Taken by Jennifer Brock On Halloween, Monica's husband goes missing. Did he leave on his own free will, or was he taken by someone or something, perhaps even not of this world?

Before the economy collapsed, Howard would have been able to get off work early on Halloween so he could be home in time to take the kids trick-or-treating. But this year they made him stay late to make sales calls so the company could stay in business. So I had to take the kids out, which left no one at home to give out candy. Tucker and Emma dragged me around for hours, extorting goodies from our neighbors. When we got home, we learned that the disappointed kids who had been to our house looking for treats while we were out had apparently brought plenty of tricks. The jack-o-lantern on our porch had been smashed; our windows were covered in ugly profanity written in soap; and our oak tree was covered in Charmin.

While I stood out in the yard with a bucket and a brush, scrubbing the windows, I cursed my stupid husband and his stupid boss and the stupid recession and the stupid kids who’d vandalized my house. I tried playing my favorite hard rock oldies station on the radio for some music while I worked, but they were running a special Halloween show, saying that Martians were attacking the city, like that old Orson Welles thing. It helped a little with my anger, as I pretended the buildings the little green men were blasting with their laser beams were the ones my stupid husband and his stupid boss were in.

I didn’t get all the soap off, but I did smudge it around enough that the kids wouldn’t see any more naughty words than they already had. I was still livid so I sent them to bed and wouldn’t let them have any of their candy until I’d checked it over to make sure it was safe. I then poured myself a glass of Bailey’s and ripped open the bag of Fun Size Three Musketeers that Howard was supposed to have been home to hand out. I cranked up the rest of the Martian invasion on the stereo in the living room, and my mood eventually mellowed, even though the size of those miniature chocolates was far from “fun.” At least they were still chocolate.

But then my cell jingled in Howard’s ring tone, and I got pissed off at him again. I read him the riot act, asking him where the hell he was and pointed out that he was supposed to have been back hours before. He tried to apologize and said that he’d already left and was in the car heading home. I’d told him a thousand times before not to use his phone while he was driving.

He must have been listening to the same station that I was, because I heard his brakes screech and then he said something about a bright light coming down from the sky toward him. I told him to knock off the jokes and get his butt home so I could kick it, but then the line went dead. I called him back, but I got the “phone is out of service” message. That was weird — maybe some hooligans knocked over a cell tower.

I waited fifteen minutes and tried again, when he should have driven on to a new tower, but his phone was still dead. Just to make sure it wasn’t my cell that had the problem, I tried calling him from the house phone and that didn’t work either, but I could call myself, so the whole system wasn’t down.

I tried again later and it still wasn’t working. I added the stupid phone company to the list of people I was mad at. At about a half an hour after Howard should have gotten home, worry started creeping in at the edges of my anger. I wanted him to be alive and well and come home safe so that I could kill him myself. When another hour had passed, I’d run through all my little candy bars, and burned off all the alcohol in my system from nervous energy.

At some point, my body’s needs became stronger than my will and I fell asleep sitting in the living room waiting for him. The kids woke me up when they came down looking for breakfast. They asked me where Daddy was, and I didn’t want to upset them so I said he’d had to stay overnight at work. I got them off to school, but I called my shift supervisor at the store and told her I needed to take a sick day. She knew me as a pretty reliable worker, so she didn’t give me too hard a time.

I was just too much of a wreck emotionally to have to deal with customers. But staying home alone wondering where the hell my stupid husband had gone wasn’t such a good option either. I couldn’t sit still. I did chores that I’d been putting off just to have something to do, so my brain wouldn’t dwell on worrying. I cleaned all the expired food out of the refrigerator, put down new shelf liner paper in the pantry, and did every scrap of laundry I could find, including the sheets on all the beds, even the guest room.

I was dusting the dining room when the doorbell rang. For a second I thought it was Howard, but that was silly; he wouldn’t ring the bell at his own house. It was a couple guys in poorly fitting suits. They were police detectives; they flashed badges and asked if this was the home of Howard Perkins. I told them it was, but he wasn’t home, and invited them in. Then I realized that they had probably come to tell me he was dead and I just lost it. I crumpled into a chair in the living room and just started weeping.

I don’t know how long I was like that. The next thing I knew this girl cop in a uniform was trying to calm me down so they could talk to me. It turned out that Howard wasn’t dead; at least they hadn’t found a body. What they had found was his car.

