I used to have a wife named Lynn, and a young son named Joseph, but they don’t live with me anymore. Something came between us. It’s complicated. Not a mistress or anything of that nature, but something that cannot be understood by those that do not know the complete tale.

    It all started on one particularly grueling Friday. I worked as a lawyer at the time, bitterly bending over backwards to catch up on some paperwork at home, causing me to miss the Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon. I always dreaded working at home, not because it caused me to miss my favorite show, but because focusing in a non-work setting was a near impossible task. The only way I could get anything done was boarding myself up in my office, creating an eighty degree, leather-clad bunker as if preparing for the zombie apocalypse.

          These nights happened to make up some of the most lonely times in my adult life. My anxiety symptoms only worsened under these lonely conditions and the only cure was my best friend Bulleit Bourbon. Lynn and Joseph knew not to interrupt me, as to break my intense concentration, well, my attempt at concentration, but I always spent the night secretly hoping they would deliver me from my purgatory. I ensconced myself in my Stapleford high-backed leather chair, gazing at the brown wall ahead, occasionally perusing a paragraph, every single words my eyes crossed going unregistered. I was running on about four hours of sleep because Lynn and I had been staying up late talking through some things.

     Consuming a full bottle of whiskey mixed with the dull environment of my work prison caused me to doze off. Just as I did, a warm, vaporous whisper tickled my ear. Upon first hearing it, my blood ran cold and my heart rate nearly doubled. I did a quick one-hundred eighty degree swivel, but found only a small, empty office space staring back at me. I focused on the whisper, but it was too faint to make out any words, so I brushed it off as being the neighbors, mixed with slight paranoia by my more than moderate intoxication. I laughed at myself for being startled by such a little thing, and took it as a hint that my body hungered for sleep, so I crept into bed.

    My eyes fluttered shut just as my head collided with the soft, memory foam pillow. My consciousness slowly faded as my cranium sank deeper and deeper into the pillow, but all of a sudden I jolted upright as a whisper flooded my head. “I want to show you something,” orated the voice, words clearly audible and articulated. The voice sounded like a man’s voice, but was not terribly deep. The s’s were slightly slurred and it had a breathy quality, as if the speaker were an older man that had difficulty breathing. I remained silent.

    “You do not have to speak to me, but that does not mean I will cease to offer my guidance. You can trust me because after all, I am your angel,” spoke the fiendish whisper. “Step out into the kitchen.”

    I do not know what possessed me to follow its instructions, but I placed my chilled feet onto the toasty shag carpet, and hustled out to the kitchen. My left foot hit the freezing hardwood floor and as I directed my gaze upwards. I found myself looking straight at the back of my wife, Lynn. “Honey are you okay?” I spoke quietly. No answer. Lynn was perhaps the heaviest sleeper on the east coast. Once she fell asleep, there was no waking her until 8 o’clock sharp, so my head was filled with confusion. Both of her hands appeared to be holding something, then I noticed the dark pool of deep maroon at the bottom of her feet. “Lynn,” I stated more sternly, “talk to me.”

    Without turning or moving even in the slightest, she whispered in an off-puttingly cheerful, bright voice, “I came to get a drink.” Then she turned in an unnaturally slow manner to face me. In her left hand was a glass cup filled with the same thick, dark liquid, and in the other, a bloodied knife. All up and down her arms were gashes and jagged lacerations, and on her face, resided a hellish grin. The grin was so unnaturally large, it caused my stomach to drop as soon as my eyes focused on it. It was as if someone or something was pulling at the corners of her mouth. She took another sip while still grinning, causing some blood to trickle down her chin. “Try it,” she whispered. I shook my head frantically. “Try it,” she spoke, anger showing through her grin. Again I shook my head. “TRY IT,” she screamed as she spiked the glass onto the kitchen floor broke into a sprint towards me, ignoring the shards of glass underneath her feet.

    I stumbled back and tripped over my own feet. As soon as my butt hit the floor, I snapped awake, chest heaving and blood pumping. It was all….. a dream? I was confused and shocked by the utter realism of the experience.

