My Husband’s Deadly Yes No Rules

My cheating husband got his brain scrambled in a car accident. Now, the only words he can utter are yes and no.

Nothing else. Not a single other word.

And the kicker? He can only tell the absolute truth. Talk about poetic justice.

I asked him, Is the woman youre sleeping with my best friend?

His face went paper-white, but his lips moved against his will: "Yes."

"Did you transfer our marital assets?" "Yes."

"Is your bank passcode your high school sweethearts birthday?" "Yes."

Armed with this bizarre condition of his, I easily sent his mistress to prison and clawed back every single dime of his fortune. He couldn't even manage to yell at me for it.

Until today.

A cute delivery guy flirted with me at the door. I turned back to look at my husband, sitting there with his usual blank, vacant stare.

"Are you really my husband? You don't even care?" I teased.

But the words slipped right out of him: "No."

I froze. I stared straight into his eyes.

It took me a long, agonizing moment to find my voice. "Then is my husband, Dylan... is he dead?"

"Yes and no."

...

A cold shiver ran down my spine.

I stared deeply into his eyes and asked him again, slower this time.

"Are you really Dylan?"

The man sitting before me looked entirely calm.

"No."

My lips trembled. "Then... who are you?"

He couldn't answer that. He was bound by the rules of his conditiononly straight yes-or-no questions would work. Well, that and the strange "yes and no" he had just uttered for the first time.

I studied the face in front of me. It was Dylans face, line for line. The faint scar near his temple was from three years ago, when someone dropped a heavy glass bottle from a high-rise balcony. He had shoved me out of the way, taking the blow himself. It took seven stitches to close.

The scar was real. It was Dylan's.

I fell silent, my mind spinning into a dark, chaotic spiral.

Up until now, this man had been a hundred percent accurate. It didn't even matter if the questions had nothing to do with his life; he could predict World Cup scores with terrifying precision, or tell me which celebrity rumors were true. I had made a small fortune relying on his answers. I trusted his word implicitly. If I asked him if an earthquake was going to hit in five minutes and he said "yes," I would have packed my bags and run without a second thought.

But now, he was telling me he wasn't Dylan.

And when I asked if Dylan was dead, he said, yes and no.

An icy dread settled deep in my bones. If he wasn't Dylan, then who had I been living with for the past three months? And where was my actual husband? Is it really possible for a person to be both dead and alive?

As I was debating whether to tie him to a chair and drag the truth out of him question by question, a sudden, heavy knock rattled the front door.

I went over and pulled it open. Two police officers stood on the porch, their expressions grim.

"Are you Flora? We're with the city police department. We have some news, and we need you to try to remain calm."

"At approximately 9:30 this morning, we recovered a severely decomposed body from the riverbank. We found an ID card in the victim's pocket belonging to your husband, Dylan. We're here to ask if you have any knowledge of this."

I nearly collapsed. "That's impossible!"

The two officers exchanged a quick, guarded look. "Why is it impossible?"

I dug my fingernails into my palms, forcing myself to stay grounded. "Dylan can't be dead. He's right here."

I pointed toward the living room, where Dylan sat on the sofa, his head bowed, completely silent.

The officers blinked, then walked past me into the living room. One of them pulled out the ID card and compared the photo to the man on the couch. Seeing the identical features, they fell into a tense silence.

I scrambled to explain. "My husband is incredibly clumsy. He loses things constantly. Someone must have found his lost ID and then met with an accident. It's just a bizarre coincidence..."

The older officer cut me off, turning directly to the couch. "Sir, are you Dylan?"

The man answered in a quiet, flat tone. "No."

The room went dead silent.

The way the officers looked at me changed instantly.

I quickly reached into my bag and pulled out the medical files. "Please, let me explain. My husband was in a severe car accident three months ago. His hippocampus was badly damaged. Aside from losing a large portion of his memory, his language center was compromised. He can only say 'yes' and 'no.' Here, I'll show you."

I stepped closer to the couch. "Dylan, do you like eating garbage?"

"No."

"Dylan, are these two police officers bad people?"

"No."

"Dylan, are you Dylan?"

"No."

I let out a weak, desperate laugh. "You see? His mental capacity is currently comparable to a seven-year-old. You can't take his words literally."

The officers exchanged another look. They carefully inspected the official medical reports I handed them and made a quick call to the hospital to verify the details. Once they confirmed I was telling the truth, the tension in their shoulders eased slightly.

"It looks like this might just be a strange misunderstanding. But we'll still need you to come down to the station with us to make a formal statement."

I asked if we should bring Dylan along.

The older officer thought about it. "Bring him. You wouldn't feel easy leaving him home alone, would you?"

So, I took Dylan and followed them to the station.

Earlier, Id been clever. I deliberately asked him three questions in a row where the answer could only be "no." The second question confirmed the officers weren't bad people, which meant they probably wouldn't make things too hard for me.

