psychological horror | Unsettling Stories

Far Too Little Air

air

I’m one of the victims of the hypodermic needle assaults over the summer. Kara Yvette Bernard. It was the first time my name was ever in the newspaper. My name was among 51 other women; 66 total victims, 51 of whom allowed the media to name them. We did it in some spontaneous show of solidarity, as if we’d formed some kind of connection because of our victimization.

It wasn’t long before the physical damage of the assaults began to manifest. The media wouldn’t go into detail, but it was easy enough to find online. Mania. Hypersexuality. Skin deterioration. Not a single doctor could identify what our injections contained. Aside from the needle marks themselves, there wasn’t any sign that we’d been injected with anything at all. But as time went by and more of the women began to succumb to the effects, my terror and dread turned into confusion. After 3 months, I was the only one still alive.

My doctor suggested I was immune to whatever the injection had contained. I didn’t have any reason to doubt his suggestion, but there was still too much uncertainty to give me any relief. And now, almost half a year after the attack, I knew it was right to deny myself that relief. I started hearing voices.

I was on the couch eating my dinner. The television was on. At first, when I heard, “can you hear this?,” I thought it was the TV. Then the voice said, “Kara, can you hear this?”

You have to realize, after what happened over the summer, I’ve been terribly skittish. I panic at the drop of a hat and I’ve been on disability since the attack. When I heard someone say my name last night and it was so loud and clear that it was like someone else was in the room, I nearly passed out. But I knew no one was around. The place was empty aside from me – just like how it’s been for the last four months.

“Kara, please reply if you can hear us.”

I whispered that I could, and I heard talking in the background. I couldn’t make out what they were saying. The next part, though, came through without any ambiguity.

“Drown yourself.”

I didn’t move. I knew it had to be the effect of the injection.

“Fill the bathtub and drown yourself.”

That was when I started to cry. The voice kept repeating the command. The tone was calm and seductive. Then, as I bawled and begged whatever it was to leave me alone, my body started to move on its own. I had no control over anything, not even my voice or my eyelids. My body stood, walked over to the bathroom, and began to fill the tub with water.

Internally, I was shrieking and sobbing and trying to plead with whoever was doing this to me to stop. All it did was repeat what it had been saying. “Fill the tub and drown yourself.”

When the tub was full, my body stepped into the warm water. Even though I tried to fight as hard as I could to break away and not be forced to do what they were telling me to do, I sank to my knees, sat cross-legged, then dropped facedown into the tub.

My body didn’t allow me to take a breath before I plunged in. While I panicked inside a body whose autonomy had been stolen, I readied myself for the moment my lungs would give out and I’d inhale, filling their entire capacity with bathwater. I imagined sucking in the water and reflexively coughing it out, only to refill my lungs again and again as I gasped until I was just a corpse to be found by the landlord.

The gasp never came. My panicked heartbeat thumped in my ears while I stared at the plastic bottom of the bathtub. There was no pressure in my chest. The only pain I felt was the cramping in my legs from being tucked underneath me.

“What does it feel like?”

I could talk again, but I still couldn’t move.

“Help me,” I gurgled, as bubbles floated by my wide eyes on their way to the surface. There was still no pain in my chest or any compulsion to inhale. It had to have been two minutes since I went under.

“What does it feel like? What does it feel like? What does it feel like?”

The question repeated over and over in my head. Eventually, I answered. “Like I can breathe underwater.”

The reply was instantaneous. “Are you actively breathing? Are you inhaling and exhaling water?”

I considered the questions and changed my answer. “It feels like I don’t have to breathe anymore.”

There was a silence inside my head that was broken only by the sounds of my heart beating and my stomach processing my dinner.

“You have eight days. We will come see you at the end of it. Please drink the bathwater periodically to stay hydrated and adjust the water temperature to avoid hypothermia.”

I noticed I could move my left hand, arm, and shoulder again. I reached out of the water and tried to pull my head up by my hair. It was as if I weighed 1000 pounds. When I tried to reach for the plug to empty the tub, my arm flopped lifelessly in the water. After a minute, I regained movement. I fumbled for the faucet and turned the water on and off.

