Original Nosleep | Collection #1 - I Bought a Wife Online (Patreon)

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I’m a fairly well-off guy, I have a good job with decent pay, and I’m not unattractive. However, I’ve not had the best of luck with relation

I’m a fairly well-off guy, I have a good job with decent pay, and I’m not unattractive. However, I’ve not had the best of luck with relationships; that’s not to say I haven’t had any, but rather that the ones I have been involved in haven’t ended well. I’ve been cheated on, told I have ‘too higher expectations’ and that I, ‘work too much’. Not unfair statements exactly, but I made sure everyone was well informed before we began so hearing that kind of thing grinds my gears.

The idea of buying a wife first came up as a joke, I had been drinking with some mates and explaining to them that my girlfriend had left me over my working late as she thought I was cheating, I wasn’t obviously, and Braden mockingly suggested that I should just fill in an order form for a wife and see how that went. We tossed around the idea for a while, joking about wife auctions and the misogany of it and I left fairly reassured with myself that I did not need to buy a wife.

Then I got an email titled, ‘Find your perfect match.’ now, normally, I would have bypassed such an obvious scam, but then I got to considering what a hoot it would be next time explaining to the boys that just days after discussing it I got a scam email and gave it a try. So I did. I opened the email and followed the link. Almost immediately a private browser started downloading onto my laptop. Horrified I tried to end program, unfortunately it was finished installing so fast I couldn’t even keep up. I’m also not the most computer savvy in case you couldn’t tell.

Once the page opened up though, it was honestly not at all what I was expecting, I was waiting for the typical porn style women to be advertised where you pay x amount of dollars for every minute of their time.. Or maybe for a million virus’s and hackers to start trying to break into my computer like you see in the movies, maybe my bank account was just randomly going to be skimmed, I didn’t know. Thankfully and unsettlingly, it was nothing like that.

Instead I was first asked to fill out a profile form, it didn’t ask for anything horribly identifiable, just age, gender, species, race and sexual orientation. It didn’t even require a name. Bemused I filled out the form and was taken to a terms and conditions page, I skimmed though it as usual there was something about ‘payment must be made in full before partner will be shipped’, ‘refunds are not given for return of partner for any reason or for DOA’ and ‘all contracts are binding and final until termination.’ - yeah, okay. I thought.

Foresight and common sense are valuable tools and I encourage others to use them. I however, clicked the accept button and was directed to a new page, this seemed to be the advertisement page just in case I wasn’t already in deep enough. It went on to explain that although all the partners available were high quality it was important to select your preferences with care as you would only be provided with the ‘closest match’. Order a Ferrari get a chicken nugget I mused to myself.

Still the advertisement clip continued to explain the process, you fill in your ideals, they fill in theirs and you would be matched with someone. Kind of like a dating site only all sales were final. I was half heartedly waiting for some explanation of where these people were to come from, when there was no explanation provided I felt feel my gut filling with dread as I considered that the ‘partners’ advertised were probably trafficked victims.

That was actually what prompted me to keep going, I decided that I would at least save one girl, I could pay for her and when she arrived I’d take her straight to the police station and we’d get help. I briefly worried about the price of such a venture before the rational part of my brain asked me if I cared more about a woman’s life or money. The decision was easy from there. Once the advertisement ended I clicked onward onto the next page filled with an inflated sense of heroism.

’Select your preferences’ the next page stated, the list was extensive and honestly felt more like ordering an elaborate meal than a human being. Everything was set out in a ‘this’ or ‘that’ style spread, these are some examples of what I mean:

‘Priority for Subdued -or- Opinionated’

‘Priority for Sex -or- Appearance’

‘Priority for Intelligence -or- Obedience’

As you selected options you would be confronted by the same characteristics rearranged.

‘Priority for Intelligence -or- Appearance’

‘Priority for Subdued-or- Sex’

And so on. It took me near an hour to go through them all, by the end I barely remembered what I had even chosen. Once I was finally done I was directed to a payment page and much like everything else it wasn’t what I had expected it to be. The payment was to be made though a company I had never heard of but I was relieved to see that there were a range of payment options, credit card thankfully was one but there were other options.. SoulExpress, HarvestGoods, I had never heard of those before.

