𝐈𝐑𝐎𝐍 𝐌𝐀𝐈𝐃𝐄𝐍 ᵈʳᵉᵃᵐ ˢᵐᵖ ʷᵃʳ

NINE: BLOOD ROT ON SATIN

You're dreaming again.

This time, you're in the house with your fiancé, the man who you were bound to marry, the ring that he proposed with gleaming like a cat's eye under a lantern. A large diamond ring, almost grotesque like a pallid cyst on your finger that shone like iridescent fish scales whenever you moved from your chair.

He, your soon-to-be husband, looked unenthusiastic as you at the prospect of marrying. Though he offered a meager support in his own darkest hours at the mention of the Day of Purification. He and you slept on separate beds. Ate during separate hours. Sat on separate cushions and dared not to look at each other in the eyes. And when the occasion for the fiancée to cook for her fiancé arose, you would serve him breakfast with guilt, lunch with regret, and dinner with grievous acceptance at your circumstances. It was almost as if you two were working in harmony like cogs, not never stuck to a connection: you merely worked to get the engine going.

But this is no dream about reminiscing on the domesticity of your former life.

You are walking down the marketplace with an arm perched on your fiancé's forearm, a bonnet concealing your perfect visage from the Spring sun. Your white dress rustled with every dress, almost like the fillet of a cod laid out to dry in the heat. An ominous silence hung over the marketplace, butchers smashing their cleaver through joint bones and fishermen spraying water down to dilute the blood pouring from their catches. Vegetable shop vendors perched their picks in woven beige baskets: an edible bouquet.

Some, when they passed by, bowed their heads down at you before walking away. Those instructed to travel in groups looked like a cluster of lice, their heads bowed and solemn in their walk.

"(First name)," Your husband once said to you. You were staring at the split head of a fish, its glassy, full eye wobbling with every breeze that sifted through. "I must tell you something."

You nod at him to continue.

"It is not that I detest you," He says, almost inaudibly, as he hands over coins for the purchase you had made. He talks in gasps, terrified of ears potentially open his way. "But I am not attracted to you."

"And I you," You murmur back, in agreement. His grip on the bag tightens.

"No, you don't understand," He says. In his eyes was some sort of feral desperation, some sort of screeching panic that was begging his brain to silence. "I am not attracted to women."

You pause, but stumble back into a walk to maintain a façade of normalcy. He looked nervous—no, he looked completely stoic, but he would look at the empty alleyways as if planning on his escape; his unpremeditated confession; his erratic and gasping breath concealed by your bonnet brushed up against his lips; his sudden, sulky silence that went unnoticed by the rest.

"I understand," You finally say. He looked afraid when you suddenly smiled, leaning into his ear to weave together the scene of a fiancée teasing her fiancé out of adoration. "Let's go home and discuss this."

The two of you quickly walk home. Once the door was shut, he goes to draw the curtains. Thick, navy-blue curtains block out the light and leave the two of you in the dusty dim air.

You sit on the table, and he, across you. You rest your elbows on the surface and he follows. You lean in, almost as if to kiss him, but stop short just in front of his teeth.

"Someone will hear," You whisper. "Best to look not suspicious."

"I understand," he says. Then, he says, "Will you betray me?"

"No," You say. "I don't understand your feelings. But I will not tell anyone of this."

He leans in forwards, pass your lips so that he could rest his lips above your ear.