text: When I was twenty one years old, I was dating this girl from Ohio. She was a wonderful person, kind, loving, caring, driven, and incredibly beautiful. At that point in my life she was everything I could have asked for in a partner, though I considered her much more than that, she was my family. We had both been raised by single parents who had pawned us off to the world at the age of eighteen and subsequently cut all communication. That feeling, of being thoroughly unloved and unwanted, was one we bonded over when we met during a finance class our junior year of college. We had both worked hard to get there and our shared history brought us close together during that time. We found that we were much more similar than we could have ever thought, she shared many of my interests and passions. Spending long hours volunteering at the local animal shelter, taking walks along the riverside with scraggly little dogs to interrupt the silence of the summer’s breeze, I have very fond memories of those years. After college we decided to move in together, both out of convenience and a subtle hope that we’d never want to part ways. She had been accepted into an entry level position at an office in the city, while I had found work freelancing online. Somehow, we made it work. Things went on like this for a few years, peaceful and quiet. My freelance work had really taken off while she climbed the corporate ladder one rung at a time. It wasn’t long before I popped the question to her and we were married shortly afterwards, a small ceremony in a local bar we frequented, at her request. We honeymooned in Europe for a few months and returned home happier than ever. Things were perfect. One Tuesday, I think it was around two in the afternoon, she came home from work early. I was sitting behind my computer eating lunch when I heard our dog bark, usually an indication she had arrived. When she opened the door, she had a wide smile plastered on her face and she immediately came over and stood next to me. “You’re off early,” I said, putting down my spoon and giving her a kiss on the cheek. “Sure am, the office caught fire and we had to evacuate,” she replied. “My god, is everyone alright? What happened?” I asked. “Well, rumors going around are that somebody left a fork in the microwave and it caught fire, but I guess only time will tell. Thankfully everyone was able to get out in time,” she said. “Well that’s good, maybe you’ll get the week off while they’re repairing things,” I half-joked. At the time, I didn’t realize how much this inconsequential event would ruin everything. Indeed, she did get the week off. And the next one too. Eventually, the company had to close their doors as the fire had damaged some crucial equipment that was far too expensive for them to replace. Turns out they didn’t have an insurance policy in the event of a fire. Hilarious. My wife, freshly unemployed, decided to take a few months off to “explore herself”, questioning whether or not the corporate life was right for her. Thankfully due to all of our hard work, we had a reasonable amount saved up and with my freelance earnings we could coast for a while. She began to get into some of her old hobbies, crochet, painting, graphic design, but settled on cooking after making a delicious penne pasta which knocked my socks off. “You have a real knack for this,” I remember telling her. She smiled in that sweet way she always did when I complimented her. She continued to cook, almost obsessively. I wasn’t complaining, though, having home cooked food to keep me fueled through the long hours of work boosted my morale and my output began to increase. Financially, we were doing great, and our relationship was stronger than ever given how much time we spent together. She began to experiment a little more with our meals, some of which were immaculate and some of which left a little to be desired. I didn’t complain, though, and supported her throughout her culinary projects. She made a chicken stew one day, nothing special, but a solid dinner which I thoroughly enjoyed. I didn’t think much of it, but when she sat down and began to eat I saw an emotion flood across her face unlike anything I had ever seen in our six years together. I’m not sure how to describe it other than bliss. Chicken stew was all that was on the menu for the rest of the week. Again, I didn’t say anything as I felt criticizing free cooking was against my personal code of conduct. I happily ate the stew, steadily enjoying it less day after day. The next week, we had stew again. For every meal. But this time, every day was a little different, some new element had been added to the recipe. Beef, broccoli, beans, carrots, cucumbers, pork, corn, you name it. It almost seemed like she was just throwing our entire pantry into this stew, day by day. After the third week, I finally said something, halfway through my bowl of brown unidentified liquid. “Hey, so, what’s with all the stew?” I asked. “It’s good, honestly, I don’t think I’ve ever enjoyed any food more in my life,” was her reply. “Have you given up on cooking other things? You seemed to enjoy experimenting so much?” I asked again. “This is my *greatest* experiment, just you wait and see,” she said. So I did. To be fair, the stew wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t exactly good either. Just neutral food, no taste of