Welcome back to another fabulous reader submission! This one comes from Barry Sampson, who struck me as a guy desperate for some good advice on a bad situation. I’m no advice columnist, and the one we have only helps ghosts, but I’ll chime in with my recommendation to the reader at the end. The story itself is an interesting one and deserves to be told in its own right, even if my advice is not quite to the level of Dear Abby.
Jacob Bartholomew
As I sit in my living room, surrounded by the chaos of four children, a demanding job, and the weight of a recent medical diagnosis, I find myself reflecting on the bizarre and unexpected turn my life has taken. It all began on a seemingly ordinary night, a night when my wife’s memory slipped through the cracks of reality, leaving me to grapple with the fragments of a life that once was.
It was just another evening of indulging in our favorite pastime – binge-watching a television series. Our show of choice that night was “Fringe,” a gripping tale of parallel universes, scientific anomalies, and mind-bending mysteries. Little did I know that the unfolding events on the screen would soon pale in comparison to the surreal drama that would play out in our own living room.
As my wife ventured into the kitchen to fetch me another beer, a mishap with melting ice cream, apparently left out by one of our children, left her slipping on the floor. In that moment, the fabric of our reality apparently began to unravel. When she returned to the living room, her gaze fell upon me, and the blank expression on her face sent shivers down my spine. The person I had shared my life with for years then said she no longer recognized me.
Confusion and panic set in as she struggled to recall the details of our life together – our children, our shared experiences, even our love. The only constants she clung to were her car and a work colleague named Frank, with whom she insisted she was married in another universe. According to her newfound belief, she had slipped into our reality to take over the life her alternate self was living.
Amid the chaos, I couldn’t help but draw parallels to the science fiction narrative we had just witnessed on “Fringe.” In a surreal twist, our own lives seemed entangled in the possibility of parallel universes and interdimensional travel. My wife, seemingly now a stranger in our home, expressed her determination to pursue the life she believed was rightfully hers with Frank.
With a heavy heart, I accepted her decision, drawing strength from the sci-fi storyline that had unfolded on our television screen just hours earlier. As my new wife ventured into a new life with Frank, I cracked another beer and wished her well, all the while yearning for the return of the woman I had known and loved. I started the next episode while waving goodbye as she drove out of the driveway and out of my life. This episode was about a guy trying to bring a dancer back from the dead, which I hoped wouldn’t come to fruition in this reality because it would be too creepy for me to bear.
As days turned into weeks, the challenges of being a single parent and managing a household mounted. Life at home became a juggling act, a constant struggle against the odds. The burden was further amplified by financial woes, a growing drinking problem, and the revelation of a brain tumor – a stark reminder of the possible consequences of my wife’s interdimensional leaps.
I found solace in connecting with my alternate universe wife through the realm of social media. Friend requests were exchanged on Facebook, providing glimpses into the vibrant and adventurous life she now led with Frank. While I couldn’t help but feel a twinge of envy, I clung to the hope that one day, my true wife would return.
Determined to reunite with my true love, I embarked on a mission to bridge the gap between our worlds. Armed with little more than determination and a makeshift contraption in my backyard – a concoction of welded poles and an ASUS computer – I set out to crack the code of interdimensional travel. Having no experience in computers, construction, or quantum mechanics, the odds were against me, but my fingers remained crossed that one day, I would succeed.
As the weeks now turn into months, my makeshift interdimensional travel device remains a work in progress. The challenges of everyday life continue to mount, but I press on, fueled by the unwavering belief that love could transcend the boundaries of parallel universes. In this unpredictable journey, only time will tell if my endeavors will lead me back to the arms of my true wife or if our love story was forever lost in the folds of alternate realities.
Barry Sampson, Lonely but Hopeful
So we have a wife who abruptly leaves her husband and claims to be from another universe, leaving him to deal with the kids, a job, a drinking problem, a brain tumor, money problems, an unfinished attempt at an interdimensional travel machine, and all the rest of life’s hardships while she goes off with a male co-worker living the life she’s always wanted to live. My advice to Barry would be to relax, this is just another bump on the great road of life.
If you have a story you would like to submit for publication on our site, please email us at [email protected] and we’ll take a look at it. I do some editing to ensure it’s up to our standards and to make myself feel worthy of a paycheck, but I do not change anything pertinent to the story as a whole. There may or may not be a Reality Register sticker in it for you if we publish your story. Thanks for reading!
