My husband was a fearful man. He didn’t like crowds, yet small groups gave him social anxiety. He hated talking to cashiers, but the self-checkout made him anxious. Even when it was just the two of us, he might see something on the news or on social media that made him spiral into a panic attack. But that was just one side of him.
He was so much more than his fear. He’d graduated college with top marks, built up a successful company from the ground up, and he had bottomless empathy for everyone else. Unfortunately, his empathy rarely pointed inwards. “I feel like a burden,” he’d say. “I’m not made to live in this world,” he’d cry as his heart rate soared, nearing two hundred beats per minute. His panic attacks were debilitating, as well as heartbreaking.
But he seeked help - lots of it. Therapy, meditation, mindfulness, medication, self-help books, all of it. But nothing seemed to help. He’d say there’s something wrong deep inside of him, something that no one could reach. I tried to help, of course, and sometimes he’d get better. We’d go out with friends, his panic attacks became less frequent, and he smiled more. But it always came back. I loved him more than anything, and I wished there was something I could do to make him feel less broken. Make him realize that he deserves all the goodness in the world; that he deserves to live a life not governed by fear.
One of his closest and oldest friends lived in the mountains, way out in the sticks. They didn’t see each other often - well, barely ever - and maybe talked only twice a year. But when they did talk, they’d have hours long phone calls, which always boosted his mood. That’s the type of friend that suited him - someone who didn’t mind his introversion, someone who accepted him as he was.
After one of these phone calls, he said that he’d be going out to see him. I was genuinely surprised, but I was happy for him. It’d do him good, I thought. He said that his friend had something they could try, something that could help him with his fear and anxiety.
A week later I kissed him goodbye. He’d be going out for an extended weekend, and he’d booked the plane tickets and everything in advance - usually he’d chicken out at the last minute. He had cooked and cleaned the night before, so that I wouldn’t have to do it while he was gone. That’s just the kind of sweet man he was.
He came back on Monday, seeming invigorated. He was smiling, and said that even during the flight home, he didn’t feel scared. I was so glad, but when I asked him what he did with his friend, he dodged the question entirely. I let it go; if he didn’t want to talk about it, that was just fine with me. Maybe, for once, he’d had some actually relaxing time off, maybe even a heartfelt conversation with someone other than me.
For the next few days, he was more chipper than ever before. Instead of ordering groceries, he’d go out to the store just for fun. He even went for an afterwork beer with some of the guys working at his company. It was a joy to see him so free, and I hoped it would last.
One morning, he was acting a bit elusive. When I asked him if something was wrong - maybe the anxiety had returned - he said “I don’t think I need to breathe anymore.”
“What do you mean?” I asked. It sounded like one of his panic attacks, when he would have trouble breathing; when he felt like he wasn’t getting enough air.
“I mean, I don’t need to breathe anymore. I stopped last night, and I’ve been fine since. Look, try my chest.”
I touched his chest. I felt his heart pumping at a steady, relaxed pace, but his lungs didn’t move. Neither did his stomach. I then put my other hand against his face to feel for airflow, but after what must’ve been two minutes, none came. His pulse was still normal, and he didn’t look like he was holding his breath.
“That’s not normal,” I told him sternly. “We need to take you to a doctor.”
But he wouldn’t go. He said he felt fine - better than ever before, even. And what could a doctor do, anyway?
I was worried, but if he really did feel fine, then I guess he didn’t need to go. I made a mental note to check on him later, to see how things had progressed.
I checked his pulse, his breathing, everything again that evening, and it was all still fine - except that he wasn’t breathing, of course. When we went to sleep, I put my arm over his chest as I snuggled up next to him. It no longer rose with each breath, which felt wrong, like I was sleeping next to a cadaver. But he was still warm. Still my husband.
Something was off about him the next day. Not just the fact that he wasn’t breathing, but something else. I felt like he was staring at me. I think he noticed that I was acting weird around him.
“I don’t need to blink anymore,” he said matter-of-factly.
“What do you mean, you don’t need to blink? Are you just blinking very rarely?”
This sounded like another symptom of his anxiety. He’d often feel like all bodily functions would become manually operational, and he needed to remember to blink - or to breathe - each time he did so.
“I mean, just, I don’t need to. I don’t know when it started exactly, but I haven’t blinked since I woke up.”
I reminded him that he should go to the doctor, which he brushed off. Afterwards, we talked for a while about nothing in particular, and I watched his eyes intently. He didn’t blink once, and his eyes seemed fine - they didn’t even tear up as a result of forced lubrication.
Later, when he came back from the store, he said that people stared at him. Yet another sign of his anxiety; feeling that everyone was staring or laughing at him in particular. I went to console him, but he just said that he’d figured that he’d need to move his chest and remember to blink manually, so as not to weird other people out. He didn’t seem bothered in the slightest, but when he blinked at me, I felt small. Like he was transforming into something else entirely, and that I had become part of the “other people.”
He skipped breakfast and lunch the next day, which wasn’t completely uncharacteristic. He had always been skinny, and sometimes he’d go through the day with nothing but coffee until dinner. But when I started cooking that evening, he told me that I only needed to cook for myself.
I asked him why, but I already knew the answer. In a flash, I got angry and frustrated, but I couldn’t pinpoint exactly why. He was doing better than he had ever before. I should’ve been happy for him, and I was, but I needed more than that. I needed him to be there with me, like he always had been before.
