My Wife Has Taken Our Roleplaying Too Far | Creep Cast
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Welcome back to Creepcast! This week we have a two-parter. This is kind of an interesting one. The story is called My Husband Has Taken a Roleplaying Too Far, followed immediately by My Wife Has Taken a Roleplay Too Far. You know, uh...

This is something I feel like all of our viewers and listeners can probably relate to in some way. Somebody, the freakiness of this fan base is disgusting. Well, I'm sure that the kind of people who listen to multi-hour podcasts from two men they've never met are just all the time just getting whatever they want. So,

Yeah, I bet. It's true. I bet there's a huge overlap. But no, this story has been recommended a lot by you all in the comments. At least the first part has been my husband's taking a role playing too far. And after some looking, it looks like the same author made a sequel called My Wife Has Taken a Role Playing Too Far. So we're going to read these two back to back. Hopefully it makes a cool little story. Hopefully you all are right. But I will say once again that you all have a very shifty track record when it comes to recommendations.

So I am going to be judging this with a critical eye, not for the author's sake, but for your sakes, because it's something I can hold against you. You said that there's a physical copy of this book, right? A physical copy of several of the authors. So the author is Christian Wallace. And on his subreddit, he links off to some copies of his books. It looks like you can get them on Amazon.

So it looks like they are what's worth looking for anthology books. Right. And it looks like he actually has a lot you can pick up. So I imagine that these books are included or sorry, these stories we're going to read today are included in some of them. But yeah, it looks like he's got a few works, I believe. Yeah, it looks like the the anthology or like the the stories of horror and supernatural. It's called With Teeth. Oh, wow.

August 25th of this year, 2024. Oh, wow. Very cool. Awesome. So very recent. Or sorry, this may be the only one. I may have been looking at other people's. I'm just stupid. Ignore me. Yeah, With Teeth, Stories of Horror, and The Supernatural. So if you like this story, if you want to support the author, which I certainly will, go ahead and get a copy of his stuff, With Teeth. Buy a copy.

And hopefully this story is good. I know I rag on you guys a lot, but I want all the stories to be amazing because I like good stories. It's that you people won't give them to me. But, you know, it's been kind of hit or miss. I've talked about this before, how like this naming title can go both ways, right? Like on the high end, you have stuff that's kind of in this like, hey, Reddit, I need help. You have stuff like stolen tongues. That's pretty good.

you have stuff like my dog is running as fast as he possibly can back and forth. I thought that somebody was trying to break into your room there. He is sprinting out to the end of the hallway, then back in right behind me as hard as he can. He can't even breathe. Look how fast he's going. He just drifted. That was cool. Anyway, there's like stolen tongues and then there's

stuff like my wife is peeking at me from behind corners. But then there's other times that becomes like, uh, the thing in the basement is getting better at mimicking people, people, and it kind of loses me a bit, or my dead girlfriend keeps messaging me on Facebook. So we'll see where this, what side this story falls in on. I'm very curious. I'm ready, dude. I'm ready to get freaky with it. Big time. Let's get freaky with it before we do though, as always, thank you all so much for supporting us on audio platforms. Continue to show some love there. It means a lot. Uh,

I actually, let's see where we're at in the Spotify rankings, Apple podcast. Get us up. All right. We're fighting with, we're fighting against Ben Shapiro, dude. Yeah. Hold on. Let me check real quick. See where we at. Cause I know that like we had just overcame Ben Shapiro last time. It was the biggest highlight of my life. Overcoming Ben Shapiro. We're currently 45, but at the time of recording, we haven't dropped one in like a little over a week. So that's actually down. So we're normally higher than that. Where's Ben at?

Speaker 0 : Yo, he's 50. We're five points or five spaces ahead on our off day. Look at that. Let's go. Speaker 3 : Now all you have to do is get past the talk to a podcast and that's how you know that you've made it. Where's that one. But if you had to guess,

We're one spot ahead of Brittany Broski. Talk to her with Hayley Welch's number five. That is depressing. All right. That's horrible information. Sorry that you're in a shit show like this one, dude. We got to step it up big time. Now, let me ask you this. Based off this title, my husband has taken a role playing too far. Isaiah, what kind of role play could go too far here?

Let's make some predictions, dude. Look, as long as there's not a child involved, I'm going to be happy. We have a history on the show of running into stories that like to involve that for some reason. I guess it's because we're YouTubers, can't help ourselves. But I think we both know what kind of

role play the title is inferring to. I don't know if it will go that way. You all have assured me in the comments it doesn't go that way, but I'll be surprised. I'm going to say it's going to be some weird dominatrix thing, right? Going to be a dominatrix thing. It's going to be locking up and all of a sudden it's going to go to haywire. I always had a weird thing.

The dominatrix thing of being locked up and someone just being like, no, I think I'm just going to leave you there. That frightens me. That's the plot of that. What's that one? Gerald's game. Oh yeah. Yeah. Well, doesn't he have a heart? He has a heart attack when he's like, yeah, he handcuffs her and then has a heart attack. So she's stuck there. That's horrifying to just be like, I'm just trapped here. I'm going to die. So maybe it goes to Gerald's game route. Maybe tie up.

and left to die. We'll see. We'll see what happens. I'm curious to see. I'm excited to get into it. What if someone's like into furry stuff, right? They want to dress up like furries. And then all of a sudden the guy comes home one day and he's part, like, let's say he wants to be a fox. He's like, he cuts off his arms and replaces them with fox arms. And he's like, he's like, welcome. He's like, welcome to the jungle, baby. Is what he tells her. And he starts to want to, he medically, surgically,

manipulates his body to look that of a fox. Would that be, to me, that'd be taking the role play too far. Maybe we might get into some weird body horror stuff. I'm hoping. I like that you thought all of this out. That would be a fun horror short. Like it starts out as like a furry thing, but then they're like, they're converting themselves into an animal. That'd be fun. Yeah. It'd be cool. I think it'd be cool. And like, like full horror, like you get to like a tusk level of like, you know, encasing yourself in the skin. That'd be cool.

I want to see him break his legs to form what like a fox leg would look like, like breaking his finger. Oh, that'd be cool. Yeah. He's just like, you know, me and you can just make stuff like this, right? I mean, we have, we have the resources. He's like, baby, I'm a saddle hop on. Can you imagine saying that to a guy who's like, he looks like a dog and he's on his back. Giddy up cow girl. Dude, me and you should make a short film. Just some weird gross horror stuff. We could pull it off.

I doubt it dude. Okay, alright, well yep terrible idea, whatever. Anyway, let's go to- alright. Before we continue this episode, I need to talk to you about something. I am cursed with a sharp sense of smell.

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That's code 55 creep or click the link to get half off and start smelling better today. Thanks for sponsoring this episode. Back to the episode. Into the story. My husband has taken our role playing too far. Are you ready to get into it? Oh, I'm ready to dive in. Slippery wet, dude. I got my baby oil ready and everything. All right. You didn't have to add that last part, but let's go. Sorry. Sorry. When he told me he wanted to play pretend, I thought it was something to do with sex.

And the funny thing is, if he'd have whipped out a Wonder Woman costume, I would have gone along with it. Good woman. Go ahead. Things have been cold between us for years. One word replies to tense conversations had become the norm. I was prepared to do what was necessary to try and patch things up.

when he clarified he wanted to pretend to be young oh no hunter oh god already hold on man hold on now these people they keep putting us in these positions i hate this i don't care for this at all you want me to play pretend pretend to be young he said mother of god why do we do this guys

You promised me. Okay, I'm going to read it to the end of this paragraph. You all promised me it would not go this route. Let's see. When he clarified he wanted to pretend to be young, I felt a lot more hesitation. If this was a sex thing, I thought it could get pretty weird. Even as he explained it all, I just kept waiting for it to turn in that direction. I figured that's what it had to be, right? But he said it wasn't like that at all. He just wanted some time now and again.

When he could behave like a child. Oh, dude, is he going to go into like a baby fetish? But he, hold on to finish the paragraph. Nothing too weird. Just sort of therapeutic role play. Okay. So this sounds like baby fetish, but she, she's clarified twice in the opening paragraph. There was nothing sexual to it. So this could be just like a mental regression. He's wanting to go into or something. Give me the baby. Give me the giant man, baby.

He's like, she comes home and she's like, where's the bed? And she's a giant fucking crib, dude. He starts shitting in his diaper and stuff. You made, I feel like you made a video about this at some point, didn't you? I did. I did. I talked about adult, adult babies. Yeah. There's, that's normally like a fetish thing, right? Well,

Well, I mean, not entirely. I think that there's some people like you're saying it's like age regression and type stuff, whatever. In my opinion, it's one of the things online where the line is so blurred. You know, who knows, right? People say it's not sexual, but then they're like,

You know, their titties are out, their dicks and pussies are out, and they're wearing diapers. I mean, what are we supposed to do here? I mean, yeah, yeah. It's like, sure, whatever you say, bud. Right. I'll admit it wasn't what I thought. He wanted me to pack his lunches and kiss his cheek before going to work, he said. He wanted me to give him the kind of things you'd give a kid. So I packed him a yogurt, a ham sandwich, and an apple. There's also a small carton of juice, all tucked neatly into a brown paper bag. His whole face lit up with joy when he saw it.

I came up with the brown bag myself and he told me it was a nice touch. I remember thinking it was the first sincere compliment he'd paid me in years. I felt a rare ping of pride at that. After that, I got the gist pretty quickly. He wanted me to run in baths and sit there beside him while he played with toys.

Dude. Okay, you know what? I'm glad it's not going to sexual direction, for one. It's making my stomach fucking turn up. But it is. Is this not way grosser? You know? I sat there and I was like, I'm picturing myself, my big fat ass in a bathtub. I'm like farting bubbles and stuff. My wife's watching me play with like a luchas. Lieutenant Chip has her toy. It feels like I'm getting like secondhand embarrassment reading about this fictional character, right? But

But here's the thing. Like, okay, I guess I should clarify. It would be more gross if it was a sexual thing and age regression, but it is more scary to read about because here the motives kind of hidden, right? It's like, what are you getting at? How the fuck are you playing with hot wheels in the tub and all of a sudden going to bring up your dick game later on in bed? You know what I mean? That's what I'm saying. I'm like, lost in translation. I don't think that's happening. I don't think that's happening at all. No, I'm saying that because I'm saying that he has his like little baby fit. Right.

And then he has like his adult time. Well, that's what I'm saying. I think what he's getting at is zero adult time that he's like completely going away. He's perpetually forever in this. That's where I think this is going. That's where I think it's going. He wanted to ask me for permission before going out to play in the yard. He wanted spaghetti and hot dog for dinner and jelly and ice cream for dessert. Jelly and ice cream? I did it all with a smile. He never really looked to me all that much as a wife.

But as a caregiver? Oh, run, girl. Run. It was like, okay, so hold on. I'm interested now. I went from scared to intrigued. This feels like a psycho, like Norman Bates scenario, you know? We'll see. It was like every little gesture was the greatest thing to him. I thought it was messed up. Sure. I don't know. Those first few weeks were actually quite nice.

One day he came home and I had the telly set to... Oh, he's British. Okay, we have to quit. All right, thank you all for watching Creepcast. Gross. Gross. Appreciate it. Sorry that a British person... I'm kidding. Gross. One day he came home and I had the telly set to old cartoons from his childhood and he just burst out into tears. Bought the DVDs as a little surprise but didn't expect that kind of reaction. Ran over and held him and we stayed like that. Huddled on the sofa for hours.

I never felt that kind of closeness or vulnerability from him, or, well, anyone else I'd ever met. It was confusing, but I liked it. We'd always been each other's closest friends, and now he was spending more time with me than ever before. And he cared about what I had to say and genuinely paid attention to me. I once baked him a cake and he sat on the counter kicking his legs, asking me questions the whole time.

I told him about the recipe, about how my grandmother had brought it over with her when she immigrated, about how it had been passed down for generations, and I could see that he wasn't play acting, he really was blown away by the whole story. But the request just kept coming, as did the amount of time he spent roleplaying. It started out as something before and after work, but he soon quit his job and without notice, it became an all day activity.

girl run run girl get out of there is what I want to say my god how does he quit his job it's like well I guess we don't have a house now

Well, what kind of income? So she has to get all of the income. Also the whole thing. She had enough income to support them. I don't know. We'll find out. I feel bad. I feel bad so far for him because one, I can sympathize with somebody being like, I never got this as a child, blah, blah, blah. You know, you fall into that deal. But I sympathize with her as well because she's probably like, it's been years since she's had this kind of inner

interconnectivity with this person that she loves. But how do you come back from this place? You know what I mean? That's kind of where my... I feel like that's where the story's going. You don't come back from it to the degree that it's getting to. But also, like...

