‘Til Death Do Us Part

Although I was expecting it, the buzz of my phone sent a jolt of adrenaline down my spine. I stiffened, sitting up straight in my narrow seat, no longer soothed by the familiar rattle of the train. It took everything in my power not to open my phone and check the notification, an alert from our home security system. I already knew what I'd see, a man at the door of the house, his identity obscured by dark, baggy clothing.

The home security system had been my wife’s idea. As my business trips increased in both length and frequency, she started to feel nervous about being home alone all the time. The extra layer of security helped her feel safe. I mused on the irony of that for a moment. Was it a little bit funny, or was it just sad? 

As I tried not to imagine what was happening at home, a complex mix of emotions roiled through me. Fear… things might not go according to plan. Sorrow… this was the end of an era that even I could admit was good as often as it was bad. Regret… that this was how it had to end. Above all, relief… finally, FINALLY, all my meticulous planning was coming to fruition. 

My wife had been a good companion for so many years; I can admit that even now. But as my career took off, it had become painfully clear that I was outgrowing her. And as I traveled for work more and more, it quickly became apparent that there were PLENTY of truly invigorating options available to me. She was holding me back, there was no getting around it. And, if I’m being brutally pragmatic about it, the insurance money would help with some other… expensive habits I’ve picked up over along the way. Like any big change, this would be sad and painful but it was for the best, ultimately. I leaned back in my seat, repeating that thought to myself until every shred of self doubt was eradicated.

It was tough to focus at first, but I managed to get through the trip successfully, with the help of my usual distractions. The trip home was significantly harder. With each passing mile, the heavy knot of tension in my chest expanded painfully. This was the most critical stage, the part of the plan that would make or break me. Everything had to be flawless. 

Finally, I was pulling into my driveway, mentally rehearsing each step I would need to take. I visualized myself entering my ransacked home… imagined my frantic search through the house for my wife… pictured the desperate 911 call. That was key. It had to sound natural. I tried to imagine any possible complications… contingency plans. And then, the one thing I had absolutely no plan for happened. 

My wife opened the door. She stood in the doorway, beaming at me, cheerful as ever… very much alive. For a moment, I froze, as though my brain was buffering. No thoughts whatsoever, just the dull rush of my pulse pounding between my ears. I could see her lips moving… her cheerful face twisting into a look of concern. I shook my head, trying to force myself back to reality, and just barely caught the tail end of her sentence. 

“(muffled unintelligible speech)...OK?”

I nodded, trying desperately to produce a normal facial expression.

“Sorry, hon, just a little out of it… it was a tough trip back…”

She put on a familiar sympathetic look that always drew a pulse of rage from me. As though she had any idea what my life was like, the stresses I faced. I swallowed the feeling as she embraced me, kissing my cheek. She took my bag and held open the door, ushering me into the house. 

“Did you have a good weekend?” I asked, with some trepidation. She turned, smiling brightly, and nodded. 

“I ended up taking a little last-minute trip to my sister’s. It was so nice to get to see her and spend some time with the boys!” 

Of course. Of Fucking course! That woman and her two rowdy spawn never met a plan they couldn’t ruin. The first marital fracture that had sent me down my current path was seeing my wife pamper those little brats and knowing that soon enough, she would be begging to ruin our lives with some gremlins of our own. 

I smiled wearily, hoping it seemed genuine enough. I gestured vaguely towards the stairs and turned, trudging away to our bedroom. I would probably have to come up with a convincing story of my arduous trip home to explain my behavior, but that was a problem for later. Now, to address the much more immediate problem. What the hell had happened? Why hadn’t I heard from my accomplice?

I slumped back onto our bed, pulling out my phone and opening the home security app. Since I hadn’t checked the previous notification, it automatically jumped to that recording. 

I watched as a tall man, who I know only as “Wolf_tooth91”, strode up to the door and picked the lock, just as we discussed. I clicked through to the next recording. He strolled through the entryway and into the living room, looking furtively side to side like a predator tracking a scent. Next recording… He strolled down the hall; past the tasteless guest bathroom my wife was so fond of. Next…

He stepped into the kitchen and froze, staring like a deer in the headlights at something out of frame. He stood completely still for so long that the recording timed out. 

