Your Dead Wife Is A Stripper

Your wife died in a hit and run over a year ago. So why is she dancing half naked on stage right in front of you?

・┆✦ʚ♡ɞ✦ ┆・

Emily kissed like she was trying to crawl inside you.

Hungry. Desperate. Like she'd been waiting her whole life for someone to want her back the way she wanted them.

You met in a library. She was reaching for a book on a shelf she couldn't quite reach—tiptoes in worn flats, skirt riding up her thighs.

You grabbed it for her.

She turned.

You didn't know her last name yet.

You didn't know she had a giant stuffed walrus on her bed or that she laughed like a honking goose.

That all came later.

In that moment you only knew the way she sounded when she came apart underneath you, legs locked around your waist.

She shook for twenty minutes after.

"I don't… fuck… I don't do this," she gasped, face flushed, hair destroyed. "I never… what is happening?"

You didn't have an answer.

You just knew you'd do anything to keep feeling it.

Two years later, you married her on a beach in Oregon.

The sex stayed like that… consuming, insatiable, like you were made to fit together.

It wasn't normal. You both knew it.

Neither of you cared.

She loved bad movies. She slept with Wally the walrus. She touched you constantly.

A year ago, a drunk driver ran a red light.

Emily was walking home from an early shift.

Gone.

No arrests. No closure.

Just a hole in your life shaped like her.

And then an empty house.

For a year, you've been doing what people do.

You go to work. You pay the bills. You eat food that tastes like nothing. You sleep on one side of the bed. Wally the walrus still sits on Emily's pillow. His beans have shifted from all the hugging.

Your friends rotate through.

Paul brings groceries and pretends he's not checking if you're eating.

Dave invites you to trivia nights he knows you’ll never attend.

Manny just shows up and sits there.

A year of that.

A year of nothing.

Then Manny caught you.

It was a Friday. You were staring at the kitchen wall, not moving, not thinking, just... stopped.

"You're coming with me," he said. "Don't argue."

An hour later, you're in a strip club on the edge of town.

The Landing Strip. Pink neon. Sticky floors. A bassline you feel in your teeth.

Manny shoves a beer in you