The first time it happened, it was horrifying. Terrifying. I thought he was dying and so did he.

He was a mess when he got home that night. I thought he had just been at work, but he was crying and babbling that he had lost time. Somewhere in the middle of the day, his memory just stopped. He didn't know where he'd been, or what he'd done. He came back to himself while he was driving home. Nearly crashed. We were going to call a doctor in the morning. After he'd slept, maybe he'd remember.

He didn't sleep. He read our son a bedtime story and put him in his little bed. Then we sat up and talked about anything other than his day. We talked about television. We talked about memes. We talked about coffee and tea, just trying to reach normal. We almost got there. We forgot, for a moment.

But he started changing. His skin got darker and shinier. At first I thought it was the light, but it wasn't. In less than a minute he was the color of eggplant or a bad bruise, and I was trying to find my phone so I could call 911. He said it didn't hurt. I didn't believe him.

He started to melt. I think I was screaming. His arms and fingers stretched down to the floor like dripping sap. His head sunk down into his body. His clothes bulged weirdly and purple appendages like snakes fell out of his shirt and pants from every angle. Seams popped, cloth tore, and shiny purple arms pushed the useless pieces of clothing to the floor.

Then an eye opened next to what used to be his belly. My scream caught in my throat. I watched as another and another blinked open all across his skin. He spun left, then right, eyes looking at arms. Arms floated above and around a bulb of a body like a constellation of purple spaghetti.

The eyes focused on me like a dozen pins sticking a bug to a board. I couldn't make any sound at all. I couldn't move. My heart pumped syrup. For that long, empty moment my mind was full of the difference between holding one's breath and simply not breathing.

The creature moved, reaching out to me with a dozen handless arms. I ran to my son's bedroom, or maybe my feet just took me there. There was no conscious thought. The boy was still asleep. I braced myself against the door and tried to listen. It was quiet.

It took only seconds to decided I had been drugged. I was hallucinating. That made me feel much better, in fact. My husband was fine, and I was hallucinating, because what I'd seen wasn't something that happened. I cried and fell asleep next to the bedroom door.

The sun came up in the morning. My little boy had moved from his bed to my lap and gone back to sleep. I carried him out of the bedroom and looked up and down the hall. Nothing. I poked my head into my own bedroom. Nothing. I went to the livingroom and checked the couch but it was undisturbed.

I finally found my husband sleeping in the bathtub naked. Weird, but he was alive and not purple. I put my child on the couch and started making breakfast. I'm good at making breakfast.

He came in with pants on. He asked what happened last night. I didn't answer. Couldn't, until I had finished the eggs and scooped them onto a plate. Then I said it was something bad, but I wasn't sure. "I thought you died," I said. "I hallucinated a monster."

He looked past the eggs and bacon in front of him, his face twisted like he might throw up. "I feel like I did die. I was purple, and there was..." He was at a loss for words. "There was a lot of me."

It was much easier to believe we had both suffered a bad trip, hallucinated the same thing. He ate the bacon, buried the egg in salsa. Then he drank two bottles of water and went to get dressed. He went to work like it was a normal morning. I forgot about the doctor.

It was easier than it should be, to forget. To behave as if something that couldn't have happened, hadn't happened.

But that next night, like a recurring nightmare, it happened again. After my boy was in bed. After we'd sat and talked about nothing forever, he changed color. His bones collapsed. He grew rubbery arms from everywhere. He grew eyes. They were all looking at me. This time I just sat and watched it all happen. I watched like it was something odd but very far away. I held still, but only because there wasn't anything I could do. I didn't stop breathing, exactly, but I certainly couldn't scream. If I screamed, it would be scary. If I screamed, it would be real.

One arm slowly came towards me, touched my knee. It was clammy and warm. I swallowed a wordless noise and told myself it didn't count as a scream. There was no reason to let any of this be real. The creature recoiled from touching me as though I had shocked it. It was still for a long time. Eyes on me. Each blinking at random. No face. No sign of my husband.

Eventually the eyes looked away from me, and the creature stood up on its two dozen legs. It walked, slithered and sort of rolled down the hallway. I could move again, when it was gone. I went to my son's room again. I lay awake on the bed, trying not to think about what I'd seen. Eventually I fell asleep. I dreamt of a melting world, with buildings and cars and trees turning to soup in front of me. No people.

In the light of day, I found him sleeping in the tub again. I shook him awake. He gasped for air like someone who'd been underwater for too long, then coughed up a cup of clear slime. I sat down on the toilet lid. He sat naked in the tub. We just looked at each other for a long time, and listened to our son play video games in the living room.

My voice was flat. "That happened." He just nodded. I nodded back. "I'm going to go make breakfast." I'm good at making breakfast. I don't know about the rest of this.

He came to the table only a little later, dressed for work. Looking alright. Certainly not a monster. Had it happened? We locked eyes for a moment. He stopped chewing. He stopped breathing. He looked scared.