Like, sure, what you said, you can sympathize with someone who never had it as a kid, but even then, to a degree, right? Because, like, I'll have a peanut butter jelly every now and then and be like, oh, yeah, this is nice. Reminds me of being a kid. But when you're using someone else, especially a spouse, to treat you like a child, that's like, I don't have sympathy anymore. Like, it's too far. I could just see some people being with the age regression thing. I could see some people having...

a lot of, I guess, sympathy for that thing. I'll be odd or whatever, but I, it's, it, I guess the point I'm making with that is even if it is people being like, well, I think it's normal. I just think for a relationship, how do you come back from that place? That's all I was saying. Yeah, I see. I see.

Like I said, it was part of the fun and I didn't put any limits on it. He did what I imagine most kids do all day long. Watch TV, play with toys and video games, ran around making silly noises. He also wanted to do the less fun stuff. Oh, he also wanted to do the less fun stuff. So I had to set him chores, bathe him, brush and cut his hair, make him eat vegetables, etc.

He even asked me to start organizing him homework. So I bought some old exercise books for low-level maths and English. God damn, dude. She is bought in.

He was, I mean, like she's taking it way too far. Like when he quits his job, it's like, okay, I'll treat you like a child. Like she's also insane. That's, that's, that's a, you know, this is a fictitious story. Cause you already know. It was like, if you came home and your wife is like, Hey, what's up? I quit my job. It would be, there'd be hell to pay. It would be over. Hell to pay. Hey, Kayla, I deleted the YouTube channel. I need you to treat me like I'm sick now. What? Yeah, exactly. Buy me, buy me homework. Study books, please. Thank you. She just beats me to death in the living room.

Okay, so that actually raises an interesting question. We're kind of cheating a bit knowing there's a sequel called My Wife Has Taken It Too Far. But it's like, why is she going along with this, right? I agree. Interesting. He was never a naughty, but he did like to make a fuss when I told him to do these things. Sometimes I catch a sly smile or twinkle in his eye and I knew he really liked it.

There was something inherently bizarre and actually kind of funny about watching an accountant sit there and struggle when carrying the one. Still, it was a far cry from the very guarded and deeply arrogant man I'd married. I guess I'm just trying to put it all in order for you, but I'm not sure I can. There were times I felt wrong, I suppose.

All my attraction to him went right out the window, but I didn't care because we didn't have sex that much as husband and wife. And even when we did, it wasn't very good. Maybe if you understood that I'm not a social person, you could see why I let this all happen. I don't have friends, never have, not even when I was in university. His company, his placid, warm, and adoring company, it worked a kind of magic on me. I think also that I actually quite liked looking after someone.

In hindsight, I probably should have just got a cat. At the time, I just liked the change of pace and always suspected there was some dark secret lurking beneath him. My mother had warned me about this with men, and I was just glad he didn't like killing hookers. You know what would be kind of crazy too? It's like if you did end up making an adult baby video, if it turned into a thing about a guy wanting to go back in the womb,

And that was kind of the, that was like the fucking titular piece of like danger that was happening. Oh, I feel like I've heard that somewhere. It would be crazy. If a guy's like, I must crawl inside you.

It's going to be pretty crazy. Oh, House of the Dead overkill. That's it. Yeah. At the ending of the game, the main character crawl. Gosh, this is so weird. I can't remember if it was his mom or if it was like a girl he just pretended was his mom, the antagonist. At the end, she gets mutated like the super giant monster.

And then I'm pretty sure after you kill her at the end, he crawls back inside of her. Damn. I'd be down to see it. Anyway, sorry. Sidetrack. This seemed safe. Harmless. At least at first. As we settled further into a routine, I started to feel lonely again. Only it was different. This wasn't the bored listlessness of a day spent at home trying to look busy. It was more like standing over an ocean and looking down.

I think it was the way he started to change physically. I thought they were all deliberate changes. Things he did to look less like an adult. Sometimes he looked at me and I didn't like it. It was a hungry look. I met a boy once when I was younger and he looked at me like that and I liked it. But coming from my husband in blue pajamas with a pacifier in his mouth and a rattle in one hand, God, I could have been sick.

You are sick, dude. You're in hell. Welcome to hell. Oh, that's messed up. Gosh. This is effective so far. This works. And come nighttime, the house started to feel different. Larger. Colder than usual. I started drinking for some reason. Some reason. Like we all don't understand. I think partly just to unwind. When things broke, it was up to me to fix them or to answer the phone or deal with bills.

We had plenty saved up, so don't get me wrong, it wasn't like we were in dire circumstances, but there was no one else to share the endless responsibilities with, and I felt like a weight on my shoulders. Come morning, I'd have to go through the motions with a pounding headache, and I found that the day started to blur. Months passed, maybe even a whole year. It's hard for me to remember of these events in a straight line, and that's not all my fault. I remember thinking that he was a growing boy

But that wasn't true at all. What? What do you mean? He was growing? Okay. We ordered new shoes for him online and they were a different size than usual. Smaller. He said it was because he wanted the light up ones. But he'd been a size 11 as an adult and the ones we bought were for a young boy. I don't know how, but he wore those new shoes just fine. I pinched the toe and told him he'd grow into them.

I have vivid memories of watching him struggle to put a stuffed toy to the top shelf, but he'd always towered over me at 6'3". Even now I'm putting it all back together in my head and finding little surprises. There's always the sense that if I stopped too long to think, everything would rush past me and I'd miss it. Even trying my best to just go with it, I found myself feeling like a stranger in my own house. Things moved, rooms were rearranged, and new toys just appeared all without me knowing how.

A whole swing set was installed in the garden without me remembering, but when I checked, my signature was on the invoice.

it's called alcoholism yeah she's just so drunk exactly he's he's out of the role play by now he's like uh he's like can you babe can you please stop and she's like that's my little boy you're my little angel boy you'd be gross too as like a grown man doing the baby stare you know like this the kid the stare kids do where they're not like looking at you or anything like they're looking past you right that's like soulless eyes they're just like

Mouth slightly open. Yeah, it's like their brain is trying to put stuff together. It's like it's trying to run math or something. Yeah. How are you feeling? I'm vibing with this so far. I like the direction it's going. I'm waiting for it. There is a storm coming. This woman has not ran away. She needs to run away. She needs to get out. From this situation. The man is getting smaller. Magically, magically smaller. You got to get out.

He is going to wear baby booties after a while, dude. Good God. At one point, he began wearing diapers and I didn't even notice until days passed. Just kind of made sense somehow. In the moment, it felt so natural. Looking back, I seem to remember my husband as a child, not a fully grown man. I've been feeding a toddler, hugging a toddler, watching a toddler play games. But at the same time, it wasn't any of that.

It was my husband sitting there with his long legs crossed and crumbs in his beard. The adage of facial hair there is pretty disgusting, honestly. Doesn't it make it so much worse? It does. It made me think of a homeless guy or something. I don't know why. One morning, I woke up to a dog. And the next day, it was gone. I searched for hours, feeling like I was going insane. But sure enough, there was a bowl and dog food right by the kitchen door. So it wasn't like I'd imagined it.

There was no dog in the house, though, nor in the garden. Exhausted and beaten, I went into my husband's room for a final check when, at the sight of him, this strange apprehension came over me. I couldn't get the thought out of my head that he'd done something. After all, if he was a child, he was a bit odd, wasn't he? He didn't play with other children. He didn't misbehave. He barely spoke. He was a good little boy. Sure, but not necessarily all that normal.

And of course, he wasn't a child. He was... he was something else. Standing there, I appreciated just how odd he had started to look. His hair was thinning. Not just falling out, mind you. It felt downy to the touch. Soft, like a newborn's peach fuzz. And good god, the smell. It was like, oh gosh!

Ugh, good God, the smell. It was like a baby smell, but foul like sour milk. And it clung to him no matter how much I bathed him and washed his clothes. There were days when it felt like I could choke to death on it, and I learned to breathe carefully through my mouth whenever we were together. His pupils were huge, too large for those small sockets. His eyes had always been spaced far apart, but placed on a child-shaped head.

He looked like he was wearing a bad Halloween mask with doll's eyes instead of his own. Sometimes I catch him staring at me from around a corner or at the bottom of a long corridor. Sometimes that met him standing there in the dark, audibly breathing as his shoulders rose and fell with some unseen thought excited him. So like, it's almost weird. Like the breathing of his shoulders there is would raise. It's like when you, when you think of someone being excited, right? You assume that their heart rate gets fluttered. So I imagine he was just like, Oh,

And he's like, it's like an animal. Like he's physically like bouncing up and down. Yeah. Right. Yeah. This is good. This is getting me so far. I'm yeah. Wow. Other times it meant glimpsing his gray head disappearing behind a wall or door. The second I turned, he drooled almost constantly wipe the excess on his sleeve, but a lot of it landed on the floor. Anyway, there were times I'd find a small puddles of spit and locked rooms.

Often just behind where I'd been standing. Other times I could hear his difficult breathing inches from my back, but he was never actually there when I turned around. I was afraid of him, I realized. I nearly cried out when standing in that dark and quiet room. He rolled onto his back as he slept in the crib. He opened a gummy smile and I saw that all his teeth had fallen out, bearing just a few.

I love it. The closer I looked, the more certain I became that even those were not his original ones. They were too white, too small, too peg-like to be an adult's incisors. I secretly hoped I was going insane. The alternative, somehow even worse. The idea of a guy actually...

what is it? Diverting back into a baby. Yeah. Like slowly. Yeah. Is so fucking creepy. It, you, it, especially when it's gummy teeth, dude, I wonder if he still has part of his beard. You know that he has the peach fuzz on his head. Fuzzy beard. Maybe like little baby hairs over his face. Exactly. Could you, could you imagine a guy and his eyes are too big for his like tiny head? Yeah. Like he's just like a baby. Yeah. Oh, this,

This is great. I love it. This is good so far. I'm into it. I was on the toilet when the doorbell rang. Taking a shit. Thank you. It was a shrill screech that grated, and I jumped so badly I dropped my phone. I quickly finished up and waddled over the window with my pants still down. There was a van just outside the front gates, which were open, but there was no sign of anyone walking around down there. Normally, this kind of problem would just go away, and they'd leave the package on the doorstep. Something felt wrong.

I couldn't hear my husband anywhere in the house. No footsteps, no babbling, no clacking toys or rolling wheels. That van looked strange. The driver's side door was still open, the engine still running. I tried to digest what it all meant while running downstairs, stopping only when I saw the front door open. A gust of wind blew through the main house, drawing out all the homely warmth. I had images of our roleplay being found out, and fears of humiliation and embarrassment filled my head.

There was something else muddled in with all the thoughts as well. We'd spent so long locked up together, my husband and I, safe and far away from the rest of the world. How would he react to this intrusion? As if in answer, someone cried out from the living room. I ran down the last few stairs and pushed open the door to find a small man shaking where he stood, brown cardboard box clutched to his chest for protection. What? What?

I put my arm around his shoulder and started to move him towards the door. I couldn't see my husband, but he was never too far away from me and I couldn't help but notice one of his favorite toys lying on the floor. He let me in. Looked just... Looked just like a... Suddenly he turned to me and gripped both my arms. What's wrong with him? I've never seen anything like that before. I don't remember what I said, but I kept pushing him towards the front door, out of the living room and into the kitchen.

A quick turn of my head and I saw my husband ducking back down beneath the sofa. He was the wrong size to be so quick and sneaky, but he had a way of hiding and moving around the house so that you almost never saw him unless he wanted you to. Come on, I muttered, but the delivery man's feet were slow and cumbersome. It was like his head was all muddled up. It was just a child. He cried like it had just dawned on him. Oh no, I frightened him, didn't I? He tried turning back, but I stopped him.

No, I didn't mean to scare him. I just... I just... His face! He stopped resisting and his shoulders slumped back down. What's wrong with him? Why do my eyes hurt? He's sick. I answered, finally pulling him the last few feet to the door. I shoved him back past the threshold and stood, panting, to catch my breath. He's just very unwell. I said, stifling a sob. Part lie, part truth. It's... it's a condition...