For eight days, I remained underwater. My legs had gone numb. On the fourth or fifth day, I tried to run the water and overflow the bathtub with the hope a neighbor would notice and alert the landlord. I lost control of my hand for a while after that.

The water grew dirty as the days went on and I stopped drinking it. I lost control of my mouth and throat and was forced to consume a certain amount every day. On day eight, my chest began to burn. As soon as the feeling registered, I had control over my entire body again. I carefully extricated my stiff body from the tub.

I remained on my back, staring at the bathroom ceiling, for a while. The smell of the room prompted me to start moving and I showered the filth off myself while looking down at my severely water-damaged body. I dried myself carefully, noticing skin coming off as I did. I thought back to the online reports of the other injected women; how their skin sloughed off in bloody, sticky clumps. But mine wasn’t like that. There was no blood. Only raw, pink skin.

It took me a while to move into the kitchen where I grabbed a box of cereal and started shoveling handful after handful into my mouth. The skin on my lips split wide open with the first handful. Again, no blood.

“Kara, stop eating.”

I dropped the box of cereal. The voice was in my head again.

“You have three hours.”

And now all I can do is wait. Wait and type. My skin is starting to hurt and I’m worried I’ve gotten an infection from being in the dirty water for so long. I don’t know what’s going to happen in three hours. Part of me wants to call the police or run away. There’s another part, though, that’s overriding my desire for help. It’s grim curiosity. It’s the curiosity of someone who’s given up hope. Someone who’s lost control. I want to see why these people want to subject me to all this.

While I was face down in the tub, I sometimes heard talking in the background. The voices weren’t directed at me. It was almost as if someone had left a microphone on by accident. Words would come through every so often. “Respiration.” “Bonding.” “Slough.” There was one time, I think on the sixth day, I was able to hear part of a sentence. I’ve picked it apart in my head over and over, trying to figure out not only what it meant in general, but what it meant for me. I guess I’ll find out pretty soon.

There’s a nervous excitement in me that I feel is somehow wrong. Somehow suicidal. But still, like I said, the curiosity is overwhelming my desire for self-preservation. A little less than two hours to go. The perversity of my excitement is unsettling. This isn’t me, but I don’t think I care. All I care is that in a couple hours, I’ll learn what they meant by “…successful underwater, but it will be entirely different in the vacuum of space.”

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Bareback

stable

I’ve been riding since I was six. It’s always felt natural and effortless. It’s nothing but the wind in my hair, the steady, pulsing steps propelling us forward, and a communion between woman and beast that transcends individuality. Once I’ve mounted her, we stop being separate entities. We become a singular machine with one, undeniable purpose: motion.

Sometime around my 14th birthday, I concluded that a saddle and bridle defiled the purity of the riding experience. They were training wheels. They had to be taken away before I could consider myself a real rider. So I insisted that I learn to ride bareback.

It was much harder than I’d anticipated. I fell often. I had a terrible time trying to get Millie to obey my commands. There were many occasions when she would roam in random directions and I couldn’t turn her. But I learned. Gradually, I learned.

I began wearing spurs. When I dug them into Millie’s sides, she’d whimper and stomp the ground, but she learned quickly that the pain meant it was time to move. The harder I spurred her, the faster she was to go. Before long, she knew I was in control again. I’d grab the thick hair by her ears and pull her head in one direction or another, depending on where I wanted us to go. My thighs would ache as I held on, but slowly, methodically, our oneness was reinstated. Our purpose was renewed. We were speed. We were power.

On the morning I’d intended to ride through sprawling, wooded acres of our property, I stepped outside to find a note on the doorstep. It was from our stable hand. With a growing sensation of rage and contempt, I read every messy, scribbled word that he’d written. He was reprimanding me for my treatment of Millie. He called me cruel. In the envelope, along with his note, were photographs of bloody streaks on her side from my spurs and raw patches from when I’d pulled her hair too hard and it had come away in my hands.

