How I Lost My Wife

Linda had never shown any interest in sewing or knitting, but one day--long after our two boys left home--she started making a doll. I watched her carefully sew on each strand of hair, draw a face with sparkling eyes, rosy cheeks, and red smile. But she didn't stop there...she was soon knitting an entire wardrobe for the doll.

Finally, she presented it to me triumphantly.

"That's nice, dear. Very cute."

She gave me a satisfied nod.

The next morning, I woke and she had started on the second doll. I stood over her shoulder as she bent over the sewing machine.

"Another one?" I muttered. She didn't answer, simply gave me a distracted smile.

Soon she was at work on her third, her fourth, her fifth dolls, and on and on. They lined the side of the living room walls. Perhaps I should have known there was something wrong...Our ginger cat, Jasper, took a disliking to the dolls and knocked them over whenever he was inside. But he stayed indoors less and less.

I knew where to find Linda, day after day. "Have you eaten?" I asked, as she made a red sparkling pantsuit for her newest creation.

She stared up me dully. There was little life in her eyes. But in the doll's eyes--that was different. In the doll's eyes there was a gleam of malice and an intelligence that startled me.

And then, one day, as I wove my way through the rows of dolls, I found my wife's housecloths laying in a rumbled pile in the middle of the floor.

"Linda?" I called, more and more desperately. But there was no answer.

I picked up her latest doll, and I swear it spoke to me. "I love you," it whispered.

I frantically swept the dolls into a pile, and then with wide open arms, I scooped them up. I took them to my bed and arranged the dolls around me, and then I told my wife about my day, as I always did.

The dolls gazed up on on my face as my wife once had, with different expressions, from love to puzzlement, from boredom to interest.

I hugged them close. "Linda isn't gone," I whispered. "She's never going to be gone."