Well, you read the title, so you know what this is about.
I have to get this off my chest, to anyone who will listen, and I figured an anonymous account would be the best option. You can judge me all you want, but I just need the opportunity to explain.
Yes this is going to be from my point of view, and yes it may sound outlandish, but I assure you everything in this post is 100% accurate and I can provide evidence if need be.
I met my wife in high school. It was one of those things where we clicked early, and were inseparable from that point on. A cheerleader/quarterback sort of a thing, but with boys’ volleyball.
From the start, she was a go-getter. There was no question, no doubt about it. She told me we were going to be dating, and my hormones agreed with zero reservations. She told me where our first date would be, what restaurants we’d go to, what movies we’d see, and ultimately, where I was to propose.
This may sound like I’m complaining, but I’m not. Far from it. It was a crutch. An easy out. I never had to decide anything for myself, never had to make choices, never had to worry about screwing anything up. Whenever it was time to buy a gift, I had a list and guaranteed success.
A few years ago, she got into natural healing. Crystals, candles, stuff like that. She bought in to some sort of grass-roots business opportunity, and before long she was moving up the ladder, selling cancer-curing geodes and juvenile-diabetes-reversing incense. I was really proud of her, of all the routes she could have chosen, she decided to dedicate her life to helping others. Eventually she was even bringing other women into the company, like a district manager.
On top of all that, sales were easy, and she was never a fan of challenges.
It was during one of her onboarding seminars that things changed.
Just a little trip out into the woods near our development. An ever-shrinking speck of untamed property that was going to be bulldozed in a few months, to build more pre-fab housing. Kind of sad if you like that sort of thing, but progress has to move forward, I guess. I always liked when birds would show up during migrations. I thought about putting a feeder out in the back yard, but she would’ve disliked the mess, which is fair.
The trip was indented to be a bonding exercise, a chance to commune with nature and to embrace the healing power of reasonably priced crystals, ethically sourced from native providers. This was really good for the native sellers, “basically charity”, as she put it. I don’t know, I never really had a mind for business.
The meeting ran very late.
I was standing in the kitchen, wondering what exactly to do, when I heard the glass door at the back of the house slide open.
Relieved, I called out my wife’s name, but there was only a low grumble in response.
I left the kitchen, thinking she might’ve been out drinking with the girls again, and got her pamper kit ready. (A pamper kit has all the things in it that a wife needs when she has to be comforted after a really bad day or a really fun night.)
The person I met in the living room was not my wife.
Kinda.
She was standing awkwardly, feet planted at weird angles, her powder pink suit roughed up and bedraggled. She held her arms in an odd way, almost like a deer standing on its hind legs would holds its forelegs. Sorry if that explanation didn’t make sense.
We locked eyes immediately, but neither of us said anything. I was surprised, having never seen a single hair on her out of place, no matter how drunk she was.
That was when her mouth opened, not the mouth that had given so many helpful instructions of the years. This was a mouth of pure darkness. A pit. A void. A pit-void lined with sharp fangs that pointed in every direction from all around the rim.
She let out an ear-splitting screech.
I explained that I understood she was mad, and that I heard her, and her feelings were valid, but apparently she didn’t want to hear it.
Within an instant I had been thrown a good six feet, against a wall, my vision hazy as I looked up at her, now standing over me despite never actually closing the distance.
This wasn’t the first time she’d shoved me, of course, I’ve done and said some pretty bone-headed stuff from time to time.
It was different this time.
By which I mean distance-wise.
Just when I was about to ask what happened in the woods, all sense of dead washed away and I was filled with relief as she turned, stalked back to the sliding glass door, and began dragging in the freshly mangled corpse of one of her new hires.
While she was chewing and ripping and gnashing away in the living room, I went to the bedroom and started looking things up online. Random changes in personality, trouble standing properly, and sudden onset fangs.
Most medical sites were of no real use, but I did find some help from a few users of a cryptid forum. Thankfully, they had a lot of information on something called a “skinwalker”, and the more I read about it, the more things began lining up. I could only nod in silent agreement with each passing line of each new document on the subject.
Everyone I spoke to said to get out of the house and to leave my wife behind, that she was a lost cause and she’d eventually destroy me. There was nothing human left in her, just a ravenous ghoul that does its best to appear normal so it can prey on others.
I’d been hearing that for quite a few years beforehand, so I didn’t pay it much mind.
When I’d read through enough to get a solid idea of what was going on with my wife, I closed everything out and shut the computer down.
As I turned to the doorway, there she was.
She seemed taller, which I hadn’t noticed before. She nearly took up the whole height of the door frame. Her hair, always a perfect blonde, was already growing out, black roots showing, her bob haircut now a wild, tousled mess.
I asked if she enjoyed her dinner, but she simply let out another wall-shaking screech, blood spray bursting from her lips.
I definitely think she was fulfilled, because after that… well, let’s just say I’m used to making the first move, and having that move rejected, but that night there was no move. Unless you count throwing me against the wall again a “move”.
She was never the kiss-and-tell type, so I’ll leave it at that.
Suffice to say we both walked kind of awkwardly the next morning.
In the following weeks, things started to get back to normal. At least in some ways. She got really good at mimicking her old voice, sounding less and less like an animal grunting out random sounds and more like that familiar tone she always had. She said my name constantly, like she was trying to impress me. That, and a few other phrases.
“The caaar is acting up…”
“That’s not where thaaaat goes…”
“This is the wrong orrrrder…”
“They don’t belooooong… in… this neighborhooood…”
Though there was never any real intent behind the phrases, and they were always spoken at random and inappropriate times, I was still flattered that she was making the effort.
The police asked me a few questions about the missing women from that bonding excursion, but no one seemed to be looking particularly hard for my wife, specifically. I said I didn’t know what happened, which was true, and I said I hadn’t seen her since she left for that trip, which was partially true.
She seems to be content with being a house wife nowadays, because she stays home all the time and only goes out at midnight. She was pretty sad when they finally got around to bulldozing the woods out back, but she brightened up when I set up a bunch of bird feeders in the yard.
She still works with the crystals and gemstones, but now it’s less about selling them and more about arranging them into circular patterns on the floor around her and chanting until there’s a thunder storm.
Really, we’ve never gotten along better. We never argue anymore, I can’t remember the last time I did something that set her off, and on rare occasions when someone poses a problem or a threat to either of us, zoop, they just vanish in the night.
In fact I’m pretty sure that, in a certain amount of months, I might be a dad. To what? I have no idea, but I already love it just the same. We’ll raise it half-and-half with regard to family traditions and whatnot.
At the end of the day, all in all, I guess I can say… I think I actually like my wife better as a skinwalker.
