Abducted?
A Short Story
By Maryanne Peters

Ava

It seemed as if I was just coming to terms just coming to terms with it. I am not saying that I accepted his absence and I was ready to move on, but just that I understood that his disappearance was a fact and that I needed to cope with my situation.

They say that there are five stages of grief, starting with denial. I never really understood how this works in the event of death, where there is a body to confront you with the fact, but with simple “disappearance” it is easier to deny. So many things might have happened. He might have lost his way and be trapped somehow, or had a knock on the head and be wandering about somewhere, confused.

With denial comes isolation, so they say. I understand that when you are the only person saying “he can’t be dead” when that is the most logical conclusion. Why else would he not contact me? Death brings people to you, but disappearance starts with “he will be back in a day or two” and then passes through “It’s a real mystery, for sure” but never get to the cold conclusion “he is dead, get over it”. There are times when I wished that somebody would say that, and then be free to comfort me in the way I thought I deserved.

It just made it harder to believe that he had abandoned me. How could he leave me to this uncertainty? Sure, we had some issues, and a large part of that was trying to understand what it was that seemed to prey on his soul constantly. He had secrets, but a simple love of life that made it impossible to consider suicide.

The second stage of grief, so they say, is anger. It sounds irrational to blame people for just dying, but blaming somebody helps to overcome denial. With disappearance I could blame him, but that was hard for me to do. They say that rage directed at an object can help, and for me it did. He kept a punching bag in the basement and that became my target. It was not him – it was just something to vent my anger against.

The third stage they call “Bargaining”, meaning trying to do a deal with God. “Bring him back to me and I will promise to be good” or even “Take me instead”. It is just as irrational as denial and anger, but it is true that I did go through this, even though I have never been particularly religious.

Stage Four is depression, although that word seems too simple. There was loss – “I can’t live without him”, and regret – “I should have been a better wife”, and worry about the future – “I can’t cope on my own”. I suppose that overcoming that was the sense that I was becoming self-absorbed. Perhaps if we had children I would have come to realize this earlier – “I need to put the kids first”, but I had no such obligation. But it came to the point where I realized that the world did not revolve around me, and I was not going to step off it.

The last stage is Acceptance, and perhaps I was just getting to that stage when Riley appeared. I am not saying that I ever really got there, and I am told that many people don’t, but I was ready to re-engage. I had started to talk of him as “my late husband”. I was back at work and found that easier than being home, with all the reminders of him.

That took me almost four years to get to that point. I had even started dating, although not that seriously. In fact DDD was at my house attending to small repairs that a man can do better, whe there was a knock on the door.

I remember opening the door and being puzzled. There was a woman standing there who could have been Mark’s sister. The likeness was obvious, but I knew that he had no sister, so it must have been another family member, so I thought.

Riley

I had met Ava through work. I was doing so contract IT work at her office and we got to talking a little so I invited her to dinner to finish the conversation with work pressures.

She told me all about Mark, her husband. It seemed like a real mystery, but I only asked the questions that I did because she told me that she was ready to answer after being in limbo for four years. She said that she was relieved to be discussing it, as she had been sensitive about it until only recently. I did not feel that after all that time I was taking advantage of a widow. In fact I offered my assistance, which is what brought me around her house that Saturday afternoon.

I had my hands in something when I heard the doorbell ring, but I just left it to her. I suppose that after having been together for around two months I was her boyfriend, but I accepted that it was up to her to introduce me to her friends, or friends of her husband. But then I heard her cry out, and so I dropped the tool I was using and headed to the front door.

The door was still open and there was a woman standing with her, perhaps offering her an embrace that Ava did not want to accept.

My immediate thought was that here was somebody with news of her husband and it could not be good. As I drew close I could see the look of horror on her face, and the look of concern on the face of this visitor. She was tall with light brown hair to her shoulders, attractive and with a great body – tanned and athletic with a great rack made visible by a dress low cut in front.

Riley was saying – “It cannot be!” and I suggested that perhaps the visitor should step inside and say what she had come to say. I had formed the view that it was better for everybody (including me) to know the fate of her husband. I helped her to a chair in the lounge and the lady sat down too.

