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"I'm serious, you need to come see this!" my wife hollered again. Something in her voice caught my attention this time. She rarely called twice, and I had never heard this amount of emotion in her voice, although I couldn't tell what it was. Sighing, I turned off the shower. I would just have to stink that night.

Stepping out of the shower, I just had time to hear the water start to drip off of me and onto the bathroom tile when my wife appeared in the doorway. Right away, I knew something was wrong. Normally, my wife was one of the most cheerful people you could ever meet. She spent so much time smiling that you would think she was born that way. If it wasn't for the way she relaxed her mouth when she slept (she would pout out her lips just like the Gerber baby) I would have agreed with you. But at that moment, she looked different. Her face was almost slack jawed, her eyes glazed over as if in shock. Whatever she wanted me to see, it had transformed my wife from an intelligent woman who spent her days teaching preschool at a prestigious private school into a barely educable idiot, almost.

To say the least, her look took me by surprise, and I stood there for a moment, until I realized the only sounds I could hear were the water dripping onto the bathroom tile, and the muted babble of whatever was being shown on the TV out in the living room. Finally, I cleared my throat. "What is it?" I asked, my throat dry with a touch of fear. I guess seeing your wife looking like that will scare any husband a little bit.

"You have to see what's playing on the TV," my wife said again. It was at that moment that she started to shake. It started almost imperceptibly, with a slight tremor in her hands, but it quickly moved through her whole body. In the two steps it took me to cross the bathroom, it had grown to full fledged tremors. It felt like I was hugging one of those vibrating massagers, but one that was five feet eight inches tall. Holding her tightly and shushing into her ear, it took me almost a full minute to get her to calm down enough that I felt certain she wasn't going to have a breakdown. I knew the worst of it was over when I heard her mumble into my chest, "Eeeew, you're all wet."

"Yeah, that's what happens when you get me out of the shower," I replied. "Now, let's go see what's got you so freaked out on TV."

My wife pulled away slightly. "No, you go. I can't watch that again," she said. "I'll get you some clothes." I was surprised, but nodded. I had to see what had my wife so scared. This was the same woman who, on the morning of 9/11 when half of America was freaking out and hiding under their beds, merely packed me a larger lunch (I was still active duty Army then) and asked me to give her a call when I knew I might be coming home. Three days later, when I finally did call, she merely had dinner waiting for me and a warm hug when I walked in the door. So whatever the hell it was that had spooked her, it had to be bad.

Of course, nothing could prepare me for the images I saw once I got to the living room. You probably know what I'm talking about. The TV screen quartered, with a horrified anchorperson in the lower left corner, while surrounding her were three mushroom clouds, one over London, one over Beijing, and one over Washington, D.C. Then Moscow a few minutes after that. That crazy North Korean fuck had finally done it, going off the deep end. I barely noticed when my wife brought in my clothes, and I put them on. Soon we were both enraptured by the news. Even if we had wanted to, we couldn't have gotten away from it.

...read the rest of this contribution in the Ficton Section