Title: Ghost Wife
Chapter 9: Interrogation
We sat in the living room, Katherine perched on the edge of an armchair like she might need to bolt at any moment. Emma and I took the couch, careful to maintain some distance between us—Sister Margaret’s body language still betrayed discomfort at too much physical contact, especially with an audience.
“So let me get this straight,” Katherine said, her scientific skepticism evident in every syllable. “You’re claiming that your wife’s consciousness somehow transferred from her dead body into a series of living women, and now resides in…” she gestured toward Emma, “a nun?”
“I know how it sounds,” I admitted.
“It sounds like the plot of a bad sci-fi movie,” Katherine replied, adjusting her glasses. “Or actually, it reminds me of ‘The Man from Earth.’ Have you seen it?”
Emma and I exchanged blank looks.
“No? Well it’s about a man who also makes impossible claims to a bunch of scholars. She smirked. “Sister Margaret probably wouldn’t like how it ends. Though I suppose it’s an unpleasant comparison in this case, since it would imply you two are telling the truth, which is ridiculous.”
“We are telling the truth,” Emma said quietly. “I know it defies scientific explanation, but—”
“It defies logic,” Katherine interrupted. “Consciousness isn’t transferable. As I said, it’s a product of specific neural patterns in a specific brain. You can’t just… hop from one brain to another like changing clothes.”
“And yet, that’s exactly what’s happening,” I insisted. “Emma can tell you things only she would know. About our life together, about conversations we had that no one else heard.
Katherine waved this away. “Cold reading techniques. Or maybe you coached her. There are a dozen more plausible explanations than consciousness transfer. It’s not like I would even be able to tell if she’s telling the truth. I don’t know any of you.”
“What about the missing time?” Emma reminded her. “Mandy can’t remember what happened when I was in her body. Clara at the funeral home couldn’t remember the days I spent as her. There’s a pattern.”
This gave Katherine pause. She tapped her fingers against her knee, thinking. “Memory gaps can be caused by trauma, drugs, alcohol—”
“Or by someone else driving your body,” I finished for her.
Katherine sighed. “Fine. Let’s say, for the sake of argument, I entertain this hypothesis. How exactly does this… transfer work? Is it voluntary? Is there a trigger?”
Emma and I exchanged another look, this one more uncomfortable.
“It seems to happen through touch,” Emma explained. “Physical contact with another woman. But staying ‘myself’ within the new body… that’s more complicated.”
I cleared my throat. “We’ve noticed that Emma’s personality becomes more dominant after… intimate contact.”
“Intimate contact,” Katherine repeated flatly.
Emma’s cheeks flushed crimson. “Sexual intercourse,” she clarified, her voice barely above a whisper. “With Calvin. It seems to… strengthen my hold on the host body.”
Katherine’s eyebrows shot up. “So you’re telling me that not only does your wife’s consciousness magically transfer between bodies, but you need to have sex with her to keep her from… what, fading away?”
“Not fading away entirely,” I explained, feeling heat rise to my own face. “She retains her memories regardless. But her personality, her… Emma-ness… it gets weaker without physical contact. She starts acting more like the host.”
“How convenient for you,” Katherine said dryly. “Your wife dies, but you get to keep sleeping with her in a variety of new bodies. Sounds like a male fantasy to me.”
“It’s not like that,” Emma protested, her voice stronger now. “This isn’t something we wanted or planned. We’re just trying to understand it.”
Katherine studied us for a long moment, her scientific curiosity clearly at war with her skepticism. “How long can you maintain your… dominance without this ‘recharging’?”
“We don’t know exactly,” I admitted. “We haven’t been willing to test it for too long.”
“I stayed in Clara’s body for about two days,” Emma added. “Then I switched to Mandy. By the end of the third day, I felt mostly like her until Calvin and I... reconnected.”
“You mean until he fucked you,” Katherine said bluntly.
Emma winced at the crude language, Lisa’s sensibilities clearly offended. “Yes,” she said stiffly. “After that, I was more myself again.”
Katherine turned to me. “So you had sex with Mandy—my friend Mandy—while your wife was, what, possessing her?”
The accusation in her tone made me defensive. “It wasn’t like that. It was Emma, in Mandy’s body. Emma consented. Emma wanted it.”
“But Mandy didn’t consent,” Katherine pointed out, her voice hardening. “Mandy wasn’t even present to consent. You had sex with my friend’s body while she was… what, unconscious? Absent? Do you realize how that sounds?”
“I thought you didn’t believe us,” I countered. “You said it was a bad sci-fi plot. Why worry about consent if you don’t believe it’s real?”
“Because,” Katherine said, “if it is real—and that’s still a big ‘if’—then you’re taking advantage of vulnerable women.”
I stood up, startling both Katherine and Emma. “And what was I supposed to do? Just ignore her, let my wife’s consciousness fade away until there was nothing left of her? Watch her die a second time?” My anger, fueled by fear and grief, boiled over and seemed to take Katherine by surprise, her hand reaching for her pocket and the pepper spray within. “So far her hosts have been completely clueless about what happened during the time she was possessing them. It’s like they blacked out, and they remember nothing. So yeah, I’ll happily fuck my wife, in whatever body she’s in, to keep her from disappearing. That’s not me taking advantage, that’s me being a husband.”
Dr. Winters stared at me, mouth agape, then frowned slightly. “Well,” she muttered after a pause. “I think a demonstration is in order.”