The delivery man looked as if he still was trying to sort his own head out, but it seemed like he bought it. He went to leave, putting one foot down on the porch steps before suddenly deciding that he needed to make amends. "Please don't report me." He cried and I jumped a little. "I didn't mean to come off as rude." My heart started to race. I could smell my husband, the stench nearly overpowering. He was so close I could practically feel him, but where he was I couldn't say.

I just needed to get this man away before something terrible happened. He was babbling endlessly about offending me. "Please! Please leave!" Did he understand? I wonder. Sometimes when I think back, I see a flickering of understanding in his eyes. It looked like empathy. I can't be sure because it all kind of just blurs together. The shock in his eyes as my husband's arm grabbed his ankle cannot be understated. Neither of us expected him to be down there.

I still don't know how he did it, but he was down there, giggling in an unhealthy falsetto rasp. Before anyone could speak, he yanked so hard the delivery man fell down backwards and his leg disappeared into shadow. Oh, God. With one hand, the crying man clamped down on the thigh as if to soothe some unseen pain. And with the other hand, he tried to push himself back out from between the wooden slats. Oh, God.

Oh, but my husband was always a big man. And now he had a strange sort of air about him, a quiet crackling power that followed him from room to room. The struggle was one sided and the delivery man screamed and howled. He gave up holding the one leg and tried using both hands to pull or push or drag himself away. I didn't know what was happening out of sight, but his face drained of blood and his screams just kept getting worse.

I've never heard a man make a sound like that before, not an adult man. It was scary in a way I wasn't prepared for. I think he asked me to help at one point. I contemplated calling the police but never did. I was so terrified I couldn't even bring myself to move. Occasionally one of my husband's thick knuckled hands could be glimpsed as he pulled more of the man inside. Those hands looked so large, so pale, so deeply unhealthy.

I could hear what he was doing, but that didn't really come to my attention until I unpacked it all mentally long after it was over. But yes, I could hear bone crack and something like paper being torn. Was it an hour? Just a few minutes. I don't know. The man just kept crying and pleading, and my husband just kept pulling and pulling and pulling. The stairs started to buckle, but the wood was thick and strong.

The final question came down to what would break first, a pelvis or a post? The delivery man's cries told me what he thought would happen. He was right. With a tremendous yell of joy, just like a child on their birthday, my husband latched another fist around the man's other leg and pulled so hard there was a sudden crack and his victim fell limp like a toy losing power. What followed was a silence so heavy it hurt my ears. Broken only by the...

faint, wet sound of my husband dragging the rest of the man into the dark. The space between each step couldn't have been more than six inches, but brute force won out. The last I remember of the man's face, he was pale with bulging eyes. The arrangement of his arms and legs didn't even make sense anymore. He looked like a spider after you step on it. I stayed there for a while longer, hoping to hell and back I'd hear an ambulance or police siren. Like I said, we live far out of town.

By the time it occurred to me that no one would rescue the man, or me, the blood on the steps was congealing. My husband was still just out of sight, giggling and clapping like a kid making mud pies. Come on. I finally managed to say, speaking like the doting mother I was, Put your new toy away and I'll make you some lunch. Bro. Bro. Really, really fucking cool way to take this, man. That was so cool. Yeah.

So the whole thing is he was dragging a guy in between like the steps, right? Like wooden steps. Like wooden steps and a porch. Yeah. Right. Okay. Yeah. Pretty brutal. I wonder why. He gets under there and like, like she could smell him before she saw anything because he was under the porch. And then he just, he like rips him through.

through the in-between steps because he has the strength of a fully grown, you know, large man, but like the absent mind of a child just pulling on something until it breaks. The visual, the visual too of him still having like giant man hands. Yeah. Is, was pretty sweet too. Like just very, ugh, just weird. Also him hiding, giggling and stuff. Ugh. Put your new toy away. He looked like a step spider. Ugh.

I'm curious to see. I don't want to speculate too much by the end. I have some questions for the end, but I want to see if they get answered. I'll say right now, I love it. This is awesome so far. I don't know where it's going. I don't know what explanation it's going to pull, but I am locked in. I love this. I was washing dishes and staring into the yard. It resembled somewhere I'd seen before, but I couldn't remember where or why. My husband was somewhere upstairs and I was alone.

I'd often hear him thunder around up there doing God knows what. Spare feet slapping on hardwood floors he once picked out in a turtleneck and chinos. That seemed like a different person's life now. That's it. Yeah, man, that's a wild sentence, thinking about that, yeah. He's now a child, but he was once, you know, at a department store picking out wood, you know? Yeah, yeah. Hard to believe it was the same man who brought me something just days before that made me sick.

Made it himself and it had hung on the fridge for a whole afternoon, just like another piece of macaroni art. Is that thing where the dog ended up?

I wondered running a dishcloth over the same plate for the second hour in a row. Man, this is just like, I love the writing style too. Just like the way stuff's described, right? Like I mean, I look at the front yard. It feels like a place I've been before talking about their own house, right? Or like I wondered the second hour of washing the dishcloth. Like it says so much with just like some little alliteration and stuff. I like it. Very good writing. I like it a lot.

It's an interesting way to show a person's descent into insanity in a very casual way, like how casual somebody's mind can just kind of slip away with something crazy.

Kind of traumatic. Especially with how absent-minded she's been. She talks about like a playground showed up that she didn't remember signing for stuff like that. Like she's just spacing out moments of time to make her brain work with it. Do you think that's supposed to be a way of her basically saying that she's, that this has all been tremendous? I mean, this might sound stupid, but is it a way for her narratively to say like that she's had like basically just traumatic experience participating in

In this thing. Like, yes, I did like it, but after a while, you kind of realized that, like, lapses of time, like, maybe when the thing you thought was okay was actually much more sinister, and, like, it takes your brain, like, how long to catch up with the fact that, like, you're actually being traumatized with this entire experience, maybe? Yes, I think it's her brain trying to quantify everything that's happening around her. I would think it, like... Right. Movement caught my eye. Out in the garden, something floated down past the tall hedges that walled in our yard.

and landed plainly on the overgrown grass. It was a bright, luminous yellow that glowed like a safety vest. For some reason, I held up the plate in my hand, looked between the two. God, I was so out of it. It was like a worm in my head. I could feel it, maybe even reach out and grab it if I could just focus on it for long enough. Each time I closed my mind around it, each time I started to feel out the shape of the intrusion, this rewriting of my own brain...

It slithered away. Frisbee? I muttered. And then just like that, she was there. She was maybe nine or ten. How had she wound up here? Audience, there's a real child, a real young female child inserted into this story. This better not go where it might go. How had she wound up here? I wondered. Maybe she was lost. She was looking around like she didn't know where she was. I could see she was scared, and my heart sank as I realized how awful our home must have looked to her.

Also, they live out in the middle of nowhere. You know what I mean? Like they live outside of town. So it is extremely odd that someone is there. What was that whole paragraph before? She's washing the dishes and then something floats past the hedges. And then I think it was the kid's head. I think it was the right.

The yellow thing that floated through. Oh, so she, so the child was probably throwing the Frisbee and she's like, and she came over the friends to get, or she came through the hedges to get it now. Right. Okay. That's yeah. But the part where it's like, I was sort of, it was like a worm in my head. I could feel it maybe even reach out and grab it. If I could just focus on it for long enough. Is there something in her brain that's like supernatural or physical? Or is she just kind of like, uh, talking about her own condition?

I think in a way she's talking about her own condition. She's so out of it. Like she's, I think it's her saying that like, yeah, I think it's her talking about her own descent. This may be because there's definitely something beyond just psychology happening to the husband, right? Like it is some, there's some physical play, right? Yes, there has to be. Maybe if it is some kind of like possession, spirit, whatever, maybe it's doing the same thing to her to make her more of a mother, right? Maybe that's where her lapses are coming from. Who knows?

Do you think that, and not to divert the story too much longer because I want to keep going, but do you think there's any way that because of this traumatic thing that she's perceiving her husband as like this monstrous child and that he's actually still a full-grown man who is also mentally unwell? Oh, I didn't think about that, but that would be interesting if like he has zero physical changes. Yeah, and she, just her perception of him of being...

Not necessarily grossed out, but like how your perception changes of this person and how now she's like, I'm looking at you. Because before she's like, oh, he's a good boy. But then it's just once again, your brain starts to catch up. Because she keeps doing this thing where she feeds into it even here, where she's like, well, he was never fussy. Like she talks about him like he's a kid out of nowhere, which is interesting. I still like the idea of it actually being a physical thing. Like in terms of like the narrative, I would prefer it to be like he is just –

I mean like regressing back into like a child. I think it can go either way depending on how it wraps up. I could hear it out either direction right now, honestly. Just kind of depending on what it does with it, I think. But it does have me right in the middle ground where I don't know which one is more likely. There's a time I was house proud, but now we lived in decrepit filth. Of course, little girl looks scared, I thought.

This was the scary house every child feared, with broken windows and overgrown bushes that choked a yard filled with rusted swings and abandoned toys. And this poor girl had lost her frisbee and… I said first to myself then once again to the room, "No!" But it was too late. I could hear him scuttle around before the house fell into quiet. From outside, the girl started to say something. "Greeting, perhaps?" There was a knife in my hand that I didn't remember taking, and I was outside before I had time to even think.

No! No!

I picked her up in my arms, even as she batted me away. I didn't care if this girl thought I was Satan himself. If she ran back home and told her parents about the mean, creepy lady, and they called the police, and this all ended with me safe and warm behind bars, I didn't care. I clutched my arm around her waist and willed it into a bane of steel to keep her safe. She squirmed but could not break free, and I ran towards the gate as fast as I could carry her. It's okay. He won't get you.

I was halfway there when her screaming and wriggling stopped. Her head was over my shoulder and all of a sudden, she gripped me like I was a life raft. The change was instant and it made me falter. For a brief moment, I heard his feet pulsing towards me. I turned, brandishing the knife like a torch against the darkness, but nothing was there. The girl started screaming again, the sight of my husband sinking, and she held onto me with dear life. Not the baby!

I backed up to the gate carefully and began to wonder what next when, out of nowhere, he leaped into sight and grabbed the girl's hair, yanking her head back while she screamed so hard her face turned beetroot red. He jumped up and down, hollering and crying like a giddy toddler with a Christmas present. His misshapen face was grinning, his gums black and bloody, but his hands threatened to tear the girl's scalp right off.

I started to feel nauseous at the sight of him. His size seemed to change with every glance. I couldn't make sense of it, and I felt that worm inside my mind wriggle and dislodge more of my thoughts. Sometimes he was waist high, sometimes a full grown man. But always those hands were too large for his frame and the brown flakes of blood still trapped beneath his chipped nails reminded me exactly what he wanted.

"No!" I screamed and lashed out with the knife. The motion that came to me in the moment was a downward thrust and the knife was left embedded in my husband's right shoulder. He let go immediately and started to howl and sob. He seemed to shrink before my very eyes and I quickly set the girl down and pushed her through the gate. I pulled the bar shut, screamed at her to run, then quickly turned back to my husband who was sucking his thumb and trying to pull the knife out with his remaining hand.

After some awkward fumbling, he grabbed the handle and threw the knife to the ground. It clattered to the floor, blood glistening in the sun. "'You're just like her!' he said, his voice breaking and returning to the calm, authoritative man I'd once known. His beady eyes bored into me and I could have collapsed under that stare. The change in cadence was as sudden as a sheer drop off a cliff. "'I just wonder what she never gave me. But you're all the same!'

Suddenly, his whole face bunched up into a twisted infantile smile and he declared with joy and delight in a voice identical to a child's. I'm going to crawl inside you. I knew it! Yes! I knew it! I knew it! Yes! Oh my gosh. Fucking Kobe from the three, baby. Damn. For one.