It was in the middle of one of the back roads Howard preferred to use instead of the highway, so they’d had to tow it out of the way. The doors were locked and the keys were in the ignition, but the engine was dead. All the electronics in the car had been fried, like the car had been hit by lightning or something. So I asked them if maybe Howard had gotten out and walked.

Then they told me the weird part. Howard’s clothes were left in the car, strapped onto the driver’s seat with his seat belt. Everything he’d had on was there just as if he was still inside it — underwear, socks, shoes, the works — his undershirt was inside his shirt which was inside his jacket and all the buttons and shoelaces were done up. His wallet was still in his pocket. His phone and watch had also been killed.

The police asked me if Howard had any history of drug use. I said he hadn’t ever taken anything stronger than an occasional drink, to the best of my knowledge. They showed me his clothes in plastic bags, and had me confirm that it was in fact what he’d been wearing. One little bag had his wedding ring, and that’s when I knew he hadn’t left his car willingly. He’d never taken it off since the day we’d exchanged our vows and I’d placed it on his finger.

I told them that it proved that someone had taken him, and I’m not sure if they believed me. They wanted to know the last time we’d spoken, and I had to tell them about his dumb UFO story. They decided that maybe this was all some elaborate practical joke on his part, to make it look like the Martians had disintegrated him in his car, or something. I said that didn’t sound like his sense of humor, and asked if maybe some bad guy was out there faking alien abductions to cover for something worse. Was Howard the victim of some kind of freaky serial killer?

The lead detective, Sgt. Jones, tried to reassure me that they would be taking the case seriously, but that it was best for me not to assume the worst. He said I should go with the practical joke theory until they had evidence that it was something else. He gave me his card, and said to call him if I heard anything from Howard, and told me not to watch any of those crime procedural TV shows like CSI in the meantime; they’d only give me bad ideas.

He asked if I knew of any enemies Howard had, and I couldn’t think of anyone. I told them that no one I knew hated him, and maybe they should go check at his office to see if he had any professional rivalries. The police said they were going to do that anyway. When they left I was still pretty much in a state of shock. I didn’t know what I was going to do.

Gradually word spread that Howard was missing. I tried to keep it from the kids, but it made the local news due to the mysterious circumstances around his disappearance, so their school friends knew about it and they came to me, so I had to tell them I didn’t know where their father was. That was the hardest conversation I ever had. I did refuse to let the media jackals interview them. I gave a statement myself, but when they were sure I didn’t have anything to do with it they left me alone for the most part. Enough of the neighbors saw me either out with the kids getting candy, or later washing my windows, that I had a solid alibi.

It took me a few days to get back into a functional state. One thing I decided for myself was that I wasn’t going to let the bad guys win. If they came back for me, or God forbid my children, I was going to stop them. I went out and bought a gun. Thanks to Pennsylvania’s instant background check, I didn’t have to wait days to be allowed to buy it. I did practice good gun safety, telling the kids to keep their hands off it, and kept it in a locked box on my nightstand.

I applied for a permit to carry it with me all the time, and called to ask Sgt. Jones if he could do anything to help me get it faster. He read me a standard department statement to victims, but said he understood why I wanted to be protected. He had me sign up to join a gun club, and took me to a shooting range. He said he’d call in a favor to get me my permit quickly if I agreed to put in an hour a day at the range. Once I was hitting the center of the target more often than not he’d get me my permit. In the meantime I took to illegally carrying it around in my biggest handbag. It was legal to transport my gun to and from the range in a locked box, but it was supposed to be in the trunk of my car.

The target range did help me feel more like I was back in control of my life. It was the one place where I was in charge of who lives and dies — Take that, Paper target silhouette guy! The police had tested his clothes and ruled out that some kind of fire had incinerated Howard, so there must have been an actual criminal involved. I refused to believe that he’d somehow left of his own will.

I was going frantic considering the possibilities. Was it a killer, or a kidnapper, or some kind of terrorist? I had no idea, and a part of me was blaming myself for wishing horrible things on him when he wasn’t home in time to take the kids to go trick-or-treating. I knew it was irrational, but my head couldn’t convince my heart that.

Howard had been missing for nine days when I got a text message on my phone in the middle of the night from a number I didn’t recognize. It said:

“Hi, it’s me. I had to borrow this phone from someone, so don’t call back. I’ll try to get home as soon as I can and try to explain. Don’t tell anyone, not even the kids until I get there. I love you. —H”

I tried calling back, but it just went to some guy named Tony’s voice mail. So I just sent back a text message of my own instead:

“Ok, so I can’t call. Maybe you’ll get this. What happened to you? Are you safe? Did someone do something to you? The police are looking for you. I love you, too. Just come home.”