The audacity of the stable hand – the stable boy – infuriated me. When my parents died, they’d left me everything. Their fortune. Their land. Their stables. And, most importantly, Millie. Millie was my property. That the servant in charge of caring for my property could have the temerity to scold his better was incomprehensible. It was seditious. It was vulgar.

In a rage, I stormed down the hill to the stables and saw him brushing Millie’s hair. He saw me coming with the envelope in my hand. The fear blooming in his dull eyes gifted me with a modicum of satisfaction, but it wasn’t enough. It wasn’t nearly enough.

I pulled a riding crop from the wall and beat the cowering worker across his face and neck. I screamed at him and demanded that he not cover himself. He obeyed. Blood poured out of the thin, deep canyons I left in his flesh. With one, final swing, I watched his left eye split as the tip of the crop carved through the organ.

Millie paced around her stall, frightened. I saw the scabs on her head and sides that’d been featured so prominently in the photographs. I unlatched the door and beckoned her out. She looked in the direction of the stable hand and saw the blood on the floor. She hesitated. I screamed for the hand to leave, and he did. After a moment, Millie stepped out of the stall.

Her towering bulk trotted into the aisle. She brushed up against me, obviously happy I was there. I looked at my watch. There was still enough time to ride. I patted her on the butt, and she knelt down.

“Good Millie,” I whispered. My spurs clinked on the wood floor. “Now, up!”

She lifted me with one massive arm and placed me on her hunched, twisted back. Her misshapen breasts dangled as she arched, then moaned slightly as I gripped her thick, black hair. She turned her head, and for a moment, I was startled by how familiar a portion of her profile looked. That one, small sector of her deformed face looked like me. It looked like our mother. The memory brought a tear to my eye. I gathered myself.

“Let’s go,” I ordered my older sister, and with a grunt of assent and a whimper of pain as she felt my spurs, we galloped off into the dewy morning.

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The Oblivion that Masks Pain

He said I’d feel better after a while; that my pain would fade along with his memory. His words echoed throughout the husk he’d left. My soul had been cored out and left to rot.

I tossed and turned, night after night, as I imagined him with the one who made him happy. My replacement. The thought of their sex didn’t bother me. It was the intimacy after – the quiet bliss when I was the furthest thing from his mind. Just days following the dissolution of our multi-year couplehood, the one which whom he’d spent so much of his life was on her way to being forgotten.

I was forgotten.

I sought an oblivion to mask my pain; anything to dull the omnipresent savagery of loss. Memories of our happiness felt false. I wondered how long he hated me before he finally let me know it was over. How long was I happy while he was miserable? How much of his life had I stolen, oblivious to his diminishing love? I knew it was all in my mind. And my mind screamed as cascades of neurotransmitters reinforced my feelings of profound, hideous dejection.

Then I had an idea.

Part of me felt sad about how easy it was to buy heroin.

The first pet store I visited had the rats I wanted. I brought them home and fed them a solution of sugar water and heroin. They died soon after. I knew the last moment of their lives had been their best.

While they were still warm, I removed their brains and ate them. I wanted to absorb the physical manifestation of their joy.

I know a small portion of the euphoria I experienced following my meal was from the trace amounts of heroin I’d ingested. But it lasted longer than a drug high. It lasted for days. For three full days, the thought of him didn’t send me into a self-destructive spiral. Quite the contrary; I felt like I was growing. I was getting over him.

At the end of the three days, the pain came back. Nightmares flooded the sleep that’d once been a respite. The fact remained: I was gradually being forgotten. I was being replaced. Someone was creating new memories with the person I love. I couldn’t let that happen.

More rats, more heroin. Another respite. Two days, though. Only two. It wasn’t working the way I’d hoped. The root of the problem was still there. Every passing day, I was becoming less clear in his mind. The prospect being forgotten was infinitely worse than forgetting him. The former made the latter impossible.

