You’ll never truly know somebody’s heart.

My wife, Mel, if there was one person I thought I knew, it was her. Turns out, all I knew was the pretty picture she painted: a quirky girl from the Midwest who was too bright and beautiful for me. I should have known it was too good to be true, but I didn’t expect a thing until the day the bombs went off. On that day, seeing her skin peel back, that caliginous, misty form spilling out of the thin layer of flesh, I felt I knew nothing of my wife.

“My darling,” she tried to say. Her wispy hands couldn’t even grasp me. My wife passed through me as insubstantial as water vapor. “I’m telling you, this doesn’t change how I feel about you.”

But it changed how I felt about her. She’d hidden her proper form from me for so many years. She’d buried her intentions, the awful purpose for why she was on Earth. I’m sure something in this lie breached the marriage vows I’d made to Mel all those years ago.

“I love you,” she’d cried. “I saved you.”

She acted as if this were a sacred, heroic act. Like there weren’t a thousand others of her kind who’d taken humans, a dying breed now, as pets. And what did they end us for? The last few drops of fresh water left on a dying world, the molten metal in our Earth’s crust? Was that worth the lives of all humanity?

“In the right situation, we are all capable of the most terrible crimes,” Mel said. “Our planet was barren. You’ve been saved, love. Don’t you understand that your planet was going to die anyway? You’ll live forever. Here. With me. We can both be happy. You have to let me take you to the doctor. They can make you like me.”

And she kept talking about the operation. How it doesn’t hurt that much. How I needed to get it soon. The importance of it. She kept talking about her people, the genius way they left the mortal coil’s confines, binding their souls to almost intangible clouds of ‘biological matter.’

“Really,” Mel pleaded. “You have to agree soon. I can’t make them do it without your consent and look.” Her hand passed through my stomach. “Darling, you’re wasting away. You know the resources on the ship are scarce. We won’t reach another planet for nearly three light-years. I can’t sustain you. Darling, please let them do the operation. Please…”

But I couldn’t. Every other human had either suffered the operation or died. I’m the last of my kind and don’t want to give in. I don’t want to live forever in that halfway state of existence. With no touch. No warmth. No body.

“Darling,” Mel sobbed. I couldn’t see the tears, but I felt guilty even after all that had happened. “You’re hurting so badly. Please let me upgrade you. Please don’t make me watch you die like this. Don’t waste away out of pride. I didn’t save you to watch you die.”

I hadn’t talked to her since the abduction. Not a single word in these past months, but I finally broke my silence. “Why did you marry me?”

Without hesitation, she answered. “Because I love you. Please, believe me. I love you with all my heart.”

I almost laughed. “I can see through you; you have no heart.”

“Well, I see through you too. You don’t want to die like this any more than I want to watch it. Starvation is a long process, especially if I keep supplying you with water and nutrients. It may be years before you succumb. Get the operation, darling.” That last sentence was tacked on, sounding like a threat.

I almost gave in, but then her hand ghosts through mine again. The unnatural chill knocked my resolve back into place. “I’m sorry, but I can’t become like you.”

Mel’s misty particles became erratic, trembling as I heard her sob. “Fine,” she wailed in a mixture of rage and sorrow. “Fine! I steal the prettiest skin to impress you! I become the perfect wife! I love you and save you! I even steal food for you… Yet… Yet you still won’t join me in eternity.”

My gut churned the same way it did when she first peeled off her skin, anxious with new and horrid variables. “I won’t,” I told her. “I can’t.

“Fine,” she said evenly. “Then it’s up to me to make a new forever.” Before I could react, her solidified appendage slammed on the airlock button, exposing us to the cruel coldness of space. The last thing I felt was her vaporous form wrapping around me, and I knew, in that moment, one thing. She loved me.