Calvin and his wife Emma

After losing his wife Emma, Calvin believes his own life is over, but when she returns as a ghost, able to possess any woman she touches, their grief collides with a reality neither of them knows how to navigate.
Emma survives by inhabiting other women. But the longer she stays inside them, the more she starts thinking like them, wanting like them, slipping away from herself. The only thing that pulls her back, that keeps her anchored as Emma, is sex with Calvin.
But how do you love someone when you no longer know where they end and someone else begins?

Chapter 1: ****

There are moments when the only reason you keep going is because your world has become so meaningless that stopping seems just as pointless. You let the disgusting wave of reality carry you forward, not really caring where it takes you.

That was me, emotionless as the overly polite bald undertaker gestured for me to enter the room where my wife's body awaited. I paused in the doorway, wondering if this really was how I wanted to remember her.

The undertaker sensed my hesitation and took that half step toward me. "Our cosmetologist was able to work some magic," he said reassuringly. "I'm sure you'll be quite pleased with her appearance."

I doubted it. I doubted anyone even managed to find all the pieces, much less put them back together. I walked into the room anyway, because that was where the current took me.

She looked good. Better than I thought she would. Not great, but pretty damn close. The undertaker was right. They had done a lot with what they had to work with. She seemed asleep rather than dead, laying there on display in her open casket. It was almost enough to fool me into thinking everything was going to be okay, like she was just taking a nap and any minute now she'd wake up and tell me how stupid I looked standing there gawking at her.

"I'll leave you alone so you can say goodbye," the undertaker said behind me, then vanished as he closed the door.

Goodbye? Yeah. Goodbye to my sanity, to any semblance of a normal life. Fifteen years and half of me gone in one stupid accident. One single moment in time, and my world shattered like glass. Looking at her lying there, I wanted nothing more than to let the wave carry me to the other side where I wouldn't have to feel anything anymore.

I noticed my reflection in the glass of the window behind her coffin. I looked just as dead as she did, only still moving, which in my case might be considered a curse. The man in the window had no life left in his eyes, no hope or dreams, no purpose or direction. Just a middle-aged with a circle of greying red hair around his head, his suit a little too tight around his middle, his face pale and haggard, green eyes bloodshot from a week of not enough sleep, too much whiskey and more tears than he ever thought he'd cry.

"Psst!" The hiss came from my left. "Calvin!"

I turned toward the sound and saw a woman in her thirties beckoning me from behind a slightly open door across the room. She looked both embarrassed and excited, like she had accidentally uncovered some big secret but wasn't quite sure what to do next. She was wearing a white blouse with black slacks and an apron with the funeral home's logo on it. I guessed she worked here.

"Yes?" I asked wearily. This day just kept getting better and better.

She whispered, "Okay this is going to sound weird but bear with me, okay?" Her face flushed red like she was asking me out on a date.

"Uh, sure." I glanced back at my wife lying peacefully in her casket. Just once I wished something today would make sense.

The woman stepped forward, peeking over my shoulder to make sure no one else was around, then said, "I hate chocolate..."

It took me a second to process that. My heart started beating faster, pumping ice cold blood through my veins. I could hear my pulse pounding in my ears. "Excuse me?"

She leaned forward until our eyes were only inches apart, staring deep into my soul. She was shaking. "The blue monkey!" she hissed frantically. "Your father's house! The blue monkey!"

I didn't mean to but I grabbed her shoulders and pushed her against the wall. Hard. Pictures rattled as my voice cracked. I wanted to scream at her, to get her to shut up, to tell me how she knew those things, but all I managed to croak out was, "What did you say?"

She started crying. Big tears streaming down her cheeks as she shook harder. For some reason she looked... relieved? "Calvin!" she wailed. "It's me! I know it doesn't make any fucking sense but it's me!" She wrapped her arms around me and buried her face in my chest, sobbing.

My wife was dead. What the hell was this lady talking about? Nothing made sense anymore. I hugged her back for some reason I couldn't understand. She felt familiar in my arms. Comfortable. Like we had done this a thousand times before.

Her muffled voice said, "I don't know what happened... Last thing I remember is the car flipping over..." She shuddered again. "Then I was me, I mean, Clara... I mean this woman whose body I'm in." She sniffed, wiped her nose, then looked down at herself. "And I know everything about her life but I still feel like me, Calvin!" She was looking up at me now, pleading for help, "Do you know what happened?

"Listen, erm, Clara, right?" I gently pushed her away from me. "I think maybe you should go lie down somewhere. You seem pretty upset." I needed to sit down too. Maybe then the world would stop spinning.