My moment of serendipity occurred while I was throwing the dead rats down the garbage chute.

He answered his phone when I called. To this day, I feel terrible for lying to him. He rushed over, as strong and protective as ever, to see who’d hurt me. When he was sitting down, I came behind him and injected a lethal dose of heroin into the side of his neck. He punched me, hard, before his pupils dilated. Before he stopped breathing, he smiled at me.

“Kate,” he whispered, “to think I’d almost forgotten how beautiful you are.” He exhaled a long, quiet breath. His dilated eyes never left mine as he blinked once or twice, almost as if he were wondering why he didn’t feel the need to inhale anymore. When he died, his smile remained.

I opened his head. It took longer than I’d expected. I made sure to keep cleaning off his face. His smile urged me to go on. After an hour, I stared at the mass inside his skull that was him. His essence. His everything.

I didn’t know what part did what. I just knew it was all him, so it was all important. Over the course of a few days, I consumed him as he smiled. Each morsel had the potential to be a piece that contained his memory of me. All his memories of the good times. All his memories of the beauty we experienced. The closeness.

When his skull was empty, I felt different. I wasn’t euphoric, like I’d felt after the rats. I felt better. I was at peace. This was my closure. I’d ensured that I wouldn’t be forgotten. The one I loved was with me again. Forever. And together, we could be free to make new memories.

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Stop Being Such Babies

stop

There’s nothing scary about the woods. Sorry guys. Or, should I say, sorry kids. I get it. You all saw Blair Witch Project or read some shitty “creepypasta” BS online and suddenly some of the most beautiful places in the world are havens for demons or zombies or whatever garbage is lining the pockets of writers these days. But guess what: it’s all your imagination. Look, I remember being a kid. My mind would go all over the place: ghosts, goblins, aliens, blah blah blah. You know what happened, though? I hit 13. I saw the real world.

Here’s why I’m so irritated about all this “oooh I’m too scared to go into the woods now” bullshit. I live near a state park. There are quite a few local businesses that used to thrive because of the high number of hikers, picnickers, and daytrippers during the spring, summer, and fall. But over the last couple years, perfectly coinciding with those idiot kids one-upping each other to cry about how scared they are, these businesses have lost a ton of money. Yes, I own one of them. An ice cream stand.

I could see the trend starting, too. Pasty white, black-clad preteens on vacation with their parents would whine about being too frightened to go on a mile-long hike along a pristine trail just because there were spooky trees around. All while shoveling ice cream into their soft faces. I thought back to what my father would’ve done if I complained about being too much of a baby to walk around outside for an afternoon. The only ice cream he’d have bought would’ve been for me to put on my black eye.

So I’ve lost money because of this shit. My buddies lost money, too. Spouses divorced each other, kids ended up not going to the colleges they wanted to, and the local economy, aside from the revenue from skiers in the winter, went to hell. And it’s all because of those little assholes who think fragile bleating and cowering in fear is more desirable than strength and resiliency. I weep for the future.

My ice cream stand is supposed to reopen on March 1st. Already, though, I can tell it’s going to be a brutal season. The pervasiveness of those online stories about “creepy things in the woods” and “omg I can’t believe what I found in this diary while I was hiking” has just grown and grown. When I look through the comments on the ridiculous websites that showcase that trash, I see adults, ADULTS, saying how terrified they are to even go out in their backyards because they think some skinny guy in a suit or a troll monster is going to possess them or something.

Never once have the authors of that garbage thought about how their recklessness is destroying small businesses. Before my wife died, I used to be able to look out from my back porch and see families hiking through the woods, kids skipping stones across the pond, and dads teaching their sons or daughters how to safely build a fire using sticks. Now, there’s just the timeless woods and a devastated economy. The childish dopes succeeded in scaring themselves away from nature and they screwed up the livelihoods of real people in the process.

Thankfully, every now and then, a family will walk by the house and do the things I used to see before all that “I’m too scared” horseshit started. The other day, for the first time in nearly three years, a young couple braved the melting snow and mud and set up a tent right on the outskirts of my property. Do you know how happy it made me to finally see some people who weren’t afraid of ghosts or haunted woods?

