Death By Chocolate

A slice of chocolate cake…chocolate fucking cake. I’m fatally allergic to chocolate! We’ve been together for eight years, married for five of those years, and he still gave me chocolate cake for my birthday! Not only that, but it’s leftovers from his “business meeting” with his latest secretary. I thought it was a dream when we got married, he was the love of my life and I thought he felt the same, but not even a year later he started having affairs with numerous women and showed a bare minimum acknowledgement of me or our marriage.

I wish I could leave, but I was foolish, I trusted him when he asked me to sign a prenup not long after he proposed. If I try to leave him the prenup will make sure I lose everything, even what was already mine before the marriage, including my family’s business. He insisted that it would protect our future and, when I look back on it, didn’t really give me a chance to read it thoroughly before filling it away. He took over the company not long after my father died nearly nine months after our marriage and he convinced me to sign away my say in the way the company ran, so I could “focus on being a loving housewife and mother”. Anyone of those things should have been a red flag.

In hindsight, he was behaving distantly even before he proposed. He was often busy and was not affectionate unless I initiated it and even then, it was brief. My mother hated him and made her feelings clear to us, but I thought we were in love and didn’t want to listen. He proposed two months after she died while I was still vulnerable in my grief and needed to feel like I wasn’t alone. God, I feel so stupid! It was so obvious that he wasn’t interested in me but in my family’s business and now because of my obliviousness I’ve been trapped in a loveless marriage for years.

I regret ever having even met him every day of our marriage. There were times that I had wondered why he hasn’t abandoned me; he doesn’t need me now that he has taken everything. On our second anniversary I had gathered the nerve to ask him, ‘Because you’re mine, you belong to me, and I won’t let anyone have what is mine. The fact that it gives me pleasure to see your beautiful face contort in pain and grief with every knife I twist in your heart is just a bonus.’ I was left speechless with horror as he gave me a proprietary kiss on the cheek and walked away. Any love I felt for him died that day and now I spend my days just going through the motions.

There is nothing left for me in this empty house and hollow life. I take a seat in front of the slice of cake and stare in contemplation. I have nothing left and no one to fight for, what reason do I have to stay here. I pick up the fork and pull the plate closer to me. He’s so meticulous, he would never make a mistake like this, so he’s telling me to kill myself, isn’t he? Did he think I wouldn’t go through with it?! Well, fuck him!

In a fit of anger, I take a deep breath and take a small bite of the cake. This will be the closest I’ll ever get to freedom. The affect is immediate. My tongue starts to feel too big for my mouth and itch like if I took a mouthful of ants. I’m starting to have trouble breathing as the second’s pass. I fall off my chair and collapse onto the floor as my vision starts to darken. I close my eyes and smile as I lay there dying. Finally…I’m free… I think with my last breath and fade away.

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Beep..

Beep…

Beep…

Wha…what is that? I try to turn towards the sound only to feel a sudden drop and hit the floor. I lay there disoriented and confused. Wasn’t I already on the floor? What am I doing in bed?

“Ana?! Is everything ok?” I start at the voice, not just because it is unexpected but because it is familiar, heartbreakingly familiar. I shoot up right, slightly dizzy from the sudden change of position, and stumble to my feet, tripping over the tangle of blankets. I race down the stairs towards the kitchen and stop to an abrupt halt at the scene inside. My mother is at the table staring at me in worry and my father was at the stove doing the same. It seems like she was going over some files while Dad was cooking breakfast, our usual routine before she got sick.

“Honey?!” She asks in alarm as I started to silently cry. She and Dad quickly make their way over to me and wrap me in a hug to try to comfort me. “Are you ok? Anastasia, what’s wrong?”

I sob in relief and joy as I hug them to me tighter, afraid to let this dream go. “Nothing is wrong.” I whisper as I snuggle into their arms, breathing in their scent, “It was just a bad dream.” If this was just a dream, I never want to wake up, and if this is real, I will make sure that my nightmare of a future will never come true. “It will be better soon.” I say determinedly as I glare at the calendar over their shoulders, remembering the date I would be having later tonight, “I’ll make sure of it.”