Jill Manor

The dampened stone from Jill-Manor absorbed the sound of the constant rain as it pummeled overhead. Burying the world outside in a relentless cast of indominable rolling fog, just as it did the many, many secrets harbored within. In the four years since their marriage, Catherine and Thomas Wilke had lived in a constant state of mutually suffocating possession. Theirs was not a gentle, passive romance as many would think, it was a fierce, all-consuming affliction that they both suffered and died from, even in life.

It didn’t help Thomas Wilke had memorized the uneven beat of Catherine’s shallow breaths from across the bed as she dreamed of escape. Or that she had grown accustomed to the demanding, deliberate steps of his muddy boots before he ever stepped through the door; half drunk and rambling.

They lived in a place miles from nowhere, nearest the drowning moors and Cliffs of Petrichor. A place no one else would dare step foot in on their own accord. By the time Catherine and Thomas Wilke realized they were in trouble, it was too late—the moors had already pulled them under, they were completely intertwined like dead tree roots in a waterlogged swamp.

“You were supposed to be mine and mine alone,” Thomas hissed, his hands tight in her hair, his lips feeling the pulse of her throat as she tensed against his skin.

“I am yours, always,” she growled, in repeat.

Their vows were undoubtedly dark, cradled in irretrievable blood, their rings of glittering gold becoming a cage they no longer had the key to, crimping lines into their fingers, suffocating the life from their hearts lines.

They did not come in peace, nor did they desire any future that didn’t have the other. No family, no fortune, no blessings of a lineage to carry their name forward, for they so to craved the other that no one else could do. No one came before them, and the each made sure no one would come after. Ever.

They craved complete, absolute, unyielding possession over one another, entirely—and so it seemed, a love built from the tired bones of Jill-Manor would bear no poisonous fruit. It would leave nothing but ruin—no room for spirits, or ghosts, or memories. No place to breathe or grow or toil and lament.

This was a love that did not exist for anyone else, but them. The same struggles day-in, and day-out.

Thomas Wilke possessed Catherine entirely, completely—and yet, he despised her just as equally, in every sense of the word. She was bound to him with such a vulnerability, it made them both weak. In her, he saw no way out of this treasonous prison for she had captivated his heart, his will and his mind, without abandon.

There was nowhere for them to go, no one else who would have them in the same sordid ways.

To be at the manor, to leave the manor, it was torture. It led into a fastidious abyss, where light and dark played no roles. No heaven, no hell. Every secret shared amongst whispered lips became a weapon, a blade cutting so deep that even their wounds couldn’t weep.

They shared meals in silence, only the clanking of their silverware on sterling plates resonated into the hearth, until the last dying embers of the fire roared to a sweltering halt. Absolution. They chose the slowest, most agonizing form of death one could manage. They had no mercy. No time. No happy ending.

It would seem, this life, that story—was not for them, not meant for their world.

The end came with the stifling breeze of a cold winters frost on a sunny spring day. Catherine Wilke had never been allowed or able to leave. Not by will or way, instead she simply withered away under the weight of his pressing devotion. Her health slipping like water through the slippery rocks of Jill-Manor Creek. Her bed, her tomb. He did not weep at the sight of her lifeless body, he wore it like a shroud. Locking himself in with her corpse, demanding her tepid ghosts to return and torture him. Be it in person, or spirit. He had finally come undone in ways no other could fix.

He banished himself to the depths of whatever realm she had departed last, wishing death upon his self. Unable to pull a breath or pulse from her confines. He stayed trapped in the rot of Jill-Manor bound to a life of death until he too could pass.