text: My wife’s name is Ava. She’s pretty much the only good thing that has happened to me over the past few years. Lately though, things have changed with her. Let me go back to the beginning. Three years ago, I was at rock bottom. Like just about everyone my age, I shipped off to college when I was 18. I was never the best student, but I was never close to failing any classes either. It was just the next thing to do in life. It just didn’t turn out the way I planned. I hit a wall in college. It wasn’t the classes but college life in general. Coming from a small town, I wasn’t used to all the social circles, gossip, and backstabbing. More than anything, my dorm was just a mass of loud strangers. My anxiety and insomnia hit a pick, and, eventually, I couldn’t do it anymore. My parents were disappointment, but they eventually got over it. I was adamant that I would get a job and that college just wasn’t right for me at the moment. My mistake was taking the first job that came up. I started working at the grocery store just down the street from my parents’ house. It was soul-crushing work at first. I stacked so many cans and peeled so many labels that my fingernails were permanently chipped. I dealt with so many customers yelling about their expired coupons and how the bakery ruined their child’s birthday’s cake that I had a persistent headache. Unlike college, however, work was repetitive and mind-numbing. More than anything, it felt pretty good to come back to my childhood bed at the end of the day. Things got better right around the time I met Ava. My do-nothing store manager retired and I decided to throw my hat in the ring for the position. Next thing I knew, I was working a salaried position. Things still were far from perfect. I had new migraines involving employees not showing up for work, stealing merchandise, or failing drug tests. The difference now was that I was finally in control of something for once. It was my store and my rules for the most part. It also helped that my bank account now had four digits in it, and I was looking to move out of my parents’ house. I met Ava on a completely random day at work. One moment I was fixing the lotto machine and suddenly there was a stunning woman looking at me. She was tall shoulder-length gold-brown hair and a set of large brown eyes. At the time, she was clutching a can of green beans. I shook off my immediate infatuation long enough to hear her explain that she had a lot of food allergies and that she wanted to know about some of the mystery chemicals listed on the ingredients label. I had to take out my phone for some quick research before piecing together some less-than-scientific explanation for the strangely named compounds. She was extremely thankful afterwards, leaving me a with a smile. This became an almost weekly occurrence. Ava (I learned her name after the third time) would come in to quiz me on some preservative or food coloring agent. It was a little strange, but I figured that she was used to going to organic grocery stores or something. Her questions eventually turned to conversations. She wanted to here about me, and I learned about her as well. She said that she was a graduate student, working with a professor to study some of the rare salamanders found in the nearby woods. When she started talking to me outside of her food questions, things picked up speed. For only the third time in my life, I asked a girl out and, somehow, she said yes. It was a whirlwind after that. She was adventurous (outside of food), constantly taking me on road trips and day-cations. It was good for me. I was a college dropout working a dead-end job and, suddenly, my world was a whole lot brighter. Ava never talked much about her past. She said that she had a bad relationship with her family and couldn’t move away from them fast enough. She only had a few friends, like me, she had made around town. My parents loved her, so it wasn’t heard to consider her part of our family. I was always teaching her things that I thought regular parents usually taught their children. I taught her how to change a car tire and how to cook a pot of spaghetti noodles. I guess her relationship with her parents really was strange. She always had an interesting way of bashfully bringing up questions about those things. She would be overboiling something on the stove and say something like: “Help. I do not have knowledge of this.” I thought it was cute. The little idiosyncrasies in her speech made me feel like she had spent time in another country or something like that. After a year, I was never so sure about anything. This girl had to be my wife. I wanted her with me, lighting up everything around me for the rest of my life. She seriously said yes. In some private moments, however, she did ask me if I was sure. After all, she had to travel regularly back to her college and attend conferences. We’d be separated for long spans. I said exactly what I felt. While I always wanted to be by her side, it seemed like a no-brainer tradeoff. If it came to it, I had no problem with quitting my job and picking up everything to move with her if we had to. My first clue that something was off came during one of those conferences. Back at home, I decided to call Ava to check in before I went to bed. She didn’t answer her cell phone, and I basically figured she was tired from the trip and had fallen asleep with the phone off. Still, being an overly-cautious person, I decided to call her room number. That was a problem. The number I called was disconnected. That was a little concerning, but I thought she may have scribbled down the wrong number for me. I called the hotel front desk then. That started sending shivers down my spine. Not only did they not have any record of anyone named Ava in the hotel, but her room did not exist. In fact, the hotel only had five