Something stole my wife’s skin
There’s a few things in life that are harder to get over than others. The death of a loved one is one of the hardest. Realizing that the person you love so dearly is gone in the blink of an eye is a heavy weight to so suddenly carry.
It’s even worse whenever that person you love had something absolutely horrible happen to them. I mean a gut wrenching, soul tearing, all-belief-questioning thing that nearly destroys you to your very core. It leaves you lying awake at night, knowing that they wouldn’t want you to give up but begging whatever is out there to take you instead and bring them back. You wonder how something so horrifying, disgusting, and evil could happen to such a sweet soul. Could the world really be this awful?
That’s how I felt when I found her, my wife, murdered. I had come home from work early, but not early enough, sadly. It’s funny how things work out that way. If I had just walked a little faster to my car, would those few seconds have saved her? If the traffic wasn’t so bad, would that have been enough time? Maybe if I hadn’t stopped at so many different stores trying to find the perfect bouquet of her favorite flowers, she’d still be here. I’m sure she’d much rather me save her life than some stupid flowers that will wilt within a week. She didn’t even get to see them, either.
But I was too late, either way. When I had walked into the house that day, carrying that bouquet that took three store trips to find along with her favorite candy, I knew something was wrong. She wasn’t in the kitchen, washing dishes and humming whatever song was stuck in her head that week. She wasn’t on the porch swing in the back yard staring at the birds. And she wasn’t in her reading chair, which she so often sat in with her legs crossed and whatever her latest read was glued to her eyes. In fact, the newest book she had lovingly told me about just yesterday sat on the side table, book mark sticking out of the pages at a section I knew she would normally have passed by now.
The whole house was eerily quiet, a quiet I don’t think it has ever experienced since we moved in. Even at night you could always hear her soft nasally snore mingling with the chirping crickets outside. I walked from room to room in the house, calling her name and feeling dread grow increasingly in my stomach as I didn’t get a response. The only light in the house that was on was the bathroom, and the door was wide open, cutting through the darkness like a jagged-edged knife, a single rectangle of light illuminating the wall across it and nothing more. Even though the sun was still shining and boiling outside, the rays seemed unable to penetrate the darkness of our once bright and happy home. I stopped just before the doorway, a little voice in my head telling me not to look and to just go ahead and call the police. The sudden appearance of a strong stench of copper did nothing to settle my nerves, either, but I was already dead set on my mission. So I turned that corner, and immediately locked eyes with her. Her eyes were pleading. Whether that pleading was asking to be put out of her misery or asking for help to survive, I don’t know, but it confirmed where my feeling of dread had come from. It tore me up inside even more to not know which was her final thought as she finally left this world. Did she stay fighting, or did she want to go?
What was left of her dead form lay slumped up against the wall, a line of blood smeared in a line above her body as if she had slid down. Blood splatter also decorated the tiled floor and walls like polka dots. There were pieces of shredded skin everywhere, like whatever had attacked her was trying to get something out of her. Her jaw hung down, but not of its own accord. It seemed to have been torn until it was almost off of her face, hanging by just a few lose strings of skin and muscle. Her cheeks were sunken in like her head was a balloon that got popped. Her arms were nearly shredded to the bone and hung limply beside her. Her legs actually had bone showing through in some spots, and it made me gag. The sight of her bone didn’t even fully register as real to me at first, it seeming too similar to all of those gaudy Halloween decorations. My wife had been reduced to a mass produced decoration, slumped there as if she had been removed from her hook and discarded for another item. A strange feeling occurred in me at that moment, a feeling of anger at the idea of someone discarding someone as wonderful as her, who was the best version of any Halloween decoration by far, but then I felt shame and confusion at trying to down play my dead wife as some cheap Party City prop. The brain does strange things to cope with shock. Flowers and candy couldn’t really do much for a corpse, but I laid them by her anyway.
