I Told My Wife I’d Pick Her In Every Life. She said I already have, and She Makes Sure I Do Each Time

She was a prankster and so I assumed she was just being silly.
“Yeah, why wouldn’t you, I’m a great husband!” I said laughing off the joke. 

“I’m not joking, actually. Usually I like to wait until you’re closer to the end to tell you, but you’ll be gone soon enough. I told you to schedule that doctor’s appointment.”

“Yeah okay Vera, whatever you say.” I was barely unsettled, she was a weird girl. Part of why I liked her. As I started to walk into the bedroom she grabbed me by the wrist.

“Sam, I’m not joking.”

“Okay, I'll bite. What are you talking about?”

“I’ve known you for probably 2000 years, and most of us pick a person for one life time and then switch it up. But you, Sam, you have been so profoundly depressed in each life it’s like I hit the jackpot. The best thing is when you have plenty of hope only for it to be destroyed. I was really looking forward to this time but you were stupid and waited for the doctor’s appointment. You only had a few weeks anyways but now I’m going to miss out on the hope being crushed once the doctor realizes there’s nothing they can do.” She didn’t laugh, she didn’t smirk, she was dead eyed. 

“You’re not going to scare me into going to a stupid doctor’s appointment, I’m 33. I don’t have cancer.”

“You foolish humans will do anything to convince yourselves you’re immortal. Even the greatest minds on your planet don’t live longer than 120 years or so. Why do you think that is? Don’t you think after all these years of human evolution you would’ve figured this out by now? Don’t you think it’s strange so many other lifeforms that are so much less advanced don’t experience this? Senosense? Biological immortality? The reptiles have it figured out, but they’re a dumbed down version here.”

Horrified at the mental break my beloved wife was experiencing, I asked her to go to the emergency room with me so she could be checked out. She agreed, if I told them I had stomach issues and got myself checked. Fine, she was nervous about my results and this is her insane way of trying to get me to go to the doctors before my next physical.

I went to the hospital with her. She was released after a few hours. I’m now on palliative care. I am 33 years old and I have Stage 4 Colon Cancer.

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“Vera, how did you know?”

“Know what?” Vera said it indifferently. Her husband of 2 years had a month left and she didn’t seem like she cared at all. In fact, she seemed perturbed by how long it was taking.

“About my cancer… What is wrong with you?”

“Honey, I already told you. You’re never going to understand this, and I’ve even taken a liking to you. I don’t love you obviously, but I do love the sustenance you provide. That’s why I pick you every time! I always make sure you get a better deal than the other prisoners, I do a lot for you that you don’t even understand. You know, the first time I met you you were a slave in Rome in 26 BCE, or whatever you call it. I had just started out here and had to find my own food, and for some reason I picked you. I was foolish then, I didn’t request for you to be with me again. I had no power anyways, but I also just assumed all slaves at that time experienced the same feeling.”

“Vera, you sound crazy…”

“Yes and you’re ignorant. You humans don’t even see or care what you do to animals with your industrial farms. At least we let you walk around and live a life. It’s not my fault that you never believe me. But I don’t care, I’ll wait another 16-20 years and I’ll be back, feeding off your energy. What I like about you though is your naivety. You don’t ever believe me. And I’ve told you the truth each time for hundreds of years! I’m definitely one of the lucky ones.” She said it with a sick smile on her face, clearly uncaring of how this was affecting me. I’m not crazy, so I assumed she was still pulling some weird prank or was going through an episode of psychosis that hadn’t been picked up yet. I decided to play along. 

“Alright Vera, let’s just say this is true. Why would I ever believe something so asinine?”

“Hmm, well I’ve done this before and you typically die right after, but I do kind of want to speed up this process since I’m getting hungry. Humans think we all feed off the whole Earth, that would be nice but that’s not a luxury my species has. It’s very much eat or be eaten with us.”

Before I could say a word she continued.

“Think of the known universe to you humans as the United States. The Milky Way is essentially 7 Mile in Detroit. One of the worst places you could find yourself. Well, me and my species are here for at least the next 10,000 years until we can gain enough energy to move on. The Andromeda is essentially Gary, Indiana. There aren’t ‘nice neighborhoods’ for hundereds of thousands of light years.”

You see, in this part of the universe that you know, you essentially live in a prison. You deserve to be here, so I can’t feel bad. Who knows what you did, all I know is you provide a supreme amount of low vibrational energy. Unfortunately my species is very much still second class citizens. Racism spans the cosmos, believe it or not. Anyways, that’s why you and every ‘human being’ on Earth are here. And you idiots choose to go into the light, even after I tell you all this I can guarantee you still will, because you’ve already done it hundreds of times. I’ve been your best friend, I’ve been your daughter, I’ve been your husband, your father, your wife, your favorite uncle. Each time, you listened to me and went into the light. Like a moth to a flame. I would feel worse if you eventually figured it out, but you haven’t. And so I continue to feed.”

Mouth agape, I didn’t have words to speak. I still assumed she was having a mental break, but the lore she created was perplexing. Before I could respond she stopped me with a single wave of her finger, and then she did something unimaginable.

Right before me, in my literal death bed, she transformed. It wasn’t as showy as you’d think, and while I have trouble remembering all of it, I need to write this down. She became a being of pure light, vaguely reptilian and bright green, almost radioactive, and about 7-8 feet tall. At the same moment, time seemed to stop. No beeping of the machines keeping me comfortable, no cable tv playing in the background, nothing. Her eyes weren’t eyes, they were voids. Voids of darkness that would make the “vantablack” paint look white. It was the most horrifying thing I had ever seen.

I could barely hear or understand her when she transformed back to a human, but I will never forget what I saw.

After that she left, as I started to code. A plethora of doctors and nurses rushed in asking for a cart to crash or something, and suddenly I was in total darkness. Not even close to the darkness of her eyes, but dark beyond anything I’d seen on Earth. I saw a distant light, and Vera was there to guide me. 

“It’s okay Sam, it’s time for you to go. Go into the light.”

I stopped and thought for a minute. Then I told her my decision. 

“I’m not going, Vera, or whoever you are.”

She muttered something frustratingly in a language I didn’t understand, and I could tell she was transforming into her horrific form again.

Suddenly I woke up in my hospital bed. I asked the doctor where my wife was and he said she hadn’t come to visit me yet, still in the psych unit downstairs.

Was anything I saw real? Is any of this real? I want to believe it’s all in my head, the chemo and dilaudid acting up. Anything to blame mental fallacies before accepting what she said. That’s why I had to post this. 

The longer I think of it, the more I think it was a dream brought on by my fear of death. The only thing that terrifies me is when the nurse came in to change my ice chips. 

“Looks like you spit up or something in your cup, did you eat any snakes lately?” she said with a lighthearted laugh.

“...no. Why?”

“Well I’m from Georgia so it’s not uncommon, I’ve just never seen a snake shed it’s skin in such a public place up here in New Hampshire!”

As she pointed the cup towards me I gasped, because I know there are no bright green snakes in New Hampshire.