The Monster Wore My Husband’s Face

It happened on the way to pick up Liam from his kindergarten. I saw the whole thing.

I watched a man snatch him, watched my six-year-olds faceterrified, tear-stainedpressed against the car window, his tiny hands clawing at the glass, screaming Mommy. Then the window rolled up, and his face was gone.

But when the detectives pressed me, when they made me sit through hours of interviews, I told them nothing. Not a word. Even when my husband, Ethan, knelt before me on the hardwood floor, his eyes broken, begging me to recall a license plate, a jacket color, anything, I remained silent.

My in-laws, their eyes raw and red-rimmed, screamed and cursed me. They called me a cold-blooded executioner, a monster. I only curled tighter into the corner of the sofa.

When the reporters blocked our driveway, I grabbed the rolling pin from the kitchen and charged out like a rabid animal.

Ethan never divorced me.

The man who had once built a perfect world for me, who had treated me like a princess, simply put a deadbolt on the life we knew and locked the world out. He ignored the gossip, the police reports, and the public outcry, deciding I would stay in that house to pay my penance. He tortured me. Every single day.

Five years of it, until the day that neural-mapping technology matured and he sent me to the Memory Retrieval Tribunal.

1

The large screen above the trial platform flickered, and Ethan's face, cold and razor-sharp, filled the frame. He stood at the head of the auditorium, behind the judges bench, a sea of over three thousand people filling the seats behind him.

"Audrey," his voice boomed, echoing through the vast Metropolitan Convention Hall, "you don't deserve the title of mother!"

"Liam was so devoted to you," he spat, "yet you stood there and watched him be taken, refusing to offer a single clue about the monster who did it!"

I was strapped onto a specialized medical gurney, a plastic tube snaking down my throat, a necessary evil after years of neglect. My body was an artifact of suffering; lifting an eyelid felt like a monumental effort.

"Don't play dead!" Ethans voice was deafening, pumped through the hall's massive speakers. "The police said you were the only eyewitness. Security footage showed you lingered at that intersection for ten minutes. What were you so afraid of?"

"Today, this Memory Extractor will drag out everything you've hidden inside your head!"

A storm of insults rained down from the audience, a collective, angry roar. Eggs and rotting fruit splattered against the thick, clear partition that separated me from the enraged public, leaving trails of foul, yellow-green slime.

My in-laws sat in the front row. My mother-in-law was shaking, weeping uncontrollably, held upright by my father-in-law.

"You murderous bitch! Liam was only six! How could you be so cruel?"

"That was your own son!"

I knew their hatred was boundless. Liam was the only grandchild, the light of their lives. My refusal to speak had turned the case cold, a national obsession and an unsolved mystery. Grief had aged my in-laws ten years in one.

As the metallic probes of the Extractor were fixed to my temples, I forced what little strength I had left to shake my head at Ethan. A tear finally broke free, tracing a hot path down my cheek.

He only sneered. He nodded to the technician.

"Begin."

The instant the machine powered on, a thousand molten needles seemed to pierce my skull. My eyes flew wide. I couldn't scream. My body spasmed violently, uncontrollably.

A doctor rushed forward to administer a sedative, but Ethan waved him off.

"No. I want her to be fully conscious when she watches her own memory. She will atone in excruciating clarity."

The massive screen in the center of the auditorium lit up, beginning to stream fragments of my mind.

The first image was Ethans back. He was wearing a black suit, standing in a room overflowing with white lilies. In the center, on a small table, was a photograph of Liam. He was six, wearing blue overalls, holding up a drawing of a sunflower, his two small canine teeth showing in a gap-toothed, proud grin. Toys and coloring books lay scattered nearby. This was the memorial room.

I saw myself walk forward, wanting to touch Ethans shoulder, but he shook me off. He turned, grabbed my throat, and dragged me right up to the photograph.

"You have the audacity to come here?" His eyes were bloodshot, manic. "The police asked for the license plate, and you said you didn't see it!"

"They asked what color jacket the man wore, and you said you couldn't remember!"

"Audrey, look at Liam's eyes," he growled, shaking me until my teeth rattled, "and tell me again you don't remember."

My body trembled, but even in the memory, I remained mute.

The image began to warp and blur. The insults from the auditorium grew more intense.

"Shes doing this on purpose! Maybe she was in on it with the kidnapper!"

"This kind of woman should be flayed alive!"

My physical convulsions grew more violent. The tube in my throat scraped my vocal cords with every spasm, sending searing pain through my chest. I felt a warm, sticky liquidsaliva mixed with bloodtrickle from the corner of my mouth onto the pillow.