I clicked on HarvestGoods just for fun since, why not, and quickly realised payment could be made in two hundred and thirty eight fresh human hearts or three hundred and seventy five minor organs. A sick kind of joke that made me even more suspicious of the site and as I clicked back I assumed that ’SoulExpress’ would be asking or ‘souls’. After I had finished fooling around with various payment options I chose the monetary option, so how much does a wife cost?

Well that depends, you could pay $2.5m USD for one year of contract, $10m USD for five years, $45m USD for 25 years or $1.3 Billion for ‘lifetime’. Looking over my options I considered how long I might need to build a proper case, one year wasn’t going to be enough, I just hoped five would. My wallet stung as I selected for $10m and I felt a heavy disappointment settle in when the following page stated, ‘Thank you for your time and generous contribution. Please wait as we process your request, it may take 7-90 business days to complete.’

A few weeks passed before I accepted the fact that I’d been scammed, my friends and I drank to my stupidity while my bank account slowly recovered. It was around this time that I received another email, ‘Your order is ready for shipment’. I was confused a moment before I remembered my order for a ‘wife’ and opened the email to find that she was apparently due to arrive the following Tuesday, and I should ensure that I’m home to receive the order..

When Tuesday arrived I waited anxiously, was something or someone really going to show up? I didn’t know exactly and I realised when I thought about it that I had never even given an address. When the knock on the door came I’m not ashamed to say I jumped a little, but by the time I reached the door there was no person there, just a two foot by three foot rectangular box. It was cardboard and definitely didn’t look like anyone could fit into it.

I picked it up to carry it inside cautiously and immediately noticed that it was impossibly heavy. So much so that I couldn’t get more than a step or two with it at a time and mostly ended up dragging it inside. There were no labels on it at all, no instructions, no delivery address or return address, though I didn’t pay too much notice at the time as I was focused on opening it quickly. I didn’t want whoever might be inside to suffocate, but then I didn’t want to stab them with the letter opener I was using either.

To my suspicion once I got the cardboard open I found a plastic drum. It was a blue container with brown-ish red symbols written onto the inner cardboard surrounds, I didn’t recognise any meaning in them but felt for sure that they were written in blood. Once my initial shock passed I hurried to open the drum only to find a letter with instructions stuck to the top. It read:

‘Congratulations on receiving your new partner! Please follow these instructions Very carefully as DOA refunds are Not available.

Step One:

Prepare a suitable space. Bathrooms are ideal. Pour a Minimum of 80 gallons (303 litres) of water into a suitable container.

Ensure No light artificial or otherwise, is allowed into the room. If you do not have a suitable space, Do Not Open the drum until one can be provided.

Step Two:

Take your drum into the dark room and remove the lid carefully. Please ensure No Light during this process.

Pour the content of the drum into the provided 80 gallons (303 litres) or more of water.

Step Three:

Leave your partner to grow for Exactly 168 hours (one hundred and sixty eight hours).

You may collect your partner once the expressed time period has passed.

Please note, some light sensitivity is to be expected within the first week.

Should you have any concerns or questions please refrain from contacting our administration. All the information you should need is listed within the provided manual.’

After reading the letter I eyed off the drum suspiciously, in return it sat there unmoving. Was I really going to do this? My bathroom was too well-lit. But the cellar was perfect... Admittedly it didn’t take me too long to decide to give it a try, what did I have to lose? I’d already paid my $10m and curiosity was burning me up. It was only a ten minute trip to the store and back to purchase an above ground pool. Just one of those tarp ones propped up by bracing, but it was nearly 100 gallons so I figured it would work.

I spent the afternoon setting everything up and waited until nightfall to blindly roll the barrel down a dark hallway into a pitch black room. It did roll down the stairs rather violently and I scrambled quickly to find it, though it seemed intact when I did. From there I followed the instructions to the letter, the contents of the barrel smelt absolutely terrible when I opened it and it plopped into the water with lumpy splashes which only seemed to amplify the stench.

I left the room gladly and put a towel at the bottom of the door to prevent any light entering under the door.. and now I’m just waiting, it’s been three days, I have another four to go.. I don’t know what I’m expecting, I don’t know why I’m even crazy enough to try this. ***To begin this time I thought I’d answer some of your more pressing questions: I work in the import/export business and have several investments running as well. I’m also really good at saving and I’m an only child so when my father died a few years back getting his inheritance helped out a lot. Next to add some context I’m a kind of feminine guy, I can’t grow a beard to save my life, I’m skinny but I work out so I don’t look too emaciated, basically my friends have a running joke that I look like a Twink.

