My wife hasn't been herself lately.

“Darling, you just fell asleep at the wheel” my wife told me. “Thankfully, I was able to wake you up before our car could skid off the road”. She spoke with a concerned tone. “Yeah, you’re probably right”, I replied. And I was convinced that that was what had happened. I must have fallen asleep and dreamed about seeing a bright light in the sky emitting from a huge disc like object. I mean, how outlandish is that! To think that we had seen some sort of alien space craft. Vishakha and I laughed about it for a while, before we went back to unpacking.

You see, we were returning home from a road trip. It was late at night and the street was empty. Then suddenly, I saw what seemed like a scene from a horror movie. A light, the brightness of which was unlike anything I had ever seen before descended from what looked like a disc shaped void. That’s the best way I can explain it. This disc wasn’t even black, but somehow darker and could be easily distinguished from the night sky. It blinded me momentarily and when I came to, the light was gone and my wife, Vishakha (or V, as I like to call her) was frantically asking if was OK. I asked what happened to that bright light. She gave me a confused look and asked what I was talking about. She said that I had fallen asleep while driving and I must have had a dream. She took the wheel after that and drove us home as I was clearly in no condition to do so.

About a week after that incident, I began to notice that something was different about V. For one thing, she had become sexually insatiable. My wife has always had a great sex drive, but now she seemed to want sex all the time. As soon as she came home from work she would take me to the shower, then the couch, then the bed, then the shower again. I couldn’t complain but this sudden spike in her libido did seem a bit strange. We never used condoms as she had had a bilateral salpingectomy years ago. Neither of us ever wanted children.

One night, when we had finished several rounds of great sex, we were lying in bed. I had my arm around her and she rested her head on my chest and her back was towards the window. I was running my fingers through her silky hair and reveling in post coital bliss, when suddenly my tranquility was shattered. The same light I had seen, or thought I had seen on that empty stretch of road, was now shinning above my neighbor’s house. I jumped out of bed and ran to the window. That blinding light lasted for not more than a few seconds, before it vanished. It was as if it had never been there in the first place. I turned around to find V standing there looking bewildered. “Did you see that?” I asked. “See what”, she asked back. “The same damn light I saw that night on the road. Come on! Don’t tell me you didn’t see it” I said, exasperated. My wife came close to me and placed a hand on my cheek and told me I was probably tired and was seeing things. I told her again that it was there. She smiled and told me again that there was no light there. That I was just tired and needed to be “relaxed”. I would have protested further, had she not gotten down on her knees and wrapped her lips around my you-know-what. The pleasure I felt blotted out any reflection. In fact, V didn't let me dwell on anything for the remainder of the night.

By the time I got dressed for work the next morning, I had convinced myself that she was probably right and I had just hallucinated.

Apart from her new sexual appetite, V’s behavior changed in other ways as well. She seemed to be growing very distant from her friends and family. I ran into her best friend one day and she asked if V was OK. She said my wie hadn’t been returning her calls or texts. I told her she was probably busy and that I would remind V to call her friend.

V had been paying for her grandmother’s assisted living and made it a point to visit her at least once a week. One evening, V’s grandma called me. She was clearly distressed and told me that V hadn’t called her or come to visit in weeks. In fact the last time she had seen V was the day before we left for our road trip, which was over a month ago. The poor woman sounded heartbroken. I told her I was sorry and promised her that I would speak to V about this. That night, after recovering from the torrid, earth shattering sex, I mustered the energy to ask V why she hadn’t spoken to her grandma for so long. At first she looked confused, then a look of recollection dawned on her face and she replied “oh…right. Yeah, I’ll see her soon.” I suggested that we invite grandma over for lunch to make it up to her. I knew for a fact that she loved her granddaughter’s cooking. She agreed.

That Saturday afternoon, as V made lunch for three of us, I picked up her grandmother and brought her over. V hugged her as she always did, but there was something off about that hug. I can’t put my finger on what it was, it just seemed wrong.

