This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.
The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/Yearbook01 on 2024-09-17 18:25:40+00:00.
I cant sleep anymore.
My husband was always worried about his appearance, always fixing up his hair, making sure his clothes weren’t crumpled, cleaning up his shoes to get rid of any dirt or dust. His dirty blonde hair was always perfectly quaffed, his salt and pepper beard always brushed. His teeth always whitened to that weird uncanny valley shade of white. His beautiful icy blue eyes were my favorite part about him though, they really could pierce through the darkness in the best way possible.
My husband wanted to try this brand new miracle drug. “Get rid of wrinkles in as little as 3 days!” those commercials peddled. It was supposed to be a way to de-age yourself several years back. I told him he was perfect the way he was, he didn’t need to get rid of his worry lines that creased his forehead. His hair hadn’t even thinned but he claimed that he wanted his old hair back. We had ordered these little pink pills from a really sketchy website, you know the ones that looked like you needed to check your bank activity to make sure you didn’t just hand over your life savings to some lowlife that was going to hack you. They had arrived within the day. The package came in a cardboard box, our address listed on the shipping label. “Darling, there’s no return address is there?” I asked. “What if we need to return them?”
“Don’t be silly honey, they’re going to work! for the price of these bastards I’m going to make sure that they do.” He reassured me.
My husband though… He’s… very impatient. Even waiting as little as 3 days seemed to be as if he was waiting for a garden to grow. The first day I noticed that the little gray hairs that speckled his beard had started to go away, where there was a solid handful the day before, there was only one or two remaining. The second day the little laugh lines he had grown from all of our years of being happy and making memories started to fade. They weren’t all the way gone sure, but they were fading.
It had honestly made me quite sad, I loved those little perfect imperfections, it showed me that we had lived a nice happy life.
By the 3rd day he was growing impatient as he normally does. “Honey, what do you think would happen if I just took all of them at once?” he had asked me. “Probably nothing good darling, you could overdose!” I told him. “But what if I can get the look I want sooner? These things are fuckin expensive and I think they should work sooner than this. It doesn’t even feel like it’s working.”
“You’re being ridiculous darling. I can see it working from here!” I spat.
“Not soon enough.”
The 4th day I wish I had watched him closer. It was the weekend for us. We had planned to run errands together. Groceries, picking up odds and ends, what have you.
I was sipping my cup of coffee in the dining room, waiting for him to preen his hair. Then I heard the glass breaking and him screaming. Running into the bathroom scared out of my mind… I can’t get that image out of my head. The empty pill bottle on the counter, the blood spattering the sink, the shattered mirror. His feet… they were flat, like the bones and the muscle mass completely eviscerated. It was slowly working its way up his legs, his legs rolling up like an empty tube of tooth paste. His screaming reaching new heights. I tried to grab him, I tried to calm him, but my eyes weren’t working, were they? There was no way I was seeing his knee caps fold in on themselves, the little disks snapping and crumbling to dust. He was on the floor now, watching the invisible wood chipper destroying everything under his skin. He was yelling for me to make it stop. I don’t know why I didn’t call 911 right then. Maybe because I thought it was just a bad dream, how could this possibly be real?
His thighs and pelvis was next. The strongest bones in the human body, his normally strong thighs? Gone.
I don’t remember running out of the bathroom. I do remember his gargled screams. He was choking on his own blood, I know that much. There was so much blood everywhere.
I finally got enough courage to call the police, trying to not scream at the operator who was just trying to do her job that my husband was being destroyed from the inside, that he took these mystery pills from this shady ass website. “Have you taken any of these pills ma’am?” she asked too calmly. “No I didn’t take any of those freaking pills!” I screamed at her. “Okay. How many did your husband take?” God, she was infuriatingly calm. “I don’t know like 25? Please just get to my house and help us!” “Ma’am do you know where you got the pills from?” she asked.
The screams stopped abruptly. Like the ash finally ripped his vocal chords out. The silence was deafening. Dropping the phone I dared to take a look into the bathroom. God, I wish I hadn’t.
My husband was nothing more than a skin suit left on the bathroom floor. His skin floppy and perfect. Not a single blemish in sight. Even the blood was gone. The empty holes where his beautiful eyes used to sit were an open gaping maw, showing the sinew and connective tissue on the inside of where his skull should be. His mouth still open as if he was shocked.
A knock on the door jolted me out of my daze. “Hello this is the police. Open up.” a voice rang out from the front door. “Thank God.” I whispered to myself. I opened the door to two police officers, their hands on their hips reaching for their guns, as if I was some mad woman who was a danger to society. “He… he’s in the bathroom. I think he’s dead. Please. Help me” I choked out.
The two officers looked at each other and brushed past me down to the bathroom. I couldn’t bring myself to look.
“Ma’am is this the only bathroom?” I heard one of them ask.
"Yes, why? I replied
“There’s nothing in here.” He replied, almost with a sense of pity.
My blood was cold, starting from my toes to the top of my head. The static that raised the goosebumps on my skin was palpable. “There’s no way, he was just there!”
Slowly creeping to the bathroom to dared to take a peek. There was nothing. The officers looking at each other like I was some mad woman who had gone off the deep end. “He was just here.” I repeated over and over again as they headed to the front door. One of them left a card to a local hospital, as if I was crazy.
I sat down on the couch that night, truly at a loss of what to do. My husband of 8 years was gone. Nothing was left of him other than this stupid unmarked orange pill bottle. I found out where he went though. His skin suit was looking at me from the bedroom, his face and empty sockets peaking around the corner like a sick game of peek-a-boo. I can’t even pretend to be brave enough to go down there. But he’s just there. As still as a picture. He’s still there actually, as I’m writing this. His papery thin hand is grasping at the door frame, but there’s no shape to it. It’s just resting floppily on the wood, like a curtain drawn for the final act.
It’s midnight now and I don’t know what to do. I can’t sleep, not with his skin suit looking at me from down the hall. I almost don’t want to, for fear that he won’t be there when I wake.