There was a reply almost immediately.

“I’m safe. I’m all in one piece and out of danger. It’s hard to explain this way. I promise I’ll tell you everything I know when I get home. I’m kind of far away right now, so it might take a few days. I have to give this guy back his phone, so don’t call or text again. Please don’t tell the cops. They wouldn’t understand.”

I was relieved but confused. Tears were running down my face. Howard was alive! Something weird was going on, but he was on his way home. That was all that mattered. I was trembling and sobbing for a while, but when I finally tired myself out I had the deepest sleep I’d had in over a week.

When I woke up I had the pleasant idea that maybe Howard had come home while I’d been asleep. I took a moment to freshen my face and then bounced around the house looking to see. He wasn’t there, and the kids looked at me funny, and since I’d promised I couldn’t even tell them why I was in a good mood. My excitement turned into nervous worry again as the day stretched out without any sign of him.

Scary thoughts were filling my head, like maybe he’d escaped from his abductor and they caught him again, or maybe the bad guy was the one whose phone Howard had borrowed, and he killed him right after he had him send me some hope. Creepy serial killers get off on that sort of thing.

I was close to giving up when I got another text the next morning:

“Still on the road. I’ll do my best to try to get there soon. It may be a couple more days. I love you and miss you all. —H”

It would be another couple days? Where the hell had the kidnappers taken him? I wasn’t sure how much longer I could handle the emotional roller coaster of bouncing back and forth between dread and anticipation. I just wanted the whole damned thing to be over. Couldn’t we just go back to the way it all was before the scary mysterious whatever happened?

I decide to ignore Howard’s messages, and act like I hadn’t seen a thing. I pretended that nothing new had happened, and proceeded with getting on with my life. I worked my regular shift at the store, started bothering the police about when they’d be done examining his car, so I could file an insurance claim on it, and even tried to find out if they’d made any progress on the case. They hadn’t.

So I was kind of shaken when I came home one afternoon and when I went to my room to take a nap I heard the shower running in the master bath. It took a moment for the thought to process, but then I realized it meant that my Howard was home! At first I thought I’d surprise him by putting on my sexiest lipstick and joining him in there, but then I got the frightening image that maybe he’d be horribly wounded by the criminals who’d taken him, and I might not want to climb into the shower with that.

So I settled for brushing my hair, fixing my makeup, and putting on a welcoming smile. I rushed into the bathroom, threw open the shower curtain, and then I saw Her! This little blonde sexpot was in my shower. I had about twenty years and thirty pounds on her, but she had me beaten me by a cup size, maybe two. Her skin was flawless and perfectly smooth, without a wrinkle or blemish or stretch mark anywhere. It all started to make sense to me — Howard had faked the whole mysterious kidnapping thing just to cover up an affair.

I grabbed the bimbo by the arm and pulled her out of my shower just as she was finishing rinsing my shampoo out of her whore hair. I shouted at her to tell me where Howard was, so I could kick his ass for bringing his little chippie to my house. I threw the shivering bitch a towel so I didn’t have to look at her perfect body any more than necessary.

She whimpered a little and just listened to me call her every slutty name in the book without even trying to fight back. I could see why this vision of every man’s dream girl thought she couldn’t do any better than my Howard. I mean, I know he was my guy and everything, but he was hardly in peak shape. And he was just a salesman, hardly any gold digger’s meal ticket. But since she had like no strength of character, even someone like my Howard could convince her to drop her pants.

When I’d run out of steam, she actually sort of began to talk back. Howard must have told her my name, because she said, “Monica, please listen to me. If you still want to throw me out when I’m done I’ll understand, but just let me say my piece.” The little whore was starting to get some guts. I nodded and let her continue.

She then proceeded to tell me the strangest story I ever heard. She said that she actually was Howard! According to her, the bright light Howard had mentioned in his phone call with me really was a UFO. Space aliens had shone some kind of ray gun that made his car stop, and then there was this light everywhere and suddenly he wasn’t in the car anymore. They must have beamed him onto their spaceship or something.

He was in a bright white narrow space the size of a phone booth but shaped like a hexagon. There was nothing there but him, and somewhere around then he realized he was naked. He called out to his unseen captors to ask what they wanted with him. The only answer he got was for the chamber to start filling with thick purple liquid. It pooled at his feet and started rising. It was oddly warm, and didn’t feel as wet as he’d expected. When it got to his face, he tried holding his breath, but it flowed into his nose anyway. However, he didn’t drown. It just flowed into his lungs like it belonged there. It seemed to flow into everywhere.