floors and Ava had given her room number at 604. I didn’t sleep that night. My mind raced with possibilities. Did she not make it to the hotel? Had she lied about where she was going? Why? Was she having an affair? Had she left me? Why? We barely ever fought about anything. No, I was just being suspicious. I resolved to call her program advisor in the morning. I sent an email to the professor just asking if I could get in contact with Ava and how she was doing at the conference. I had just pressed “send” when my phone started ringing. It was her. I exhaled all of the air I had been taking in from hyperventilating. She had seen my missed call and was checking up. She apologized for falling asleep and not getting back to me. I delicately broached my confusion with the hotel situation. She told me that she had simply wrote down the wrong number and that the room had been booked by the university without her name attached. That made me feel pretty bad about feeling so suspicious. Of course, Ava wasn’t the type of person to run off without a word. I had completely forgotten about sending the email until I got a reply later that day. That reply sent me back to a world of confusion. The professor, Dr. Miller, told me that I had the wrong professor. She didn’t have an advisee with Ava’s name. I read that email is disbelief. Ava couldn’t have told me the about the wrong advisor. She had stories she told about her. I was sure that was her name. I only had more questions that were now coupled with that bizarre episode about the hotel. How well did I know my wife? Was she even in a graduate program? I’d never seen the bills, but she had assured me they were taken care of by a scholarship. What was she doing away from home? How do I even bring this up to her? When Ava came home, I still didn’t know how to find the right questions. I was afraid that just speaking the words would cause my perfect world to break. So, I was cold and distant. It wasn’t on purpose; it was just reflex. I was sure that I just needed to find the right time to bring it up. I was also resolved that this wouldn’t be the end of Ava and me. She was too pure, too good for me. Whatever it was--an affair, a job she didn’t want to talk about, something about her estranged family--I would not leave her. I think Ava really sensed by coldness. She started spending more and more time away from home. Mostly she liked to take walks on the trail down the street from our house, especially in the early mornings or in the evenings. I really started missing our evening movie dates. She had so many movies she had missed out on as a kid, and I enjoyed introducing them to her. Her favorite was Monsters, Inc. I had given her a Sulley plushie as part of her first anniversary present. It usually sat at the edge of our bed. It took weeks for me to get the courage to talk to Ava about her mysterious trip. Every moment with her started to be filled with suffocating anxiety instead of the warmth I had felt before. Finally, I decided that I would take a walk with her on the trail. I thought the pleasant atmosphere of a misty, early fall morning might take some of the edge off. Ava usually got up early for her walks, so I set my alarm for 6:00 am the next day. I awoke, surprisingly, well before my alarm clock. It was 5:00 am, and the sky was a very dark gray. I wanted to go back to sleep but quickly decided to stay awake to make sure I could catch Ava before she headed out. I rolled over in bed in an attempt to get up. That was when I noticed that Ava’s end of the bed was empty, save for the Sulley plushie. Ava was an early riser, but this was really early. My mind again wandered to where she may have gone. However, her care was still in the garage, and her outdoor sneakers were off of their rack. I figured that she must have went to the trail earlier than usual. I thought about maybe trying to get up earlier on another day to catch her but decided against it. No, this would be the day. I’d been putting this off for far to long. I wanted to hear what was really going on so that we could work through it and go back to normal. I got to the trail a few minutes later, needing a flashlight to guide me. Ava wasn’t near the path’s entrance, so I ventured deeper inside. The thick trees seemed to curl around the dirt path, making a canopy above me. The ground was just slightly muddy from the early morning mist. The cold air fully woke me up. I was only a minute into my walk when I noticed a dark goo-like substance underfoot. It darkened some sticks and the ground itself. Curious, I stooped down to get a better look. There was a red tint to the soupy substance. It was blood. It was gruesome to look at, but my first thought was that it was animal blood. Maybe a cat had gotten ahold of a squirrel or chipmunk, or maybe a deer had been hit by a car nearby and had stumbled back into the woods to die. I kept walking only to find that the bloody trail continued. Whatever had happened, it was brutal. I found a clump of hair next. It was wrapped around a large stick that sloped onto the trail. It was long... and human. In the light from my flashlight, I saw that it was golden brown. Ava’s hair... I nearly fall to my knees. I started coughing puffs of gray mist. This wasn’t just a hair or two. It was an entire patch removed. And there was all the blood. No! No! I was screaming internally, fearing that anything I actually spoke would make this situation real. What happened? Was it a bear? We usually had one bear sighting a year. Some crazed murder? Why? Why did I let her walk alone? My only two options were to run back home and call the cops or to try to find her myself. I just couldn’t leave her out here. It may be old-fashioned, but I felt like I was failing my duty to protect my wife. I kept going. The blood and hair clumps continued off the trail. With every