In the same vein, I also have a low sex drive to the point where I’m almost asexual, and yes this has had an impact on my previous relationships. This is important to know because it’ll help explain the preferences I set for my ‘wife’ when ordering, I basically prioritized appearance above all, then intelligence, and sex was last out of the top tree. I don’t mean to sound like a jerk but I wanted a ‘trophy house wife’, you know, someone insanely beautiful that I could show off at work functions, but still be able to come home to a clean house and cooked meals.

How I expected whatever was brewing in the darkness of my cellar to form into a this wonder girl of a wife I’ve got no idea. The only thing I can say I was relieved about was that it at least didn’t seem to be a fourteen year old human trafficking victim. Better some dark magic or backwards experimental science than an innocent. However after I had followed all the instructions I found myself going though various stages of uncertainty.

Firstly I wondered if I was completely insane. I had bought something online from a less than reputable looking website after clicking a bait ad email, paid a large sum of money to some unknown entity, that, by the way, showed up on my card statement as ‘Paid to ϟαтαη’ which was obviously someone’s idea of an edgy company name, and now whatever I had received was growing in my basement? The smell alone was bad enough, it had been bad when I first poured it into the water, however within a few days it was entirely insufferable.

The smell permeated through the towel at the bottom of the door and wafted slowly into the rest of the house. For my own benefit I avoided areas of the house that were affected and it’s needless to say I didn’t invite any guests over. There was only one thing in my entire life that I had ever smelt that was similar and that was the rotten fluids of a still born baby delivered naturally after it had died inside the mother a couple weeks earlier.

At this point the idea that I was maybe being punked crossed my mind. I had heard of people buying mystery boxes off the deep web only to find chunks of dead animals and barbed wire inside and thought that my situation wasn’t too dissimilar. If that was the case, I wasn’t sure I wanted to go check on whatever was down there, what if I turned on the lights and it was just a few chunks of human flesh bobbing around. How on earth would I explain that to anyone let alone to the police?

This was about the time paranoia set in, it was as if the air itself inside the house got heavier, it pressed down on me with a sticky humidity no matter how low I set the air conditioner. I found myself eyeballing the mail man as he walked past and peering out the curtains at pedestrians on the sidewalk. Somehow I felt like I was doing something deeply wrong and that everyone in the world knew about it, mostly though I was worried that they’d smell the rancid odor from outside.

Then I began to wonder about if I Wasn’t being messed with. How would whatever was in that barrel turn into a wife? Was I part of some government experiment? My curiosity got the better of me once again and I decided to go to the cellar door and see if I could hear anything so, while holding my breath, that’s exactly what I did. I walked down the hallway slowly and pressed my ear against the door. At first I couldn’t hear anything, then I realized there was a quiet sloshing sound, as if the water was being moved around slightly.

Both surprised and unsettled I recoiled from the door and in doing so made the mistake of breathing in. I’m not ashamed to say I thew up then and there as the smell assaulted my nostrils with a vengeance. After that I decided it best to wait a while before attempting to go near it again though it soon became unnecessary to as I began to hear sounds from the cellar without having to get close. Initially they began so faint that I wasn’t sure whether or not they were real, but with time they became louder and unmistakable.

There was splashing and occasional indecipherable words coming from the cellar. When I would lay awake in the dim of my room on the other side of the house I would hear it, the garbled sounds of something horrendous developing in wet darkness with groans of agony and unintelligible mumbling. To ease my nerves I began to play music through the house just loud enough to mask the sounds but quiet enough to not have the neighbors call the cops on me.

When the day finally came that the timer counted down to mere hours I began to panic. If there were preparations to be made I wasn’t sure what they were, I managed to find some of my ex’s old clothes assuming that my new ‘wife’ would need something to wear and bought a decent stock of food. Though I was unsure if whatever was down there would even be able to eat and was assuming it wasn’t going to make me it’s first meal. Then made up a bed in the guest room and paced anxiously around until the timer showed ’10 minutes’.. Then I reluctantly I grabbed a towel and made my way to the basement.