“I am sorry, but we haven’t met,” the tall lady said. “I am … or I was … Ava’s husband, Mark”.

I just stood there in disbelief. I looked across at Ava and her face bore the same expression. Looking back at the visitor I looked for all the signs that this person might once have been male, but I saw nothing. She looked entirely female, and she spoke in a feminine voice. Her throat had no Adam’s apple, her hair looked like her own, and there was no heavy makeup to mask any afternoon stubble. Her hands and feet may have been larger that many women, but not all.

“If you’re him, then where have you been for the past four years?” I asked.

“That’s what I have been trying to explain, but I have to say that I am a little fuzzy about the details myself,” she said, and I still thought that I was talking to a she. “I am pretty sure that drugs were used. I was abducted – that is the only way to describe it. I was taken away from my home and my wife by an evil and selfish woman. I am so sorry Darling, it must have been awful for you. I had to escape and come to you. I had to explain.

Ava just stared with tears now coming from her eyes. There was still disbelief in her face, and I have to say that I shared it. But who was this person and why were they here in her living room?

“But you’re a woman?” I said. “I mean, I am not going to ask how much of a woman you are, but you certainly appear to be completely a woman.”

“Yes … completely a woman,” she said. “But it was not my doing. It was her. She did this to me.”

“How awful,” wailed Ava. “What has she done to you, and why?”

“Surgical reassignment and everything,” the woman said. “I know that I can never be your husband again in the way I once was, but if you want me back as I am, then I wanted you to know that I am here. But then again, this nice man appears to be your boyfriend? Or perhaps something more than that?”

She looked at me, but I detected no hostility or jealousy, as I might have expected. She had not asked for any explanation of my presence or even my name. She seemed to accept me being there, in a way that no person who was Ava’s husband, would. In fact, her story sounded way too unlikely to be true.

“My name is Riley, and yes, I am Ava’s boyfriend,” I said. It was a bold statement, but I wanted to see the reaction of both women in the room. Both seemed to accept it as fact.

“So, you have been a prisoner of this … evil woman you talk about, for four years?” I asked. “Where was this? Here or some other town? What can you tell about your abductor? We will need a description. We will need to call the police. This is a very serious crime.”

“She has gone now,” the woman said. “I am back. She has gone and will never be found. I am here. I am not expecting to simply walk back into my house in the state I am now. I just wanted to tell you that I am not dead and that I am not to blame for my absence all these years.”

“Look, a serious crime has been committed and it must be reported,” I said, and then I added on impulse – “But there is something not right.

She had been there for less than fifteen minutes when there was another knock on the door. This time I rose to answer. Would it be the evil woman? Or perhaps the police?

There was a tall powerfully built man standing there.

“Hello, my name is Dorian,” he said as if that was all that was needed to be said, but then he added. “I am here looking for my wife, Abigail.”

Dorian

She had come into my life two years before she suddenly left me. I remember the day well, because it was a day that changed my life. Before she arrived if anybody had to me that I would fall hopeless in love with any woman, let alone one who had come into the world as a boy, I would not have believed them. I had been married before, and my wife had given me two fine young sons, but I know now, there was never true love there. It was a life progression driven by expectations and convenience. The marriage would not last.

I met Abigail in a café where she worked and where I was a regular. I asked the owner and he explained that she had arrived suddenly and needed work and a place to stay and he was able to arrange both. He said that she had recently recovered from a medical condition that had drained her of all her resources, but she was now healthy and happy.

That was one thing that I knew from the moment I met her. She seemed to be totally content just to be alive in this world. Her cheerfulness brightened my day and reminded me that I had wasted too much of my life to expectations and convenience.

I flirted with her a little and even asked her out on a date. I remember that she said – “You wouldn’t want to date a girl like me,” so it was only after I insisted that she told me a truth that knocked me to me core – “I am a transwoman,” she said. “I was born with male bits that I have only recently had removed.” That was her medical conditional although her boss was just as clueless as I was.

