I’d like to say we probably started out as most high school sweethearts do, pretty popular and practically known for just being in love with each other. We were voted most likely to get married after high school and well, you guessed it, we got married after high school. I mean we were 19, we had great parents, and each had a great job opportunity on hold for us and everything went swell. I’d say we were on the lucky side of things, but our flame not so much. After our first daughter things started to get a little on edge between me and my husband.
To catch you up to speed, my husband is generally a very enthusiastic man we’ve been together all through out high school and married for about another 5 years, so don’t think we didn’t have our fun when we had the chance, of course we did. We didn’t want children until our mid 20’s, and really everything has been fine. Recently though my husband has been acting strangely towards our daughter Viridian, I would often catch him avoiding all contact with her and when she would crawl towards him he would flinch and hurriedly scamper the complete opposite direction from her. He would cringe every time he saw me pick her up, or kiss her face or even just be around her and play with her. This was odd and it hurt quite a lot since, he was the father.
This man was my first everything and we even have our first child together that he can’t simply bear the thought of giving her a slight bit of affection. He made it seem like she was sick with some kind of disease and continued to avoid her like the plague. One night, I did the usual of putting our daughter to sleep and noticed my husband peeping around the corner of the door. I walked out of our daughters room but he had disappeared and I noticed that our bedroom door was slowly being shut. I rolled my eyes and walk in our room and noticed he was in bed facing away from me.
“Honey,” I spoke calmly to him, “you’ve been acting strange towards Viridian recently, what’s going on?” He shrugged but didn’t say anything, “You need to talk to me.” He sighed and finally turned but instead this time, he was facing the ceiling, almost in a day dreamy kind of way.
“I don’t think she’s ours.” He said, a heavy silence followed, and I took notice as to how he said ours instead of his.
“I’m not sure what you mean honey.”
“I mean, she’s not ours, don’t you find her kind of… strange?” I was almost offended, was this just not what he wanted? Is he trying to tell me he thinks our child is somehow defective?
“Wow. Okay, Good night, I’m not having this conversation about our daughter.” I snuggled under the sheets, turning away from him and decided not to talk to him or influence an argument for the remainder of the night. He sighed.
“There’s something wrong with her, something I just can’t explain.” I almost started to consider what he was trying to say, but refused to believe it regardless of how convincing he was, “I don’t think she’s human.” This took me by surprise, how was our daughter not human? I gave birth to her in front of doctors, nurses and even my own husband, was that so unnatural to him? I shrug off what he said, I knew he wasn’t trying to be offensive and that this was something that had clearly been on his mind.
I woke up again at around 4 in the morning from the sound of our daughter crying. I get up and mumble that I would check on her, when I got up to walk across the hall, I noticed her light was on. I find this odd and proceed with caution, my heart was pounding, who turned the light on? I opened the door quietly and found my husband standing over the cradle and staring at her. He was gripping the gate really hard and just staring, who knows what was going on in that mind of his. I walked towards him slowly and called his name softly but he didn’t listen to me.
“Look at her.” He spoke in a hushed tone, “Don’t you see it in her eyes?” I crept next to him and gently put my hand on his and looked at our crying daughter, “They’re not normal.” I did look at her eyes, lifting her up in arms, rocking her and hushing her and humming, and her eyes were beautiful, big and brown like mine.
“She has my eyes,” I said in a dreamy tone as she finally started to settle down, “They’re beautiful.”
“Her eyes are missing, Elizabeth.” I quickly looked up at my husband to find that he was towering over me, staring at Viridian like she was his next meal. I took a good look at him, his sclera’s were red and his eyes looked so strained, he had gotten a bit pale like as if he were sick and he was sweating like a maniac. I took a step back but his eyes were trained on our daughter. “Look.” I look down but her eyes were there, her big beautiful brown eyes, nothing missing. I look back at my husband who was still standing and staring at her.
“You need to get some sleep, go.” He didn’t move, “I said go, get out of her room, we’ll talk about this in the morning.” He slowly looked at me and finally walked past us and into our room. I sigh in relief, my heart pounded in my chest, I felt like we were in danger. I can’t leave her alone like that again, I don’t trust my husband enough not to do anything. Quickly, I shut the door and lock it, and sit in rocking chair, falling asleep with our daughter in my arms.