As I approached the door I noticed that the horrible smell from earlier was no longer there. My heart raced, pumping blood through my veins so furiously that my hand was shaking as I put it on the door knob and I could taste the adrenaline in the back of my throat. Swallowing my anxiety I watched the final seconds count down on the timer and opened the door. I creaked it open slowly letting the light from behind fall onto the stairs before me. This was the only patch of light and it only served to heighten the contrast of the room so that I couldn’t see anything past it.

“Hello? Is, anyone, anything.. Alive down here..? Please don’t eat me!” I called, trying to make it sound like I was joking to hide the pure terror I felt looking into the pitch black nothingness beyond the light. There was no answer to my question so I cautiously made my way down the stairs. The instructions had suggested that my new ‘wife’ would be sensitive to light so keeping this in mind I didn’t turn on the overhead lights, instead used the torch app on my phone to light the rest of the way.

When I neared the pool I held the light up to see a set of reflective eyes just above the waters surface looking back at me. For a brief moment I thought I had grown an alligator or something, however upon regaining my composure and cautiously peering at it again I realized there was a woman in the water.. She was sitting with only her eyes above it and had long black hair floating around her in the perfectly still calm water.

Being confronted with what seemed to be an actual being and not knowing what else to do I introduced myself, “Hi.. I’m Jake..” I said uncertainly and when she didn’t answer, I continued awkwardly, “I’m ahh.. I bought you.. “ She still made no comment, only watching me with her eyes as I moved a little closer, “Do you want to come out now..? The instructions said-“ I didn’t get to finish my sentence as she started to get up. Picture this if you can, she was stark naked, uncoordinated and with seemingly disproportionate limbs half crawling half dragging herself out of a kiddy pool like something from the exorcist, slipping and clawing her way to dry land.

Had I not been so utterly petrified I may have fled the f*cking country in one of my export containers, instead, I stood there frozen like a stunned mullet looking at this humanoid heap of woman crawling her way toward me on the floor. Her hair was long enough that it clung to her body covering her shoulders and breasts better than I would have expected it to, not that it really mattered as I was too horrified to really pay attention to her nakedness past knowing her skin was pale and the once clean water that was running off it, had a red-ish tint.

As she reached me she stopped by my feet and looked up at me twisting her neck at a horrible angle to do so, before opening her mouth to gargle out a strangled sounding, “J..a.. ke..”. I nearly gagged then. Bloody water dribbled out her nose and mouth through pointed shark-like teeth as she spoke then reached up for me. Still in shock and not knowing what else to do I offered her the towel, she didn’t take it, didn’t even try to take it. So I awkwardly draped it around her and helped her to stand.

Her skin was cold to the touch, smooth, almost reptilian, and she was comfortably shorter than me. This was only significant in that it had been a preference I had selected while ‘ordering’ her, the ‘comfortably shorter’ part I mean, not the ‘reptilian’ part.. When she made no attempt to eat or otherwise maim me I started to lead her upstairs into the light. She squinted and blinked turning away from the brightness with a low growl so I quickly dimmed the lights.

However dim light was better than my phone flashlight so that was when I was able to properly see her features. Body wise, she looked nice, hourglass shape despite her arms and legs being a little gangly, probably C-cup boobs, so nothing overbearing, and her facial features were generally Asian-ish. Dark almond shaped eyes with long lashes, petite nose and mouth and as I looked at her I realized that she actually resembled my ex in a weird, ‘just grew this in my basement from a tub of unidentified parts’ kind of way.

I mean the match wasn’t exact, but they could have been sisters or something. Other things of note are that her skin was even more pale than I had thought, I would even go as far as to say it had an iridescent quality to its whiteness and her eyes had no contrast, they were fully black. And when I say black, I mean extremely black, like oil where different colours reflected in them. Her toe and finger nails were much the same, oily black, but also long and curved like a predator’s claws.

Once we made it to the kitchen I sat her down and asked, “Are you hungry? Thirsty maybe?” While offering her a glass of water. There was a long pause as she stared at me before she murmured something so quiet I didn’t catch it the first time, “I’m sorry, what was that?” I asked hesitantly leaning in closer to hear her better.

Without looking away from me she repeated herself slowly and purposefully, “H-un-.. g-rry…” she whispered, her voice scratchy and dry. I felt my heart drop a little at that point, of course my new ‘wife’ was hungry. Maybe she’d like to eat my liver with some fava beans and a nice chianti? If nothing else I was pretty certain she was about to demand that I sacrifice some virgins to satiate her appetite but she gave no further instruction so I did my best.