I remember that I just walked away. I am not even sure if I paid. I walked out into the street with my head spinning. I had been slowly developing feelings for this person, and I had no idea how strong they were until she laid that hammer blow of my forehead. I just staggered away back to my truck and tried to make sense of it all.

All logic told me that I needed to find another place to have my coffee, but then logic does not rule the heart, and it was the heart that was in play. What logic can do is say stuff like – “You love the person, not the anatomy” or “Some say that T-Girls are much better in bed.” What I did understand was that my own bed had been empty for too long, and I still wanted her to fill that hole in my life.

I spent most of that night lying in bed awake thinking about her, and the rest of it dreaming of having sex with her. Still, I woke up feeling in control and with resolve. I went back to her café and sat down with a smile on my face, and she saw it and returned it. But then she always smiled.

“What can I give you today, Dorian?” she said.

“You can stop saying no, and let me take you out to dinner tonight,” I said.

She just laughed and agreed to go out with me. Then one thing led to another and there was another date and then it was back to my place for sex, and she was making me breakfast in the morning before dawn so she could get to the café in time to serve others.

I don’t mind early starts but after a while I persuaded her to move in and quit the café. That meant more sex in the mornings and she could keep house and mind my workshop and warehouse as well. Her contribution to my business was huge, because she was organized, and unlike other kinds of women (I guess) knowledgeable of my stock and physically capable of moving it around. She became a partner of a kind so it seemed only natural that she become my life partner and wife.

I proposed and it was only when I did that I sensed that there was something troubling her. As I said, her nature had always been cheerful - like there was nothing in her past that she had not cut away like her unwanted body parts, and only a future to look forward to. But my proposal had opened up a wound. She said that we were husband and wife, and I believed that, but I knew that there something wrong.

As for the location device, that was always in my old truck, which I gave to her once I got a new one. She would run stuff to me and it is always good to know how far away she is. I never thought I would be using it to track down a runaway wife until my wife did run away, but I had her location on my laptop from the moment that I figured that I needed to fetch her back.

The truck was parked right outside a modest house so I knocked on the door and a guy answered. I could hear some women whimpering in the living room around the corner, but I waited to be invited in.

Abigail

Guilt is a strong emotion. It needs to be buried deep. Maybe what it really needs is to be assigned to somebody else – the woman that lived inside Ava. It seemed easier to say that she had made the choices, easier to say that she was the selfish one who never had any concern for Ava. If she existed as a separate person then she was certainly capable of salting away all the funds needed for surgery without Ava knowing. She was also capable of abducting me and forcing me to go with her right into that operating theater to be turned into the woman I was supposed to be – not an evil woman like her but the happy and innocent woman that any man would be proud to call his wife.

The problem with doing that is that it is a form of insanity – a self-created delusion there to mask the truth.

Honesty is better. I needed to be honest. But I ran away from Dorian just as I had from Ava. I should have told him the truth – that I had a wife left abandoned in another city who had no idea if I was alive or dead and possibly could not move on because of that.

I should have told Ava the truth, before I left and when I returned. When I left, I was Mark and nobody knew my secret. It just seemed easier to let things stay that way. Nobody would think ill of me if I just disappeared. No – it was worse than that. And yet, when I came back my foolish mind still tried to find a way to explain things without taking responsibility.

I deserve criticism, if not punishment.

But instead, as she was at last was able to hold Riley while I told her how sorry I was for what I did, and how I would now pay the price for my wrongdoing, I looked up and there was Dorian walking towards me with his hand outstretched ready to take me home.

I simply said – “Ava I am so sorry from treating you this way, but everything here now belongs to you. I will sign it all over. Just send me the papers. You have a good man here, better than your first man, who was not even a man at all. I hope that you are very happy together. If you are even half as happy as Dorian has made me then you will not give any of this another thought.”

And then my man scooped me up and took me away.

The End
3057

© Maryanne Peters 2025

Author's Note: This was another challenge set by Erin. Here is her outline: “A husband who has been missing for four years arrives back home as a woman. He claims to have been abducted but his story has holes in it. A few days later a man comes to the door looking for his wife, with a story to tell the lady of that house and her new boyfriend”