The next few weeks, my husband began to act stranger than usual, Viridian was crawling like she usually did but this time she made cute little squeals when she laughed or was happy. My husband practically feared her, like as if she was a monster from out of this world, and anytime she would crawl to him or clap or even tried to give him affection, he would almost scream with fear. What I found most odd was how quietly she would watch him and just stare. Sometimes she would even try to get closer, almost like as if she was purposely provoking him.
I’ll admit they were both acting quite strange and I was even starting to consider that maybe my husband was not crazy, but there was nothing I could do to really convince myself that our daughter was the problem, and on top of that I had asked him to get evaluated and he refused. He claimed he wasn’t seeing things and even assumed I was under some sort of trance. I felt uneasy around my husband, like I had to walk on eggshells, I started sleeping in our nursery to make sure our daughter was safe. I tried talking to my husband about his behavior and that he was scaring me and our daughter.
“That thing is not our daughter!” What he said stung but I said nothing, and walked away, attending to Viridian. One day my husband finally came to his senses and began to act normal, holding our little girl, playing with her and even feeding her himself. I finally felt at ease and after a few days of him progressing like this, I was able to finally sleep in our bedroom. I decided it was best to not question is behavior towards Viridian over the past few weeks in fear that I might bring something up again. I fell sound asleep until I had to wake up to the sound of our daughter screaming her lungs out, I quickly jump out of bed and run to her nursery but she wasn’t there. I ran to my room to grab my husband but he wasn’t there either, my heart completely sank to my stomach. I rushed downstairs as fast as I could and there he was, in the kitchen with my daughter laying on the counter and a knife in his hand.
“Honey,” I spoke softly, careful not to provoke him as every bone in my body was ready to attack him, “Listen to me, you don’t want to do this.”
“If I don’t she’s going to kill us, you don’t understand, don’t you see the shadows surrounding us? She brought them here!” I looked but it was just us in the dark and my daughter shining under the moonlight, crying and screaming.
“There’s nothing there,” I said softly, inching towards him, “Look at me, let me help you, I think you might need some help and I think we can get you what you need! You just have to listen to me.” I watched as he just stared at me, he looked so tired and drained, a voice of reason is something he wanted but didn’t feel he needed.
“No, no I don’t need the help, it’s you! How do you not see it!” He slammed the knife next to Viridian, I almost screamed, my heart was pounding in my ears and I was still walking very slowly towards them until I was finally across from him with our daughter in between us, “She’s going to hurt us both if we don’t kill her.” He said quietly, he began to point the knife at me instead, “What if she already replaced you? She’s infected you, you have the same ooze coming out of your eyes like her!”
“Honey, you need to listen to me, things have gotten worse this past month, I want to help you but you need to let me.” I tried to reach for the vase slowly that was above Viridians head, my plan was to smash it over his head. Everything grew completely silent and the next moments became a blur. Aaron grabbed the knife and was ready to stab my daughter, but I quickly grabbed her and pulled her out of the way, clutching her in my arm and using the other to smash the vase over his head and then I run out the door.
Aaron screamed in pain and I’m sure he was darting towards us and I screamed for help, our neighbors lights started to turn on and once a door was seen barely opened I rushed towards the house and begged them to help me and my baby. Aaron was gaining onto us and the woman pulled us inside, slamming the door and locking it completely shut. He banged on the door screaming my name telling me he had to kill my baby. The woman called the police and they came in less than 5 minutes, arresting Aaron and taking statements. He was halfway through smashing a window just kill my daughter.
This all happened a few years ago and he was sent to the psych ward, where he was diagnosed with severe schizophrenia. He was not allowed visitors since he would constantly just get triggered and try to convince them to come after my baby. Viridian is now 3 years old, walking and even using her words much better. I moved on from Aaron, as he was never getting better and never progressed even with medication. What I found odd was that he has had one family member who has had schizophrenia from his mother’s side however, it was his 4x great grandmother and it had never happened to anyone else since. He has also never had any symptoms in his entire life nor has he ever been treated for it. My current fiancé is mentally healthy and has been treating my daughter and I so well, though recently he has been acting strange around my daughter.