The answer to my uncertainty came in the form of a grilled cheese sandwich, which she ate when I presented it to her so I assume it wasn’t not on the menu. To be perfectly honest at this point I didn’t know what to do. I hadn’t truly been expecting a living being to come out of the drum of unidentified lumpy liquid poured into water and left stewing in darkness, yet here it/she was. However after eating she looked tired so I took her to the guest room and let her lay down.

She didn’t seem to know what to do with the bedding and so ended up sort of awkwardly on top of the bed where I folded the sheets over her. I left the room fairly swiftly after that, locking it behind me. To say that this wasn’t what I ordered is an understatement, it wasn’t even human for all I could tell. In trying to get some understanding of what she was I decided to go back to the basement and look at the water she had been in.

This time I turned on the overhead light and went down to take a look. As I approached the pool I saw that the water had settled into two layers, the top layer was mostly clear and looked to be just water while at the bottom a thick red-ish brown sediment had formed. To see if there was anything hidden at the bottom I decided to stir up the water with a broom handle and drain out as much of it as I could, now I would like to point out that the water didn’t smell until I started to disturb it, then I could smell the familiar pungent odor of something unspeakable rotting and, to my horror, I could feel the broom clattering against something on the bottom beneath the filth.

Without thinking I reached into the murky water to retrieve whatever it was assuming something ordinary had fallen in at some point, only to find myself holding a bone, it looked like a human femur, and yes, I did throw up again. By the time the pool had drained, I found a collection of bones, all of which I’m sure were human, a dead crow, a variety of insect husks, and some water-logged herbs I couldn’t identify. I’ll spare you most of the details regarding how I disposed of these items except to say that it wasn’t easy, it took most of the night and I passed out right after.

I woke the next morning to the sound of my surround sound tv blasting out advertisements and I sprang up check the guest bedroom. When I reached it the door was open, the lock broken and she wasn’t anywhere to be seen. To say this was unsettling was an understatement, I took the umbrella off the coat hanger in the hallway and made my way towards the sound of the tv. As I approached, I could hear talking, not just from the ads, but more like talking as if someone was trying to do a voice check.

The pitch and tone would change as words were said in different orders, it sounded similar to a deaf person speaking only that the words were becoming clearer with repetition. I made my way through the kitchen and saw in the sink that there was a mess of blood and teeth in it, unsure what to make of that and entirely unable to process it I mostly ignored that detail and continued on into the home theatre. When I reached it and rounded the corner into the room I saw the person speaking was her.

From what I could tell she was practicing speaking and when she noticed I was there she turned to face me with a crooked kind of smile. To my surprise her teeth were normal and suddenly the mess in the sink made a little more sense, had she pulled them out and grown new human ones? The next thing I noticed was that her skin tone was more human no longer incandescent. In addition to this her limbs were now proportionate, her nails manicured and her eyes weren’t fully black any more, though the iris’s were still a little too big.

“GOod- Good, Morning.” She greeted me, though looked puzzled as to why I was holding the umbrella. “The moSt im-port-ant meal of the d-ay is prepared!” She announced gesturing to the table where there was a bowl of cereal overfilled with milk waiting for me. I stared between her and the drowned cereal for a moment while she stood unblinkingly waiting for me to sit and eat. Not wanting to anger her I did sit and poke around at the soggy breakfast but she didn’t seem to mind as she turned back to the tv.

In the few days following she continued to ‘improve’ I suppose you could say. Her voice and speech patterns got more normal, I taught her to read and her meal making abilities improved. By all counts she now seemed perfectly human, I haven’t told my friends about her yet, but last night was the first night we shared a bed. We didn’t do anything, if that’s what you’re thinking, so I can’t comment on that, however I will say that she smells amazing. Her hair, her skin, it’s indescribable. I think I love her.

I find myself forgetting what she started out as, that’s why I thought it was important to update this, she’s just so alluring now. I want to do things for her, I don’t want to go to work so that I can spend more time with her. My phone keeps ringing but so far I’ve been ignoring it. Last night I just stood by it and let it ring out, I did listen to the voice message though. It was Braden, he was complaining about not having seen me for a while and was apparently calling to let me know that my ex, I forget her name now, has been reported missing.

