Barry had never been much of a thinker, but he was blond, fit, and handsome, with the prettiest storm-gray eyes. So when he proposed, I said yes. My parents passed away when I was young, and Barry’s couldn’t afford to fly, so we just signed some papers and Barry brought them to the courthouse. His single-minded insistence that we get pregnant right after getting married and moving into a new house was a little surprising, as he hadn’t mentioned wanting kids before. I suppose we hadn’t talked about those things much.

Surprisingly, I did get pregnant sometime within the first few weeks of our marriage. I was happy. When I told Barry, he was ecstatic. He was also very supportive, fetching everything for me and cooking and cleaning when he got home from work.

Shortly after he left for his job at the hospital in the mornings, I would start to hear banging sounds coming from the basement. The door was locked, and anyway, the basement steps were steep and I didn’t want to risk them if I didn’t have to. I sent Barry down to investigate when he got home, and after checking, he assured me it was just the pipes making noises. He told me the water heater was doing its programmed flushing, and then he went down and flushed it to show me it made the same noises, which it did.

Continue reading →

For fifteen years, my husband seemed normal. Then he started cutting off his own body parts.

I loved my husband. I love my husband. George. We met studying abroad in Germany, and against all odds kept in contact when we returned to the United States. We dated a year before we got married and we had two kids shortly after, Zoe and Mark.

We didn’t have a perfect life, but we had a great one. George got a job writing for the local paper, and I supplemented our income with a part-time job at the library.

George was good at his job, too. If he’d been in a bigger city, I swear he would have won a Pulitzer for some of his stories. He pursued stories like a bloodhound. On two separate occasions, he solved a crime the police hadn’t figured out yet, and he kept the local politicians honest, a feat I’m not sure has been rivaled anywhere else in the world.

When he told me that he was working on the biggest story of his career, I knew it would be something special. He started working longer and longer hours, and he would come home with his hair messy, his shirts wrinkled and sweat-stained, and with dark circles under his eyes.

Continue reading →

I first tried skin soup for lunch at an “American-Style” restaurant in a broken-down strip mall with faded signs and eight empty storefronts. It was a dare, and my friends and I have an understanding that we do not chicken out on dares. Besides, it wasn’t like it was actually skin, I thought. The waiter told me I was the first person to ever order it.

My dread stretched the wait to both sides of an hour. I dabbed sweat from my brow several times, though the day was cool. The waiter brought out hot sauce and a soup spoon. My face grew hotter. 

The soup consisted of a clear broth, a few slices of green onions, and what looked like skin floating in it. I took a spoonful of broth and green onion. My friends chided me for avoiding the skin, so I got a tiny bit of that in my spoon as well.

It. Was. Delicious. 

Continue reading →

My wife wanted to keep her room the same as when she was alive. Jessica. She died too young. Way too young. We kept her room full of all her belongings, which meant the shelves were full of dolls, the closet full of clothes, and the bookshelves full of books for a little girl. I wasn’t sure if that was the best way to move on, but my wife insisted.

The first months were a blur of grief and family gatherings. Christmas was the worst. I drank too much and passed out early, waking on the couch around two in the morning with a dry mouth and a pounding headache. 

Stumbling to the bathroom to get something for my headache, I noticed a light coming from underneath the door of Jessica’s room. I opened the door to turn it off, when I saw my wife sitting on the edge of Jessica’s bed, holding one of Jessica’s dolls.

“Samantha?” 

Continue reading →