She was getting frustrated. Her eyebrows narrowed as she shook my hands off her shoulders. "Calvin! I'm not crazy! Don't you dare treat me like I am!"

Shit, now she really sounded like my wife. I stared at her, not really knowing what to do or say. Was this were the current was taking me? To madness? That actually sounded kinda nice.

The door to the viewing room opened and the undertaker stepped in, eyeing the woman suspiciously. "Everything okay in here?" he asked with that fake smile of his plastered on his face.

The woman who claimed to be my dead wife looked back and forth between us. "Yes, sorry Peter," she said sheepishly. "I was just, huh, showing Mr. Kent here the work we've done on his wife's makeup." She eyed Emma's corpse with a weird look on her face, fascination mixed with disgust.

Peter relaxed his stance a bit but still watched the woman warily. "Right, well, I think it best if you take your break now." He motioned for her to leave.

The woman clenched her teeth, shot me a **** glance, then said, "Of course." She walked past Peter and disappeared through the door behind him.

Peter closed it and turned toward me. "Sorry about that. Sometimes our staff gets a little too involved with the families of our guests." His fake smile returned as he gestured toward the casket. "Would you like more time alone with your wife?"

I shook my head. "No. I think I'd like to go home now." I walked toward the exit without waiting for a response.

I got into my car and sat there staring at nothing. My thoughts were racing. What the hell had just happened? How could that woman know those things she knew? Who was she really? Was it possible my wife had somehow come back to life inside the body of another woman? I burst out laughing hysterically. Jesus Christ, I really had lost it.

I didn't realize how long I had been sitting there until someone knocked on my window. It was the woman again, looking down at me worriedly. I rolled down the window.

She knelt down so we were face to face. "Calvin Richard Kent, don't you dare give up on me! Do you hear me?!"

I blinked. She had this woman's face, this woman's voice, but the way she talked, the fire in her eyes, the determination... "Emma?"

She smiled and nodded. Tears started rolling down her cheeks again. "Yes Calvin. It's me. I don't know what the fuck happened but it's me!"

I opened the passenger door and she sat down next to me. Was I diving deeper into insanity or had I just found a life raft? I studied her closely, looking for some sign this was all just a dream. She was cute. She had dark hair pulled into a bun and bright green eyes that pierced right through me.

"Alright... Emma," it hurt to even say her name, "I'll play along. Say you are my dead wife. Just... how?"

She frowned, staring straight ahead through the windshield. "When I woke up inside my... her body, I had my hand on my old body, the one that's dead. One minute I was just Clara, starting my shift, doing my job, and the next I was Emma inside Clara's body, with her memories, her thoughts, her feelings, but also me!" She turned toward me and grabbed my hands. "Fuck, Calvin... Am I me or am I just Clara with my memories? I'm so confused... Please help me! I don't want to lose you, Calvin."

I burst out laughing, nervously at first, then harder and harder, until I was gripping my sides, tears running down my face, unable to breathe. My dead wife didn't want to lose me. That was just so rich. So god damned funny. "Wait... So what? You put your body back together?" I said, wiping my eyes with the back of my hand. She just looked at me blankly, not seeing the humor in it at all.

"Yeah... That was fucking strange." She shivered. "But it felt normal. My daily routine, except I was working on myself." She chuckled nervously. "Jesus, Calvin, I've spent the last couple days pretending to be Clara! I kissed her husband, slept in her bed, took care of her kids. It all felt natural. But I also felt guilty, like I was a spy in her house, you know?"

"Yeah." I didn't know. I didn't know anything anymore. "Listen, Emma," I said, not quite believing the words coming out of my mouth. "Why don't you come over to my place tomorrow and we can talk, okay?"

"But..." she started, then stopped, her eyebrows furrowed in concentration. "I can't... I mean, what am I going to do? I can't keep pretending to be someone else!"

I didn't have an answer for that. I was overwhelmed. I couldn't handle this. Not right now. Not after today. I needed time to think. "Just give me some time. Please. Let's talk tomorrow. Maybe we'll figure this out. I'll give you my address, okay?"

"I know our fucking address!" she snapped. "I'm your wife!"

I nodded slowly. "Yeah... Sorry... I'll see you tomorrow then, okay?"

"When?"

"At the end of your... Clara's shift?"

She pursed her lips but nodded. "Fine. I'll see you tomorrow." She got out of the car and walked back into the funeral home, her hands stuffed into the pockets of her apron, looking like a teenager being sent to her room. Part of me wanted to drive away as fast as I could and never look back, but a bigger part of me wanted to hold her, to kiss her, to tell her everything was going to be okay. The waves of reality were starting to make me seasick.