flicker of movement caught her eye, and she pivoted around to track it like a bird of prey. I had to drop out of sight more than once because of how sensitive she was to change is in the light. Although I think I managed to avoid her line of sight, because when I finally snuck into the house via the back door, she was in the exact same spot, stared at the same. staring into the darkness like a blind man.

For a moment, I thought I was safe in the shadows, but whatever this thing was, it didn't seem so committed to playing human. As soon as I got near the stairs, her eyes fixed on me like a hounds, and she came barreling forward on every limb she had. What little of her was visible in the moonlight almost looked fish-like, like she'd been pulled out of the bottom of a lake. She still had the general shape of a person, I guess, only it was like something wearing a human suit, one that was falling apart. Her joints slipped up and down her bones like they were

on a pulley, and they went backwards and forwards and sideways. As she got closer, I smelled her, and it was like rotten milk and dog shit left in a hot car. It hit me hard enough to water my eyes and make climbing the stairs difficult. Of course, I didn't get very far. Between my short legs and the side of her coming at me, I didn't stand a chance. I got maybe four steps up before she grabbed my ankle with one hand and hauled me downstairs. She mounted me, legs on either side, and slowly undid part of her sundress. I didn't know what the hell was going on, nor did I have the strength to fight it. The last thing I remember was the sight of her ribs pressing against her skin, like fingers trying to poke through a rubber sheet, like they were alive inside of her

and wanted out. Baby need a feeding. She asked, before grabbing my head and slamming it backwards into the step behind me. I awoke with a foul taste in my mouth. I'd been strapped into a high chair, and I looked around grogly until I laid eyes on a baby bottle. The congealed contents were the color of a smoker's finger, with visible lumps of pink matter lurking towards the bottom, like syrup and a milkshake. My wife said, her misshapen fingers stroking my hairless head. Straight from the source. I realized that my legs were in agony, and I saw that there must have been a dozen needles poking out of my skin.

And right through the pajamas she dressed me in, she pressed a finger against one, and for a second the pain became so white-hot that I nearly passed out all over again. I fought hard to stay awake, desperate to avoid another feeding, although part of me wondered if I wanted to endure a second one while awake. But when it all came down to it, it was just her in my way, wasn't it? And that hatred inside me burned up like a pyre, and I realized that I wouldn't mind dying all that much. I'd secretly hoped for so long that maybe I could fix this somehow, maybe even get back to normal and get my body back. I don't know how I'd let myself think that could be possible.

Sitting there, looking at her loom over me, I decided that living this way wasn't really an option anymore. My hands were free. Who could blame her for leaving them like that? I couldn't hit her or kick her. I didn't have the reach or the strength, but I did have something sharp. So I reached down and tore needle-free, and before she could try to get it out of my hand, I shoved it through her palm. It went right through like she was made of nothing more substantial than some thick wool. It didn't even make a noise, although the stent she emitted became unbearably strong. She looked angry. Good, I thought, and I reached down and grabbed another, and this time she tried to be quicker,

but it just meant her face got closer, so close that the moon might hit it, and for a moment And I hesitated, because I finally saw just how god-awful she really was. You could see where all the skin was just slipping away and hanging loose like a badly made mask and whatever was underneath. It looked a little like a spider. Not a spider's face, mind you. No, like she had a spider for a face. Only it was a spider with too many legs that were all curled up like it had been stomped

on a few times. Like her whole skull was a ball made out of furry rubber bands. But she still had eyes, and they looked mostly human. And like I said, she'd gotten in so close I could see those hairs twitch and wriggle, and that meant I could lunge forward and jam that needle right into her eye, pushing so hard that by the end of it, it was as embedded in the palm of my hand as it was in her skull, or whatever she had. I don't know what exactly was in there, but it must have hurt because she let out a scream

that drew blood from my ears, and she ran into the dark, desperate to get away. Far away from whatever had caused her pain. I didn't have much time. I slipped loose from the chair and ran from the house, stopping only long enough to catch a glimpse of a shadow passing over the house as if something had flown over. It's hard for me to say what exactly, but I had a vague notion that some of the lamp posts in the nearby street were moving

and that they reached way too high into the sky. I felt her leave. Jesus, I felt her leave and it was like popping a cyst. It hurt bad. It hurt like nothing I'd ever felt. It wasn't a protracted injury, just more like being shot, I imagine. I don't know. It just… I reached the gate and saw somehow that my hand dwarfed the lock, and by the

time I'd fumbled it open, I was already hurtling towards the ground like a falling tree. When I woke up, the house was blazing, and I felt like I'd eaten 150 pounds of raw meat. But at least I was the right size again. I wound up having to take a trip to the hospital that same day, so they could get the remaining needles out of my leg. I was laughing so damn hard that they wound up keeping me for my own safety, which, well, I guess I can't blame them. Between the needles and the children's clothing and the way I screamed with joy at the side

of my own hands and my hairy arms, I guess I must have really looked crazy. I didn't feel too bad being stuck in that place, though, and they didn't keep me for long. They said something about spores in my lungs, I don't know. I don't even care. I did tell them what happened, of course, but they just told me it was all a product of my mind. They say my head is screwed. I mean, they say it a little more politely than that, but that's the gist. They showed me a scan of my brain, and it looked like an apple after it spent three weeks on the ground in mid-August.

I guess I'm not an accountant anymore. Most days, if I'm lucky, I can work a remote. For a long, long time, she kept leaving me a packed lunch on the doorstep of my new apartment. It's crazy, but I almost ate one or two of them. It was a strong habit, you know. But instead, I always made a big show of throwing the food right in the trash. The last box was full of divorce paperwork, although it didn't look official, more like a bad joke. But that was the whole marriage, wasn't it?

Just a bad joke. I signed them in Cran and left them outside.