broken stick, I was afraid that whatever had gone after my wife would spring out at me. But I knew that time was of the essence. I had to go fast. The next grisly discovery was only meters ahead. There was some gray mass almost glued to a fallen branch. It was sticky blood and flesh that had kept it in place. Realized that it was human skin, grayed due to blood loss. I may have thrown up then without stopping. Something did smell terrible. I nearly fell into a sort of clearing. The trees parted to a grassy plain. I felt strange whirring in the air, stronger than regular win. Some mechanical sound was rumbling the ground. I swung my flashlight around. Something was at the other end of the clearing. It was like a giant octopus, just taller than a person. Its bottom tentacles were larger, supporting its weight. Small tentacles appeared stacked on top of the base. A beak protruded from the thing’s center while two eye stocks grew out of the top. It was standing next to some time of device. It was large and metallic. Something inside the cylinder appearing to be spinning. I screamed completely, forgetting about Ava for the moment. With horror, I realized that I had crept to close to the thing while I was inspecting it. Its eye stocks pointed at me as I turned to run. I got to the line of trees only to cry out again. Hanging on a branch was an entire coat of human skin, dripping crimson. The top was covered with golden brown hair. “Ava!” Behind me, I heard another, animal-like gurgling sound. The monster was making noise as it advanced toward me. It was gaining ground much faster than I was. I looked down as I ran to find something else. There was another one. This was smaller but had the same shape as the first one. Only, whereas the first creature was red and blue, this one was whitish pink--flesh-colored. It came running towards me, gurgling like the other one. My only instinct was to kick it. My adrenaline-fueled kick sent the thing flying into a tree. The thing gave a terrible, ear-shattering screech. The larger monster behind me also shrieked. I felt something large touch my back. It had me. I clawed and punched at the tentacles. Some kind of purplish blood came out, but it still pulled me in. It hoisted me in the air. My feet could no longer reach the ground. It brought me closer to its gurgling beak. Then, it stopped. When I was in full view of the things face, it brought another tentacle to its mouth. It was another metallic device which it placed around its beak. “Nick! Oh, Nick!” That was Ava! “Ava!” I sobbed, forgetting that I had seen her lifeless skin. “Where are you?” “Nick...” I finally centered on the source of the sound. It was originating from the thing’s beak. “You!” I shouted at it, while kicking out. “Stop using my wife’s voice!” “Nick...” I kept kicking until the strength left me. “Nick, it’s me.” “You...” I gasped, my mind beyond hazy. “You...” “I’m so, so sorry Nick. I could never tell you...” “No!” I cried while shaking my head. “It’s not... it doesn’t make sense!” “I can explain, Nick.” I had to listen while the thing spoke. It told me how it came from a race of explorers from galaxies away. Those explorers were scholars, wanting to learn everything about the sentient beings of the universe. They like to take on their form and to live among them without creating a disturbance. They had machines that could craft skin, hair, and all outward appearance. Their bodies, like octopi, could fit into almost anything and were malleable. They could slip into fake skin and live like it was nothing. She told me her story. She had spent years waiting for an interstellar assignment. When a green and blue planet had been marked for study, she had been sent there. She had landed in the wilderness to make sure her arrival was a secret. After that, she had studied the languages and cultures. When she was confident enough, she stepped into their world, wearing their skin. She even picked out a name, one of the most common ones from a baby book she found. What she had never planned on was growing so close to one of the planet’s inhabitants. She had fallen in love with him and, despite any reservations, she had chosen to remain with her mate. “Ava... Ava...” I murmured in disbelief. “I’m so sorry, but it’s me. This is me.” Everything, everything, I knew was breaking apart. “We can go back,” she begged. “I can put on the human suit again, and you won’t have to see me like this again. It’ll be just like before.” It wasn’t just that the words had gotten stuck in my throat. My brain had completely stopped formulating thoughts. “Or, you can run away. I understand. I’ve lied from the beginning about something so important. You can go and never look back. I won’t be angry. I understand.” Seeing that I was calming down, she lowered me to the ground. I remained standing there in awe of the creature before me. “Even if you do leave, I’ve told my people to never intervene on Earth. I’ve told them that there are many kind humans there who should just be left alone and studied from afar. You’ve done so much for your world without even knowing it.” “Okay,” I said. I wasn’t sure what that meant. It’s just the word my brain centered on to tell me that it was processing information again. Ava. This was Ava. I noticed another set of tentacles. They were the same fleshy ones that I had seen on the little one earlier. “Then... that one,” I gasped. “A miracle!” Ava replied, sounding like she was weeping. “Maybe the greatest one that the universe had ever known. That’s why I’m out here. I need to make a new suite.” I leaned down, holding out my hands to the fleshy creature. Sensing something on an instinctual level, and despite my earlier actions, it slowly climbed up my arms. The top of its eye stocks were hazel, just like mine. On that strange, cool morning, I held my child for the first time.