I must’ve stayed in the tent until the sun came up, enjoying their warm, young meat. The woman died instantly but her husband or boyfriend or whatever remained alive for hours. The only benefit of such a low population of hikers nowadays is that not a single person heard him screaming as he watched me eat the most tender morsels of his partner before I unleashed my appetite on him. Another bonus: they were in a tent! I just had to wrap it around them and drag them back to the house. No fuss, no muss.

After all my complaining, I have to admit, finding two people who were brave enough to go out in the woods helped me feel better. It showed me they didn’t follow trends and did their own thing, just like in the old days. It doesn’t entirely make up for the lost wages and the harm to our local economy, but it’s still something. That knowledge, plus a freezer full of meat that’ll last me through the spring, helps warm my cynical heart.

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Seed of Man, Pollen of Angels

FDD MICROCYCLE: Angel-Snowdrop-Caterpillar

I don’t want to bring my son into town because I know people will stare and try to interfere. You know the kind of folks I’m talking about. Gossips and busybodies. They’ll look at him and say he’s sick; that his color looks bad; that he’s lethargic. A couple men, Jehovah’s Witnesses, I think, rang the bell last week. I answered with my boy in my arms, and they had the audacity to gasp when they saw Cullen. I just slammed the door in their stupid, pious faces. I have my own faith, anyway – my Lord tells me everyone is welcome, no matter how they look.

When Cully’s mom died giving birth to him, I buried her myself. It’s what we’ve always done in our family. We’ve had six generations of Dempseys come and go. Each one is on our property, six feet underground at the foot of the rock face. No gravestones. No need to tie them to their earthly names when they’re beyond. Their memories live on through our journals and essays. It’s what my great-many-time-over grandfather, Finian Domnall Dempsey, demanded of all his children, grandchildren, and so on. It’s how our legacy will endure.

I’ll admit to not being the best father over the first couple months of Cully’s life. I often forget to feed him. Sometimes I leave him alone for hours at a time if I need to run errands. I’ve never once heard him cry or whine, though. He’s very sweet like that. Not a complainer. One thing I’ve always remembered to do, though, since it’s hard to forget, is bathe him. As the time has gone by, his smell has gotten worse and worse. In the back of my mind, I know the reason. I’m not ready to admit it yet. My boy is healthy. Strong.

FDD MICROCYCLE: Angel-Sunflower-Lamb

This was one of our shorter microcycles, as we’re nearing its end. It feels good to write an update so soon, though; only about a month after the last one. Cullen hasn’t moved. The food I tuck into his mouth, hoping he’ll swallow, just sits there and putrefies until I turn him over and let it tumble out. That thing in the back of my mind I mentioned last microcycle is hard to deny nowadays. Cully’s gone unwashed for at least three weeks. Whenever I tried to do it, he’d get damaged. I can’t bear to hurt my boy. I’ve since swaddled him up in the tiny blanket Sine had knitted for him. I wish she could’ve seen him in it. He looks so peaceful.

FDD MICROCYCLE: Archangel-Thistle-Lion

I had to stop denying the reality of Cullen’s situation today. More and more of him had leaked through the blue pastel blanket his mother had made to keep him warm and safe. The entire house smelled of death. The end of the macrocycle just made the impending trip to the rock face that much more of a necessity.

At the foot of the rock face, above the bodies of those who came before me, countless flowers grew. Their bright faces shone with hope and encouragement, doing their best to cut through the morosity I felt. I carefully placed Cullen on the grass. I unwrapped the blanket and stared at the carcass of my son. As the wind took his odor away and poured it into the woods, I thought about the long wait I’d have to endure. Another three quarters of a year until I’d see my next Angel.

