It's taken me weeks to even write this. Not because I can't find the words - hell, they're burning in my head day and night - but because part of me still doesn't know what's real anymore.

I'm not crazy. At least, I don't think I am. But if you're reading this, maybe you'll understand. Maybe you've been through something like this, or maybe you'll believe me when I say?

My wife disappeared.

And then I found out she never existed.

---

Her name was Elise.

We met at a bookstore downtown, that old creaky one on Ash Street with the crooked sign and the cat that always sleeps in the philosophy section. I remember that day clearly - she reached for the same copy of The Secret History, and we laughed about it. We got coffee. One thing led to another. Within a year, we were married.

She had this laugh - like something caught between a melody and a secret. I used to tease her about how she always hummed to herself when she cooked. We lived in a small house on the edge of town, near the woods. Nothing fancy, but it was ours. It was home.

Until the night I came home and she was just? gone.

No note. No sign of struggle. Her phone left on the kitchen counter. Her shoes by the door. Like she stepped outside for a moment and forgot how to come back.

I called the police. They searched the area, asked questions. But something was off from the beginning. The officer - Detective Holloway - kept looking at me like I'd said something strange. He started asking questions I didn't expect.

"Do you have any photographs of your wife?"

"Have any of your friends met her?"

"Are you on any medications?"

It didn't make sense. Of course I had photos. We had albums full of them. Vacation shots. Christmas mornings. That selfie she took of us at the lake where her hair was a mess and she swore I couldn't post it. I remember every damn picture.

But when I pulled out the albums? they were empty.

I mean blank. Not just missing pictures - completely empty sleeves. I checked the digital backups. Nothing. No Facebook tags, no Instagram. Just me. Smiling by myself in places I swear she was standing next to me.

I thought I was losing my mind.

I tore the house apart. I found receipts for dinners for two. A second toothbrush. Her handwriting in the margins of Rebecca, her favorite novel.

But no one else remembered her.

My own mother said I was never married. My best friend thought I was joking. Even the woman who officiated the wedding - Pastor Lin - looked at me with that slow, cautious expression, like I'd just said something dangerous.

"She? I think you're mistaken," she told me, gently. "You've always been alone."

That's when I started to look deeper.

I dug through old boxes, hoping to find anything. Eventually, in the attic, I found a box labeled "E + J." My heart almost stopped. I tore it open, and inside were dozens of photographs. Us - together. Smiling. Her face lit up by candlelight, her hand in mine on the beach, her asleep on the couch with that stupid blanket she loved.

Proof.

But then I looked closer.

In every single picture, she was faded. Blurred. Like something out of focus, but only her. And as I watched - God help me - she began to fade even more, right there in my hands. I stared at one photo until my eyes burned, and I watched her face dissolve into nothing.

Now, the pictures are just me again.

But I remember her.

I remember the way she said my name. The songs she sang under her breath. The scar on her left wrist she never told me about.

I've started dreaming about her lately. Every night, she calls to me from the woods behind our house. I never go out there, but sometimes I wake up at the back door, keys in hand. The ground muddy, like I've already gone.

The whispers are louder now.

Last night, I found a note on my pillow. In her handwriting.

"I'm still here. But you have to remember me, or they'll take me forever."

I don't know who "they" are.

I don't know if she was a ghost, or something else entirely. But I know this much:

You can love someone who never existed.

You can lose someone no one else remembers.

And you can feel their absence like a scream in your bones.

So if you wake up one day and something feels? wrong - if there's a gap where a memory should be, a whisper in the silence, or a shadow next to yours that doesn't quite follow -

Don't ignore it.

They might already be gone.