Page 46 of Depravity

“The fuck did you just say?”

“I hate you.” She says again. With more venom. More anger. More emotion than I’ve ever heard from her. Gone is the placid, meek little girl. The woman in front of me now is all poison. “I hate you.” She screams it once more. “I hate you. I hate you. I hate you.”

I slam her head back, slam it into the rug and her eyes roll back on impact.

“I’ll, I’ll never love you. I’ll never feel anything for you but hate.”

The fact that she’s not stammering right now pisses me off even more.

My fingers curl around the chain of my mother’s necklace around her throat and I tighten it, seeing the way her flesh pops out, the way it reddens. Part of me wants to do it, to strangle her, to silence her forever.

My fucking wife.

She was meant to be docile. Malleable. But this bitch before me is anything but.

She starts clawing, flailing, her body jerking violently as she tries to throw me off. For one moment I consider doing it, tightening my mother’s chain even further, taking the last of her breath and watching as she slowly dies.

It would be a fine punishment.

It would be more than justifiable.

Her eyes bulge. All the little blood vessels seem to pop and they go so violently red. Her tongue lops out of her mouth, swelling with the pressure.

And then my fingers ease. The voice of reason talks us both off that ledge.

“My fucking wife.” I hiss as she gasps for breath.

More tears stream down her bruised face. The chain sticks to her skin, and I can see where the mottled flesh is already turning purple.

She starts shaking; whether from shock or fear I don’t know, but I realise now that I’ve been going about this all wrong.

I shouldn’t be trying to win her love with nice gestures. I shouldn’t be trying to kill her fight with kindness.

No, I’ll break her the way Magnus broke Lilianna.

I’ll break my wife down into tiny little pieces and I’ll rebuild her until the only thoughts she has in her head are the ones I’ve put there.

Ican’t move.

My entire body feels like it’s been crushed. Broken.

I’m still here, on the floor, where he left me.

My ribs are throbbing from where he kicked me, and that awful necklace is still wrapped around my throat like it’s trying to choke the last of the oxygen from my lungs.

Every time I blink, I see it. That look in his eyes. That anger.

I knew Conrad was a monster. I knew from all the things he’d done to me so far but today, today was so much worse.

I shudder, letting out a chuckle that is so at odds with the situation I’m in. In what world is him choking me worse than him raping me?

But it is. It’s so much worse.

And I know now, in my heart, that this man will be the death of me. He is going to kill me. He is going to lose control, and he will snap my neck before he even considers the consequences.

Would it be better to die though? Better to just get it over with?

My tears stream more at that thought.

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