The Spellbound Spouse

I found the book at the back of Roger’s closet, wedged between a box of tax returns from 2007 and a shoe he’d been looking for since Obama was president.

That should have been my first clue. My husband doesn’t hide things. He leaves his coffee cups on the nightstand until they grow their own ecosystem. He drops his keys in the same bowl every night but still spends fifteen minutes patting himself down before work. He’s an open book. A slightly dog-eared, coffee-stained paperback with no plot whatsoever.

So when my fingers brushed leather instead of cardboard, I pulled it out.

It was small. Bound in something that felt like skin but wasn’t. Warm to the touch, which was weird because the closet stayed cold. No title on the cover. No author name. Just a symbol embossed in gold, a circle with a line through it, like a zero with an opinion.

I opened it.

The pages were blank. Every single one. I flipped through the whole thing, half expecting a pressed flower or a grocery list to fall out. Nothing. Just cream-colored paper that smelled like cinnamon and old churches.

I almost put it back. Almost. But then I noticed the edges of the pages weren’t quite flush. Like some of them were thicker than others. I held it up to the light and saw it. Faint. Almost invisible. Writing on every other page, hidden between the blank sheets.

I couldn’t read a word of it. The letters twisted and curled in ways that hurt my eyes. They looked like Arabic but not. Like Sanskrit but not. Like someone had taught a spider to write poetry.

“Laura?”

I jumped. The book hit the floor with a thud that felt too heavy for its size.

Roger stood in the bedroom doorway, still in his work clothes. His tie was loose. His eyes were doing that thing they do when he’s been staring at spreadsheets for eight hours. He looked at the book. Then at me. Then back at the book.

His face went pale.

“Where did you get that?”

“Your closet.” I bent to pick it up. “What is it?”

“Nothing.” He crossed the room in three steps and took it from me. His fingers wrapped around it like he was afraid I’d grab it back. “It’s nothing. Just an old thing I picked up at a yard sale.”

“Roger. You don’t go to yard sales.”

“I went to one.”

“When?”

“Last month. With Dave from accounting.”

“You don’t even like Dave from accounting.”

He shoved the book into his coat pocket. It bulged against his hip like a tumor. “Dave’s fine. Dave’s a good guy. We had lunch.”

“You had lunch with Dave from accounting and bought a mysterious blank book and put it in your closet and didn’t mention any of this to me?”

He wouldn’t meet my eyes. That’s when I knew something was wrong. Roger can’t lie to save his life. His ears turn red. His voice goes up an octave. He looks at the floor like it owes him money.

“What’s in the book, Roger?”

“Nothing.”

“I saw writing. Hidden writing.”

He swallowed. I watched his Adam’s apple bob up and down. “It’s a spell book.”

I waited for him to laugh. He didn’t.

“A what?”

“A spell book. A real one.” He pulled it out of his pocket and held it like it might bite him. “I bought it from a woman in the parking lot of the grocery store. She said it belonged to her grandmother. She said it could make things happen.”

“Things.”

“Yes.”

“What kind of things?”

He looked at me then. Really looked. His eyes traveled down my body and back up. Not in the usual way. Not in the way that makes me smile and roll my eyes and pull him toward the bedroom. This was different. This was hungry. This was scared.

“Things I’ve never told you about,” he said.

The air in the room changed. I felt it in my chest, a pressure like before a storm. We’ve been married eighteen years. We’ve had three kids, two dogs, one hamster, and more arguments about dish placement than I care to count. I know this man. I know the sound of his breathing when he’s asleep. I know the shape of his back in the dark.

But in that moment, I didn’t know him at all.

“Tell me,” I said.

He sat on the edge of the bed. The mattress creaked. He put the book in his lap and stared at it. His hands were shaking.

“Do you remember our honeymoon?”

I sat beside him. “Of course.”

“We were in that little cabin in the mountains. It rained the whole time. We barely left the bedroom.”