After a while in the fluid Howard discovered that it he couldn’t move his arms or legs anymore. The alien juice was paralyzing him somehow. He concentrated on trying to move his left hand, but it didn’t move, or maybe it did move but he couldn’t tell because the stuff was blocking sensation, and he couldn’t make his eyes open to see.

He could feel electrical tingles everywhere, as he was probably being scanned and probed by the Martians. And there were pains inside his body that he couldn’t understand at the time. This went on for some time, maybe hours, maybe days. (Slut Girl wasn’t sure, or maybe she hadn’t made up that part of the story yet.) Finally the weird feelings stopped and it was just Howard alone in the tube full of liquid.

He concentrated over and over again on trying to get his hand to move. It seemed like it would never work, but he had to keep going. It was the thought of somehow making it back to me and the kids that kept him at it. (That was a sweet thought, but I wasn’t going to tell Little Miss Storyteller that.) Howard struggled against the paralysis, and at last got his arm to wiggle a little. He moved it more and more, until he got his fist to slam into the side of the tube, over and over. And then the tube started to crack, and the purple stuff began leaking out.

The more the fluid went away, the more he could move. It got so he could kick a large enough hole in the wall that he could get through. On the other side of the tube was a corridor filled with scuttling metallic insects or possibly robots. The puddle from the tube caused them to back away, and Howard took advantage of the opportunity to make a run for it. He was too panicked to pay much attention, so he didn’t realize that “his” boobs were bouncing as he run on his shapely legs and dainty toes. It was only when he’d ducked through this round doorway thing that irised opened like a camera shutter into a little round room that he had a moment to catch his breath, and he noticed the new body parts moving.

Howard did a quick check to verify that she was actually a she now, and didn’t know why the aliens had done that to his body, but really didn’t have time to think about it. She looked around the room and saw a panel of the wall covered in strange hieroglyphic-like characters. She ran her hand along one and as well as noticing her elegantly shaped nails, she saw that her touch made the character light up. She touched a few more and then there was a deep humming noise from behind the wall. She hit another one and the hum changed in tone, and she then skipped around rapidly between symbols, making the whatever machine almost play a tune.

But then there was a solid “Thud” and the machine stopped, and the whole room tilted. She’d done something that not only messed with the singing wall but with the whole spaceship. It was lurching wildly. She went back to the corridor and the robot bugs were running down the hall in a line. She followed them and saw they were scrabbling at another of those round doorways. She ran her fingers through her hair and collected more of that purple stuff and dripped it on the insect things to get them away from the door. Then she went through.

The other side of the door was a small cramped dome with windows out to a rapidly moving Earth far below. There was another panel with more of those symbols, and she played with them until something happened. That something was a loud explosion and suddenly gravity shifted in the room, and the Earth in the windows started getting closer.

The little dome room crashed into the ground, but she survived the impact. She must have stumbled into some kind of “space life boat.” She was in the middle of the desert somewhere. She climbed out of the hatchway and found herself in the rain. Her lifeboat was glowing red-hot, and the water was causing it to make scary steamy noises. She ran away from the crash site before it exploded.

Lost in the middle of nowhere, naked, female and soaked to the bone, she started walking in a random direction. As luck would have it, she found a highway and started walking along it. She scavenged a windblown plastic grocery bag to cover her nakedness a little, and managed to flag down a passing truck.

She worried that it would be some creepy guy that would make her do stuff for the ride, but it turned out to be this nice lady trucker who took her to a truck stop and bought her some cheap souvenir clothes (a large t-shirt with “Albuquerque” printed across the front that worked on her as a dress, a pair of flip-flop sandals, and some red panties that were sold rolled into the shape of a rose as a romantic gift) and a free breakfast. She made up a story about having been kicked out of the car by her boyfriend on the side of the highway, and she just wanted to go home. She didn’t think Bertha would believe her about the aliens.

Bertha didn’t have a cell phone, so she had to borrow one from one of the other truckers to send me a text message; she said it was for her mother. Tony read her message over her shoulder and asked what the “H” in her name stood for. She couldn’t think of a name so she had him guess, and went with the third name he picked for her. So she’d been calling herself “Hayley” ever since. It was a cute name, and suited her. I wondered if that was her real name or if it was just another lie.