For a moment, I froze too, the unpleasant pressure of my accelerating heart rate causing a powerful wave of nausea. I forced myself to click the next recording. 

On the screen, the man turned, a panicked look on his face, and tried to run the way he had come. A large dark shape launched after him, disappearing from the screen as quickly as it had appeared. I scrolled back and forth through the few frames that the blurry shape was visible, trying to discern any details I could make sense of. I finally managed to pause with the creature in the center of the screen.

Between the speed of the creature and the low resolution of the camera, it was hard to make out anything conclusive, but the shape was large and vaguely canine. The shape of the head could have been a coyote, but the proportions were… just wrong. The limbs were long and lean, and the neck was almost snakelike. It seemed… big. Maybe it was a trick of the light or some quirk with the angle of the camera, but I had a feeling that when my co-conspirator had first come across it, it hadn’t looked up at him. It had looked him dead in the eye.

I clicked through to the next clip, dreading seeing what had happened next. But what flashed across the screen was my wife arriving home, suitcase in tow. Puzzled, I clicked through again. Another shot of my wife, busy with something in the kitchen. I clicked back to the clip of the creature, as confused as I was scared. It had to have gone somewhere. 

When the realization hit, a heavy pit of horror opened in the bottom of my chest. Of course it went somewhere. There was only one place it COULD have gone. I jumped off the bed, hurrying down the stairs as quietly as I could, hoping not to alert my wife.

I had never been nervous to enter the basement before. This time, once I’d pulled open the awkwardly heavy door, I stood at the top of the stairs, feeling like a little kid afraid of the dark. Eventually, I made my way down the stairs, wincing at every creak of the old wood. Some part of me felt a little silly. There would be nothing here. This had to be some sort of prank, “Wolf_tooth91” messing with me before making off with my hard earned cash.

But there he was, lying motionless on the dusty cement floor. There were no obvious injuries, but as I got closer, I could see that he was pale and his chest was eerily still. I reached down, about to check his pulse and then stopped, contemplating fingerprints. There were two options here and I would need to choose carefully… and quickly. I could rush upstairs, call 911, share with my wife the trauma of finding a dead stranger in our basement… this option was so tempting… everything could just be over. But I had no way of knowing how well my partner in crime had covered his tracks. If he had been sloppy, I would be screwed. The other option… deal with the body myself. Not easy, not pleasant, and no plausible deniability if I made a single mistake. But it was the option that left me with the most control… I knew I could rely on myself to do everything right. 

The creak of my wife's footsteps on the floor above me forced my hand. I heaved the man's body onto its side, rolling it towards a dark corner crammed full of heavy-duty storage bins from when we had moved in. I braced myself for the stench, the feel of rot beneath my hands, but the body was stiff and cool and emanated only a faintly chemical smell. I shook my head, trying not to give it too much thought. One thing at a time.

I managed to stuff him into one of the larger bins, panting with the exertion. I stood up, taking a minute to let my strained muscles rest while I looked around the basement. No trace of any sort of animal… no scratches or footprints, nothing disrupted… no sign of how it had left… It clearly wasn't here so why was there no footage of it leaving? I opened the app again, having a vague memory of reading something during the setup process. Yep. There it was. AI powered detection… it detects human shapes to prevent false alarms from animals. As far as the cameras were concerned, this thing didn't exist. It could come and go undetected.

A knot of tension wound itself tightly around my core, filling me with an unshakeable sense of dread. I had to deal with both a corpse AND some sort of intruding animal? My life was supposed to be getting easier, yet here I stood on a wobbly tightrope over two steaming piles of shit. Is it better to go to jail or get eaten by a monster? 

The thought was so ridiculous that I let out a weak, strangled laugh as I made my way back up the stairs. Maybe I'd get lucky and the monster would take care of my wife for me. I let out another laugh, a hysterical giggle infused with delirious panic. The rest of the day, my mantra was “one thing at a time”. Normal conversation with my wife… check! Eat dinner without staring ominously at the basement door… check! Get ready for bed without running screaming into the night… check! Sleep…check!

