Now listen, I’m not saying I was the bastard love child of George Clooney and Ryan Gosling or anything like that, but when you factored in my soft features and my career, there was no denying I was a serious catch.
The problem is looks meant everything to Hannah. Everything.
See I’d known since early on in our relationship she sought validation through her physical appearance. Personally, I blamed her parents. In our first year of dating, while we lay side-by-side on the beach swapping stories about our crappy childhoods, she told me her dad once refused to put up her school photos.
When she asked why, he patted her head and said, “Don’t take it personally honey, it’s not your fault your acnes so disgusting.”
So, you can understand where her toxic obsession sprung from. Not that I’m excusing what she did, just making the point that although her skin may have cleared up, those self-esteem issues most definitely did not.
It’s funny, in a grim sort of way. Because between her long, golden curls and piercing brown eyes, you could count the number of times Hannah needed to buy her own drinks on one hand. And her fixation with ALWAYS being the centre of attention could get a little…corrosive.
Like one time, at a gala dinner, the senior partners at my firm practically started a Battle Royale craning to get a closer look at my Cesare Attolini suit and new Yacht-Master Rolex—the one with the bidirectional rotatable bezel and black dial.
Had Hannah stayed home that night, it probably would have gone unnoticed. I woke up the next morning only to find a fist-sized tear beneath the lapel of that dinner jacket, along with two buttons missing.
In the months following ‘Attolini-gate’, she insisted on attending every last cocktail party and charity ball, no matter how mundane, in the flashiest dress imaginable, her hair all done up, luscious and bouncy. With a glass of champagne in hand, she endlessly referred to herself as my trophy wife. Or the winning lottery ticket that blew into my hand.
Little by little, these snide remarks ate away at me. From the way she talked, you’d think she married a professional Shrek impersonator, so the next time she dropped a ‘don’t you think you’re punching above your weight with me honey?’ quip in front of polite company, I casually replied, “Actually, I reckon we’re about even looks wise.”
As I polished off my whiskey, there was a long, awkward pause, interrupted only by one startled on-looker choking on a shrimp tartlet.
To Hannah’s credit, her temper didn’t boil over until we got home. However, rather than explode because of the humiliation, she just endlessly ranted about how I’d placed us on equal footing physically.
Thirty minutes of shouting, screaming, and stomping around the house later, with half the furniture sprawled across the floor or broken, she said, “Fine, we’re even. You’re the window dressing AND the main breadwinner in this relationship. Congratulations.”
With that, the bedroom door slammed shut behind her.
Did I already know this encounter was headed to a bleak place? Absolutely. It was almost dawn, though, and I could feel Hannah’s raw fury from the far end of the hall. So, I spent the night in the guest room.
Hopefully a little rest would help dissolve that temper…
The next morning, from across the breakfast counter, the beautiful woman stared right through me.
“Everything okay?” I asked, my voice all meek.
She finished her coffee, tossed the empty cup into the sink, and exited the room without a single word.
Over the next few days, I’d catch her watching me whenever she thought I wasn’t paying attention. While in the shower, the bathroom door would shiver open, just a little, and I’d quickly turn off the water and shout, “Hello?” only to be met with silence. In the middle of the night, floorboards would squeak and I’d catch a glimpse of a figure in the outside hall, but by the time I flicked on the bedside lamp and scrambled to my feet, the quiet house would be snoozing peacefully.
Meanwhile, I refused to believe the obvious truth: that I was terrified of my own wife. I mean, it sounded ridiculous, and if my buddies caught me tiptoeing past the master bedroom or jumping at my own reflection, they’d have said, ‘You can bench 220 but you’re terrified of your missus? Puh-lease’.
So, rather than go stay at a hotel, I marched into our room one night, bouquet of roses in hand, and announced to Hannah that I couldn’t hold a candle to her. I said every time the human beam of sunlight I was privileged enough to call my wife and I stood next to each other, I looked so ugly by comparison on-lookers wondered whether my parents might have been related.
Hannah gave me a long, hard stare before pulling back the bedsheets.
What was I meant to do, wait for a damn smoke signal? I hopped straight in, desperate to believe we’d closed the book on that ugly chapter of our marriage.
When I woke up, my hands and feet were bound to the bedposts by metal cuffs. My dearly beloved sat on top of me wearing a face mask, her hips straddling my chest. In her gloved hand, there was a glass container filled with clear liquid.