“I remember.”

“That was the best week of my life.” He touched the book’s cover. “But even then, even when we were perfect, I was thinking about other things.”

“What things?”

He took a breath. Let it out. Took another.

“I want to change you,” he said.

The words hung in the air. I felt them land on my skin like cold water.

“What?”

“Not permanently. Not really. Just. In the moment.” He rubbed his face with both hands. “God, this sounds insane. I’ve never said this out loud. I’ve never even let myself think about it properly.”

“Roger. Just tell me.”

He looked at me. His eyes were red. Tired. Vulnerable in a way I hadn’t seen since our first date.

“I want to turn you into other things,” he said. “Other people. Other forms. I want to see you as a different woman. A stranger. I want to watch you become someone I’ve never met and then find you again. Over and over.”

I didn’t speak. I couldn’t.

“I know it’s sick,” he said quickly. “I know it’s weird. I’ve been carrying this around for twenty years. I thought it would go away. I thought if I just loved you enough, if we had enough good years, I’d stop wanting it. But I haven’t. I want it more.”

“You want to turn me into other people.”

“And other things. Animals. Creatures. Anything.” He was crying now. Silent tears running down his cheeks. “I want to see you in every form. I want to touch you in every shape. I want to know every version of you that exists.”

I should have been horrified. I should have stood up and walked out and told him to get help. Any normal woman would have done that.

But I’m not normal. I’m Laura. I’m the woman who fell in love with a man who forgets to buy milk but remembers the exact date of our first kiss. I’m the woman who held his hand through three labors and two funerals and one very embarrassing incident with a vacuum cleaner.

I looked at the book in his lap.

“Does it work?”

He blinked. “What?”

“The book. Does it actually work?”

“I don’t know. I haven’t tried.”

“Why not?”

He laughed. A wet, broken sound. “Because I was scared. Because if it works, then I have to face the fact that I want this. And if it doesn’t work, then I have to face the fact that I’m just a pervert with a fake book.”

I took his hand. His fingers were cold.

“Show me,” I said.

“What?”

“Show me what it does.”

He stared at me. “Laura. You don’t have to do this.”

“I know I don’t have to. I want to.”

“Why?”

I thought about it. Really thought. The answer came slow and simple.

“Because you’re my husband. Because you’ve never asked me for anything like this before. Because you’ve been carrying this alone for twenty years and I didn’t even know.” I squeezed his hand. “And because I trust you.”

He looked at me like I’d handed him the sun.

“Are you sure?”

“I’m sure.”

He opened the book. The pages rustled. The hidden writing glowed faintly, a soft gold light that pulsed like a heartbeat. He read something under his breath. Words that sounded like water running over stones.

The room went cold.

I felt it start in my toes. A tingling. A warmth. A pulling sensation, like my skin was remembering a shape it had forgotten. I looked down at my hands and watched them change.

The fingers lengthened. The nails grew. The skin shifted from pale to tan to something darker, something richer. My wedding ring fell off and clattered to the floor.

I looked up at Roger. His eyes were wide. His mouth hung open.

“Laura,” he whispered.

“What?” My voice was different. Lower. Rougher.

He reached out and touched my face. His fingers traced my cheekbone, my jaw, my lips. I felt the shape of them. The shape of me.

“You’re beautiful,” he said.

I turned to the mirror on the closet door.

The woman staring back wasn’t me. She had dark hair. Dark eyes. Full lips and high cheekbones and skin the color of honey. She was younger. Sharper. A stranger in my body.

I touched my face. She touched hers.

“Roger,” I said, and my voice shook. “What did you do?”

He was still crying. But he was smiling too.

“I showed you who I’ve been seeing,” he said. “Every night. For eighteen years. I’ve been seeing you in every face I’ve ever imagined.”

I looked at the stranger in the mirror. She looked back at me with eyes that weren’t mine.

And for the first time in years, I didn’t know what I was going to do next.