The swollen torso of Cullen collapsed inward as his livid flesh melted into the grass. His little mouth stretched open, popping softly as the decayed jawbone separated. His swollen tongue pushed itself out over his nose and forehead, followed by his esophagus, stomach, and intestines. A wanton orgy of flies descended upon the viscera, only to die the moment they touched the glistening surface. From the soil beneath my beloved boy, countless black tendrils of the finest gossamer erupted in an infinitely-long, omnidirectional spread. In my mind, I remembered the last words in Finian Domnall Dempsey’s journal he’d left before inaugurating the very first macrocycle: “…and corruption will begin its inexorable metastasis in testicles and breasts and bones.”

The carcinogenic tendrils of Archangelic filaments continued their eruption until the last of my beautiful boy had dissolved into the dirt. And he was gone. I mourned for what felt like hours and watched snowdrops, sunflowers, and thistles rise from the Cullen-fertilized ground. I felt empty. Alone.

I walked back into my home, trudged down to the basement, and unlocked the cage which held the soon-mother of my future Angel. I told her what her name would be, then I handed her a ball of yarn and two needles. Sine got to work immediately. Later that afternoon, I planted the seed of the new Cullen. All that’s left for me to do is wait.

FDD MACROCYCLE: Man-Pollen-Null

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Regarding Danny and Micah Stevenson

My brother and I had always been close. “Joined at the hip,” everyone would say. They weren’t wrong; we went everywhere with one another. There was some security in that. The bullies at school were ruthless, our neighborhood was terrible, and, honestly, neither of us could imagine having to go through it all alone.

Even though we’d spend time together, we didn’t have much in common. Danny was a sports nut. He’d never miss a televised football game and he’d always talk about how he wished he could’ve played in high school. He tried out, but he didn’t make the team. “Just not athletic enough,” said the coach. I remember how heartbroken he was and our parents did their best to console him. There wasn’t much they could say, though. It’s not easy to comfort someone when they learn their dream is unachievable.

I, on the other hand, am more of a nerd. I’m bookish and I love to write. Something about the written word makes me feel free – like I can do anything. Silly, I know, but it’s better than doing nothing. Or watching football.

Once school was done, we needed to find a job. College was out. Neither of us were ready for the commitment. The local supermarket was looking to fill a few positions, so they hired us on the spot. The pay wasn’t the best, but the work was consistent and it filled our time. The money we made allowed us to rent an apartment near work. Moving out of the home where we’d grown up was a bittersweet moment for our parents. They were sad to see us go, but nonetheless proud of our maturity. Still, I knew they were relieved the place was so close to home.

A few years went by. Danny and I did our thing. Our social life was decent. He had a girlfriend for a little while, but it didn’t last. I stuck with my books. The escapism they provided was invaluable, even though the life I was trying to escape wasn’t all that bad.

Something terrible happened one summer about four years after Danny and I had moved. Our parents were arrested in a child pornography sting operation. It was a massive, multi-state investigation that caught nearly a hundred people. My brother and I were absolutely dumbstruck by the news. We knew it had to be bullshit. But there was evidence. Overwhelming evidence. Pictures, videos, chat logs – everything. Neither of them even contested the charges. Mom was sentenced to six years and Dad got seven.

The feeling of confused rage toward our parents manifested itself differently between Danny and me. He was a puncher. Walls, doors, some guy at a bar who was nice enough not to press charges; the works. I, probably unsurprisingly at this point, was a crier. All I could think about was how the memories I had of playing with either of my parents were tainted by a hideous, predatory subtext. I wondered if either of us had been molested. It was enough to drive me crazy. I sank into a deep depression.

A few months ago, Danny got sick. He thought it was a cold, but it persisted. When he finally got it checked out, the doctor said it was something more serious; something congenital that he’d somehow managed to avoid until then. His lungs kept filling with fluid. The doctor was surprised I didn’t have it, too. But that didn’t provide me with much relief; this was just another insult to my brother. His body wasn’t content with just making him bad at sports, it had to make him sick, too. He was terrified. I promised I’d take care of him, no matter what – that I’d try to be the source of comfort he’d always gotten from our parents. It was a rare moment of emotional closeness between us. We shared a profoundly awkward embrace.