But just as we finished the statement and were getting ready to leave...

A female officer suddenly pushed the door open, her face grim.

"Wait. I have some questions."

She caught the eye of the younger officer, giving him a brief nod, and sat down directly across from me.

"I think you're lying."

My fingernails dug hard into my palms.

"Excuse me?"

She stared deeply at me, reaching over to click off the recording device. Her voice dropped to a low whisper.

"Flora, don't you recognize me? It's Lisa."

A cold shiver ran down my spine.

At first, I honestly hadn't recognized her. Lisa, my old high school classmate.

A girl who once harbored a massive crush on Dylan. We had never gotten along, and she spent years chasing him. After Dylan rejected her, she vanished from my life. I had no idea shed joined the force.

"The DNA results for the body aren't back yet, so we can't confirm if it's Dylan. For all we know, you hired an actor to take his place."

She glanced sideways at Dylan, her tone softening just a fraction.

"Dylan, do you remember me?"

Dylan flicked his eyes up to her, then quickly looked back down at the floor.

I didn't know if it was just my imagination, but a fleeting flash of pain seemed to ripple through Lisa's eyes.

I spoke up immediately. "His brain is damaged. He literally cannot answer anything that isn't a straight yes-or-no question."

Lisa tapped her ballpoint pen against the desk, looking lost in thought.

"Flora, let me ask you. Why did Dylan get into that accident in the first place?"

My body went rigid as the memories flooded back.

When I first found out Dylan was cheating on me, I had completely spiraled. He had started lying to me about a year ago, getting incredibly good at it. It began with a stray lipstick left on the passenger seat, then a long, unfamiliar strand of hair tangled in his coat buttons, followed by endless nights "working late" at the office.

Every sign pointed to an affair.

But he had ripped out the dashcam, wiped his phone clean, and left me with zero hard evidence.

My hysterical confrontations were met with nothing but his impatient, defensive screams.

"Enough! Do you have any idea how crazy you look right now? Like a hysterical nag!"

"You want to go through my phone? Go ahead! Search it! And when you find absolutely nothing, you're getting on your knees to apologize to me!"

I had finally given up, fully prepared to file for divorce, when the crash happened.

Hed been driving fatigued, wrapping his car around a semi-truck halfway up a mountain road.

I let out a dry, humorless laugh. "Should I say there's a God after all? He crashed on his way to meet his mistress and ended up a vegetable. You can look it up; the accident report is on file right here at your station."

Lisa nodded, tapping out a quick message on her phone.

A moment later, a reply chimed. As she read it, her expression grew increasingly heavy.

"What you're saying is true. But it still doesn't prove that this man sitting next to you is actually Dylan."

My patience snapped.

"Are you insane? Can you not see his face? He is Dylan!"

"Back in high school when you were learning how to sketch, didn't you secretly draw hundreds of portraits of him..."

Lisa cut me off. "Flora, I suspect you murdered Dylan."

I laughed out loud, utterly bewildered. "Lisa, if you keep making accusations like that, I will file a formal complaint."

"A severely decomposed corpse. Tell me, how on earth did you decide that was Dylan? Based on a single ID card?"

"Not just the ID. The height and weight of the corpse perfectly match Dylan's medical records."

Lisas voice dropped to a near-whisper. "And then there's the tattoo."

"The face was ruined by the water, yes. But the tattoo on his wrist is entirely unique. It was..."

She hesitated, closing her eyes for a brief second.

"...it was something I tattooed on him with my own hands."

The interrogation room fell into a dead silence. Beside me, Dylan remained completely motionless, not saying a word.

But at the mention of the tattoo, his hand twitched.

In the next second, I grabbed Dylans arm and yanked his sleeve up.

On the inside of his wrist, a poorly drawn, ugly little dog tattoo came into view.

Lisas face went entirely pale.

"Don't tell me you gave the same tattoo to two different guys!" I scoffed.

"I always wondered why he had such a bizarre, ugly tattoo. Now I know it was your doing."

"Lisa, does your face burn yet? Still suspecting me? You think I killed Dylan? What would even be my motive?"

She furrowed her brow, fighting back. "Tattoos can be copied..."

I cut her off.

"Copied? So you're telling me I found someone who looks exactly like him, matches every single physical feature, just to pull off a duplicate? Why would I even bother?"

"Dylan cheated on me and ended up half-braindead. He only recognizes me. As long as I play the loyal, doting wife, his parents are practically weeping with gratitude. I have free rein over all his money. Why would I want him dead?"

"If he actually died, his parents would swoop in to claim their share of the estate. What do I stand to gain?"

The older officer let out a sharp, warning cough. "Watch your language. Keep your speculation to yourself."

I shut my mouth, shaking my head with a cold smirk.

Truth was, I wasn't worried at all. Because I knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that I hadn't killed anyone.