He likes to dress me in his wife's clothing.
I can never come to him as me.
I must always pretend to be her, dress as her, respond to her name.
He claims to still love his wife while wishing he still could.
They have given up on having sex with each other a long time ago.
In the beginning, it was repetitive, routine, what married couples do. It faded into a drunken activity for the few nights they went out and had consumed too much. Drinking in hopes to escape it all; only to find themselves locked armed and hung over the next morning.
She would call it champagne love. He would just order another drink.
A few years later it became a mandatory act. Their livers wasted, the charade was over. They had separate rooms and separate lovers. Their bodies intertwined with new ones, with the one rule that the names stay the same.
The first night he heard her having sex with her lover, he broke down the door and sent the other man to the hospital. Then he tied his wife to her bed. Naked and still covered in another man's sweat and semen.
He fetched his little black bag, all the while reciting the parts of the body in his head. Digging inside he felt the cool steel of his scalpel. He wanted to cut out the organ that she had promised would be his forever.
He looked at his wife, naked, tied, silent, and his scalpel lying between her breasts. But when it came time to make the incision, he couldn't do it. Somewhere inside, he knew her heart was already dead.
Now when he hears her cries, hears his name being called out, it has no effect.
He just grabs his coat and leaves.
That's when he found me. On one of those night walks. It was late autumn, his favourite season. Somehow it was only when he saw the dead leaves on the ground, heard them crush and snap under his feet. It was only then that he felt like he belonged. He said he chosen death a long time ago and must now live through it.
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