The nine signs in the disappearance of the visible soul

She quit eating actual meals and lived on snacks. A handful of this or that. A slice of processed cheese-I found the individual wrappers lying around everywhere like the remains of a kill. A fried chicken wing-little gnawed bird bones left on the counter. A bowl of dry cereal in bed at 3:00 A.M.-crunch crunch crunch night after night, right in my ear. I thought it was some sort of passive-aggressive retaliation for my missing dinner so often.

"The way you're eating, I'd swear you were pregnant," I joked as she chewed on a cold barbecued sparerib one morning in the kitchen.

"How could I be?" she replied. "You're never here."

"Oh, come on. Didn't I sleep in our bed last night? I'm here now, aren't I?"

"You know very well that's not what I'm talking about. You haven't made love to me in months."

"Don't be ridiculous. We just had sex last week. I'm positive."

She washed the barbecue sauce off her face and hands, and left the room. I didn't need to ask where she was going. It was naptime.

I glanced at the clock. 7:52 A.M. She'd only been up for half an hour.

2.
Sleep Patterns

Napping seemed to go hand-in-hand with her new eating habits. On weekends, she slept more hours than she was awake. At night, when I came home from work, I would find her asleep in the cushioned seat of the bay window or on the straight-back chair in the foyer or in the dining room with her head resting on a placemat.

"I think my wife has narcolepsy," I told everybody, and they laughed along with me.

3.
Unpredictability

Always rather phlegmatic (what had originally attracted me to her), she now alternated between Arctic freeze and Amazonian feverish. She ignored me for days, and then suddenly hopped in my lap, right in front of the newspaper-like she was transparent and I could read through her.

Some mornings, she seemed to deliberately avoid me and I didn't see her before I left. Others, she was constantly underfoot, bumping and rubbing herself against me as I tried to dress. "I'll be late," I told her. "And you're shedding all over my suit."

She began picking her marmalade-colored hairs off my three-piece pinstripe, but something suddenly upset her. She uttered a little cry and ran out of the room. That night, she was right by the front door, like she'd been waiting there all day, but she didn't seem very glad to see me. When I tried to kiss her, she wrinkled her nose and turned away, as if she smelled a strange scent on my clothes and skin.

"Listen, I couldn't get away a moment sooner. An important client came into town-"

"That's what you always say," she growled, and stalked off.

She slept on the sofa for a week. Then one night, I awoke to find her crying at the foot of the bed. "What the-" I mumbled. At the sound of my voice, she was all over me, and I got no sleep whatsoever.

4.
Hiding and Other Bizarre Behavior

She became sneaky, sly, hard to find. I think she took a perverse pleasure in not responding as I searched all over the house, calling her name.

However, I soon learned her favorite hiding places:

A) The attic, where she'd be going through the trunk of old moth-holey sweaters I'd worn in college.

B) The basement. She liked to sleep on the ratty old sofa we had in our first apartment.

C) The garage. She would sit there and gaze at all the stupid stuff we'd accumulated over the years, as if they held the secret to the mystery of life.

After that, I no longer needed to play the absurd game of hide-and-seek she'd initiated, of course. I'd just pour myself a nightcap and go to bed. She'd come back out eventually.

5.
Excessive Curiosity

I frequently discovered her pawing through the clothes in my closet or rummaging in my desk or poking around in my briefcase or unearthing things from the glove box in my car.

When I was home, she watched me closely. Very closely.

"Why are you looking at me that way? I haven't done anything wrong," I protested one morning, as I spilled soft-boiled egg down the front of me.

"Is that a new tie?"

"No, of course not."

"I've never seen it before. I know your clothes as well as I know my own."

"Well, you don't know everything, do you?"

"I know more than you think. Where'd you get it?"

"A department store."

"That's not what I mean."

"Just what are you insinuating?"

"You hate red. I once bought you a red tie and you returned it. You said red was a tacky color."

"People change."

"They do indeed." She stared at me. "Where did you get that shirt? You never wear stripes…"

6.
Senseless Destruction of Property

Suddenly, she began lashing out at everything in the house. From day to day, I had no idea what I'd discover smashed, shredded, or broken.

The telephone-now what would cause her to tear that thing off the wall and disembowel it and leave it lying in the middle of our bedroom floor?

Photographs. The Waterford crystal that had been an anniversary present. Her new fur coat. My rack of pipes.

That red tie.

She never cleaned anything up, of course. After making the mess, she retreated to one of her hiding places. Frankly, I was glad.

7.
Laziness

Formerly a busy and productive person, she began to sit around, doing absolutely nothing. She especially liked to sit around and do nothing by a sunny window, gazing out for hours at who knows what.

"I know why leaves are called leaves," she remarked once. "Because they leave the tree."

And, "Do you know where shadows go when they disappear? I do."

8.
Nocturnal Restlessness

Toward the end, she didn't sleep at night, but prowled around the house, as if she were looking for something she'd lost.

One night, I awoke with a start, feeling soft breath on my eyelids, the light brush of hair against my face. She was hovering over me in the dark, staring down at me.

"Take a goddamn sleeping pill, will you? You're keeping me up and driving me crazy," I told her. "I've got a lot to do tomorrow-"

"Oh yes," she said, softly. "I know you do. And it's nothing you can put down in your Day-At-A-Glance Planner, either."

Although I can't be completely certain, I believe that was the last thing she ever said to me.

9.
Wandering

Then, one day, she was gone. I guess she must have slipped out when I wasn't looking.

Upon reflection, I realized what had happened to my wife. The strange changes in her behavior suddenly made perfect sense. Everyone knows members of that species are uncaring and fickle, faithless and prone to roam.

Sometimes, they return. Sometimes, they don't, but there are always plenty of others to be had.

I know this one won't be back, though.

The only thing she never did was purr.

With grateful acknowledgment to Jean Cocteau for the idea of the "visible soul."

Biography

Phoebe Kate Foster lives on the coast of North Carolina, where she is an Associate Editor at PopMatters, an online magazine of global culture, and an Assistant Editor at The Dead Mule, a literary ezine. Her short fiction is forthcoming in Prairie Schooner, and has appeared in a previous issue of Electric Acorn as well as in Eclectica, Slow Trains, Mid-South Review, Starry Night Review, Megaera, Tattoo Highway, Flashquake, The Distillery:
Artistic Spirits of the South, Emrys Journal and others. One of her short stories has been nominated for this year's e2ink Best-of-the-Web Anthology.