***

In the few weeks following my wife’s birth? Creation? Spawning? (I’m not sure what to call it exactly), she became the perfect wife. There were of course minor glitches, for example, as I mentioned before she had had to learn how to speak in a natural manner. Next came behaviour, small things such as blinking occasionally rather than burning holes into people’s souls with an unintentional death stare or fluttering her eye lids like she was having a seizure when people greeted her.

We also had fun learning about simple movement mechanics, like reflexes. For her moving aside when objects were inbound for impact wasn’t a consideration and, yes, it was a little awkward explaining to the kids next door why my wife stood motionless as their stray football smacked her square in the face. It turned out okay though, they just thought she was super metal. In the general public I found she blended in quite well and I could play off most of her strangeness as an horrific sense of humor.

Though I still don’t trust her to shop alone, the first day I had taken her to the supermarkets I asked her to grab some cheese while I got bread.. I came back to a cart overflowing with cheese and empty refrigerated shelves. She also tended to ask if we needed whatever item she’d spotted on the shelf as she was already loading several of them into the cart, ‘No sweetie, we don’t need four can openers..’ Was a regular conversation we had. Though when she answered me once with a sly smile saying, “Aren’t I always supposed to be right?” I had doubts as to whether or not she was really actually joking with me or not.

In terms of homely things, and again I don’t mean to sound like a jerk here, she was great. In fact she did more than I expected her to, she kept record for me of important dates and bill payments, it was sort of like having a secretary I suppose. The house was perfectly clean, breakfast was made by the time I got out the shower every morning, lunch prepared and packed before I went to work and dinner on the table when I came home. Her meals were wonderful, the first few were a little charred sure, so a few cooking shows later and she was a master chef.  

One weekend I woke up early to treat her to breakfast before she could make it for me, but my gesture only made her fret and no amount of my assurances could calm her. She was very insistent that she be the one to make meals for me, not the other way around, I’m not sure where she got that from. I don’t remember selecting a ‘will be flawless 80’s house wife’ in my preferences, maybe she picked it up from the tv since she liked to watch a Lot of older sitcoms?

Nothing really unusual happened to be perfectly honest. My phone battery sh* t itself, the damn thing stopped holding charge, I had more of appetite (probably because her cooking was so nice) and I was a little more tired most days, though I was also working a lot harder during the day so that I could be home at a reasonable time in the evenings. However as we were settling in for dinner after work on Friday there was a rather intrusive knock on the door.

Begrudgingly I got up to answer it, I really just wanted to eat and here someone was interrupting my meal. As it turned out it was Braden, he pushed past me into the house with a, “Yo, I haven’t seen you for aggeeess. Didn’ you get any of my messages? Where’ve you been- and what’s that smell?” He asked his lip curling in disgust, feigned disgust that is, I’m sure, as the only smell that filled my home at the time was my wife’s cooking.

Confused I shook my head, “I’ve been working, I didn’t get any messages..” I told him then hesitated, “Oh, actually I got one, someone’s missing?” I asked following after him as he seemed to be trying to locate the source of whatever he was smelling.

“Yeah man, Zoey, she’s missin’. Her family said they’ve been tryin’a call you. Didn’ you get their messages?” He asked looking at me like I was crazy.

“Who’s Zoey..?” I queried confused.

“Haha, very funny, you now Zoey, your recently ex girlfriend.” He reminded me and then it clicked, like a small piece of a puzzle I’d been missing it came back to me.

“Oh right yeah.  Sorry I’ve just been so busy, I haven’t gotten any messages, I’ve-“ I stopped as Braden interrupted me suddenly.  

“YO! Who the Hell is This?!” He shrieked, recoiling from the kitchen startled. It took me a second to realize he’d found my wife.

“Braden, meet Alice, my wife..” I informed him as he stared at her dumbfounded.

“A pleasure to meet you.” Alice paused to smile as she greeted him, she was dutifully covering our dinner plates with tinfoil to preserve them knowing the food would get cold as Braden and I spoke.

There was along moment where he just didn’t say anything. He paced back and fourth a moment, casting glances at Alice, then myself, before finally throwing his arms up and asking, “When did you get married exactly? Cauz I don’t remember no wedding.”

I realized then that I hadn’t mentioned anything to him or explained anything. It hadn’t even occurred to me that I had to, it felt to me like Alice had always been a part of my life and I struggled to remember that she’d only arrived recently. “Okay, yeah, you’re going to love this. Remember when we joked about ‘buying a wife’? Well I got an email advertising wives, I clicked on it, annnnd..” I gestured to my wife, “She arrived, marriage papers included, all I had to do was sign them.” In my explanation I of course left out the whole, ‘brewed in my basement’, thing.  

