My wife is from Eastern Europe. The other day she sent me a text in her native language. “How was your day?” it said.

I asked her what she meant. <br><br>She told me that she’d got a strange message from my number. It was a photo of our living room. She said she was worried I’d been robbed so she’d called the police. They had performed a welfare check. I wasn’t home. The police had texted her a short video message. It showed two officers standing in front of my sofa. <br><br>They were running after me. <br><br>I was crawling on the ceiling. <br><br>She sent the video to me. I watched it. It was strange because I had no furniture on the ceiling. It was a flat, featureless expanse. I didn’t even have a table lamp up there, or anything else that would need an outlet. <br><br>What really caught my attention, though, was that the officers were crawling across the ceiling too. They didn’t even look surprised. In fact, they were acting like they’d pulled me from some kind of road accident. <br><br>I couldn’t explain what was happening. I hoped they would send more messages or photos, but no more came. <br><br>I tried calling my wife but she didn’t answer. I must have called her a dozen times. Every time, the ring went on for a long time before I was sent to voicemail. <br><br>I hopped on a flight, desperate to get home. The flight was long and I spent my time staring out of the window. The flight attendants told me that I wasn’t permitted to stand in the aisle. I explained that I was worried for my wife and that I had to look out of the window of her plane. <br><br>The flight attendants looked at each other. They told me that I was on a plane, and that my wife was across the ocean. <br><br>I told them they were wrong. They called for security and I was sedated. I slept until we landed. <br><br>When we touched down, I called my wife again. A man answered the phone. He said that the woman I loved was gone, that she’d been killed in a traffic accident. He said that he was a police officer and that he had her phone. <br><br>I was hysterical. I couldn’t believe what I was being told. The police officer couldn’t understand me, and I couldn’t understand him. I was screaming at him, begging him to let me talk to my wife. <br><br>I was still on the plane. I was standing by the window and I looked out stupidly as they tried to restrain me. They had sedated me again. Before I fell asleep, I saw my wife. She gently touched my shoulder. I tried to grab her but she got away. <br><br>When I woke up, I was in my bed. My wife was next to me. I held her so tightly that I thought I would suffocate her. <br><br>The police had not taken a video of me on the ceiling. I checked her phone and there was no sign of any such thing. <br><br>It was all some kind of dream. <br><br>*Thank God,* I thought. <br><br>But then I felt the ceiling of our bedroom lightly touch my fingertips. It was just out of reach. <br><br>I gently crawled across our bedroom ceiling, looking back at my wife as I did. <br><br>She lay in bed, staring at the wall. <br><br>She was staring right through me.