Slipskin
By Ava DeVries
Something that is not my wife is baking oatmeal raisin cookies. It wears her clothes and it wears her face but this something is not my wife. It is puttering about the kitchen, whistling a lullaby my mother once sang to me. It is holding a spoonful of dough to my lips for me to taste and laughing my wife’s laugh when some sticks on my nose.
Something that is not my wife is lying next to me in bed at night. It is still and silent, but it is not asleep—breaths too measured, face too placid to be anything but a paltry imitation. I lie awake in the sluggish dark, resisting the drag of unconsciousness, because I know that when I fall asleep it will be there. Watching.
Something that is not my wife has been hiding bits of food around the house. It pushes its dinner around its plate and claims to have eaten a large lunch. I find scraps of sweet potato under the toilet lid and lasagna growing mold behind the microwave.
One night, the something that is not my wife asks me if I want to make love. It stares up at me with unblinking eyes, silent and observant as I move inside it. Eventually I have to roll away and pretend to sleep. It tells me I’ve been distant lately. Has everything been okay at work? Is there someone else? Perhaps we should consider couple’s counseling.
Something that is not my wife bulges in the wrong places. It has teeth where there should not be teeth and pale lips that stretch strangely around its words. I can feel my own body fading away. My nails are brittle and cracked, my face sallow, my hair coming out in clumps. I do not recognize what grins at me from the mirror.
Something that is not my wife is oozing a viscous black fluid where the razor pierces its skin. It is hot and oily where it slides over my fingertips, filling the bedroom with a smell like floral perfume. I carve all the way from its chin to its hairline before its bloated eyes fly open. Its gaping mouth begins to emit a whistling shriek, slicing through the silence of the room.
Something that is not my wife has slipped from its skin and slunk down the bathtub drain all at once. I am left with only clogged pipes and ink-black footprints on the tile and a bed full of empty skin. My right hand refuses to uncurl from the razor; there is no one in this house but me.
Ava DeVries (she/her) is a Creative Writing student at Western Washington University. She enjoys reading and writing about strange rituals, uncanny forests, and slow descents into insanity. Ava serves as a Staff Editor for Beneath the Garden Magazine and a Submissions Reader for Fusion Fragment. She can be found @AvaDeVries04 on Twitter and @ava_devries on Instagram.