Page 1
Story: Unseen
1
THE BETTER CHOICE
Death was so much quieter than I had expected.
I was not sure what had made me think it would be loud. The only dead bodies I had ever seen were laid out in coffins, silently sleeping and smelling violently of Lily of the Valley. I had never been a witness to anyone actually dying.
Perhaps it was less about expectation, and more about a secret desire. I wanted a loud death. Pleading and crying, begging me for mercy.
The same pleas I had uttered in those first months of marriage, every time my geriatric husband had leered over me. Every time those disgusting, twisted fingers had forced themselves into the most intimate parts of my body, bemoaning how I was never “ready” for him. Every time that hacking cough burst through his lungs, brought on by any manner of exertion, launching spittle across my face.
Yes, that was it. As I held the silk pillow down over my pathetic husband’s face, I was not ashamed to admit that I wanted him to suffer, as I had suffered. But I had endured. I had found a way through all those nights. I had stoppedbegging and pleading, forging ahead, all those nights leading to this one.
The night where he was now succumbing.
Slowly, quietly, nothing but a muffled whimper or a rattly groan betraying the fact that his life was now ebbing away, and at my hand no less.
His pretty little bride.
I recoiled as one of his hands came to rest against my cheek, and I jerked my head away from the touch. He whined, his chest shuddering beneath me.
“Just go to sleep, old man,” I murmured, pressing harder as his heartbeat slowed. “Go to sleep, and this will all be over.”
I was doing him a service, really. He was so very old. That hacking cough was surely a sign that he was unwell, and not long for this world. When we had first been married, he would have overpowered me had I attempted this. But his slaps across my face every month when I bled had weakened over the years, until he could barely lift his hand. The crags in his face deepened, the skin blanching til the purple network of veins beneath his skin resembled a worn map. He was so old now, old and weak and feeble.
If anything, these last years of his life had been the happiest, surely. What kind of man wouldn’t be thrilled to spend every night bedding a woman young enough to be his granddaughter? Showing her off to everyone like a trophy, like a prize he had snatched up for himself.
Bile rose in my throat.
Men were revolting. I hated them, all of them. My father, my uncles, and my decrepit old husband. All of them had used me. All of them had seen me as nothing more than a pawn in their twisted plans for power and wealth.
None of them had reckoned with prim and proper little Evie taking that power from them.
I hiccuped out a laugh, pressing my face to the pillow to smother the sound. Even the night was quiet, the sky clear, the moon shining through the window to illuminate the floor in cool blue light. Such a peaceful end. Much better than Acton Caine deserved.
His fingers twitched once, twice, then went still. I kept the pillow pressed to his face for another minute, making sure that all air had been stolen from his lungs.
There was no more movement. No sound. No breath.
Acton was dead.
I collapsed, gulping down air and blinking away unexpected tears of relief. It was finally over. I was finally free.
“It was either him, or me.” I am not sure whom I was addressing in the empty room. The quiet night? God, perhaps? It didn’t matter. “I’m young. I can still do good. I’m the better choice.”
I slowly withdrew the pillow from his face, bracing myself. I expected to feel revulsion, maybe even a flash of horror at what I had done. But even that did not come as expected.
Indeed, Acton looked like an old man who had simply gone to sleep. His eyes were slightly open, a slit of bloodshot white still visible. His mouth hung slack, useless, no breath passing his lips. Just an old fool whose time had come.
I dared not touch him any further, simply drew up the covers, as if he had simply been sleeping, then rose from the bed. I crossed the room to gaze up at the night sky, to my only witness, the moon, which glowed brightly overhead.
“You understand, do you not?” I put a hand against the cold window pane. “You could not blame me for this, could you?”
The moon did not reply.
I closed my eyes, and took a deep breath, feeling, for the first time in three years, that perhaps I was a person after all.Not a wife, a mere vessel for Acton Caine’s heirs. I would soon find my way back to myself, now that I was free, unshackled from this cursed family.
I cast one last glance over my shoulder at Acton’s feeble form, inert in the bed, before turning on my heel and creeping across the floor to the door of his bedroom. My feet found all the places in the wooden floor that did not creak, a path I had memorised, perhaps planning this night without even realising it, all these months. I paused at the door, waiting for any sound, the distant footsteps of a passing servant.
Table of Contents
- Page 1 (Reading here)
- Page 2
- Page 3
- Page 4
- Page 5
- Page 6
- Page 7
- Page 8
- Page 9
- Page 10
- Page 11
- Page 12
- Page 13
- Page 14
- Page 15
- Page 16
- Page 17
- Page 18
- Page 19
- Page 20
- Page 21
- Page 22
- Page 23
- Page 24
- Page 25
- Page 26
- Page 27
- Page 28
- Page 29
- Page 30
- Page 31
- Page 32
- Page 33
- Page 34
- Page 35
- Page 36
- Page 37
- Page 38
- Page 39
- Page 40
- Page 41
- Page 42
- Page 43
- Page 44
- Page 45
- Page 46
- Page 47
- Page 48
- Page 49
- Page 50
- Page 51
- Page 52
- Page 53
- Page 54
- Page 55
- Page 56
- Page 57
- Page 58
- Page 59
- Page 60
- Page 61
- Page 62
- Page 63
- Page 64
- Page 65
- Page 66
- Page 67
- Page 68
- Page 69
- Page 70
- Page 71
- Page 72
- Page 73
- Page 74
- Page 75
- Page 76
- Page 77
- Page 78
- Page 79
- Page 80
- Page 81
- Page 82
- Page 83
- Page 84
- Page 85
- Page 86
- Page 87
- Page 88
- Page 89
- Page 90
- Page 91
- Page 92
- Page 93
- Page 94
- Page 95
- Page 96
- Page 97
- Page 98
- Page 99
- Page 100
- Page 101
- Page 102
- Page 103
- Page 104
- Page 105
- Page 106
- Page 107
- Page 108
- Page 109
- Page 110
- Page 111
- Page 112
- Page 113
- Page 114
- Page 115
- Page 116