It took a few more days for her to finish hitching her way home. (There were some details she didn’t want to share, and let slip that she’d had to do things she was ashamed of) She’d used the key hidden in the fake rock to let herself in, and after four days in the same clothes the thing she wanted most was a shower. That’s where I’d come in.

That this cheap floozy actually wanted me to believe that she used to be my Howard was amazing. How naíve did she think I was? I tried to stare her down, but something in her big doe eyes made that hard for me.

She called me “Nicki,” which was what Howard called me when we were in school, but maybe he would have told his girlfriend that. I said that if she was really Howard, she should tell me something that only he would know. She crinkled her forehead cutely and thought hard, and then said that on our wedding night Howard had been unable to perform his husbandly duties. That was one that he’d unlikely want to share with his hot little mistress, but it wasn’t quite enough. I told her I needed more.

She told me about the time Howard had brought Emma to visit me at the store when I’d started working again after she was born, and he was so proud about taking care of her by himself. But when my co-workers gathered around to see my beautiful little girl, that bitch Shirley had to point out that he’d put Emma’s pretty little dress on backwards and everyone laughed. Howard was so humiliated.

That was a cute story, but it seemed like the sort of thing he might have shared with his girlfriend so he’d come across as vulnerable and sensitive. I wasn’t ready to buy this crazy “aliens turned my husband into a girl” thing. It was just too impossible.

She gave it one more shot. She described the worst day Howard ever had. He’d been up for a promotion at work, and his ass of a boss gave it to this kid who was less qualified but had a fancier Ivy League degree and a more expensive smile. He was feeling miserable and had a couple beers after work and didn’t get home until late. When he did he was in such a foul mood that he snapped at me when I’d told him someone had run into my car while it was parked at the store. He’d blamed me for leaving it in a bad spot and chewed me out for something I’d had no control over.

We got in this huge shouting match, and it woke up Tucker and he came out to see what was happening, and I tried to explain that Mommy and Daddy were just having a disagreement, but Howard swore at him and I had to rush to get him back into bed. When I went back to the living room, we got back into it, just not as loudly. I scolded him for talking that way to our child, and he came this close to hitting me. But then he realized what he was doing and he just broke down and started crying. He really didn’t want to turn into his father.

Hayley tried to make a joke about there being little chance of that happening now, but it fell flat. She’d reminded me of a time I’d hated Howard and had even thought about leaving him. It brought a lot of those old emotions to the surface and I got pissed off at her for reminding me. But I noticed she was kind of shaking, and I was torn between wanting to comfort this person in obvious pain and still not quite sure who she was. I froze up.

She sensed something in my reaction and wiped her face in the corner of her towel, which seemed to remind her that she was wearing it. She stood up and got her clothes from where she’d left them on the bathroom counter, unwound her towel and got dressed. Her body was truly amazing. If she really did get it from aliens, there was no doubt what they wanted to do to her in it. I envied her breasts, bigger than mine and jiggling enough to let me know they were real, but perky enough not to need a bra.

As she slipped into her sandals, she looked at me and sniffled. “I get it. You don’t believe me. I don’t completely believe it myself, and I was there. I keep thinking I’m going to wake up and find that this was all a dream. I’ll go now — I think there’s a shelter in the city for teenage runaways; I can probably pass for one. But can I borrow some money to go get something warmer to wear, at a thrift store or something? I’ll pay you back as soon as I can find some kind of job that doesn’t need a Social Security number. I’ll mail it to you if you don’t want me coming around again. Maybe that hundred you always carry in your purse for emergencies?”

Was that her angle? Was this weird story just a complicated con to get my money? It seemed a little too elaborate for just a hundred dollars. I was getting puzzled, but I got my wallet out of my purse anyway and retrieved the folded-up hundred hidden in an empty book of stamps and handed it to her.

She kept it folded and hitched up her t-shirt to tuck the money in the elastic of her panties. “I hate not having pockets,” she said almost to herself. Then she turned her baby blues to me and said, “Thank you. I’m sorry it has to work out this way. There’s a couple things I want you to do. Promise me you’ll do them.” She waited for me to nod before she continued. “First, call my cousin Andy. He’s in insurance, but since you’re family he shouldn’t try to screw you like the rest of them do. Ask him what the procedure is for how long I need to be missing before you can collect on my life insurance, and if you have to keep paying the premiums while I’m gone. You deserve that money, and with only your salary to live on, you’ll need it.”