He paused again, “Hold up. You mean to say, you clicked on some dodgy a** email, ordered a wifu online, and this is what you got?”

“..Yeah, I mean it was more involved than that but yeah.. That’s basically it. “ I agreed with a nonchalant shrug though he didn’t seem at all reassured.

“You gotta get rid of it, that thing, ain’t right. She looks like Zoey, and she’s missin’. That’s a Big Fat no brother.” He warned shaking his head at me and backing away from Alice.

His reaction, I thought, was unreasonable. I have to get rid of ‘it’ and ‘that thing’ isn’t right? Who did he think he was talking about. Alice was a person with rights and feelings and I wasn’t going to put up with that kind of rudeness towards my wife. I asked him to leave, telling him as he went that he wasn’t welcome back until he apologized. He didn’t seem too fussed, “I’m tellin’ you, it ain’t right. Take her to the police or somethin’, drop her off somewhere. Ain’t nothin’ good that comes from scam emails.” He ranted on his way to the door, “I’d be watchin’ what she’s feedin’ you, yo look a little thin too.” He added

“Seriously, not funny.” Was all I said in return though my teeth. I was angry, unbelievably angry, I’d never before been so angry. Part of me genuinely wanted to kill him as I slammed the door shut behind him, where has all that anger even come from? It wasn’t like me.

Alice and I made love for the first time that night, something about all the strong emotions put me in the mood and it seemed that she just fell out of her clothes. I will mention, since I’m sure some of you are morbidly interested, that she was amazing in the sheets. I won’t go into too much detail except to say that she did things in ways I had never experienced before and it was, without a doubt, the Best s*x I’ve ever had.

In the days following I heard nothing else from Braden, it seemed he was unwilling to apologize and I brushed it off with a ‘whatever dude’ kind of attitude about it. I also got a new phone, since the old one was all but useless if I was missing messages, but soon noticed that it too seemed to have a battery issue so took it back for a service. They told me at the store that it was going to take a day or two to send away and sort out, so I’d be without a phone until then.

That didn’t really bother me, though as I sat down for lunch the next day I did feel a stab of regret about it as it meant I wouldn’t get the usual ‘Hope you’re having a good day! :)’ text from Alice. Thinking of Alice and my phone naturally lead my thoughts a stray to replaying what Braden had said to me, ‘I’d be watching what she’s feedin’ you’. I’m not sure why that came to me just as I was about to take a bite of the sandwich Alice had prepared me but it did and I found myself eyeballing the sandwich suspiciously.

It seemed fine, just your standard lettuce and chicken between two slices of whole grain bread with mayonnaise. Nothing obviously harmful, so I can’t explain exactly why I threw it into the small trash can beside my desk and instead ordered food from a little stand across the street. As I ate my not-wife-prepared food, I felt kind of strange, it made me feel sick to eat it, and I realized that I was all but inhaling it. Why was I suddenly so hungry? I mean I was more often than not hungry these days, but this was different, I was eating like a starving dog.

Because of this, I picked up some takeaway on the way after work and ate it before I got home. When I arrived home however, I instantly felt guilty, Alice had dinner ready on the table for me. I apologised profusely, telling her that I’d just felt so full from her sandwich that I didn’t need anything else and went to bed early. She didn’t join me right away as she usually would have, I assume that was because I made her mad by refusing dinner, but when she did I could feel her glaring daggers at the back of my head.

In the morning I got up and left early without having breakfast and went straight to the store to see if my phone was repaired. I doubted it would be, I just wanted to get out of the house really, though was surprised to learn that it was in fact ready to go. The guy at the store handed it back to me without really saying anything, just that it was fixed so I asked what had been wrong with it. He hesitated a moment as if trying to decide how best to broach the subject.

“There was nothing wrong with it, the battery just needed to be charged..” He said carefully and I could tell he was doing his best not to out rightly call me an imbecile for not knowing how to charge my own phone. Needless to say this confused me, I had put my phone on the charger every night, checked the switch was on, done all the right things, and yet, each morning when I woke up it would only have 5-6% battery. A wave of nausea swept over me as I considered that maybe, just maybe, Alice was unplugging it after I went to sleep and plugging it in again shortly before I woke each morning.