As V and I were setting the table for lunch, she knocked over the bottle of wine. And I mean she deliberately knocked it down. It fell from the counter and shattered. I just stared at V for a few seconds, perplexed. She said it was an accident, but it sure didn’t look like one to me. I decided not to make a big deal about it. She implored me to go to the liquor store nearby and get another bottle. I reluctantly agreed. On my way to and from the store, I couldn’t help but ponder over V’s strange behavior. Why had she become so distant from her loved ones? Why did she knock over the wine bottle? And did she actually do that or did I dream that up as well? Should I talk to her about it or just let all this slide? Was I over thinking this? As it turned out, I wasn’t going to get much peace of mind, regardless of whether I confronted my wife or not.....

When I came back from the store, V’s grandmother was lying on the floor. V stood over. The look on her face can only be described as a strange combo of mild annoyance and curiosity. I rushed to grandma's side to check on her. She was unconscious. I was about to check her pulse when V told me she had already done that and that grandma was dead. I was shocked by the coldness in her voice. But this wasn’t the time to dwell on that. I called the emergency hotline.

The paramedics conformed that she was, in fact, dead. We later learned that it was a massive heart attack. I finally asked V what exactly had happened. She nonchalantly told me that grandma had been walking to the kitchen when suddenly she clutched her chest and fell down. I couldn’t get over V’s tone. What was wrong with her? She had always been such a loving granddaughter. The Vishakha I knew would have been crushed by her grandmother’s demise. The woman who stood in front of me seemed like a completely different person. And I was scared of her. I deicded to sleep in the guest bedroom that night, in spite of V’s attempts to seduce, and later to guilt trip me into sleeping with her.

I lay in bed awake wondering what the hell was going on. All evidence pointed to a completely natural cause for my wife’s grandmother’s death. Logically, I had no reason to suspect otherwise. And yet, that look on V’s face. Her tone when she talked about seeing her grandmother drop dead. I was mentally exhausted but couldn’t fall asleep.

The strangeness that came upon my wife haunted me. The next day, I left for work early. When I came home, V was already home. She was sitting on the couch holding something in her hand. When she saw me she smiled and held it up. It was a pregnancy test. It was positive.

I stepped back. How was this possible? She had had a bi-salp. She smiled. A knowing, yet cryptic smile that sent chills down my spine. She approached me and before I could say anything, she spoke “Darling, I know that we agreed to not have children, but I’m going to keep this baby. It’s ok if you don’t want to be involved. We’ll get a divorce and I’ll get full custody. You don’t have to pay child support. You’ll be free from all responsibilities”. She continued to smile at me, as if she was daring me to ask questions, to verbalize the math I was doing in my head. To give her a reason to get rid of me. I said nothing. I simply nodded and stumbled to my car. I spent that night in a hotel room.

All of this somehow did and didn’t make sense at the same time. That light I saw was from a spacecraft. Somehow, when I had been blinded, my wife was replaced. The woman, the thing I saw next to me after it disappeared was one of them. So was the thing growing inside her. It may share my DNA, but I felt no attachment to it, only fear. And what had they done to my wife? What had they done to my V? Was she even alive? And was this the beginning of an invasion?

The divorce was hassle free. The house was mine and I kept it, as V and I had signed a pre-nup that ensured that she would keep what’s hers and I would keep what’s mine.

I really don’t think the thing that looked like my wife was interested in material possessions. What it wanted, it already had. I’ve been spending time trying to get in touch with people who claim to have been abducted by aliens. I’m just grasping at straws here, hoping against hope to be able to see my wife again. I can’t go to the police as they would surely think that I’m insane. Soon after the divorce, I heard that the thing pretending to be Vishakha had quit her job and was moving to another city. I should feel some relief now that she’s away from me, but I don’t.

For my own safety, I’ve decided to move away as well. You see, my neighbor, the same neighbor over whose house I saw that bright light, is pregnant. This would not be extraordinary, except she’s in her late 50s. Interestingly, her husband died of a heart attack just a few days ago.