Happily Ever Afterlife

There’s a dead woman standing in Charlie’s kitchen.

Blonde. Blue-eyed. Silk-sheathed in something that slides like water down her hips. Lips red as an exit wound, eyes glassy and cold—like the marble saints he remembers from Sunday mornings, watching him kneel, whispering sins he never quite confessed. Her skin looks cool to the touch. Porcelain, untouched by the living. Like the makeup morticians apply before sealing the lid.

She smiles, and it’s flawless, devastating. The kind of smile that shatters marriages, wrecks cars, leaves bodies tangled in silk sheets.

“You didn’t call,” she says.

The mug slips. Coffee splashes his bare feet, lukewarm and bitter. He doesn’t feel it. Doesn’t blink. Only stares at Janine, who he remembers very clearly sliding beneath six feet of earth, coffin grinding down metal tracks, roses wilting on polished oak.

“Cat got your tongue?” she whispers. Her head tilts, a gesture he remembers too well—the coy slant, deceptively innocent. A doll’s empty charm. “Or are you still mad?”

Charlie’s mad, alright—but not because she’s here, perfect and impossible, haunting his linoleum floor. He’s mad because his last words to her—the night her convertible screamed off the bridge, plummeting through darkness—were fuck you.

“Goddamnit, Janine.” His voice scrapes against his throat. “You can’t just—”

“Come back from the dead?” Her smirk glistens, sharp as broken crystal. “Guess what, babe. I did.”

His hands tremble. Weak, foolish hands. He shoves them deep into his pockets. How do you talk to your dead wife without sounding insane? Hey, babe, how’s Hell treating you? Did you bring any souvenirs?

She drifts now, circling the room, one delicate fingertip trailing along countertops, tapping lightly on unwashed dishes, a discarded take-out menu. A fingertip he’s felt a thousand times, tracing his collarbone, his jaw. She’s measuring him, tasting his loneliness, cataloging a life unraveled.

“You haven’t redecorated.” Her voice carries a playful disappointment. “I thought you’d... I don’t know. Move on?”

Move on. Two words that twist inside him, sharp and jagged.

“Why are you really here, Janine?”

Her smile flickers, falters—a sudden flaw, barely noticeable. A cloud across the moon. Her eyes betray her, darkening, deepening with something raw, hungry, quietly feral.

“I wanted to see you,” she says. Soft, delicate. The lie floats between them, glittering like a baited hook.

“No.” Charlie retreats, spine rigid. “Tell me what you really want.”

She laughs—a velvet, throaty ripple that once tightened his chest, dried his mouth, turned his thoughts syrup-thick. But now the sound rings false, hollow. Like a bell tolling softly inside an empty crypt.

“Charlie, Charlie, Charlie,” she sings, and before he can flinch, she’s right there, inches from his face. Hands pressed against his chest, fingertips cool through his shirt. Dead hands, porcelain hands.

“What do you think I want?”

His mind races—useless, panicked, cataloging possibilities like he’s flipping through late-night channels: revenge, closure, murder, forgiveness, a sobbing reunion. But Janine despised clichés. She preferred sudden curves, hairpin twists that made your heart leap into your throat.

Then it clicks.

“Oh, shit,” he breathes.

Her smile widens slowly, razor-blade sharp. “Finally,” she murmurs. “I was beginning to wonder.”

He looks into those eyes, eyes he once lost himself inside, lips that whispered secrets in dark bedrooms, perfume that lingered in his clothes, on his sheets—jasmine, vanilla, lilies—all of it wrong now, too saturated. The essence distilled, corrupted. Like someone fed memories through a blender and served them back ice-cold, too vivid, unreal.

“You’re not her,” he whispers.

Her grin tightens, predatory. “No,” she breathes, lips grazing his ear, soft as moth wings. “But I remember her.”

He stumbles back, chair toppling with a dull crash. She looms above him, luminous, wrong. A vision radiant enough to sear through retinas—his deepest regret, darkest sin, hungriest fantasy rendered in flesh and silk.

“What are you?” he croaks.

“I’m your wife,” she whispers gently, voice caressing. “The way you loved her. The way you hated her. Every kiss, every fight, every lie whispered in darkness. Every broken promise you kept alive, burning inside you.” Her hand moves up his throat, fingers feather-light, cold as frostbite. “You created me, Charlie.”

Her fingertips cup his jaw, tilting his face upward, forcing him to look at her—at the illusion, at the hunger.

“I’m your Happily Ever After,” she says, breath hot and sharp, and something in her voice promises both paradise and ruin.

Charlie pushes away, scrambling on tile slick with spilled coffee. Janine follows, gliding forward, high heels clicking a lazy metronome, counting down to something inevitable.

“You made me, Charlie.” She repeats it softly, almost tender, like a lover’s whisper at dawn.

His breath hitches, shoulders pressing against the cheap cabinets. “No—I buried you.”

“Bodies aren’t people,” she murmurs, crouching beside him, silk rustling, her perfume dense, oppressive. Her face is so close now he sees every pore, perfect and unblemished, a manufactured flawlessness. “Memories make people.”

He shuts his eyes, hands clawing at the cold tiles. “You’re just in my head.”

She laughs again, softly—glass cracking beneath velvet. “Baby, you wish.”

He opens his eyes. Her fingers trace circles on his cheek, nails sharp enough to draw blood. Her eyes hold him, bright and fevered. Wrong eyes. Another woman’s stare behind Janine’s perfect face.

“I’m every dream you starved yourself to keep alive,” she whispers. “Every thought you refused to bury.”

She presses closer, lips parted, as if to kiss him. His heart pounds—a caged animal slamming at his ribs. But instead of warmth, instead of softness, her teeth graze his jaw, sharp, playful, tasting his pulse.

And that’s when he sees it.

The reflection in the polished chrome toaster: himself, alone, pressed tight against emptiness. No Janine. Just Charlie clutching himself, nails biting his own skin, face pale with horror, bruises darkening beneath his eyes.

She notices his glance, smiles slowly. “Caught me.”

“Jesus.” He exhales. “This isn’t—”

“Real?” Her fingertips tap his temple lightly, a patronizing rhythm. “What makes you think your reality matters?”

He lunges, stumbling upright. Eyes dart to the countertop, to the knife-block gleaming dull silver. She tilts her head, smiling, patient.

He grips the knife handle—cool, solid, real. He holds it in front of him, shaking.

“You can’t stab a memory, Charlie.” Her tone is gentle. “Trust me.”

His grip tightens. “Stay away.”

She laughs softly again, pitying. He swings—wild, desperate, the blade slicing air, sinking into nothing.

He stands alone, breathing ragged, the knife buried in drywall. No Janine. Just echoes fading in silence, bitter scent of coffee cooling in a cracked mug.

The front door clicks open.

“Charlie?”

A woman’s voice. Soft, worried.

He turns slowly, dread pooling thick in his chest. Her face pale in the doorway, grocery bags heavy in each hand. Dark hair falling loose around her shoulders, eyes wide, uncertain.

He stares at her, the wife he married after burying Janine, after swearing never again. Her gaze moves slowly from the knife lodged in drywall, to his bloody nails, to the bruises darkening his skin—marks only his own hands could leave.

“Are you alright?”

Her question floats carefully through the silence, fragile as glass.

Charlie meets her eyes, haunted, hollow. “You...you didn’t see her?”

“Who?” Her voice trembles, confused, gentle. “Charlie, it’s just us.”

From behind her shoulder, invisible, impossible, Janine smiles. Lips mouthing silent words:

Now we’re all here.