My wife cries every time I remove my cl0thes, but she won’t tell me what she saw on my b0dy.
I walked into our bedroom that night, exhausted from a week of moving boxes, negotiating with NEPA, and unpacking a mountain of mismatched furniture. Our new apartment in Surulere looked fine on the outside, but inside, it was chaos—the kind only a freshly married couple in Lagos could endure. I thought I was stepping into normalcy, into the comfort of my wife’s arms. But I wasn’t.
As I pulled my T-shirt over my head, Chinonye’s face crumpled like paper in her hands. She quickly wiped her eyes and bent her head, wrapping herself tightly in her wrapper as if shielding herself from some invisible storm.
“Chinonye… what’s wrong?” I asked, my voice calm but tinged with worry.
“It’s nothing. Maybe I’m tired,” she whispered, but her eyes screamed betrayal, fear, something I couldn’t yet understand.
I shrugged it off. Stress, I told myself. Stress makes people cry. She had just endured months of packing, bills, and moving. Surely, this was just that.
But the second night shattered that theory.
I returned from my younger brother’s apartment, trying to laugh off the small frustrations of Lagos life. Ogunlana Drive had been a small escape, a place where we could talk about work, gossip, and the things that didn’t feel heavy on the soul. I thought coming home would be the same escape—but the moment I entered our bedroom, reality hit me like a punch to the gut.
I pulled my T-shirt over my head, and instantly, the dam broke.
Tears streamed down her face without pause. She didn’t try to hide them. She turned sharply toward the wall, clutching her wrapper as if it were armor against some unseen enemy. Her shaking shoulders told me fear had replaced exhaustion.
“Chinonye… what is it?” I asked, approaching her gently. She flinched, moving just enough to avoid my touch, yet not enough to run.
“Obinna… please… just leave it tonight,” she whispered, voice quivering.
I was frozen. My mind raced. A rash? A scar? Something new? My body—my own body—had betrayed me? I stood in front of the mirror, inspecting every inch. Nothing. Only the small scar on my back I’d carried since childhood. Nothing to frighten her.
The tension grew unbearable.
By the third evening, even the street noticed. Surulere is alive with the smell of suya, the chatter of neighbors, the clatter of plastic chairs. We sat outside Mrs. Adesuwa’s shop, hoping the simple joy of the street might ease her trembling soul. Instead, she caught every neighbor’s attention.
Mrs. Adesuwa leaned in, whispering like I had committed a crime.
“Obinna… you aren’t… you aren’t hurting her, are you? Her eyes… something’s wrong.”
Her words stung, but I shook them off. No—I was not a villain. I had loved Chinonye for years. Nothing I did could explain this terror that flickered across her eyes every time I shed a layer of fabric.
That night, I decided I would face the truth. I would uncover the mystery that gripped my wife’s soul. I entered our bedroom, each step weighted with dread. Slowly, deliberately, I unbuttoned my shirt. Before it even dropped from my hands, she broke down again—full tears, full horror. She turned toward the wall, trying to disappear from me, her body quivering in fear.
Confusion, embarrassment, and a sharp, burning fear filled me. I could not understand it. What on earth could she see on my body that scared her this much? I quietly slipped back into my shirt and sat on the edge of the bed, my mind churning.
“Tomorrow morning,” I said, my voice low, almost trembling with anticipation and dread, “you must tell me what you saw.”
She nodded slowly, still trembling, holding her wrapper like it could protect her from me. That night, I barely slept.
Morning broke with the kind of oppressive stillness that Lagos streets sometimes carry—the smell of wet asphalt, the distant scream of a hawker, and the hum of electricity lines. Chinonye moved with caution, eyes darting at shadows, fingers brushing over the wrapper that now felt like her last defense.
I couldn’t wait any longer. “Tell me,” I said, gently but firmly.
Her lips pressed together. She shook her head violently, tears brimming, her entire body vibrating with fear.