I'm not that nice to you on the show often, but I will say great call. Thank you. Great call. Well done. Also, it's so I'm so happy. This is so good. This is incredible. Also, I was not expecting the story to hit this hard, but it is like, it is going, it is three for three for three right now. Question. Yes. Him changing shapes like that. Does that not read to you that she is like,

It almost seems like, you know, it's when you're sleep deprivation and it can be like, you almost begin hallucinating. Like, I remember I was driving a long time from Kansas City to LA. And by the time I got to Las Vegas, I was so tired before I pulled off that, like, the road was almost making, like, a warping.

like it looked like a wave like it was very odd how it was i have seen people i've been so tired i've seen people standing on the side of the road who aren't there like i blink in there exactly yeah what i'm saying what i'm wondering is with this traumatic like going back to the traumatic thing

Is she just like loopy? Like in a weird way, I'm like almost wondering with just some of the other stuff. Not that is she imagining this, but is her like, I wonder how much of this is actually him physically changing sizes and more so her just being completely insane. Okay. So it depends. It goes back to what we were talking about. It depends if this is a physical change or a mental one, because if it's a physical one, I,

I think that brain in her, that worm in her brain could very well be literal, right? Like it dislodges itself at moments and stuff. Could be a similar thing to whatever's happening to him. But if it's psychological, then I think that

Maybe this is just how she's perceiving him. She sees him as a kid, but then he'll do something that snaps her out of it, like the size of his hands. For one, the visual element of this is incredible. You see a child, but when it reaches out, its hand is like a full-grown man's, and then the rest of him becomes a full-grown man. It kind of reminds me... It's weird to say shot, but it's shot so well, like the way that's described. It kind of reminds me a little bit of the...

The child out in the woods in left, right game when it's like you shine the light on them and it grows in certain areas. Yeah. I like to think that it's the proportions of all these different things are they're aging differently.

But it is interesting to think that it's fluctuating. Like it's almost like he is continuously moving and his arms are breaking and cracking and reforming. And, but his hands are always, he's like giant kind of like man hands compared to his probably smaller stature, even when he's taller or shorter. So I'm, I'm like, I am locked in dude. This is exciting. Dinner was cold is the first meal I'd made him after our little fight.

I'd fidgeted over it for hours, filled with doubts and fears, but it all came to naught. He was too smart to fall for that, whether he'd seen the rat poison or not. Oh, man, she's ready to end it all. Also, what a terrifying scene of like, there's a little girl and then like he's chasing her. So she stabs him. That's like the realization of this has to end, right?

The visual of him grabbing the root of her hair and like pulling her head back. I actually thought that he was going to like rip her scalp off or something. He had it come for dinner. Now I was left with a problem. I'd stayed fixed to the spot in the kitchen, working away with endless looks over my shoulder and night had fallen. The only light was in the kitchen and it was a big house filled with inky black shadows that swallowed entire rooms and corridors.

Often, I would glimpse a sliver of movement, like a shark's fin cresting a wave. I might see a blue piece of fabric catch the moonlight before disappearing back into the dark. He was out there. Man, this is so good. Just like the... I had a new knife, at least. Something about the adrenaline in my veins helped me think more clearly. When I looked back at my thoughts, I no longer saw a child, but something twisted and deformed with delusion and malice.

A disease had festered not only in our heads, but the space we shared and the world we lived in, spilling out into reality like a migraine aura made real. I didn't know if it was an intruder or just something dark that had spread from within, but it belonged to me one way or another. I couldn't let it live. "Dinner's ready! Come on!" There was a shuffling somewhere out front by the stairs. I don't know why I bothered saying anything. He must have seen me.

I cried out again, my voice faltering from fear and exhaustion. I picked the plate up and put it by the threshold of the kitchen, its edge just inches from the darkness. You must be hungry, I said, doing my best to smile. Please eat it for me.

Could you just like, just the visual of this is great, right? It's dark in the house. There's like a just blackness, like closing off the kitchen from the rest of the house and the food put on the edge, like a prisoner's meal. Like, oh yeah. I mean, who hasn't been into like a weird house where there's like one light source, but it looks like as you look into the darkness of a hallway or downstairs, it kind of looks like an endless black void just because there's absolutely no light trickling down into those areas. Yeah.

Man, I'm so happy. A single chubby finger peeked through the doorway and slid the plate across. It was so loud in the silence, grating across tile. Something felt wrong. But in the moment, I just hoped it was the sheer panic trapped deep within my chest. The plate whipped out of the darkness and struck me in the face. My nose cracked and my head snapped backwards and before I knew it, I was on the floor. Plate rolling to a noisy stop a few feet away.

It was whole, but one edge was coated in blood. I became aware of a coppery taste in my mouth and realized it was mine all over the plate. It felt like I was lying there for a good few seconds, agony ringing in my ears while I opened and closed my jaw in disconcerted shock. Slowly, layer by layer, things started to right themselves. There was a sharp pain in the back of my head, and I realized I must have hit it when I fell over. And there was a weight on top of me, pressing down, making it hard to breathe.

Had I broken a rib? I wondered. But it didn't feel much like that. It felt like something was moving around, something sharp and painful. I looked down and saw husband's cabbage-shaped head bobbing away at my breast. Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh

Cabin shaped head is so good for a baby's head. That is so fucking nasty. Bobbing away at my breast, dude. So that little motherfucker is sucking that tit raw, dude. Okay. So when it was reading, it's like, I felt a sharp pain. Like I'd broken a rib. I thought he was stabbing her. I thought that's what it was, but I think it's his teeth. It is. It is his teeth. It is his teeth. That's why like it hit me in waves. The realization of what was happening. Oh, man.

Oh, alright. I screamed and pushed him away, but he clamped down hard, those nasty little peg teeth burying themselves into my flesh and refusing to dislodge. I was overcome with disgust and started beating away at him, scratching deep gouges in his scalp and shoulders. Only when I buried a thumb in his nasty little eye did he relent and let go. He sat up and my thumb slid out of the socket with a pop.

For a moment, he looked overcome with naive sadness, but then hatred washed over his face and his remaining eye glared at me with murder. He started to choke me, those terrible fists clasping around my throat like bands of iron. I struggled, lashing my hands out at the floor and furniture, desperate for something, anything that might help. Thankfully, my hands alighted on the knife and I drove it hard into the soft flesh of his armpit.

The moment he carried on as normal, but by the time I drove the blade between his ribs once, then twice, the blood had already drained from his face. It soaked us both, and to my horror, it stank of sour milk and talcum powder. Fucking talcum powder is so good. I watched the realization of his wounds dull the fire in his eyes. He stumbled backwards, his face scrunching up as he let out a horrific bawl.

Pink foam seeped from his mouth and he gasped and choked. His lungs were filling with blood and I watched him die slowly before me. By the time it was done, he was a man again. Strangely dressed, emaciated wretch of a man. But nothing more. I touched my throat and it felt sore. My chest was a ragging mess. Was it good for you? I asked, a laugh rising unbidden from my lips. The sound of my own voice scared me. I sounded deranged.

But I couldn't stop laughing at the joke I'd made. Before long, my breath became short and consciousness slipped away in its entirety. It's so good. It's such a good story. It's so well done. It's been some time. How long? I don't know. And I still wonder whether he was ever real. I burned the house down and I finally got to hear the sound of sirens coming to take me away. It was a weird problem to explain to the police. They had evidence of a child living in the home, but no body.

They thought I'd offed a kid and burned the house to hide the evidence. Later on, they found one adult body, but it was the delivery man's, not my husband's. And I was arrested just a few short weeks later. Of course, I told them the truth, just barring a few of the weirder details. My husband had gone insane, I said. He'd snapped, started acting like a child, killed one man, then tried to kill me. Unfortunately, there are no records of my husband, nor our marriage, nor our life together.

I lived alone, unemployed because of a wealthy trust granted to me by my family. The mortgage was not paid by my husband, but rather the trust. All of this was news to me. He was real, I know that much. I still have the wounds to prove it, and they found that little girl who testified somewhat in my defense. She really had seen a man dressed as a baby, she said. Although when asked to give a description of what he looked like, she broke down screaming and had to be sedated.

I knew what that felt like. I couldn't tell you my husband's age, his eye color, his birthday, or even his name. It's all worked against me. I think I'm on my second appeal, but my lawyer told me to lower my expectations. No marriage certificate, no wedding invitations, no relationship status on Facebook, no photos, no plane tickets for the honeymoon, no official documentation. Every conceivable trace of this man's life simply doesn't exist.

I managed to get a brain scan. They say my brain should belong to a dementia patient. Except I'm just 36. It's all full of holes. Lesions, they call them. Took a name for it. I said there was a worm, didn't I? He was eating through my head like an apple core. Not a literal worm, of course. Well, I don't know that for sure. But still, I think he did something to my head because even now, just the thought of him can give me a nosebleed. I don't remember much of my life before.

He wrote over it like a computer file and deliberately blotted out whatever didn't suit his purpose. And of course, they never did find his body, did they? Bit of a cliche, I know. I think it was childish of me to ever believe that a few holes in the torso would kill him. It, I should say. After all, he was playing pretend and being human just as much as being a child.

And that is the end of my husband has taken our role play too far. And interesting. I'm it's low. Let me ask you this. Are you happy that there is a followup story from apparently the husband's perspective, or do you, do you like it being kind of open-ended here? Okay. So I'm going to digest this story on its own. And I, for one, I want to say that was a home run, right? That it was tight.

It wasn't longer than it needed to be. Right. And the ending of this story does not give you a certainly defined. Yes, he was real. This was all physical. No, it was a manifestation of my mind. No, whatever. Right. It plays the middle ground. And I think it does it in a satisfying way where it's kind of whatever answer you want to take it. Right.

Yeah, it doesn't feel like an ambiguous ending that feels cheap or doesn't feel like they knew how to end it. I like the element of really playing her as being someone. Like I said, I mean, the entire time I was asking, do you think this is a traumatic episode? Do you think this is her? I mean, these lapses of time. So they were building to that, uh,

To that ending in a really great way where I'm still under the impression to where I was like, oh, maybe he did get up and leave. Maybe this thing wasn't even human or whatever. And it's fun thinking, was this person just insane? And she was pretending that she had this weird adult, you know, child thing or whatever. Who knows? I mean, it's the emphasis on the lack of documentation of their marriage is very interesting. That's like a really interesting thing.

little detail that at the end to really hark on to. Dude, I'm just so I feel like I just like succeeded at something. I'm just so, oh, that was great.

Yeah, no, I will say extremely well done. I am curious to see like as a single story. This is the part of this is the kind of part of storytelling where I'm like, I almost wish I didn't have anymore. I like I like where it's at. I'm hoping that this sequel can add in a fun way. But these are the kinds of stories where I'm like, you just need to let it be. Even if it's popular, just leave it be. It's a great it's like a fun piece.

totally told from the it's all from the perspective of an insane person to like there's there's no way you can read the story to and be like, oh, the wife is insane. She's definitely crazy by the end of this. Everything she's been through. I think she's just bad. Yeah, but that's the thing. It was the inception of this her own craziness or is that just a symptom of what she experienced? I like to believe the latter.

Because like she said, the little girl did see something, right? And the delivery man is dead. Well, you have to think too, if it was, if there was anything and all of a sudden she just got attacked by this woman out in her yard who was like, who was,

In my mind, if she is making the husband up, that means that to me, I'm like, she's probably playing both roles. And she even did pull the little girl's hair and she was like screaming to stop it while she was doing it. So it might've just been an extremely traumatic thing for this child too. Yeah, that's true. It could be man. Gosh, it's such a good middle ground. The descriptions of violence at that end were so good. Yeah. I, I want to say too, um,

I love the little detail. I didn't even think about what their house looked like until that's when the little girl showed up and she's like, this place is disgusting. There's broken windows. So it seems like she's almost living in essentially an abandoned house is what it seems like how it's kept. But I pictured like crayon drawings over the walls. Yep.

like toys all over the floor and like unkept dishes and stuff. Cause also whenever she was washing her dish, she was washing the same one for two hours. So I imagine that there's just tons of dirty. It's like a child. It's like a child. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, should we just hop immediately into the, my wife has taken a role. Man, I'm just, I'm just so excited. Okay. So I'll say this, whatever the next part is,

I think the first part works perfectly well as a standalone. And as a standalone, I honestly, I may be a little, little lovestruck right now, but honestly, it's one of the best we've read on the show. I definitely put it like top five.

maybe it's hot five, but definitely like top six or seven. It's just so tight. Everything about it works well. The ending's great. The setup's great. The violence is great. Like I, I really loved that story. That was awesome. I will, I will say it's very, it's very well paced. It doesn't linger too long on anything, but yet when it, when it does go for the punches, it hits really hard. And I think that's like, for sure. And I think that's really, really cool. All right. So now I'm interested to see where this is going to go. Um,

Um, cause I honestly have no idea. It's the title of it is my wife has taken our role playing too far. So it's implied to be from the husband's position, but the vibe I got from the first one is that the husband may not exist or some ethereal being, uh, which if this, if this story, if I don't like this story, I'm just choosing to believe that, that the first story exists without a second. If there is a perspective from the husband here, it could very much be that the wife was insane. And just when she burnt down, uh,

the house. We don't know the time lapse, the jump, the lapses of time. Who knows what she did during those lapses of time, like destroyed pictures, doing whatever to like almost erase its existence. Plus, we also mentioned that she is being kind of suspicious, like some of the way she phrases stuff, like she refers to him, even to us as she narrates the story as a child. And that's kind of weird, right? So it's not out of the realm of possibility. I don't think.