The doctors face wavered in my blurred vision. He hesitated, looking up at Ethan. Then, with a grim determination, he plunged a syringe of adrenaline into my vein.

The drug hit my bloodstream and, suddenly, the fog in my consciousness tore open. The screen went haywire. The shouts, Ethan's face, the blur of the running childeverything imploded into a chaotic mass of color before dissolving into a single, cohesive wash of warm, saturated orange light.

The doctor rushed to the microphone to explain.

"The Memory Extractor detected a surge of intense emotion. The memory being displayed now is likely the patients deepest, most profound fragmentthe most critical one."

The screen slowly stabilized. It was our sun-drenched living room. Liam was on the rug in his little dinosaur pajamas, the afternoon sunlight slicing through the French doors and spilling over him. He was coloring sunflowers, just like the one in the memorial picture.

I sat beside him on the sofa, peeling a tangerine. I broke off a section and offered it to him.

"Mommy, look!" Liam held up his artwork, a smear of yellow crayon on his nose. "I drew Mommy and Daddy for the sunflower so it won't be lonely!"

I wiped the crayon off his nose, squeezing his soft cheek. "My clever boy."

He giggled and launched himself into my arms, burying his little head in my neck. "Mommy smells so good," he whispered, "like a cupcake."

Just then, the front door clicked. Ethan walked in.

Before he could even put his briefcase down, Liam had slid off the sofa and toddled over on his short legs, wrapping his arms around his fathers thigh.

"Daddy! You're home!"

Ethan bent down and lifted him, the exhaustion instantly melting from his face, replaced by a profound, heart-stopping tenderness.

A profound silence fell over the hall.

"Wait... that looks like a happy family," someone whispered.

"Why wouldn't she give up the killer's information if she was this close to him?"

"If she was truly cold-hearted, why would this warm memory be the strongest?"

"Maybe there's another side to the story?"

But the murmurs of doubt were quickly drowned out by renewed fury.

"Its a performance! She's trying to manufacture sympathy to confuse the machine!"

Ethan, standing by the platform, stared at the image of our smiling, sun-lit faces. His hands clenched into fists, his expression so dark it looked like storm clouds brewing.

"Enough!" he roared suddenly. "Audrey, you have no right to remember those moments!"

He vaulted off the platform, ignoring the technicians protests, and rushed to the Memory Extractor, snatching the control lever.

"Mr. Ethan, no! It's already at eighty percent of the safety threshold! Any higher will cause irreversible brain damage!"

"Irreversible?" Ethan's voice was a chilling sneer. "She killed my son. I need the answer now."

Slam. He pushed the lever all the way to the top.

Kerr-CHUNK!

The Extractor emitted a high-pitched, electric scream. The metal probes on my temples felt like theyd instantly turned into branding irons. My head felt like a bell struck by a hammer, my skull cavity pressurized to the point of rupture. My eyeballs rolled upward into my head, and my body began to convulse with ten times the force, my limbs twisting at unnatural angles.

"Doctor! Stop the machine! You'll kill her!" a voice from the audience screamed.

"This is barbaric! It's not a trialit's murder!"

The discussion erupted into full-blown panic. Security rushed to block the exits as several distraught attendees tried to rush the platform.

The doctor, frantic, again tried to inject the sedative, but Ethan brutally shoved him aside, sending him tumbling to the floor.

Ethan stood over the gurney, his face a mask of pure hatred.

"You think you can die, Audrey? I promise you, not even the Devil himself can take you until you tell me who the kidnapper was!"

He spun to the technician. "Stabilize the power! I need a clear picture! The killers face!"

"I want everyone to see the bastard!"

The technician was shaking, but fearing Ethan more than the exploding machine, he fumbled with the controls.

I felt my neural pathways snapping, one by one. The darkness at the edge of my vision grew thicker. I could only see the broken fragments flickering on the screen. Liams crying face, the glaring sun, the flashing red light of the crosswalk.

The pain was too severe to concentrate, too consuming to piece together any coherent image. I felt my breathing shallow, my consciousness sinking into a bottomless well.

The shouts of the audience had quieted, replaced by looks of horror and pity. Some began to murmur that Ethan was too obsessed, that this spectacle was senseless cruelty.

My in-laws hatred softened, replaced by a lost, vacant confusion as they looked at my near-dead body.

But Ethan heard none of it. "The killer? His face? Audrey, think! Now!"

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