As Danny got worse, I did my best to help him out. I hate to use the word burden, but he was a terribly heavy weight on me as his condition deteriorated. He refused to go to the hospital – not that we could realistically go anyway considering we had no insurance and were still paying off the thousands we owed for the visits to get him diagnosed. The only good thing was he was getting some disability pay from missing work. It barely paid the rent, but between that and the little we’d saved, it was enough to scrape by.

But now, as I write this, none of it matters anymore. Danny died in his sleep a few hours ago. The sensation of his body cooling is indescribably awful. I’m feeling weaker with every passing moment. I knew that if he was the first to go, I’d be prepared. I’d write something about us and leave the note to be found. I figure maybe people would want to read our story. But now that it’s here – now that the abstraction has become a reality – I’m scared. I want to get up and run away from the inevitability of it all, but I know it’s impossible.

My heart can only pump so much blood for the both of us now that Danny’s has stopped. The weakness I mentioned is starting to overpower me. I keep glancing at the face of my brother, expecting him to wink and start laughing, proving that this is just a cruel joke. But now I’m just fantasizing. I guess there will be time for more of his jokes and awful, cackling laughter after I join him. I wonder when our parents will find out. Even though I hate them for their crimes, I still want to make them proud. Hopefully, even in their grief, they’ll take solace in the fact Danny and I left the world the same way we entered it: joined at the hip.

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Prosopagnosia

pros

Jaime’s car accident nearly killed him. His coma lasted eight weeks. When he regained consciousness, he couldn’t recognize me and Inez. Prosopagnosia – face blindness – was the diagnosis. The doctors wouldn’t give us any answers about whether or not he’d get better. They just said we’d have to wait and see. Jaime could remember who we were; he knew he had a wife named Carla and a daughter named Inez, but whenever we walked into the room, he saw two strangers.

Over time, he started to recover. The recovery wasn’t total. Not even close. He’d jump with shock and surprise if Inez came into the room too quickly and didn’t leave him enough time to remember it was her. Last month, when Jaime and I were in the shower, I washed his hair and shoulders and back, but when he turned around, he yelped and tried to get away. He slipped and almost cracked his head on the faucet.

The therapist suggested Jaime carry and study a photograph of Inez and me as frequently as possible. The goal was for his damaged brain to hopefully remap the features he’d lost the ability to retain. After a couple months, we saw some major improvements. Still far from perfect, but much, much better. The frightened, jumpy person he became after the accident slowly started to resemble the strong, protective man I’d married.

Last night, I was jolted awake by the sound of Jaime shrieking. He wasn’t in bed. The sound came from down the hall. From Inez’s room. I jumped out of bed and ran to see what was wrong. Jaime met me halfway. His hands were covered in blood.

“It’s wearing her face!,” he screamed. He gripped my shoulders and studied my features with his wide, terrified eyes. “It stole her face!”

I struggled out of his grasp as Jaime sunk to the floor and called after me. “Find Inez!,” he choked out. “Please.” He sobbed as I turned the corner into our Inez’s room.

Gaping holes that once housed eyes oozed blood down pale cheeks. Those same eyes were now forced deep into the skull by the panicked violence of my husband. As I screamed with incomprehensible horror, Jaime came up behind me and bellowed, “get away from it!” “Find Inez!”

Jaime tore through Inez’s closet with the picture of Inez and me in his hand, frantically scanning everything inside for the girl who matched the appearance of his daughter in the photograph. My breath caught in my throat. In the picture Jaime studied to memorize the faces of his family, I was sitting behind Inez and brushing her long, black hair.

“What are you doing?,” he screamed at me. “Help me find her!”

Sobbing, I collapsed on the bed and cradled the cooling body on the blood-soaked Steven Universe sheets. After Jaime had gone to sleep, I’d finally given in to Inez’s nagging. Instead of the luxurious, flowing hair in the picture, Inez went to bed with her new, short, pixie-style haircut.

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