She looked very serious, and I thought I caught something familiar in her eyes. “Second, after a couple months call Bert, and find out what it would take to divorce me in absentia or get our marriage annulled due to my being gone, or to just get you declared a widow. He’d know the right lawyer term for it. I want you to look toward remarrying; the kids need a man in their life, especially with me gone Tucker will probably start acting up again. But don’t just settle for the first man who comes sniffing around; find a guy that deserves you. You’re an amazing woman.”

She was starting to get a little weepy again. “And tell the kids - I don’t know how you can say you learned this - but tell them that their Daddy loves them and misses them and that his being gone isn’t their fault. And they don’t need to be afraid that what happened to him will happen to you, too. The ones who took him away from them are gone for good. Tell Em not to worry too much about trying to get perfect grades; mixing up the state capitols for the Dakotas and the Carolinas is no big deal. And tell Tucker that I’m really sorry I won’t be around to watch his soccer games next year; I think that kick we’ve been working on will really be something to see. Do you think it would be okay if I snuck into the crowd at one of his games to watch? I’ll try not to call attention to myself. It’s just my dad never made it to any of my games, and I swore to myself that I wasn’t going to miss seeing my little man trying his hardest, even if his team never wins.”

The tears were really flowing now, and I was even shedding a few of my own. And for the life of me, I finally bought the story. I reached out and pulled her in for a close hug and said, “Honey, you don’t have to go anywhere. We’ll figure something out to tell the kids.”

I went through my closet to find something better for her to wear. She had a tiny waist so none of my pants fit her. But after trying a few options we came up with a summery blue cotton dress that didn’t hang too low on her and could be belted tight enough. We layered a black cardigan over it to be more appropriate for October. It hung loose but still looked nice; we left it unbuttoned so it was less noticeable that it didn’t fit. With three pairs of socks, her feet fit into a pair of my sneakers.

When the kids got home, I introduced them to “Daddy’s cousin Hayley from Albuquerque,” who’d be staying with us to help out until he came back. We were still pretending that Howard’s disappearance would only be temporary. But I suppose in a way we weren’t lying about that, since Howard was still sort of around. It was weird adjusting my mindset to the new definition of reality.

I took her measurements and brought Hayley to the store to get her some clothes of her own that fit right. The story I told people was that her luggage had been lost by the bus company. The lie just kept getting more complicated. We ended up saying that we’d never mentioned her before because Howard hadn’t been close to his Aunt Mary and Uncle Frank. They really did exist, but their only child was a guy who lived in Seattle, and they weren’t all that close to Howard. They’d called when they found out he was missing, and it was the first I’d heard from them in four years.

But in our revised version, their daughter Hayley had decided to come see what she could do, since she hadn’t quite figured out what to do with her life since graduating high school. She had such a youthful complexion that we didn’t think we could pass her off as older than twenty, and we didn’t want to make her a college student, since it had been a while since Howard had been in school and we didn’t want her to get the details wrong. There was lot to keep track of to make sure we kept our story straight.

We soon fell into a new routine. Since her amazing body didn’t seem to need as much sleep, Hayley would get up early and start the coffee for me and then make some kind of breakfast for all of us. Sometimes it was something like eggs or pancakes, but even when it was just cereal she put an extra effort in and added freshly cut pieces of fruit or she’d hand-squeeze juice for us. We were spoiled. She also made the kids’ lunches for them, a chore which had already been Howard’s before.

After the kids had gotten on their bus and I’d left for work, she’d spend her day watching the Style channel and reading fashion magazines in order to get better at doing her hair and makeup and putting an outfit together. And sometimes she’d switch over to the Food network to get ideas, since she also got in the habit of making dinner for us. It was nice to come home on a day when I worked a long shift to not have to do anything, and suddenly a hot meal would be put in front of me. At first, her culinary skills were fairly limited; Howard had never been much of a cook. But as time passed she got better at it.

The children got along great with Hayley. To Emma, she was something of the older sister she never had. At eleven going on sixteen, Emma saw her as more of a peer than a grownup, so she’d go to her for advice about how to do her hair or what to wear. In fact, it was trying to help Emma that got Hayley interested in fashion; she didn’t want to give her bad advice. Hayley managed to convince me to take them both to the mall to get their ears pierced, and it strengthened their bond. Sometimes I felt a little left out, when I’d catch them off giggling together over some private joke that they didn’t want to share. Hayley did let me know that Emma had shared some secrets with her, but it was nothing I needed to worry about, mostly just stuff about boys she liked.