My wife has taken our roleplaying too far. It was my wife who suggested roleplay, despite what she may say elsewhere. You'll just have to decide who you think is being honest. When she first suggested acting out roles, I was hoping for pigtails and pleated skirts, but I should have figured it wouldn't be like that. Okay, to be, for one, the pigtail skirt thing is pretty weird. Just like...

Like in real life. Like a school girl. Yeah. Yeah. That's, that's, I know it's not expressly like, you know, like their child or teen or whatever, but it is wrapping at the door of it. And I've always, I will say that is like probably the most, I would say that's the most, when people say like role play,

They just think like what nurse and like that kind of thing. So I guess it probably is just a generic thing of him being like, oh, this is why I expect. Yeah, sure. I'm not saying it's I'm just saying in real life, it's always weirded me out a bit. Oh, sure. Yeah. Like in real life, I'm like, it's a little strange. If I'm honest, there isn't much that I wouldn't have agreed to at that point in our relationship. Things weren't bad, but well, they weren't good either.

One morning I woke up to a packed lunch and an orange juice on the breakfast table. I tried to make myself a cup of coffee. She told me that growing boys shouldn't drink things like that. I typically skip breakfast and headed right out the door each morning, but the way she sat there looking at me made me feel like I was missing something. It took me a minute to realize that this right here was the start of our little pretend play. So I sat down and ate the cereal and drank the juice.

All right, so I see where this is going. This is going to be like a manipulation game, right? Like which one of them is correct. Well, I think she's taking the motherly role is what he's going to say. She wanted to pretend that she was his baby. She wanted to be mom, and she's saying that he wanted to pretend to be the baby. So I'm interested how some of the later events of the story go from his perception, right? The whole scene made me pretty uncomfortable. I guess I just felt on the spot.

It sounds weird, but I've always had a bit of a thing about people cooking for me. My mom died when I was eight, and my dad didn't really pay me much attention. I had to cook and clean and iron my uniform every night before school, and no one ever did my homework for me. Later on, my dad married some poor waitress half his age and treated her like a servant, and I realized that must have been exactly how he treated my mother. Not saying that this taught me to be the perfect man or anything. Far from it.

I just didn't like things that made me feel like I was becoming my dad. But there's my wife, making me cereal for breakfast and then handing me a neat little lunchbox with cartoons on it that I'd watch as a kid. Goku. That was a throwback. What cereal box has Goku on it? And I'd be lying if I said I didn't like some part of it. Driving to work that day, I decided that this roleplay was probably just some kind of therapy.

and that it was best to go along with it. Even after I got home that night to find that she'd run me a bath, not only did she want me to be a, quote, clean little boy, she'd even laid out some brand new pajamas. It was deeply uncomfortable. That would be extremely uncomfortable. That would be so weird. She perched on the toilet lid while I was set upright in the tepid water, not sure what to do with myself. A grown man with a beer belly hunched over in gray water. I felt so stupid.

"Do you need help washing yourself?" "Uh, sure." I replied and she came over and pulled out a fish shaped bottle of no tear shampoo. She washed my hair using a small plastic cup to rinse my scalp. I had to lean back for her to get it all and she held my head in her hands. I hated it. My eyes wouldn't stay shut, her hands were too cold, the water too warm, the porcelain of the tub too hard.

And every time the water flowed over my head, I would reflexively lurch forward and try to sit up, which of course meant I got suds in my eyes. Just lie back. It won't hurt. I won't let it. So I laid back and controlled my breathing and told myself that it was for her sake, not mine. One of my last memories of my mother was her reading a book while I sat in the bath and

And I guess I didn't like how I fell to my wife's arms at that moment, but she just kept talking to me in that soothing voice. And somewhere along the lines, I let go of conscious thought and focused on the sensation of the warm water rolling down my scalp. You can let go, she said, wiping some water from my face. And when I looked up at her, I realized that I was shaking and my heart was pounding. All of a sudden, it all just came out.

all the tension, all the anxiety, the constant state of near panic that I suppressed for my entire life. You're meant to say this kind of stuff feels cathartic, but I hated it. It made me feel physically sick, even a little ashamed. She held me in her arms while I sobbed like a baby in the tub, and when it was finally over, all I could think was, "Thank god I can breathe again." I let her dry me as I stood dripping wet on the tiles,

Then I let her dress me in the cool, dry pajamas she laid out. Ready. The silky fabric raising goosebumps on my skin. By the time I curled up into bed, her arms cradled my head like it was a precious jewel. I was exhausted like I'd just gone for a quick 30-mile run. Last thing I remember was the theme tune to Ed, Edd n Eddy. And the flood of nostalgia combined with the feel of fresh bed linen put me to sleep hard and fast. Several of you in the audience would immediately fall for this, by the way.

I kind of like actually how therapeutic his version is. Her presentation is like he wants it, so she kind of like allows it, but his is like, I have to release this. Like, you know, it feels... Well, his is so weird because it's like she kind of just randomly does this and he's like, oh, okay. But he already has some like deep

deep seated, like deep rooted problems. You know what I mean? So then in a weird way, he feels stupid about it, but it actually ends up letting him be able to like let down his guard and actually like let out some of these emotions that he probably has just kept him for so long. Yeah. Just kind of an interesting, the, the, the mirroring of the story is it's very interesting. Normally I don't like sequels, especially to stories like these, because I'm always like, okay, you did. The first one was fine. You don't have to like tack on or whatever. Right. Um,

But this one, so far, this one is adding interesting context or an interesting way to look at the first story, right? Yeah, it's still pretty early in the story before I want to get to. It's still pretty early for sure. Yeah. Okay, so let me ask you this, Hunter.

You and you and Allison are at the house, right? And Alice is like, hey, hey, babe, I made you a lunch today. Right. Nothing weird about that. Right. Yeah. OK, so you get you go you go to eat your lunch and you open it up and she made you like there's like an apple juice in there and there's like a peanut butter and jelly sandwich or something. Right. Right. Would you have any level in your mind of like, well, it's a little strange, right?

No, I wouldn't say so. I don't think I would either. I don't think I would either. Knowing me and my wife, I know that we would be... I definitely would make a...

a comment. I'm like, oh, I feel like I'm in first grade again. Yeah, probably laugh about it, but I wouldn't. It's not like I'd be like, what the fuck weird? Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. There's like a level of plausibility there, right? The pajama thing and the bathing. I would not do that. So that's what I'm saying. Okay. So we have like one end established is like, that's fine. And then another end of definitely not right. Setting up in the tub while she washes your head. My question is where on the spectrum do you

like say something or do you realize something's weird? Well, the thing here, I think it's important to realize is that he is telling us, Oh, I, I feel so weird doing this. I secretly think that he, he really wanted this or he like in a way I think that it is beneficial to him where you can, you can feel like that cringe of like, Oh God, what am I doing? But it's one of those things where once you start doing it, I think he's going to be like, I really enjoyed it.

You know, I think he's, I bet you anything. I'm wondering if he gets bought in a bit more, like if he's like, I don't know, it feels weird. And they just more little things keep happening until it gets too far. I don't know. I'm curious. It falls into it a bit. Yeah. Yeah. I think the cutoff would be, cause I'm, I'd be the same way. If Kayla like made me a lunch and it was like stuff, I wouldn't think anything of it. I think the line is when she started doing stuff for me, you know? Well, how, how do so like, okay. So,

Like, making me food? Wouldn't think a thing of it. Trying to feed me food...

You see what I mean? Like going a little too far with it. I would immediately say something. If my wife said growing boys need to have that, like growing boys need to have this. I would say, what the fuck? What if it was set in like a sarcastic tone though? Well, she's like, Oh, yeah, that's different. I'm saying, I think that she is the way that the, the wife is acting in this. I, I imagine that she is,

very sincerely. Yeah, probably. Yes, probably. I can't think of a scenario where like running me a bath. I would be like, unless it was like romantic, like, Oh, I've made the bath or whatever. I can't think of a scenario where that would fly over. Well, you know, time of bath. Hey, only bath situation is that door better be cracked. And then titties better be covered in suds, dude. That's all I'm saying. Ooh,

I'm going to be the one to you know, I mean, ain't no way I'm going to draw a bath and be like, wash my hair. You kid me, my apish body look at the goddamn jungle book rolling around that bathtub. Ain't no way, dude. I'm going to have that.

Okay, well, normally when your wife draws a bath, it's not to actually use the bath. You know what I mean? That's what I mean. That's the only scenario where it doesn't become strange because otherwise it's like, oh, I made you a bath so you could clean up. It's like, what are you talking about? I would probably, you know, I'd be saying, do I smell like shit? A lot of times I've said that to my wife. It's unbelievable. But I'm like, oh, do I smell bad or something? Because she'll say some comment or whatever and it's always like, oh, no, I meant it this way, but...

I could say if someone drew a bath like that or you know, I feel like I would definitely be like, oh, do I smell like shit? I must smell like shit.

Y'all take a bath. I don't like baths though in general. So I don't, I don't, I wouldn't fuck with the bath. Yeah. You know, actually, you know, I think would be the cutoff. Like I was trying to think on like the spectrum of like where you get off. If she started dressing me right. If she was like, God, not physically is way too far, but I'm saying if like she has outfits laid out, like here's what you're wearing today. Oh yeah. The physical dressing is too far. I think that is right on the line where I'd be like, um,

Okay. I'm like, I'm a grown man. I can put on pants, dude. And she'll do stuff like, she'll do stuff like, oh, you should wear a different color shirt or stuff. Like that's normal wife stuff. But if it's like, she has it laid out on the bed, that's when I, I think that would be the breaking point where I'd say something. Right. I don't even like that, dude. I don't even like that. Don't fucking put my clothes on. Dude, I'll get my, I can dress myself. You dressed yourself. I'll dress myself.

We're all right. Yeah, I know. I'm saying that would be like, that is like the lowest level of something that I would be like, no. Sure. Right. Yeah. Anything lighter than that. I could probably like the making me lunch and it's like kids food and stuff. I'd probably like, I wouldn't think anything of it. Yeah.

Unless it was like peanut butter and jelly every day for like several weeks. Then I might be like, all right, what's going on here? I honestly, to be fair, I probably wouldn't fight that very hard. I do like peanut butter and jelly quite a bit. I'm saying if she sat there and she made me a peanut butter and jelly and like apple slices, I'd probably, I don't think you'd hear my ass. I can't think of a scenario where my wife makes me food and I'm mad about it, you know? Yeah. The next day at work, I felt dirty.

and I didn't much enjoy the thought of going home.

I knew what was waiting for me, and sure enough, she was there with Spongebob pajamas, brand new, in one hand and a plate of food in another. Now, me and you were respectable men of character who would step off from this. I guarantee you at least 40% of the men in our audience would kill for this. Oh my God, in a heartbeat. In a heartbeat. A woman who acts like their mommy and gives them pajamas to watch TVs and make some food. I just, I don't know, dude. That shit grosses me out.

Well, yeah. Yes, I think that's the correct answer. That treating your wife like your mother is gross. Yeah.

And also like, all I'm saying is, dude, some, some, some dudes like that. You're like brave takes only on this podcast. I'm just saying, this is kind of weird. A little bit, a little bit peculiar. Can't hold me back. This is what the woke media doesn't want you to know. It's kind of strange. At first I told her I wasn't up for it that night, but she just told me to stop being silly and to sit down to eat. And well,

The food did look good and stupid as this is, I told myself it was me doing her a favor. You know, like if I just agreed to have her do all this stuff for me, it would be okay. So long as I agreed begrudgingly. So I ate the food and wore the clothes and I tried not to cringe when she called me her baby boy. Several of you would fold. As much as I hated it, she was being really nice to me. I just wanted her to like me.