“I can’t… Obinna… I can’t look at you… like this,” she whispered, voice cracking.
Every word was a dagger. The reality of her fear struck me with a force I could not name. “Then I’ll see it myself. Let me see,” I said, heart hammering.
She collapsed backward onto the bed, covering herself with trembling hands, shaking her head, eyes wild. “No… no… you don’t understand… it’s not just… it’s not… human.”
I froze. My own wife—my partner of years—looked at me as if I were a stranger, as if I carried something monstrous beneath my skin.
“You… you mean… on my body?” I whispered, a cold sweat forming along my spine.
She nodded, tears streaming freely now. “I saw it the first night… the second… I tried to pretend, to hide it… but I can’t anymore. Every time you… every time you remove your clothes… Obinna… it’s… it’s moving.”
“Moving?” I asked, laughter rising in my throat in disbelief, but it quickly died as her terrified gaze pinned me.
“Yes… it shifts. Shapes… shadows. Something alive. Something wrong.”
I stumbled backward. My mind rejected it. My rational brain screamed denial. Childhood scar, stress, exhaustion—but her eyes… they told a story of horrors. Something beyond logic.
The days that followed became a careful dance of concealment and discovery. Every glance in the mirror made my stomach twist; every touch from her carried fear, suspicion. She would flinch if I adjusted my shirt or even rolled onto my side. Sleep eluded us. Our apartment, once a sanctuary, now felt like a cage.
I decided to investigate myself. Alone. In the dim bathroom light, I stripped completely. My hands trembled as I inspected every inch. Nothing. The scar. Only the scar. No shape, no shadow, no movement. Nothing.
And yet… Chinonye would not look. She couldn’t. Every time I faced her, her eyes darted down, away, her hands clinging to anything to shield herself from me.
One evening, desperation broke me. I left the apartment, moving through Surulere streets in a haze, seeking advice, seeking sanity. I ran into an old friend, Ifeanyi, a local herbalist rumored to have answers to things no doctor could explain.
“You see it too?” he asked before I could speak.
“See what?” I barked, panic thick in my voice.
“Things that shouldn’t move. Things that hide in flesh. I’ve seen many. Some are born with it, some are cursed. Most people—partners, family—they run. They cry. They fear.”
I swallowed hard. My wife… she hadn’t imagined it.
He handed me a small, leather-bound book. The pages were filled with diagrams, symbols, and notes about marks, shadows, and movements that existed beneath the skin. I flipped through, stomach twisting, breath catching. The shapes described in the book mirrored the terror in my wife’s eyes.
“You have to be careful,” he said. “And you must protect her. Some things can’t be removed. Only understood. Only… respected.”
That night, I returned home, the book clutched in my hands. I approached Chinonye slowly, sitting beside her on the bed. My heart pounded in my ears.
“I know what you see,” I whispered. “I don’t know how, or why, or what it means—but I believe you. And we’ll face it… together.”
She looked at me then, eyes red, trembling, fear tempered with a spark of hope. “You… you mean it?”
“Yes,” I said firmly. “I swear, I’m not leaving. Not now. Not ever.”
Her hands reached out, hesitantly touching mine. The tremor in her body didn’t stop immediately, but it softened.
Days turned into weeks. I studied the book. We researched. We experimented with rituals and protections. My wife and I faced a truth neither of us could have imagined—something hidden beneath my skin, something that shifted and moved like a living shadow.
And slowly, fear transformed into understanding. Her tears became fewer, her voice steadier. And while the mark remained, the horror lessened. Together, we learned the boundaries, the language, the signs of something alive beneath flesh.
Surulere remained bustling outside our window. Suya smells, shouting hawkers, neon lights flashing through the evening haze. But inside, in our apartment, something miraculous had happened: fear had turned into unity. Horror had turned into intimacy. Something meant to separate us had bound us together in a way nothing else could.
And though the mark would always be there, moving silently beneath the surface, we lived, we loved, and we survived it together.