Tucker’s relationship with the newest member of our family was a little less healthy. He gave her a lot of attention, giving her big hugs when he left for school in the morning, asking for her to tuck him in instead of me, trying to sit next to her on the couch when we watched TV — that sort of thing. At first I thought he was just being extra-friendly to his cousin out of abandonment issues from his father being missing. But over time, it became clearer that he was crushing on her. I guess it made sense; she was beautiful and sweet and very lovable. It got less cute when I caught him sneaking peeks down her top when she’d lean over the dinner table, and when he’d hug her he’d tip his face up so it would smash into her chest. I knew that all boys eventually spend most of their day thinking about boobs, but I just didn’t think that eight-year-olds were supposed to be doing it yet.

I had to make it a rule that Hayley needed to stop coming to breakfast in just her nightgown, and to at least put a robe over it. I also insisted that she always wear a bra; she’d been skipping it sometimes when she didn’t have to go anywhere. When I explained my reasons why she had to do this, instead of being horrified like I was, she just thought it was cute. I worried that he’d end up completely screwed up when later in life when he found out that the first girl he lusted after was really his own father. She said we’d just have to wait to tell him until after he was at least a teenager and had had a few actual girlfriends. I supposed that made sense, but it still freaked me out.

Naturally, my own relationship with Hayley was also weird. I’d set her up in the guest room to conform with our story, and I felt lonely all by myself in half a king-size bed knowing my soulmate was just down the hall. I was missing Howard, but I had Hayley instead, except that I didn’t exactly have her. It was confusing and frustrating, and I spent more than a few nights sobbing into my pillow.

But then there came an evening where after the kids were in bed Hayley and I watched a lovely romantic movie on the Hallmark channel. We sat on the couch and it was a chilly night so we snuggled up together in our nightgowns and shared a blanket for warmth. When the movie was over and we were turning in, she gave me a warm hug. My heart recognized the feeling and when she whispered “I love you,” I replied with the same. And when she turned and pressed her lips to mine for a kiss good-night, I didn’t fight it. My lips tingled with a familiar energy and I felt my heart race.

I was feeling more excited than I had in a long time. I took her hand and led her back to my bedroom. We kissed some more, and I pulled her nightgown up over her head and laid her on the bed. I remembered back to my experimenting with my college roommate, and gave her a thorough tour of all her erogenous zones. She was very sensitive, and surprisingly vocal in her enthusiasm. At one point, she woke up Tucker, and I had to go in there and talk him back to sleep, telling him that his cousin had just been having a bad dream, so I was letting her share my bed. I tucked him in and kissed him on the forehead, hoping he couldn’t smell her on me.

When I returned to my bedroom, she said it was my turn, and she stripped my nightgown off and set to work exploring my body with her gently supple lips. She was better than Howard and my old roommate combined — I had to cry into my pillow again, only this time it wasn’t out of sorrow.

She didn’t officially move into my room, but we spent many nights together after that. I introduced her to my buzzy little friend, and that inspired her to get me to take her on a shopping trip to the adult toy store. We got Hayley a jackrabbit of her own, and she thought a strap-on harness would be fun. The piece of “equipment” she chose to get for attaching to the harness was huge and surprisingly realistic, with a veiny texture and its own silicone testicles. I teased her that if we got that one I’d be using it on her before she got to use it on me, and that actually seemed to get her more excited. And when I picked out a ball gag to deal with her noise issues, she got really enthusiastic and picked out some fuzzy handcuffs so I could tie her up, too. It wasn’t what I was expecting, but I have to admit I found it all kind of sexy.

I did eventually let her use the big tool on me, but for some reason we both seemed to like it more when she was on the bottom. The best time we had was a Saturday night when Emma had a sleepover at her friend Nina’s, and my parents had taken Tucker for the weekend. Hayley and I did amazingly naughty things in nearly every room of the house. Trying to keep up with her energy level wore me out, but it was totally worth it.

But a few days after that, everything changed. I had a day off and was home in the afternoon. Hayley and I had been brainstorming over lunch about how we could get her a fake birth certificate so she could get a driver’s license, and then a social security number. Money was getting tight, and it would be useful if she could get even a part-time job. The doorbell rang and she went to answer it and she let out a shriek.

I went running to the living room and standing there in the doorway was Howard. He was wearing rags and had a scruffy little beard, but it was him! Hayley was standing there motionless with her jaw dropped and he walked right in and closed the door behind him.