“You need to tell me what the fuck is going on. You don’t breathe, you don’t blink, and now you don’t even eat or drink? That’s not normal! What the fuck happened on that trip to the mountains?” I asked him with an unintentionally raised voice.
“Are you mad at me for being happy, for once in my life? That I don’t need to think of every single fucking thing as a threat constantly, like some abused dog? Why can’t you just be happy that I’m happy?” he yelled back.
We argued for some time until our annoyance and anger tapered off. I ate dinner alone that day. He had his back to me when we went to sleep. I wondered if he even needed to sleep, or if he was just doing it to please me.
We didn’t talk much for the next few days. He was spending more and more time outside. He stopped telling me where he was going, and when I should expect him back. It was terrible. I felt like I barely knew my husband anymore, and that he no longer needed me; that life was somehow better without dragging me along.
One day I walked into the living room, and a deep feeling of unease filled my chest with knots as my body tensed up in fear. My husband was floating in the air, like a skydiver, holding his arms and legs out to his sides. I think I gasped or screamed, because he quickly - too quickly - rotated himself around his middle axis to face me. He floated silently, his skin pale and his eyes a grayish milky-white, the irises and pupils near fully engulfed by the sclera.
With pure, smooth energy, he moved himself in the air until our noses almost touched. He smiled with his teeth, which had turned grayish and sharp. “I guess I don’t need to walk anymore,” he said. His voice sounded distant, like it was no longer coming out of him, instead from something inside of him.
I sat him down the following evening to talk. He insisted that he would float instead. It made me uncomfortable, but he didn’t seem to care.
“How are you able to float - fly - like that?” I asked.
“I don’t know. Don’t really care, if I’m being honest.”
“Why don’t you sit down, like I asked you to, then?”
“Why should I do something to please other people? To please you? You said it yourself: I deserve all the goodness in the world. And this feels good.”
“It doesn’t feel good to me.”
I then realized that he hadn’t opened his mouth once during our conversation.
“I don’t need to make you feel good,” he said, the words echoing in my mind instead of emanating from his mouth. I don’t know how he did it, and although the whole situation was above absurd as it was, I felt like he should’ve at least asked for my permission before invading my mind like that. I felt silly and frightened and tiny. This wasn’t the man that I had married.
I barely saw him for the rest of the week. He was out a lot, and if he wasn’t, he was floating somewhere around the house. I’d catch him sitting on the ceiling, upside down, his ever-open, gray eyes staring into nothingness. He’d whisper things to me, sometimes, the words coming from inside my own head. Awful things that left me with nothing but an afterimage of abstract dread.
One morning, I woke up to him talking to me. Like, actually talking, with his mouth. He stood in our bedroom doorway, and then walked into the room, stopping at the end of the bed.
“I think I don’t need to live anymore,” he said. He sounded sad. Not happy, not fearful, not anxious, but like a man who was consumed by terminal grief.
“What’s wrong? What do you mean?”
“I’m going somewhere. Someplace else.”
“Where?” I yelled. Tears began to stream from my eyes. I was so tired. All I wanted was some answers. I wanted my husband back. “What the fuck are you talking about?”
“I’m sorry. I love you. I always have, and always will.”
That was the first time in a long time he’d said anything nice or even halfway pleasant to me. I realized he hadn’t even told me that he loved me after he’d come back from his trip. I wanted to tell him that I love him too, that I’m here for whatever he needs. But before I could say anything, I saw something move in his eyes, which made me gulp the words back inside myself, to that place in my chest where words and love and compassion come from.
He began to cry gray, thick tears, but I quickly realized they weren’t tears at all. They were his eyes, melting out of their sockets, dripping down his cheeks like honey. Soon, I heard a tapping sound as his liquid eyes hit the floor, like a leaking radiator.
I began to hear a sizzling sound, and I moved my gaze away from his reddish-gray, half-empty eye sockets. The skin on his arms began to melt, like it was on fire. The skin soon exposed his flesh, which began to crackle. Black, rancid smoke started to waft off from all over his body. I could see the bones of his arms, and his neck began to form a gaping, red-hot hole, burned in by an invisible flame.
I screamed, but I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t dare approach him and risk becoming inflicted by whatever it was that was doing this to him. I simply sat and watched his body sizzle and burn in flameless silence. His clothes were quickly burned to nothing, and he was completely naked. I saw his withered lungs through his ribcage, which looked like gigantic raisins. In his exposed stomach, his bowels had formed into a taut, rotting ball that seemed to no longer connect to anything inside of him. His genitals became brittle and black, like charcoal.
Soon he was more bone than flesh, his neck holding up a disembodied skull, alongside sharp, exposed, skewed teeth. His bones began to crack like rotten sticks, puffing out a grayish powder as they crumbled. His skeletal frame began to disintegrate, and parts of him fell to the floor, cracking into dust. Soon, there was nothing left of him except for a pile of dirt and soot and sickly sweet black smoke.
I didn’t call the police. What would I have said? There was nothing left of him.
Once I could move again, I went to get cleaning supplies. It was completely absurd, but it felt like the most logical thing to do. There was a big mess, and someone had to clean it.
I scrubbed and vacuumed and mopped until his remains were completely gone, like nothing had happened at all. I aired out our home to let the smoke and dust clear out. I didn’t know whether or not I should grieve. He was gone, but it didn’t feel like he had died. That’s not how people die.
I’m writing this to let you all know what happened to him, because I fear the same fate will soon find me as well. That morning, after I’d cleaned up the remains of my dead husband, I noticed that I no longer needed to breathe. I didn’t ask for this. I’m scared.