It kept happening. The first time it skipped a night, we thought it was over. The whole next day we celebrated. But it does that. It skips. It doesn't stop. That night was awful, more like the second night again. But he wasn't dead. He was just weird. The fortieth night was like the twentieth again. The fiftieth night was like the hundredth.

So nearly every night, a little after midnight, he falls apart. He'll roll into the other room, eventually fall asleep, and when he wakes up, he's a person again. He says it doesn't hurt, but I'm not sure if I believe him.

We never called the doctor. What would we say? "Seems I turn into a tentacle monster for six hours every night! It's cured my insomnia, and I don't have cavities anymore!" Worse things would happen if he was believed than if he wasn't. We've tried to figure out what happened on the day he can't remember, but there's nothing. No clue.

He's said so many times that he'd understand if I left. I think he knows now that I won't, but it confuses him. He said once that I should, and I slapped him. At least he didn't say that again.

He can't talk when he's a monster, but he can type, and he can write. He usually goes to the tub after he changes, and goes to sleep, but sometimes he goes back to his desk and finishes something he's working on. Our son's bedtime has gotten a whole lot more strict, for now. Until he knows how to keep a secret.

The first time it happened, it was incredible. Wonderful. I thought it was foolish, and so did he, but I only wish I had done it sooner.

We were talking in the bathroom while I brushed my teeth. My monster would write on the wall with a dry erase marker. He could hear me talking with the whole surface of his skin. So we talked. We talked about television and memes. We talked about friends and picked a restaurant for our anniversary.

He told a joke, and I laughed at it. A stupid dad-joke. And he was himself, and he was mine.

When I stopped laughing, I spit out my toothpaste, rinsed my mouth, and turned to look at him. All those eyes. Happy eyes. He must have understood the look itself, because he wrote YOURE CRAZY. IM SURE YOU DONT WANT TO DO THAT.

But I did. I shed the pajama shirt and pants I had already changed into, and sat on the edge of the tub. I closed my eyes. Waited. Opened them. He hadn't moved. He was completely frozen.

He wrote on the wall, WE HAVENT DONE THIS IN FOREVER BUT YOU WANT THIS NOW??? WHEN IM LIKE THIS??

So I looked him right in some of his eyes and took my panties off too. "Maybe this is what's been stopping us." I took off my socks. "It's been stopping you too. When you're like this or when you're not!" Set my glasses on the counter. "But this is just you." I stepped into the bathtub with him. On him. Sort of.

I had touched him enough times before, when he was a monster. Mostly by accident, but I knew he was soft and sometimes damp. His arms were smooth, and strong. He wrapped them around me so tentatively. He was warm. I laid back and my whole body sort of floated on the surface of him, on the ceaseless motion of his body.

He touched my face with a dozen fingers. He traced my lips, my ears. There were no lips to kiss, so I kissed the arm that was touching my face. His whole body went stiff for a moment. I laughed, "Did I hurt you?"

It was an honest question. I hadn't done more than blow a kiss at him in so many months, but he relaxed when I asked if he was alright. A single damp arm traced down my neck like a long tongue. Another traced the curve of my breast. One by one, more fingers and tongues caressed my body. Endless feathers and fingers and kissing touches on my back and legs.

Small tendrils wrapped around my already hard nipples, sending a wave down into to my belly. He touched the spot at my waistline where the spasm had gone. He knew what that was. What he was doing to me.

He wrapped tentacles around my legs tightly, spreading them apart. The number of eyes looking between my legs suddenly made me blush. He held me, and looked. Dozens of little fingers made their way up the inside of my thighs. Incredibly slowly. And he watched the effect of that, my thighs and pussy twitching like mad.

One of the larger arms unwrapped from my ankle and came up to touch the lips between my legs. It was wet like a smooth tongue, and it tasted the wet there. One. Two. Three times. Then it lay flat over the opening, like the palm of a huge hand. Feeling the movement. Enjoying my pleasure. The arms all around me grew still. All the little licks and touches stopped and he just held me there. The palm lifted, and the tongue tasted me again.

It went in slowly. Feeling its way around. My whole body stiffened, and I moaned through my teeth. He seemed to enjoy how wet I was. The tongue rippled, sending shivers everywhere. It found a sensitive spot inside and toyed with it, making me arch and try to kick while the other tentacles held me fast. I dug my nails into his body, and the whole of him shuddered, moreso the part that was inside me, which made me arch again.

A soft touch on my neck. Across my collar bone. A flat palm caressing my belly. Thick fingers twisting around my hands. One by one the other tentacles began again, touching everywhere.

I was overloaded with licks and touches. My hips took over, found a rhythm of their own, which he responded to. There were at least four tentacles inside me now, filling the space with movement, touching all the places he knew to touch, all at once. Tendrils prodded softly at my clitoris, in time with my hips, punctuating each thrust with a wash of pleasure.

A long tongue filled my mouth, and I just opened wider, offering my own. We writhed together, and he had a better shape for it, but I held my own.

I woke up in the bathtub next to my husband. It was hard. Uncomfortable. A lousy place to wake up. I sighed to myself, "I'm going to have to slime-proof the bed. Maybe some rubber sheets..."