She hadn't liked me in so long and this whole messed up business meant she was being genuinely affectionate to me. For years, she'd always kind of looked at me like I was a dick. I don't know where, but somewhere along the line, I stopped being her husband and just became a husband. Just another emotionally stunted guy with a receding hairline. I could have been more attentive. I know that. But nobody told me how exhausting mediocrity is.

and by the time I got through barely surviving work each day, I'd find very little energy left to give to her. I felt lonely all the time, and something about being in her arms made me feel a little less alone. I secretly hoped that this roleplay was about dismantling the walls we'd both put up. It wasn't on my terms. I would have picked literally anything else. But hey, when is life ever fully on anyone's terms? Being in love really means being held hostage.

Yeah, things were bad, but man, I loved her with everything I had. So I had to work with what I had, and what I had was this weird roleplay. I figured that it makes some sense that some women didn't want a daddy, that instead some women actually wanted to be a mommy. You see it online all the time, right? Daddy this, daddy that. You can't throw a stone online without finding some pornographic image of a woman being infantilized.

So why could it go the other way around? So long as it wasn't sexual, I figured I could do it. I wear the pajamas, watch cartoons, and ask for help coloring in the lines. I guarantee you, guarantee you, that sentence is a cope. He a million percent would have let it become sexual. I don't believe a guy who's wearing SpongeBob cartoons kicking his feet going, can we color now? Wouldn't whip it out.

As soon as, as soon as, as soon as it was put on the table that he'd get his dick and balls sucked in some pajama, like in a pajama, like a fucking SpongeBob onesie. That would, that shit would have happened in a heartbeat. Once again, our audience much the same. I would imagine if I had to guess these ingrates, there's a lot of them that are getting excited. Just hearing this, but I'm sure I'd, I'd wear pajamas, watch cartoons and ask for help coloring in the lines.

In the end, I didn't just go along with it for a few nights. I went along with it every single day that followed, and I found that every day there was a little more of it to go along with. Packed lunches became more elaborate. Food I ate grew simplified until I was practically the kind of stuff you'd feed a toddler. One Friday when I finally told her I wanted a break, she just told me to stop being silly.

Oh, don't like that. She used that phrase a lot during the role play. Also, them continuing to use the phrase role play makes it just a bit more uncomfortable, you know? Yeah. And this is going to sound stupid, but she made me feel silly when she said it.

Her voice immediately made me feel small and ashamed, just like I had in the bath. And before I even realized I was doing it, I was sliding the pajamas on and booting up my Xbox while she messed around in the kitchen. Now that sentence taken out of context of everything else, that sounds nice. Just got your pajamas on, playing Xbox, watching you make a dinner. Ain't nothing wrong with that. It's everything else around it.

I talk big game, but aside from the actual child stuff, the idea of like just wearing pajamas, play video games. Like, yeah. Okay. Well, it's not twisted my arm as long as it ain't become graphic or nothing. I believe it's Christian enough. I actually plan on talking to her that night about going to couples therapy, but she spoke to me like a little boy and I just couldn't stop myself reacting like one.

It was like I'd been trained. That weekend, I listened to her tell me stories as I sat on the counter kicking my legs, and I think I felt something die inside me. So interesting hearing that whenever it was like from her side, she was like, he was genuinely interested. He was so excited. And meanwhile, he's like, kill me, kill me, kill me, kill me. On some level, I have to take some responsibility. I ate the food I wanted to eat. And when she asked if there was anything I wanted, I always had something to say.

I watched the TV I wanted to and wore the clothes she put out for me. Pretty soon I got used to not thinking about those things. Pretty soon every single day was spent with her. Some nights were movie nights and we watched her favorite films while she told me all the memories she had of first watching them. Some nights were mommy nights where she'd sit and drink wine and watch her own shows while I'd play games.

We made forts out of cushions, camped in the backyard, played cowboy and Indian using Nerf guns, chased each other around the house for hours at a time doing hide and seek or some homebrew version of tag. You and your wife just like running through the house playing tag. Once again, it's so messed up. They're like both 36 years old. It's just weird. Fucking weird, dude.

I've had to describe this time, it was like being in a waiting room only I didn't have a number or a clock or any way of knowing how much time has passed. The only way I could even tell that time was passing was that I lost weight. In fact, I lost a lot of weight. My wedding ring slipped right off my finger one day and where it went after that, I'll never know. I still don't understand this part of it, but I remembered that I just kept getting thinner.

I mean, how does that even work, right?

I started the year wearing, weighing 120 KGs. In the end, I got down to 45. Oh gosh. God damn. I think 120 KGs is like 250 pounds, maybe something like that. 260. And now you're down to like 120. What the heck? Or 100? Man. Yeah. Not only that, but my hair started getting thin and downy. And I couldn't even remember when I last needed a shave. I asked her about this one day and she played it dumb. Like she didn't know what was happening to me.

now the two of us she must have known because it was literally right in front of her eyes i was changing she recommended that i stay home until i felt a hundred percent myself again which of course meant that i never went back to work because i never ever felt like myself again see this is interesting his point of view compared to her point of view about that you know looking back it wouldn't surprise me if she forged a resignation letter of mine or did something similar to keep me at home either way by the time the stomach bug passed i was trapped in that house

The outer gate that had once barely reached my chest now towered over my head and I could barely get my fingers around the bars. It wasn't a new gate, or at least I didn't think it was. It was just somehow taller than me all of a sudden. Things stopped making sense around this time and looking back it's hard to disentangle certain memories and ideas. I don't even remember the crib arriving. I was just... It was just there one day.

along with a whole new room in the house that physically shouldn't have been there. I checked one late night when I felt lucid, and sure enough, the bathroom and master bedroom hadn't magically shrunk by 50%.

but somehow a whole new room had just sprung up between them, and it was painted in baby blue, and the walls were covered in paintings of airplanes. As if I stared at them too long, I'd feel real sleepy, and my head would get heavy, and boom. Next thing I would remember, it'd be morning, and I'd be staring at a bowl of cereal. Okay, that's a really interesting thing that didn't come up in the first part, right? It's like some House of Leaves action. The house is like adding dimensions to it. This is all very spectral and different. That's cool. I'm wondering...

I'm wondering if in his depraved state, if she is completely just reorganized, like he says they're new rooms, but I'm wondering if he's like stripping rooms and like redoing them to be more baby. Like it's what I'm wondering. Right. Again, it rides that point that I don't know. I think honestly, both of them might be infected by something at this point. Right. I'd be curious to see if there's like a brain scan for this guy too. I don't fucking know. Whole chunks of time were purged from my head and not just the recent stuff either.

I was an accountant who suddenly couldn't do long division and struggled with his multiplication tables. Normally, my brain was like a cacophony of fireworks that took every ounce of my willpower to keep under control. Stray thoughts just pinged off all the time, and it was like, it was chaotic, but it was me. But with my wife and with everything going on, it had turned into something more like a cop wedding with holes poked in it. Wonder if she's poisoning him too. Uh, she certainly could be. Again, it's like, it's a weird middle ground.

Yeah. You know when you listen to someone and their voice just turns into a drone and you realize that you stopped listening after a few words? It was like that, but with my own thoughts. As soon as I got any momentum going, I lost interest and time faded and I'd come to a few hours later bouncing up and down on my wife's knee. I hate that. That's awful. I could practically feel bits of my mind sloughing away like candle wax, leaving big patches of nothing behind and it hurt so bad.

It hurt worse than anything physical that ever happened during that messed up time. Something was cutting my mind up like a scrapbook or getting at old magazines and I could feel it happening in real time. There are times when she takes something off me like the remote and put it on the counter and I just hang there over my head and that just doesn't make sense to me. And the harder I concentrate to try and figure that out, the more it feels like staring right at the sun.

And it wasn't just me. There were absolutely a couple of moments when she'd look at me and I wouldn't see my wife. Actually, that's not right. She was my wife. Absolutely. 100% my wife. She just had an extra two pair of limbs and whoa. Weird. She had an extra two pairs of limbs. Okay. If this keeps up, we get like new events that were happening in the background during the first part. This may be one of the best sequels for sure we've seen on the series.

I like the idea, too, of, like, they both have perceived their spouse as, like, physically changing, too. It's kind of interesting coming from, like...

oh we're in a bad relationship right you're in a bad like it's almost like the kind of actual physical altercations and like physical modifications that your that your mind will look at when you're in a bad relationship with somebody you know what i mean yeah certain things become painful or something like somebody's laugh like when you're really i used to date this girl back the day when i always liked her laugh when we first started dating but then as like it kind of got on and we i

relationship started falling out. It's almost like you perceive the laugh differently. You know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah. It's different. Yeah. Yeah. And it's interesting to see how like, Oh, physically they're like perceiving each other in these new ways, regardless if it is real or not. I just thought that was, it's kind of an interesting, uh,

I've got to say the way information is being fed and stuff like that, even though I know like broad strokes of where it's going, I'm still so engaged to see where his perspective of it goes. Like this real, really like hats off to, um, uh, let me get his name. Christian Christian. Yeah. Hats off to Christian dude. Like banger banger so far, man. I thought what I liked about the sequel is I'm glad that it's the same story, but it's interweaving in these new sections, uh,

like new perspectives of things, but then also filling in where her time gaps are. Yeah. When she's like, oh, I just, I happen to be in this new spot now. It feels like he's been filling some of that, filling some of the spots. Yeah. It hurts even now to try and remember too clearly. What I do know was that as time went on, I felt less like precious cargo and more like a leaden weight she had to lug from place to place. Some nights I'd wake up and spot her stood in my doorway looking at me and the expression on her face was,

Holy shit, it was murderous. I'd have to lie there and pretend for hours that I was snoring gently because on some level, I just knew it'd be bad news. The time we spent together started to change, and more often than not, I'd try to stay out in the garden and play with toys. Only I wasn't really playing. I was just pretending, hoping that if my performance was good, then she wouldn't get any more irritated with me. Without knowing when, why, or how, rules were introduced.

I go to do something like make myself a drink and stop. Hand frozen halfway to an empty glass. I remember that I wasn't allowed to get glasses out of the cupboard by myself. I didn't know how I knew that. I just knew it. I wasn't allowed to play games past seven. I wasn't allowed to get my own snacks. I wasn't allowed in the garden without telling her where I was going. And if I broke these rules? One time I threw a ball and broke a window and she exploded out of the screen door like a bull.

It felt so wrong to feel scared of her. She was meant to be looking after me. Those were the roles we were meant to be playing. She grabbed my arm and pulled it so hard it popped right out of the socket and I begged for the game to stop, but nothing I said could snap us out of these messed up roles we'd made. She dragged me into the house and I passed out around about the time my head bounced off the third step of our porch. When I woke up, I was sat in a high chair and strapped in real good. Something hurt, but I ignored it.

All I wanted was for this pissed off woman to love me again. I was so terrified I would have done anything she asked. She was the only thing I had to keep me safe in the world and my head was full of all the amazing stuff she did for me. The food, the gifts, the movies, the clothes, the bathing. I could see how tired she was. It was me making her that tired. So I cried and I sobbed and I said sorry so often my throat got sticky and dry and I started to heave.

When her terrible frown finally broke, she ran towards me with her arms wide open and pulled me out of the chair. She told me to never make her hurt me again. Saying it over and over again as she sat me down on the sofa and rolled up my pajamas to show me my chubby legs. Something was jutting out of the skin and before I could figure out what it was, she pinched it with her fingers and thumb and drew it out in one long motion. It was a needle.

A little sewing needle that had been slid painfully into the thick, fatty muscle of my thigh. There have to be rules, and there have to be consequences. But don't worry. I want you to know it hurts me just as much as it hurts you. We both suffer when you break the rules. I want you to know that. You don't just hurt yourself, you hurt me. I watched as she placed the bloody needle on her tongue and swallowed it. Ugh. Ugh. Ha ha ha ha!

When the doorbell rang, I was looking at the diapers around my waist. I didn't know when or how they had gotten there, and weirdly I remembered thinking the exact same thing that morning. The morning before that. The longer I thought about it, the harder it was for me to remember when I'd last actually used a toilet. Ugh. Ugh. The realization horrified me. Some of the memories flashing into my head. It's like I was experiencing them for the first time all over.

