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The Above-Average Wife
In the middle of a dark winter night, deep in a wonderful sleep under my warm covers, my mobile started vibrating. I don’t remember exactly how I picked it up, because I woke up about two minutes after hearing my own voice repeating: “Hallo, Hallo…” and getting no answer.
It was a video call, and on the screen of my smartphone appeared the name of a German colleague of mine. We have been working together for many years and, besides, we are good friends who share some private small talk. Very strange, but in the video what I saw wasn’t exactly his face. Well, it was close, because what I saw was also a person with thin blond hair, but with a lean face and huge black glasses that covered almost half of it. The thin lips didn’t move. The hand holding the phone slowly panned it from side to side in front of the face, as if the person was looking into a mirror. A genuine chill went down my spine. Somehow this scene reminded me of Norman Bates’s late mother.
After saying “Hallo” several times into the void, I simply hung up and tried to drift back to sleep, which was no longer possible. The question “What the hell was this?” kept rattling around in my head, causing me a few hours of tossing and turning in bed. As a divorced woman who almost always sleeps alone in her bed, I hate being woken in the middle of the night. Probably because there is no one to comfort me after the…
