CW: abuse, violence, death or dying, bodily harm, sexism and misogyny, unhealthy relationships.
The hardest person to be honest with is yourself, and acknowledging the gap between fictions you’ve convinced yourself are true and actual reality is a heartbreak holocaust. But honesty is always the best path to walk, even if it cuts like broken glass beneath your feet. Eventually, you’ll notice how long it’s been since you last felt the pain of shattered shards, that each step forward has taught you new ways to navigate, that wounds heal, and every scar is a reminder of how far you’ve come.
The familiar squeeze of his hands around my throat again. He always used both. If you really mean something, you don’t half-ass it. And he meant it.
He meant that I should be without a voice, that he was the one who mattered.
He meant he could end my life then and there.
He was wrong, though.
The capillaries in my neck broke under the force of his fingers. The room turned mossy green and stretched far away, and I was suddenly aware of the walls of my skull, which I’d forgotten about since the last time.
But he wasn’t going to end my life that night. He’d already done it long before. Only—I hadn’t realized yet.
The girl whose life I haunted was dead. But the smile I wore looked so real I even fooled myself.
I had a heartbeat, I had a stomach that digested food, I had feet and hands that I used to wait tables six or seven days a week and barback on nights I worked lunch. A very clever disguise for a ghost.
Of course I’d work for the both of us. After all, someone had to pay for rent and his bar tab and his gas-guzzling pickup truck. Hard as he tried, he couldn’t find a job. Life had never been fair to him. He’d always had it rough. It didn’t even feel like a sacrifice—I was happy to be able to take care of him.
So many hours working left very little time for anything else and all of it belonged to him. What kind of wife would I be if I wasn’t there to make him look good in front of his friends? If I didn’t meet him at the bar after closing the restaurant past midnight—so what if I had to be back in the morning? And if I didn’t make him cum when he wanted, he’d find someone who would.
Between one thing and another, my days were too-full balloons I wouldn’t dare let pop. There was no room left for me. But that was okay, I wasn’t there to claim anything so precious as time, anyway.
• • • •
He killed me so discreetly, so cleverly, I didn’t even feel it happen. Chiseled bits off of me a little at a time. Threw them into marshes or shallow graves. Burned them on pyres right in front of me, distracting me with marshmallows while I sizzled on the flame. Yes, I came to believe, I was worthless and a cunt and everything I thought was true was wrong, which meant everything I said was a lie. Just like all those crazy bitches who came before me. How unfair for this to happen to him again; I had to do better. I owed him that much.
I had turtlenecks for every season and concealer and a devastating amount of love. “Isn’t this what love looks like sometimes?” I’d tell myself through tears. “When there’s so much passion?” We just loved each other so passionately, that had to be it.
For years I thought I still had a life to fight for. So when his hands clasped around my neck, I’d squirm and kick and struggle. In my naivete, I wanted to make it out alive, not knowing it was too late.
• • • •
Eventually, I wised up. That hollow unnameable absence wasn’t all in my head. It was real, just nothing I could point a finger at and say “See?” The absence was real, and it was me. The absolute wrongness of me, in the land of the living. An imposter among flesh and blood people, trying to pass as a real girl.
If I’d been found out, it would give him away too. And I couldn’t betray him like that. I had to protect him.
But I finally understood. I was nothing but a ghost. So when he wrapped those big, heavy hands around my neck and squeezed, I didn’t push back, didn’t fight, didn’t cry. Not anymore. I didn’t do anything at all. I was already dead. He was strangling a costume with no one inside it. And if he squeezed hard enough, not much would change for me.
He never noticed. He thought that was me on the couch, his wife. Face going purple, eyes going red. He still thought if he kept going, he’d end my life then and there. The way only someone who matters could.
But then he wouldn’t have me around to clean up his mess, so he’d let go.
• • • •
It wasn’t until after I left that I learned the story of Bluebeard. He came up during one of our assignments in a course about monsters. I was instantly fascinated. Completely enthralled with this fairy tale. I felt such an immediate and intense connection with it, but every time I told myself that’s because you relate to it; you got away from him, it felt wrong.
Because that isn’t the truth. I’m not the wife who lives. I’m one of the dead ones. The bride I was is just another girl on a pile of dead brides he keeps locked away in a secret chamber.
So now I’m here. Someone different from the girl he killed all those years ago. She’s gone for good. I think about all those crazy bitches who broke his heart before me, how my name has since joined their roster. How the ones who come after will think life hasn’t ever been fair to him, that he’s always had it rough.
It’s been more than five years and I’m still working on the reincarnation, piecing together someone new. Learning laughter and trust and love. Those things all look different to me now. I’ll never laugh the way that girl did, without fear that whatever is so enchanting will transform into something vicious. I’ll never trust like her—automatically, generously. Take people at their word without first being sure it wouldn’t be a fatal misstep to do so. And I’ll never hand my heart over to anyone the way she was so very eager to do.
Not this heart. This heart is mine.