The timid woman I'd married was somehow suddenly so strong, able to not only overpower me, but able to actually lift me off the ground. To pick me up and lay me down on a small table and hoist my legs up and... She changed me, I thought. My whole body flushed with unspeakable humiliation. I think it was the feeling that let me keep my head together when the delivery man came. Like I had this little bit of defiance that stopped me trying to hide from the stranger. This is my chance, I thought.

Wait, no, I'm not allowed to open the door. Not for strangers, but I can speak to him. Maybe he can help. Someone has to help. But if she comes and finds me that I'm in trouble, I don't want to be in trouble. It was like being drunk. Like having my thoughts handcuffed to a maniac. I had to fight every step of the way to stay a man and not a child. And I pulled at the handle eager to get some perspective on what was happening to me. Only I never got to even see the guy because that was when the bathroom door slammed shut.

She's coming, and I knew that if she found me, then I'd get one hell of a punishment. My legs and arms already hurt so bad. I wasn't a very good boy, I knew. I broke a lot of rules and didn't help that the new ones were popping up all the time. I fled towards the kitchen, turning the corner just in time for the door to swing open and for the delivery guy to get a good look at me. I briefly turned to face him, and the way he reacted to the sight of me... I expected to feel embarrassed, but I just felt scared.

Something was happening to me and the fact that this guy could see it made it horrifyingly real. My body had changed no matter what my wife wanted. I wasn't a child. I was changing into something, but it wasn't a normal kid. This wasn't Benjamin Button. Whatever happens when you cram a chubby middle-aged guy into a three-foot package, it resulted in a cute little kid. It's a nightmare. I ran crying from the look in his eye. I got as far as the garden when I heard my wife thunder into the living room. Who let you in? I have children in this house.

Who are you and why are you trying to be in my home? Poor guy was dumbstruck. I could hear him stammering away as I ran under the porch steps and waited. I learned this was one of the few places where she couldn't physically fit. A few times I'd hidden under there, she had to calm herself down and that made things a little easier on me, at least in the short term. Now I hope it'd keep me safe long enough that I could maybe even make a break for it when the guy left the gate. She childproofed it with some infuriating mechanisms that my fat fingers couldn't work.

but it sure did take a long time for that gate to swing open and close, and that right there was the best chance I was ever going to get. Out of my house! She screamed at him as he flew down the steps. She followed hot on his heels. Who's your manager? Who do you work for? I want to put in a complaint. I want you to know exactly how goddamn badly you've messed up.

This guy was stuttering and mumbling and fumbling, unsure of whether to run away or turn and give this woman a decent account of himself. I hoped he would leave. I was hidden so well, and if he opened the gate, then I would finally have a chance to get the hell away from this living nightmare. This guy was still trying to answer when my wife stepped down onto the path and turned to me slightly, raising one eyebrow right in my direction, where I thought I was hidden. God, the terror I felt. I pissed myself.

I thought I got one over on her, but she knew the whole time and she had something planned. Look at this. Look at this step. This wasn't damaged until you came along. The guy looked confused as hell and I couldn't blame him. He'd been bombarded with conflicting complaints. It was like he was grasping at air to understand everything he'd seen. It wasn't just my wife going off at him. It was the memory of what he'd seen. It was the memory of me. He bent down to look, to take a look, and my wife encouraged him to get closer.

I wondered why she was making him get so close to my hiding spot. Did she want to humiliate me? Did she want to parade the little freak around? I thought she must have known how much my body upset me and she was going to use that fact to torture me a little bit. But it was nothing that tame. Without warning, his face slammed into the middle step. His head bounced off like a coconut. Only she was there, ready to catch it, and before either one of us could figure it out, she had shoved his head right back against the wooden step.

He started to swear, then shout, then cry, and then finally he screamed and screamed and screamed. Fun parallel. That is really fun parallel. Yeah. It lasted so long. She never stopped pushing and somehow, impossibly, he started to give way. The sides of his skull started to crumple. His eyes bulged. His teeth popped out. He fell to the floor like coins from a slot machine. I had to pull my legs up just to keep them from landing on my bare feet.

I had front row seats to the worst horror show I could ever think of, watching that guy get scalped in slow motion. Well, he didn't stop at his head. She kept pushing until his shoulders started to pop and crack. Arms bent backwards, bones snapped, muscle and skin were peeled off with a sound like Velcro. At the end, he poured out that little six-inch gap and fell onto the floor in a quivering pile of skin and flesh. The only thing left on the other side was my wife's face staring at me through the gore-coated wood. Come on.

Put your new toy away. I'll make you some lunch. Interesting. Great. I love how that's consistent. The consistencies in the story are really fun to see how they make it fun. So my current working theory is that both of them are infected by the same like plague or like mind virus or whatever. That's making them eat like outwardly. They're each fully committed to the role, but each of them still have their consciousness in there. So yeah,

We're hearing their consciousness that doesn't want these things to happen and is coming up with ways to justify it when in reality, both of them are fully committed. I think she was pushing him through the stairs as much as he was pulling the guy through the stairs.

Oh, interesting. Okay. So you think that even he was even, so you're saying that they're both at fault, like they're both doing what they're both saying. Like if you were a third person, if you were a camera witnessing this, they are both 100% fully committed, but both of them are basically possessed and still conscious in their heads.

I kind of like that idea. Convinced it's the other one that's forcing them into this because both of them are like, I don't know what's coming over me. Whatever they're doing is making me go along with it. When in reality, that's the same thing the other one's thinking. But outwardly, they're both acting the part of sitting outside pretending to watch the clouds go by aware that she was behind the kitchen window and pretending to wash dishes.

she was that's fun yeah stuff like that the parallels right like she's been washing the same dish for two hours and then he's like oh she's pretending to wash yeah she was looking right at me even if i couldn't see her i watched her clean that guy up watched her dump him in an old compost pile around back it was the only one down there i saw my old clothes my laptop my phone my keys my mail everything that used to be me i was just talking about things

I never really thought of it much, but I shrunk and changed and I guess all that meat and bone fat had to go somewhere. I just hadn't realized that she tied it up in dripping bed sheets and plopped it in the farthest point in our yard. I don't know how to explain it. I just knew it was me down there. Bits of me I never get back because it had been sun-baked in a leathery offal. Is that not fun?

His body is rotted off and she's got it tied up over there in a bag. Gosh, that's cool. Man, that's so, this is such an inventive idea. Oh, it's so cool. Also like, uh, yeah, again, I think they're both equally like on the outside. Both of them are equally a part of it, but their consciousness is like still fully aware. So like he probably peel helped peel the skin and muscle off himself, but his brain's convincing him that it was her man. Yeah. Yeah.

Couldn't even begin to tell you how it feels to grieve your own body like that. Whatever defiance I had was gone, especially after seeing what she did to that delivery guy. Coming to terms with who, or rather what I was, meant that I lost all desire to escape. I'd have tried to overdose if it wasn't against the rules for me to go anywhere near the medicine cabinet. I ran a thumb across the purple and yellow flesh of my thigh, skin riddled with a thousand infected puncture marks. Can't break the rules, I thought.

Those brief instances he sees where he mentioned like she has extra pairs of limbs or whatever. I think that is the true thing causing this. The mind plague, the possession, the spirit, whatever. I think that is it showing its face for a millisecond, right? Like maybe every now and then out of the corner of their eye, the other one looks monstrous. It looks demonic or whatever, right? Like it's its true form for a moment. I think they are the same person.

I think it's either the wife or the husband who believes that they're playing both roles and one of them doesn't exist. Which is also why he shifts up

tall and short, tall and short. It's because they're perceiving both of them at the same time. I never even considered that. Yeah. That's what I, that's where I keep leading. My mind keeps leading me. It is one person that is both the baby and the mom and the mommy. Correct. Whoa. And all of this is just like an acted out, like a split both sides. Oh, and I love that. Like, I really, I really like

I really like, like, I keep leading myself to believe this. I'm curious to see the ending to see if it also, because at the ending, if it's like, oh, she never existed, then I will, I'll be like, oh yeah. You'll say you'll, you were definitely right. Yeah. Yeah. I'll be more convinced that, okay, this person is believed that they are both the same. Like, oh, this person never existed. Blah, blah, blah. Oh man. Okay.

When a frisbee floated freely over the hedge, I stared at it for a moment like I was a disinterested cat. Maij tracked it, but nobody was home upstairs, if you get what I mean. Only when it landed gently on the grass and I heard the gate clang open did it dawn on me that I wasn't alone out there. As a little girl, her reaction wasn't all that different to the delivery man's. She stopped dead in her tracks and started to cry a loud, distressed wail.

I wanted to ask her for help, but I didn't want to face the way she looked at me, so I quietly scuffled off towards the bushes to hide. Or at least I started to. It's when I heard the screen door bang and my wife came down the steps with a big smile on her face. It's okay, she cooed, reaching out to hold the girl. Only our visitor couldn't see the kitchen knife my wife clutched behind her. I won't let anyone ever hurt you.

When she started walking towards our kitchen door, something broke. I felt a special kind of hatred burn inside me. It wasn't a defiance, so much as pure spite. The kind of feeling that would make you scream "I hate you" over and over at your parents just to see them hurt. It sounds stupid as much, but as part of me wanted to keep that little girl safe, another part of me was just plain old jealous. After everything my wife had done to me, I couldn't bear the thought of her bringing another child into the house.

I started to run towards the two of them and my wife, spotting me, hoisted the girl up into her arms. Only that slowed her down so much that I reached them both before she'd even got up the first step. I tried to grab the girl's coat when I jumped, but wound up grabbing a fistful of hair. Everything that happened next was a jumble, but my wife slashed my arm and wrist with that big knife of hers and I pulled so hard on the poor girl's head that a load of her hair came free in my arm.

In the end, though, I think it helped because the girl started screaming like hell. And when she got a good look at me, that was when the fear really kicked in. And she started wriggling and kicking and punching. My wife, who really wasn't ready for just how hard it can be to keep a hold of a pissed off kid, ended up dropping the little girl. Once her feet were on the ground, that kid just zipped right out of there. And I did everything I could to keep my wife away from her.

Looking back on everything that my wife cost me, I guess that was one of the few little victories I ever had. As soon as the gate clanged shut, all that feeling of triumph dribbled away.

I crawled back towards the porch steps as quick as I could, and the best way to describe it is that even though I wasn't looking at her, when my wife's eyes found me, I could feel them. Her rage, it must be what it's like to stand next to radioactive waste. I swear my shadow got darker and the ground got a little hotter, and the noises I heard...

They didn't sound like they came from an upset woman. Not sure what they sounded like really, except maybe a strange kind of clicking. When I finally got under the house and turned, I saw that she looked big enough to crush a man like a bug. I don't know how to describe it, except it was a little like looking at something with 3D glasses or the way your eyes feel funny just before a big migraine. I guess for just a second I saw her as something that wasn't human, but the part that really hurts my head is that she never changed.

it was the same entity i'd married on the altar only now i got the same feeling i did looking at dead spiders or leathery roadkill she never really had been human had she it was my memory shot to i wasn't even willing to bet that i'd even married this thing read about those parasites that lay eggs in their hosts looking at her she scuttled towards me yeah i got the sense that's what she was some kind of parasite

She stopped just a few inches from the steps, her face peering at me through the gaps. She blinked with a third set of eyelids and smiled so wide her skin started to lose its color and break. "I will drown you in my womb." She said as calmly as she would ask if I wanted to cut up hot dogs and my spaghetti. I believed her. I didn't come out of those stairs for the rest of the day. Not even when my wife stood out on the porch and called me for dinner.

i didn't fancy my chances with whatever was shambling around up there and pretending to be a wife or a mother or whatever else it felt like i didn't want anything she prepared and as time wore on i found that the hunger in my stomach sharpened my mind so that i didn't mind it too much but again the parallels are fun because at the same time she says the adrenaline sharpened her mind right and he's saying the hunger did it's just these fun dichotomies

Besides, I could hazard a guess that she wasn't being honest about what was in my food and I didn't want anything she prepared. Whatever this was between us, it wasn't really a game now. The stakes were too high. And for me, tucked away under those steps with my stomach growling and my mind growing more lucid with every passing second, I really started to hate her. I hated that she hurt me and she was supposed to protect me. I hated that she lied every second of every day until the sick little plan of hers had come to fruition.