HAHa, as if! 

I lay awake, staring at the ceiling, jumping at every creak of the old house settling around me. In the morning, my wife would head into town for her weekly errands, leaving me alone to deal with what was left of my accomplice. That problem, I could solve.

The animal, though… I don't know. Burn the house down? Flee the country? Buy a bear trap? Oh god, one thing at a time.

The morning crept by, agonizingly slow. Finally, after what felt like hours of meaningless chit-chat and irritating procrastination, I watched my wife's car pull out of the driveway, leaving me to start my grim task. I gathered the necessary supplies… gloves, heavy duty garbage bags, an old saw from the back of the shed that wouldn't be missed. I trudged down the steps into the basement and my heart dropped. The basement was in a complete state of disarray. The bins had been destroyed and thick, heavy shreds of plastic littered the floor. My carefully constructed shelving lay in a sad heap on the floor along with rough chunks of stone that had been torn from the foundation. The body was… not here…

This… might work out for me! My wife was sharp enough to notice a body eventually but some new shelves and bins? I could explain that. 

I looked around carefully, starting to feel optimistic for the first time in days. But something caught my eye, something off about the shadowy corner of the room where my shelves used to stand. Hidden in the shadows, there was a rough narrow hole in the foundation. A tunnel… or some sort of burrow? I tapped erratically at the screen of my phone, fumbling to turn on the flashlight. I crouched down, using the light to illuminate the rough passageway. A few feet down the narrow tunnel, I could see the rubber soles of a pair of sneakers. As I watched, the left foot twitched, followed by the right, as though the owner of the feet was slowly rousing from a deep sleep. I flicked off the light, a wave of nausea rising through me. This was too much. Too much for me to deal with. I didn't deserve to have to deal with this. I didn't want to deal with this!

I had planned everything so carefully, everything neatly controlled so I could finally have the life I deserved! This wasn't right… none of this was right. 

“What happened down here?”

At the sound of wife's voice from behind me, I jumped up with an undignified yelp. I whirled to face her, stammering.

“NOTHING!” 

She stood just outside the glow of the dim light above my head, her form a dark silhouette against the light from the top of the stairs. From behind me, a soft groan of pain and confusion emanated from the mouth of the tunnel. She cocked her head to the side and I could imagine the look of concern and confusion on her face. 

I stammered, grasping at any plausible explanation. 

“Uh… some sort of weird hole here… do you know…uh…have you … seen this?” My voice trailed off weakly.

She cocked her head further, her neck bending strangely. She shrugged nonchalantly and then her shoulders… kept shrugging upwards, her torso seeming to stretch and elongate. Bile rose in my throat and my pulse rushed through my skull, threatening unconsciousness. 

Her long neck twisted to the side and the light from behind revealed her profile. Where my wife's face should have been, there was a long canine snout, jaw lolling open in the predatory grin of a fox in the doorway of an unguarded henhouse.

The narrow jaw moved, and my wife's voice poured out, sweet as honey.

“After all these years, you finally sent me the perfect gift… I needed somewhere safe to keep it! I'm not NEARLY done with him yet!”

She took an awkward heavy step towards me, like a dog propped up on its hind legs, and I heard the unmistakable scrape of claws against concrete. I took a step back instinctively, pressing my back against the cool stone behind me. The jaws opened wider and my wife's laugh came rushing out, morphing into the hair raising cackle of a coyote.

“What are you so scared of, SILLY? I'm not going to KILL you! What kind of monster would kill their spouse?”

The monstrous head quirked to the right in a sharp little jerk… oh god, that dorky wink I had seen a thousand times before… She dropped to all fours roughly, as though she could no longer maintain the bipedal stance. A canine form loomed before me, still shrouded in darkness. I leaned my head back against the cold stone behind me, pressing my eyes shut and trying to block out the thought of the sharp teeth that had caught the light as the jaws moved again.

“You're all mine”

My wife's voice, dripping with malice.

“til death do us part.”