    To my horror, one thing was constant within my dream and the real world. The voice. The man’s whisper flooded my head, “She is planning to kill you. Kill her before she kills you.” The voice repeated that last phrase over, and over again. “Kill her before she kills you. Kill her before she kills you.”

    I tried to calm my mind with various breathing techniques that I used to use when my anxiety problems were at their worst, but to no avail. My heart beat at a consistent 110 beats per minute for the remainder of the hellish night. I could not return to my slumber over the sound of the voice in my head, causing my existing sleep deprivation to grow even worse. Morning came at last. The clock struck 8 and Lynn sat up in bed. My entire body quivered as a keen sense of dread flooded my bones. Oh God please don’t have her turn around, I thought to myself.

    Her head slowly rotated. A cascade of relief flushed every muscle in my body of the tension that I had not realized was building. “Morning hun’,” spoke Lynn with forced cheer. I feigned a weak smile.

    She exited our bed, went through her morning routine, and made breakfast as I lay in bed listening to the horrible, endless whispering that still remained from the previous night, “Kill her before she kills you. Kill her before she kills you. Kill her before she kills you.” Lynn called for my presence in the kitchen. I nervously put my cold feet on the warm shag carpet, flashbacks of the dream filling my mind. As I stepped my left foot into the kitchen, a sense of deja vu overcame me. I caught a glimpse of Joseph relaxing at the table, sitting with his knees on the chair as young kids do, but my eyes focused directly ahead at Lynn as she stood still with a dark red beverage in hand. She saw me and extended her arm holding the beverage towards me, clearly intending for me to take it.

    “What is this?” I asked, trying to mask the tremble in my voice.

    “Try it,” she said with a smile, as she shoved it towards my face. I swatted her hand, causing the beverage to fall to the ground and glass shattering. Our house fell completely still. “What in the hell is wrong with you? I went out my way to make you a fruit smoothie and you thank me by giving me a mess to clean up? Why am I not surprised?” she exclaimed, anger exposed from behind her happy housewife facade.

    I felt silly. My face grew warm and I managed to stammer out the excuse that I was feeling sick to my stomach, which was not entirely false. I took a seat at the table near Joseph as his smile beamed and he exploded into a tsunami of questions and statements, “Morning daddy! How did you sleep? I slept good! Wow what a wonderful today is gonna be! Are you feeling okay?”

    I tried to smile to show Joseph I was okay, but could not sell it, as was evident by his responding frown. His slew of words mixed with the voice still pounding in my head caused a intense feeling of nausea. It was almost like the nausea experienced when severely dehydrated or when an IV is starting. I excused myself claiming sickness, and retired to the uncertain safety of my bed. After the night before, I was well aware my bed did not offer true safety, but at that point I would have done anything to gain a moment of silence.

    I spent the entire day in bed, trying so hard to tune out the constant, “Kill her before she kills you,” but I could only muster a half-assed attempt, feeling the futility of the situation overtake me. The entire day felt like a dream. I stared at our eggshell-white walls, thinking about nothing in particular, just letting the voice flood my brain, not even reaching for a bottle of whiskey as I normally would. Eventually, a sour-faced Lynn joined me in bed and switched the lights off without a single word or even so much as a look, but I didn’t care. I somehow managed to doze off, but just as I did, I jolted upright. The voice was growing increasingly loud. “Kill her before she kills you. Kill her before she kills you.”

    Feet colliding with the warm shag carpet once more, I stumbled out of bed, head swirling as I struggled to pull myself upright. My left foot came in contact with the all too familiar freezing hardwood, notifying me that I had found my way into the kitchen. The normally white kitchen walls had a greenish hue emanating from them, causing the percussion within my skull to crescendo. I looked up and saw Joseph lying face up on the abnormally far kitchen table. I careened like a drunkard towards the table, lights oscillating from total darkness to painfully glaring while the room spun around me as if it was the solar system and I was the sun. Each step closer to the table made my feet feel heavier. Joseph lay on the table, eyes closed with a cut from his trachea to his pelvic bone and flesh splayed out as if he was a frog being dissected. I began to gag. Joseph…. how? His eyes snapped open, darting directly towards me he grinned the same grin I had seen on Lynn the previous night.