Looking at the phone I saw that I had a decent amount of unread texts and voice mails, and that they were all recent with the oldest one being from just after I had dropped off my phone for repairs. Had.. Alice been deleting my messages? Were these ones only here now because she hadn’t had access to my phone? This paranoia swirled in my mind every second for the rest of the day. At work I listened to a couple voice mails, one in particular stood out. It was from Braden.

“Hey man, look, I’m sorry ‘bout the other day. I’m real happy for you. I just.. I dunno man. She freaks me out. Her eyes are cold, like a shark. And the way she looks like Zoey? I mean, I know you got a type bro but.. Isn’t it just a, just a little weird how she shows up all Zoey look alike and all, Just when Zoey goes missin’?.. Anyway that’s all I got to say. We’ll talk soon yeah? I said I was sorry… Give me a call when you get this. Bye bro.”

I didn’t call him back but his message certainly stayed with me, it made me remember the discarded sandwich from the day before.. Curious I leant over my desk to check its position in the bin and to my horror saw that it was growing unnatural pink tendrils that pulsed as they struggled to haul themselves out of the trash. Disturbed I drove home in silence with my thoughts and by the time I pulled into the drive way I had decided that I was going to confront my wife. She could speak and reason, surely we could talk this through? Get it sorted out?

Apparently she had come to the same conclusion as I had because when I walked through the door she was waiting for me in the lounge room with her arms folded and no dinner on the table - the universal sign of a p*ssed off wife.

“You left today, without breakfast, without even saying goodbye.” She began immediately.

“Okay, yes.” I agreed but before I could continue she did.

“All you have to say is ‘Okay, yes’?!” She yelled offended, and as she took in another breath to yell more I took my chance.

“You’ve been taking my phone off charge and deleting my messages! And I don’t even know what you’ve been feeding me!” I blurted out without any tact whatsoever. This caused her to pause, her mouth snapped shut and she stared at me unblinking so I continued, “What are you…” I asked with dry lips, “Where did you come from.. And why do you look like Zoey?”

In response she now smiled. She smiled a smile that grew. It spread slowly across her perfectly red lips until her teeth were showing and then stretched out impossibly wider. I heard the skin on either side of her lips tear as her head tilted back at a right angle and her jaw began to open impossibly wide, revealing the inside of her mouth to be lined with rows of curved teeth leading down into the black abyss of her throat. From her back her spine seemed to crack outward, breaking the skin and allowing malnourished arms covered in a slimy red fluid to push violently out through her shirt.

Some men might imagine that the worst part about confronting their wives would be the possibility that she could leave them, for me, the worst part was watching her eyes bulge and split into more eyes like a rapidly dividing cell. I stood unable to move as she transformed from the beautiful Alice, into this Thing and once it was done she seemed to turn to me. Her multiple eyes all somehow focusing on me. If balls can shrink, mine did in that moment.

“ArE yOu SoRry now Jake?” My wife demanded in a mocking tone, her voice no longer sweet but deep and raspy.

I tried to answer her but my mouth was too dry to form words. Around me I noticed that the walls of my home were covered in fleshy webs, I understood then that she were a parasite grown from a putrid recipe and finally I were able to speak, “Y-yes, I’m sorry, I’m very. Sorry.” I whispered, and this time, I knew what I was apologizing for. I was apologizing for ordering her online, for growing her in my basement, for ever daring to have raised my voice to her.

There was an agonizingly long moment before the word came to me, “Goooood~” She purred, low and long. Her form now clicking back into place with a sickening set of cracks and snaps to return to the woman I had become a custom to seeing, “You will be a husband to me. I look like Zoey because she was your optimum match and her nutrients feed me well.” She now answered my questions politely as her tattered clothes reminded me of what she could become if I displeased her.

“R-right, yeah, that makes sense..” I agreed unsure of what else to do, my mind couldn’t quite accept that I may have poured my ex’s bones into a broth of whatever else to make this thing that now stood before me.

“Oh, and Jake, if you had a problem with my cooking, you only had to say so.” She said pleasantly with a smile that made me flinch, “I’ll see what I can do to change it.”

Marriage is hard. As it stands, I have four years, ten months, and two weeks of marriage contract left, and she wants children. All I can say is that I am truly sorry.

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