But more than anything, I hated her for what she'd done to me. I wasn't a man, but I sure as hell wasn't a child. I was more like a monster and a joke, and I just knew that somehow she'd be the one stripping meat and fat off my bones until my frame withered to its pitiful size. I had to leave. I had to. She then locked the gate, and I needed the key. And if she stopped me, well, I guess I needed a knife, didn't I? I needed something to keep me safe.

I waited until sunset and crawled out from under the house, making sure to stick to the shadows. Peeking through the kitchen window, I saw her stood there with a plate in one hand and a blank expression on her face. She looked a little broken, like she didn't quite know what to do now that I wouldn't listen to her cries of dinner time. She just stood there and shivered until some flicker of movement caught her eye and she pivoted around to track it like a bird of prey. I had to drop out of sight more than once because of how sensitive she was to changes in the light.

Although I think I managed to avoid her line of sight because when I finally snuck into the house via the back door, she was in the exact same spot, staring into the darkness like a blind man. For a moment, I thought I was safe in the shadows, but whatever this thing was, it didn't seem so committed to playing a human. As soon as I got near the stairs, her eyes fixed on me like a hound's. She came barreling forward on every limb she had.

What little of her was visible in the moonlight looked almost fish-like, like she had been pulled out of the bottom of a lake. She still had the general shape of a person, I guess, only it was like something wearing a human suit, one that was falling apart. Her joints slipped up and down her bones like they were on a pulley, and they bent backwards and forwards and sideways.

As she got closer, I smelled her and it was like rotten milk and dog shit left in a hot car. It hit me hard enough to water my eyes and make climbing the stairs difficult. Of course, I didn't get very far. Between my short legs and the sight of her coming at me, I didn't have a chance. I got maybe four steps up before she grabbed my ankle with one hand and hauled me downstairs. She mounted me, legs on either side, and slowly undid part of her sundress. Oh no.

Hunter, don't make me read this. I'm scared. Titty sucking time, dude. I'm ready. I'm scared. I didn't know what the hell was going on, nor did I have the strength to fight it. The last thing I remember was the side of her ribs pressing against her skin like fingers trying to poke through a rubber sheet. They were alive inside of her and wanted out. Baby need a feed? She asked before grabbing my head and slamming it backwards into the step behind me.

Ugh! Oh!

Straight from the source. My wife said her misshapen figure stroking my hairless head. Oh, it's like black and full of blood-looking clumps. Yeah, it seems like bloody, like a bloody pulp is what I pictured it. And also, at this point, at least to him, she doesn't even look human. It looks like a bug person inside of a skin suit, right? It's like, don't you want a drink? Like, ugh. Ha!

I realized that my legs were in agony and I saw that there must have been a dozen needles poking out of my skin and right through the pajamas she dressed me in. She pressed a finger against one and for a second the pain became so white hot that I nearly passed out all over again. I fought hard to stay awake, desperate to avoid another feeding, although part of me wondered if I wanted to endure the second one while awake. But when it all came down to it, it was just her in my way, wasn't it?

That hatred inside me burned up like a pyre and I realized that I wouldn't mind dying all that much. I'd secretly hoped for so long that I could maybe fix this somehow, maybe even get back to normal and get my body back. I didn't know how, but I let myself think that it could be possible. Sitting there looking at her loom over me, I decided that living like this wasn't really an option anymore. My hands were free. Who could blame her for leaving them like that? I couldn't hit her or kick her. I didn't have the reach or the strength.

But it'd have something sharp. So I reached down and tore a needle free and before she could try and get it out of my hand, I shoved it through her palm. It went right through like she'd been made of nothing more substantial than some thick wool. It didn't even make a noise, although the stint she emitted became unbearably strong. She looked angry. Good, I thought. And I reached down and grabbed another. And this time she tried to be quicker, but it just meant her face got closer.

So close that the moonlight hit it and for a moment I hesitated because I finally saw just how god awful she really was.

you could see where all that skin was just slipping away and hanging loose like a badly made mask and whatever was underneath it looked a little like a spider not a spider's face mind you know like she had a spider for a face only it was a spider with too many legs that were all curled up like it had been stamped on a few times like her whole skull was a ball made out of the furry rubber bands but she still had eyes and they looked mostly human

Like I said, she got it in so close I could see those hairs twitch and wriggle. That meant I could lunge forward and jam the needle right into her eye, pushing so hard that by the end, it was as embedded in the palm of my hand as it was in her skull or whatever she had. I don't know what exactly was in there, but it must have hurt because she let out a scream that drew blood from my ears and she ran off into the dark, desperate to get far, far away from whatever had caused her pain.

I didn't have much time. I slipped loose from the chair and ran from the house, stopping only long enough to catch a glimpse of a shadow passing over the house as if something had flown over. It's hard for me to say what exactly, but I had a vague notion that some of the lampposts in the nearby street were moving, that they reached way too high into the sky. I felt relief. God, I felt relief, and it was like the popping of a cyst. It hurt bad. It hurt like nothing I'd ever, ever felt. It wasn't a protracted injury.

Just more like being shot, I imagine. I don't know. It just... I reached the gate and saw somehow that my hand dwarfed the lock and by the time I'd fumbled it open, I was already hurtling towards the ground like a falling tree. When I woke up, the house was blazing. I felt like I just eaten 150 pounds of raw meat, but at least I was the right size again.

Okay. What do you think of that altercation of the fight? It's an exact parallel of like, she gouged out the guy's eye. He gouged out her eyes. So what I think happened is she,

I think it, once again, it's just leading into a person is like wrestling themselves almost like it's a fight club kind of thing. Is that not, I love that visual of like, it wasn't like she had a spider's face. She had a spider for a face. Like it was like a ball of like hair and fangs and points and stuff. What a, what a abstract thing for like, if you're right through the other half of yourself. Right. Yeah. It's kind of interesting. The,

the, the neat, the use of needles in this one makes it seem they talk. They both have both the wife and the husband kind of have like, it feels like a bit of guilt. So it almost seems like, you know, like how there's cutters, people that cut themselves. Um,

Makes you think that almost like the needles are someone who like pricks themselves with needles and stuff for that kind of that sadistic kind of pain or, you know, to feel something. And it makes you think that the needles were just there and the person like stabbed their eye out. They're writhing on the ground. They probably like set the house afire, crawled outside, and then they were like realized themselves again as like a man, a full grown man. You know what I mean? Yeah.

I like that one where it says, uh, when he gets out, it says a slip loose from my chair and ran. I caught a glimpse of a shadow passing over the houses. If something had flown over, is that implying again, we're talking in a literal sense, not like symbolically, is that implying literally that his wife like fully shed the skin and became like a gargoyle thing and took off. That's, that's kind of what I'm picturing. Yeah. Almost. Yeah. Yeah. Actually this whole end sequence kind of reminds me of, uh, the first VHS clip. Um,

date night or whatever yeah where her face is like peeling apart and you can see something underneath and then she takes off it kind of reminds me of that a bit yeah and then as soon as he comes out he's the right size again so when she leaves it's like he is unburdened from this thing he's been going through basically the illusion's gone i wound up having to take a trip to the hospital that same day so they could get the remaining needles out of my leg i was laughing so damn hard that they wound up keeping me for my own safety which well i guess i can't blame them for

between the needles and the children's clothes and the way i screamed with joy at the side of my own hands and my hairy arms i guess i must have really looked like a real loon i didn't feel too bad being stuck in that place though and they didn't keep me for long said something about spores in the lungs i don't know i don't even care i did tell them what happened of course but they just told me it was all a product of my mind

They say my head's messed up. I mean, they say it a little more politely than that, but that's the gist. It's screwed. They showed me a scan of my brain and it looked like an apple after it had spent three weeks on the ground in mid-August. I guess I'm not an accountant anymore. Most days I'm lucky if I can work a remote. I don't really care though. For a long, long time, she kept leaving me a packed lunch on the doorstep, my new apartment. Nuts, but I almost ate one or two of them.

It was that strong of a habit, you know? But instead, I always made a big show of throwing the food right in the bin. The last box was full of divorce paperwork, although it didn't look official. More like a bad joke. That was the whole marriage, wasn't it? Just a bad joke. I signed them in crayon and left them outside. I love that ending. I mean, I am fully bought in that it's the same person. Okay, so from her perspective, she has like holes in her head and the marriage never existed, right?

And then from his side, she escaped.

Uh, the whole marriage seems a joke, but the, she still haunts him leaving food out and sure he's resisting that, but she's still appearing there. So if this is the same person, cause they both have the same holes in their head, right? Um, it's like that alternate personality is tempting them. Actually, we can even put some pieces here together because her side seems more literal in the stuff at the end. Like there were no divorce records. There was no marriage records, stuff like that.

And then at the end, he's just kind of living in an apartment, but there's that mentioned the accountant over and over, but we never hear what she does. So maybe this was a girl who was also an accountant who developed this like brain disease, like split their personalities. And then at the end, they are being held for the murder of that guy. And the little girl said she did see a big baby, but then freaked out afterwards. The big baby being her in the baby costume, acting as both the attacker and the defender. Right. Yep.

I think that's very feasible. If this is two people, I like my theory that they're both fully conscious, but they're also both fully possessed and given to the role play. I think physically, the...

the lapse of time between each other's where there's parts where she's like, I don't remember doing this. There's points where he's like, I have a diaper. I don't remember putting that on. And it makes sense that he is the, the person, if it's the woman, she's allocating the time between each of these characters where there are lapses of time, which each of each of the character, they're losing bits of their head space. Like they're losing time and all this.

It's this is a fun story, man. I'm like, I'm still trying to process all of it. I really actually love I I'm not the biggest fan on all, you know, like having tons of sequels and stuff like that. But the sequel made it better for sure. I think it felt like a part two of being able to see on both sides of that mirror, which I think it elevated the story a lot. This is a this

This is an upper echelon story. I really enjoyed this. Also great timing too. We're at here. We did both of these. I know we stopped and we've had some pauses and stuff, but the like right around two hours for both of these reads. Yeah. When you read it comes in right in it too. Uh, probably more like an hour and a half. If you didn't talk in between, just, you know, read straight through and stuff. Um,

Gosh, yeah, the second story enhanced the first one so well. It's so creative. I love your idea that it's just one person who's experiencing this breaking of their mind into two different personalities, and then they're causing the damage to themselves and stuff like that. That's why both sides, the physicality doesn't make sense. It's one thing, then it's another. This was so good. I want to emphasize too, again, guys, that the author Christian Wallace does have that with teeth thing.

horror stories. Go buy that book. My word. I will be picking up mine right now. There's a hardback cover of it. And I think that it'd be cool to even get some of these and maybe do another little grab bag of some more of these stories in this. Oh, I'll also say, I just looked. So if you go to chwallace.co.uk, uh, it seems to be his own website. That is all of his stories, like on his own blog, basically. It's always cool. I just love that this subreddit has

just gave birth to all these, like just gave people a platform to become authors and stuff in a really kind of natural way. It's just cool. Gosh, that was so good. Yeah. Watch more of his stuff. A lot of his other stuff. Like I'm just looking at some of the titles now on his blog, a carnivorous chapel, or do not pray to the God in the desert or my shit. My ship has been stuck in the Arctic and something keeps leaving me coal. Like these are all such fun title ideas and stuff like, um,

I think this guy, look off of those two stories. Absolutely loved it. That I will dare. I say that is a top five creep cast story. I think we definitely need to revisit Christian Wallace's work again in the future. I think this is a lot of fun. So good. And we'll, we'll, we'll link the book in the description. Please go support him. He deserves it. But for now, this is the, my husband and my wife have taken our role playing too far. Like you're saying, I, you know, top five creeps.

Creepcast? What do you guys think here at home, huh? Also, thank you again if you've been listening to this on Spotify or Apple Podcasts, all that jazz. If you can give us a rating and a thumbs up or any of that jazz, that really does help. But until next time.

Oh, my God. Also, by the way, Creepcast Tour, guys, like four weeks from now. It's coming up. Three and a half weeks. All right. So if you got tickets to that, we can't wait to see it. It's going to be such a great time. Really look forward to that. And until next time, everyone, stay creeped. Stay creep your spooks. Did you see the picture they put in the subreddit of me and you six to nine in each other in a cave? Okay. That's the ending of the recording. Bye, everyone. Bye.

Don't forget to check out SimPurt if you want to smell real good. Thanks for watching!