    “Hiya daddy! Look how pretty mama made me! We will make you pretty too!”

    Vomit began climbing my throat just as Joseph’s eyes moved from me, to directly over my shoulder. A warm breath caressed my neck, Joseph’s face turned into a grotesque mix of anger and giddiness like the face you would picture on a serial killer just before the final cut or stab. I stood, frozen in terror, knowing full well what I would see. After what felt like a full hour, I pulled myself out of my stupor and fought against my joints to turn. There she stood once more. Lynn.

    The voice in my head now howled, “KILL HER BEFORE SHE KILLS YOU. KILL HER BEFORE SHE KILLS YOU.” My head ached. My heart ached. My very soul ached. Lynn lifted one hand to show me a knife. She raised her other hand’s index finger to her lips as a “shhh,” sound escaped her lips. They say when you are close to encountering death, time slows down and a numb feeling overtakes you. I sure felt far from numb. True terror filled my core and crawled around inside my body, clawing at my skin for a way out. With a swift motion, the knife penetrated my gut and I awoke.

    It had been a dream, but like the night before, the voice remained, shrieking just as loud inside my head. I stammered out of bed, carelessly knocking several things over on my way to the kitchen. I screamed as the decibel level inside my head steadily increased. I snatched our sharpest kitchen knife from the drawer and without thinking, sliced my left ear right off, desperately hoping it would alleviate some of the pain caused by the other-worldly volume. A howling scream escape me and much to my intense disappointment, the voice grew no quieter. Lynn rushed out of our room, awoken by the deafening racket I was making, which was a mere shadow in comparison to the voice I heard. “KILL HER KILL HER KILL HER!”

    Lynn’s lips moved frantically as she was clearly speaking, but I could not hear her. I stomped towards her, clutching the knife, knuckles white. A look of fear conquered her face. I knew exactly what I had to do. I sheathed the knife in her gut, chuckling to myself at the humorous reversal of our roles compared to my dream. This time, I killed her before she could kill me. This time, I was ready for her. Her body went completely limp as the blood poured out, painting our hardwood floor.

    The voice grew slightly quieter, but the words changed. “Good. Now kill HIM,” it said, emphasizing the last word with a particularly disdainful hiss.

     Him? I thought confusedly. Then it all clicked into place. A small figure stood in the doorway, noticeably shaking. Tiny hands clenched together in front of a tiny chest. A face filled with a symphony of fear and sorrow. Tears streaming down slight cheeks, as if trying to wash away the blood on the floor, to annul the evidence of recent events and by extension, the events themselves. Joseph had witnessed everything.

     “Kill him,” the voice asserted. I hesitated. “KILL HIM.” It was at this point I realized the complete truth of the voice, of my angel. If I let Joseph go on living, my life was as good as over! I sprinted towards Joseph. I could practically feel the terror emanating from his tiny body, but was not fazed. My guardian angel filled my body with strength and aplomb. With extreme aggression, I sheathed the knife in his head. His knees buckled as he fell to the floor, fear permanently frozen on his face, the face that shared features with my own. The body that I had witnessed grow from its beginning stages, devoid of life.

    I collapsed to the floor simultaneously laughing and crying. My two biggest responsibilities were quite literally cut out of my life. I wiped away the tears, smearing blood across my cheek as I stood, laughter dying down.  I pulled open our, or rather, MY liquor cabinet and grabbed the 15 year old Rip Van Winkle Bourbon I had been saving as well as my favorite rocks glass, fingers decorating it with bloodstains. Joseph and Lynn may have passed away, but it was a necessary price to pay, I thought as I took the whiskey with me to my office and had a seat in my leather chair. I gulped a large swig of the delicious beverage as the intense caramel, toffee, and peppery brown spice flavors flooded my palate. Now here I sit, relishing in the sweet release of alcohol. Lynn and Joseph died tragically, but the loss of  them was insignificant, because I now have an angel looking out for me.