Dear Libby,

I don’t really know how to explain this without sounding crazy. I swear I’m not having delusions or hallucinations. When the lockdown started, I was stuck at home with my whole family: my wife, my son, my wife’s sister, and her husband. It was a lot of people in a pretty small house. I wasn’t thrilled about it having my in-laws there, but they lost their home right before the lockdown started and didn’t have anywhere else to go.

A few weeks into the lockdown, I made dinner for the family and set the table. When I called everyone to come eat, my wife asked why I set an extra place. Figuring I just miscounted, I looked around and realized my brother-in-law wasn’t there. I told her it wasn’t an extra place, he just hadn’t come to the table yet. Both my wife and her sister looked at me like I had two heads. My sister-in-law claimed she wasn’t married and never had been!

I thought maybe they were bored and trying to prank me. I figured once we started eating, he’d show up and they’d laugh about how they got me. But he never came to dinner. I didn’t see him at all that night. Actually, I didn’t see him at all ever again. I brought it up a few times with my wife, but she started getting mad at me, saying I was being cruel to her sister by constantly pointing out her lack of a partner in such a bizarre way.

I checked on social media to show her that I wasn’t making things up, but his accounts were gone. I searched online for any sign of his existence and found nothing. I had no idea what to do. What was I going to do? File a missing persons report? Nobody believed me that he’d gone missing because nobody believed me that he was even a real person. So I just went on with life. I can’t deny that it was actually a bit of a relief to have one less person to worry about.

Then a few weeks later, it happened again. This time, my wife found an earring in between the couch cushions that didn’t belong to her. She somewhat accused me of being with another woman, but I pointed out that we’d been stuck at home together since March, which limited my opportunities for an affair. When I suggested it belonged to her sister, she slapped me!

When my wife was thirteen, her younger sister drowned in Silver Creek River. Obviously that wasn’t the sister I was talking about, but she insisted she only ever had one sister, and I was a heartless bastard for dragging up that pain in order to distract her from my transgressions. Again, I searched high and low for any trace of her sister, but it was like she never existed, either.

My son disappeared next. That one hit me much harder than my in-laws disappearance. I loved him so much. I hadn’t seen him all day and asked my wife where he was. She looked at me with disgust and said something about how I made her sick. I asked what in the world was the matter with her, and she told me that she knew I blamed her for not being able to have children, but to pretend we had a son who was missing was a new low.

I’m not sure when my wife vanished. We’d been sleeping in different rooms ever since that day when my son went missing. We barely spoke or acknowledged each other, so it wasn’t unusual for me not to see her all day. When I realized it had actually been several days since I’d even heard her elsewhere in the house, I checked her room. As I had feared, it was empty. Even though she despised me, having her around meant I wasn’t alone. Now I am.

Will I disappear next? I’m not sure. Maybe I will. There’s nobody left who would notice, though. I would vanish, and as far as the rest of the world is concerned, my house has always been empty. Or maybe with everyone in my family gone, a new family will get the chance to live there. Will they disappear, too? Is it the house doing it? Is it me? I really don’t know. I doubt you can help me, either. I just wanted a record that I was here before I’m gone.

–Alone At Last

Dear “Alone At Last,”

I was going to answer you with sincere advice about seeking out professional help for your mental health, but apparently this is just another prank from one of my haters. I went to follow up with you and it said your email address doesn’t exist. I looked up the contact information you provided and got diddly-squat. It was too late for me to change my entire article for this week’s column, so congratulations. You got me. I hope you’re really proud of yourself.

–Lovingly, Libby