Hannah said, “I’ve been mulling over what you said, and you were right before: we are equal.” As she unscrewed the lid, a pungent aroma seeped out singeing my nostril hairs. “But that got me thinking, if I’m not the pretty one, what exactly do I bring to this marriage? Nothing, that’s what. So I’m gonna knock you down a few pegs. You know, to even things out.”
The container dangled directly above my skull, slowly tipping forward, inch by terrible inch. Along the side, there was a yellow and black illustration of a beaker spilling over a bare hand and eating away at the flesh.
Oh fuck.
Now a stammering mess, I choked out a feeble, “Hannah…please…”
The last thing I saw was her big, bright smile—the smile that made so many men melt like butter in a hot pan. Then, scalding liquid doused my eyes, and an invisible battalion of hungry ants sunk their mandibles into my skin.
From there, there are only vague echoes of me clawing my way across the room, a scream issuing from my bubbling lips, and eye-jelly oozing onto the carpet. Either I broke free from my restraints or Hannah released me.
The world appeared as blobs of swirling colour, and the front of my nightshirt kept growing hotter by the second. As I ripped it off over my skull, there came a flash of bright light, accompanied by laughter.
It occurred to me that Hannah was probably watching this with great amusement, delighted by her husband’s disfigurement. What I didn’t realize at the time was that she’d also snapped photos to WhatsApp to our closest friends.
In the morning, they’d wake up, open pictures of me wrestling my shirt over my head—accompanied by the caption *my ugly man’s got that beach bod—*and chuckle at what they believed was my ‘disgusting Halloween mask’.
Disoriented, still burning, I screamed for help through liquifying lips, again and again. There came no response.
My phone wasn’t charging on the bedside cabinet. I fumbled around on my hands and knees, past the carpeted hall, finally uncovering a cold, tiled floor. The bathroom.
Guided by muscle memory, I worked my way over into the bathtub, my hands spider-walking up the side. With help from the towel rack, I dragged myself to a standing position.
The controls for the shower sat at chest height. Still blind, with the inferno raging on my face growing worse with each passing second, I mashed buttons until a blast of perfect, icy water hit me in the face, providing momentary relief from the pain.
It wasn’t long before the showerhead got yanked from its holster. The jet pelted me in the stomach, moved across my torso, and around the side of my thighs.
As it turned out, Hannah decided to record an Insta story. Water fight with the hideous hubby. Love how we’re still sooo goofy after all these years!
I toppled over the side of the tub, my ribs thudding against the floor. A short time later I found myself in the outer hall and as my hand groped for floor, it found only a handful of air, and I went toppling down the stairs.
Disoriented, bruised, I found myself trapped in that maze of a house. This wasn’t working. My only chance of summoning help was with Hannah’s phone, but how to get it from her?
With a series of stiff shoves, my darling wife wrestled me onto the armchair in the lounge, her delicate voice barely audible through the agony-filled haze.
She eased herself into a seat across my lap, one arm draped across the back of my neck. Oh fuck—she was taking a selfie, she was actually taking a selfie. She really had lost it.
The second I saw a flashing light, I sprung into action. Later, I was told in the action shot captured by the phone my face had the consistency of strawberry jelly, and where our cheeks touched melted skin stretched out like the warm cheese on a piece of garlic bread.
Still blind, I lashed out, swiping at Hannah’s chest and arms. The phone went spinning out of her hand and she tried to run, but I cut off her escape, knowing if she slipped away I’d be left there to rot.
With every ounce of strength in my body I reigned down blows, hearing bones crunch and teeth shatter. My 'better' half fought back, swiping at me, tearing away chunks of flesh so large medics would later tell me huge portions of bone shone through.
Hannah collapsed onto the floor, groaning. Just from running my fingers across her crumpled features, I could tell she didn’t that ‘more breathtaking than the first day of summer’ smile anymore, and most of the polish had been wiped off those well-defined cheekbones...
From there, my survival became a game of Marco Polo with the phone, which had taken shelter beneath the sofa. In the centre of the screen sat a blurry green button. I tapped it, and then a concerned voice spoke back at me.
I screamed. I screamed until the police officers kicked open the front door, then I lay in the back of an ambulance speeding toward the hospital, the sirens loud in my ears, a paramedic promising everything would be okay—that they’d save my vision.
Twelve weeks I spent in recovery, my face encased with bandages. The authorities took Hannah for her own quick pit stop in the emergency room before carting her off to jail, where she’s currently awaiting trial.
From what I hear the other inmates have taken to calling her the elephant woman…
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