anything special. I began to yearn for something else but felt as if going out for food, or even the suggestion of doing so would somehow upset her. She had gone grocery shopping one day, no doubt for more stew ingredients, and I began to poke around the kitchen. I wasn’t sure what I was searching for, really, but felt curious as to her stew. My gut told me something was wrong. After rooting through the cabinets and finding nothing, I sat back down at my chair. *I’m just tired of it always smelling like stew in here*, I thought to myself. I figured one more check around wouldn’t hurt and I opened all the kitchen cabinets, stepping back to see if there was something I missed. Finding nothing but an empty bottle of Budweiser, something neither of us had drank in months, I gave up. Our recycling bins were kept below the kitchen sink and while I was in the process of dashing the bottle, I noticed something. The smell of stew seemed to intensify when I opened the small wooden doors leading to the sink’s underbelly. Moving the bins aside, sitting at the back by the wall, there was an instant pot. It was on. I pulled the pot out, sure that this was her stew and where she had been keeping it. I placed it on the counter, careful to plug it back in, and waited for her to get home. When she did, her entrance smile lasted for only a second before she noticed the pot sitting on the counter. “Why are you keeping your stew under the sink?” I asked. She was speechless, her face getting paler with every passing second. “Is something wrong? Your behavior has been off ever since you started making the stew,” I said, noticing the fear in her eyes. She got real close to my face and whispered into my ear, “We can’t talk here, come out to the car,” Caught off guard, I followed her instructions and we went out to her sedan. She instantly began bawling, shoving her head into my chest and breathing in short, sporadic bursts in between the tears. I could feel my shirt getting wet as I wrapped my arms around her, stroking her hair. “Baby, what’s going on? What’s happening?” I said, in as soft of a voice as I could. “The fire at the office,” her shaky breath mustered, “It was all my fault, I’m the one who did it,” I didn’t know what to say, so I didn’t say anything. She continued. “I had been making stew, keeping the pot in the break room. The same kind of stew we eat everyday, somehow the pot had malfunctioned and caught fire,” “Hey, hey, that’s okay,” I held her tighter, “things like that happen, that’s not your fault,” “But people died!” she said. I didn’t know about this. She had never told me. Once again I stayed silent. “I didn’t tell you, I’m sorry but the guilt has been eating me alive. It was an intern, some nineteen year old, he didn’t make it out in time. I never told anyone that I was responsible, so I immediately left the company to avoid seeing any of their faces again. Thank god they went out of business. I had to begin cooking other things, I hate the stew, I hate it, I hate it, I hate it!” her voice grew louder. “But it always draws me back in. I can’t escape it. You know when I got kicked out, when I was eighteen?” she asked. “Yes,” I said. “The only thing I had to my name was an instant pot, one I had been eating from my entire childhood. No matter what I do, I can’t empty it, I can’t stop it. It always ends up back in my life. A month or so ago, I had gone to the grocery store and when I returned to my car, there it was! Still on, still cooking, always the same fucking stew! I had bought a bunch of chicken breast in the store and I...” she trailed off. “I don’t know, it has some kind of power over me. I fed it the chicken. Then we ate it for dinner,” she sobbed again. I wasn’t sure what to make of her story. I felt unsettled in a way I cannot properly describe. I stepped out of the car and walked back inside, unplugging the pot. The little light was still on, still cooking away. *She was right.* I took it and walked to the balcony, looking down at the four floors which lay in between me and the ground. I threw it, watching it fall into the bushes below and disappear from sight. It hardly made a sound. I turned around to go back inside and my heart dropped. There it sat, cooking away on the countertop. Cooking the stew. I ran back outside to the car, but it was nowhere to be seen. Where it had been parked lay a note, scrawled hastily in black ink. I picked it up and opened it. *It’s your problem now.* It’s been about a year since I’ve seen my wife, if I can even call her that. I’m not sure where she’s gone and I no longer care. I’m better off without her. After all, I’m busy most of the day tending to the stew. It’s always hungry, far more so than I could have ever expected it to be, cooking away on the countertop untouched since its fall. I feed it and it feeds me, a symbiotic relationship sustaining our beautiful and perpetual existence. It feeds me well, I have grown far beyond the reaches of my older self, stronger and larger with every day. The stew saved me from myself, from the man I used to be. So weak and unsightly with my thin frame and gaunt appearance, I never knew how fulfilling it would be to experience the immaculate embrace of oneself. I thank the stew every morning and every night when it feeds. I know that one day I will be one with it but until then I will grow, for I intend to feed it well.