Day 268

Their grandchildren loved to make them things out of whatever they found.
One day them visited with an egg, they drew a cartoonish smile and called it "Grammy".
She laughed and said it was the spitting image of her and put it on her bedside table.

She stopped talking soon after that.
Bells Palsy they called it, the old man felt sad.
The doctor said that due to her age it was likely that she'd get worse.
As the old man helped his now mute wife into bed he glanced at the smiling egg.

He'd know what grin anywhere, he married the woman behind it!
No longer was the mouth a thick, black pen line.
It was hers, it even had her teeth and dimples!

He could see other dents in its' surface and wondered what it would steal next.
Over the following week her left eye began to droop and the egg began to form.
The following month both her eyes were lax and uselessly swaying as the egg glared.
It grinned and it glared, sometimes whispering things that almost sounded like her poetry.

He wanted to smash it, he wanted to but his heart was weak.
Whenever he sat in front of it it looked at him the way his wife used to.
It smiled her smile, laughed her laugh and spoke half gibberish.
He began to grow fonder of it than his spouse.

Eventually the egg took over from her.
He didn't know what to do with the lifeless husk that he'd married.
The egg, no Mavis told him to leave her body so they could run away together.

By this point his dearest Mavis was almost human looking, she didn't have hair yet but she was still perfect.
She was more like the woman he married than his wife had ever been.

And that's why she had to go.

They eventually found the old man a few miles away from the burnt shell of his home, dying.

He was holding a rotten egg in his hand, muttering about "becoming as perfect as my new Mavis".