He saw me and threw his arms open and ran to me. “Oh, Monica, I’ve missed you so much, Baby. Who’s your friend?” He tried to give me a hug and I backed off.

Hayley finally snapped out of it. “Get away from her! Who the hell are you and what are you doing in my body?”

The man who looked like Howard shouted back. “What do you mean ‘your body?’ Who the hell are you and what are you doing in my house?”

She tried to take a menacing stance, but she was just too cute to pull it off. “I think I know what’s happening. I bet you’re an alien. They abducted me and were planning on pulling some kind of switcheroo. You were going to replace me, but I escaped and ruined their plans.”

Howard was starting to figure out who she was. “Wait a minute.” He turned to me. “Did this bitch here try to make you think she was me or something? I would have told you about the aliens, but I didn’t think you’d believe it. It’s true; back on Halloween I was taken up in a spaceship and they poked and probed and did stuff to me. I guess they scanned my brain or something if she was able to convince you they somehow made me look like that. It must have been some kind of experiment to find out how gullible Earth people are. But get out of my house now, you Martian whore! We’re not buying it.”

I didn’t know who to believe. “If you’re Howard, how did you escape from the spacemen?”

“What do you mean ‘if’? Honey, we’ve been married for almost twenty years! You don’t recognize your own husband, and you think some alien chick is really me? She must be screwing with your brain. I think they gave her something like super mojo pheremones, because as much as I want to kick her ass for trying to steal my life, and even though I’d never dream of cheating on you, there’s a part of my brain that can’t stop imagining throwing her down on the couch right now. Sorry.”

Hayley made a little gagging noise. “Eww. Maybe if you cleaned up a little and you weren’t some kind of body snatching invader…” She winked at me. “Would it be considered cheating if I did have sex with myself, or would it just count as a sort of masturbation? Anyway, I don’t doubt that your Martian friends did something to make this body extra sexy. I bet they were planning on using me as some kind of love slave. Think I’d look hot in a gold bikini?”

I giggled at the image, but it wasn’t helping me. “This isn’t getting us anywhere. One of you is my husband, and one of you is probably an alien. How will we decide?”

Male Howard said, “Ask me anything about my life. I’ll prove I’m me.”

Hayley said, “Maybe if you gave us each a kiss, you’d know which one truly loves you.”

That intrigued me, so I tried it. Hayley’s kiss curled my toes as usual, but Howard smelled horribly and I nearly choked. He needed a shave, a shower and a change of clothes, so I’m not sure if it was a fair test. We did try a couple rounds of Howard Perkins trivia, but they both knew everything I knew about him, so that was getting us nowhere.

I went to my room and left them alone for a while. I came back, wielding my freshly-loaded gun. Both of them looked at me in shock. I made them sit in chairs on opposite sides of the room, and told them to be quiet so I could think. They both started to complain, but then thought the better of it and shut up. It was kind of scary how similar their reactions were; they even seemed to be sitting in the same pose.

The easy choice would be to just keep the male Howard, the one who looked how everyone would expect my husband to look. We could tell the cops he came home, maybe tell them about the UFO, maybe not. The kids would have their dad again, and he could go back to his job and everything could go back the way it was before all this.

But on the other hand, what if that Howard was the impostor? I don’t think I could kick out the man I loved just because he wasn’t a man any more. If Hayley was the real one, I’d have to keep her. I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if I made a choice just because it would make my life easier. I had to be sure. I gave them each a chance to plead their case.

In the spirit of “Ladies first,” I began with Hayley. “Don’t shoot anyone, okay? Let this guy say he’s me, but then you call Bert and tell him you’re going to file for divorce. This alien bastard will probably end up getting all my clothes and things, and taking half our money, but he’ll be out of our lives for good. Even if that means he’d be able to finish whatever his mission for the Martians is that needs him to be me, I don’t care. Just don’t let him get any kind of custody of Tuck and Em. I don’t want to think about what he might do to them when you’re not around.”

The other Howard took a different approach. “This alien bitch is good. They made her pretty charming. Don’t listen to her lies. I’m not sure where you got that gun, but even though getting rid of this monster would be a good idea, it would be a mistake for you to shoot her now. The neighbors would hear the shot and probably call the cops. But I have an idea; since nobody knows I’m back yet, why don’t you hand me the gun? I’ll take her out of town somewhere and fix it so she won’t bother us ever again. We’ll show those Martians not to mess with us, and get our lives back to normal.”

I let my instincts guide me. I held my breath, pointed my gun at the alien, and squeezed the trigger.