The cops fed me and everyone else in our family some bullshit about an animal attack. I knew an animal couldn’t have done that though because I literally saw the crime scene with my own eyes. They also said the animal had to have entered the house through the open bathroom window, but that window is almost never open. How many animals do you know that can open windows, especially wild ones? Nothing else was destroyed in the house, either. Wouldn’t an angry and hungry wild animal do a lot more damage to its surroundings than that? Especially if it panicked in the enclosure of a house that is so drastically different to the outside and open world. The fact that they just blew the whole case off because they were too lazy to do their jobs made me feel a rage I have never felt before, but I was mostly angry at myself for not saving her. The cops wouldn’t have failed at their investigation if there had never been a need for an investigation in the first place.
The worst part, however, is that, whenever I got home this afternoon, my wife was in the living room. Nearly a week after her murder, she was home. She was in her usual reading chair, reading one of her favorite books. The cover had worn down so much over the years of her reading it that the spine was breaking apart in places, strings playing peek a boo and wiggling a bit every time she turned the pages. It very much so reminded me of the strings of skin that had barely clung to her corpse whenever I found her. This was definitely not my wife, but it wore her beautiful skin. How had it pieced it back together so wonderfully?
“Welcome home, honey,” it greeted me, eyes peeking out over my wife’s reading glasses. I gave a weak smile back as a reply, but I felt my stomach churning whenever I noticed that its skin seemed…baggy in some places, like it wasn’t quite the right fit. It pieced it back together correctly, but it had stretched it out as well. I struggled to keep my composure, and it took everything in me not to run away screaming. A glimmer of hope that it actually was my wife sprang into my head, but I quickly extinguished that flame, the gruesome sight of her body returning to my mind once more. I gently shook my head to get those thoughts away, knowing it would definitely make me lose my composure.
“What’s wrong, honey?” It asked while feigning a look of worry on my wife’s face. It’s voice didn’t sound perfectly like hers. It sounded like a recording of her voice, played through a speaker that was just a few feet away from where she actually was.
I waved a dismissive hand in its direction. “Oh, nothing. Just a headache.” I glanced out the front window, hoping there would be someone or something outside, anything that could be an excuse to get away from whatever this thing was. I noticed the sunlight was struggling to shine its beams through the house once again.
“Would you like me to get you some medicine, honey?”
I shook my head again, finally meeting its eyes. It’s fake worried expression was cracking, and I could see another look, a look of questioning. It was wondering if I could tell, and it was actually starting to look legitimately worried.
“I’m just going to go shower,” I informed it, giving a small smile. I began to walk down the hall, plans of escaping out of the bathroom window fresh in my mind. My wife didn’t make it, but maybe I could. I paused my pursuit of freedom whenever it spoke again.
“Make sure you’re faster than she was, honey.”
I turned back towards it as I felt like my heart was beating out of my chest. I didn’t expect it to actually confirm my suspicions, but I guess it didn’t really matter if it was about to kill me.
“The window should still be unlocked, so you’ve got a head start.”
Before it could even finish that sentence I was in the bathroom, slamming the door behind me and locking it. I heard the sound of the chair rocking back and fourth from the motion of the thing standing up. I slid the window open, preparing to climb out. I tried to ignore the spots of blood splatter the cleaners hadn’t noticed, focusing instead on making sure my blood wouldn’t be the next to be forgotten. My wife would want me to escape, and I needed to remember that to remain strong and keep going no matter what.
“I guess that’s where those few seconds you needed for her went,” it continued, from right outside of the door. I planted my feet on the grass outside, not even bothering to close the window behind me before fleeing. Somehow I could still hear the monster as if it was right beside me, which confused me because I didn’t know if it could actually move that fast or if it was playing tricks. I didn’t have time to finish that though, though, because the last thing it said to me took my full attention and made me more terrified than I had felt seeing my wife’s ragged and demolished body.
“They couldn’t be used to save her life, but let’s see if they will save yours.”
