"Conscience"
Author's Note: This story was inspired by rmcrms5's ficlet, "The Perfect Wife." Seriously, if you are of age and can read adult content, GO READ IT. It's dark, dramatic, but an excellent piece. It literally leaves you in suspense and dying to see what happens next.
She graciously is letting me post this, so one way to thank her would be to go check out her story. Other than that, I'll just say right now that I dislike it intensely when you read and don't review. So please review...or don't. Hopefully you will though. I like to get feedback.
The test screening is all set up; the completed commercial ready to show. The mood in the room is far too casual for what they're about to see. It's a sort of public service announcement, and also rather like a confession. Short as it is, it took a lot to film the piece, and those who were put in charge of making it are rather glad it's almost over.
She can relate; she was glad when it was over for her too....
As the lights dim down, the test audience settles down into the comfortable cineplex seats, and quiets as the first credits roll. They did not know the nature of the commercial, but were simply brought there to give their opinion on it. Was it thought-provoking? Did it get the message across?
These were the sort of questions they'd answer on the post-screening survey the makers had concocted. Everyone was so hopeful it'd go over well, for such a horrid concept put to film.
The theatre is black now as they wait for it to begin.
Soon, a woman appears on screen. She is horribly broken-looking; pale with visible bruises littering almost every inch of her body. Dried blood sticks in her hair; there's a small gash in the corner of her forehead. She is shaking as if she was cold or in the midst of shock. She is curled up in the fetal position on the ground, still shivering. Whimpering to herself, she turns her face to the audience, her features tremulous.
"I just said what I thought of it," she began quietly. "What I thought of how he treated me, his rules, our marriage...all of it."
"Needless to say," she added, "I didn't like it, and he didn't like me talking back to him."
At this point the audience is riveted to their seats. They can understand the general premise of the commercial: domestic violence. Their consciences tell them it's wrong, and their hearts all go out to the poor woman on the screen. The only thing that keeps their eyes glued to the screen is the desire of finding out her whole story. Where did her marriage go wrong? What rules was she talking about? What evil things had he done to her? Who was this man? For he must certainly be some sort of monster, ugly on the outside as he is on the inside. That's what their minds conjure up anyway. Someone ugly, someone you could imagine being that sick in behaviour.
"I always thought he was so handsome...in the beginning," she reminisced ruefully, "and he was. He truly was beautiful. Tall, muscled...beautiful green eyes, and his hair too was gorgeous, a reddish-brown colour."
The audience's previous theory alters. A monster in disguise, it seems.
"But he wanted me to be perfect. A perfect wife," she says, emphasizing sarcastically the latter title, a spark of defiance lighting in her tortured eyes.
"I was not to have my own opinions, thoughts...feelings even. I was supposed to be this."
The screen split into two halves, diminishing the woman who even still laid on the ground, trying not to move to exacerbate any of her injuries. In the new half of the screen though, was a picture of a couple at a breakfast table. The woman, wife perhaps, was sitting on a man's lap, pouring coffee for him. Her face was completely devoid of any emotion whatsoever, except that of strained concentration. The man didn't seem to notice her inner struggle. He had one hand clenched tightly around her miniscule waist, the other playing with a lock of her chocolate brown hair.
The man was gorgeous, truly. But there wasn't something entirely right about the look he was giving his wife. He didn't look at her with any love or affection, but rather a mixed countenance of lust and scrutiny, as if he was waiting for her to make some mistake.
That explained her concentration, never mind the strain. She was trying her damndest not to make the mistake he expected of her.
The split screen dissolved, going back to the woman on the floor. "That was me and my husband shortly before we married. I served breakfast to him every day."
She was eclipsed by the photograph's reappearance, and the audience could almost swear her voice echoed, though no such effect had been put into the film. Giving the watchers a minute to re-scrutinize the picture, it slowly faded away, back to the woman.
"Whenever I pulled away from him when we'd kiss, he'd punish me. Whenever I spoke up to him, he'd punish me. I had to edit my own thoughts before I ever spoke, and even then, I was only to speak to him when spoken to..."
As she spoke, a flashing montage of both her perspective and the pictures flashed, and the wildness of it all, seeing her face, the photo, her, photo....it made you compare the two. And what you ended up finding was that the two weren't all that different. She may not be bruised in the photo, but she's still scared. Her eyes are still as hallow and as haunting in the live feed as in the old picture.
Then a close-up of her photographed eyes dominates the screen, and you can still hear her speaking.
"He said he loved me, that we'd be together forever. But those words only ever frightened me more. I didn't want to be with him forever. I couldn't make it forever. I couldn't just keep living the life that I was. So I spoke up to him again, and here I am now. Punished."
She said it with a sense of grave finality, like one might say "The End" after reading a storybook or a fairy tale.
The screen flickered back to her lying on the ground. She looked worse than before, as if she was slowly losing all of her strength, her will to live. She blinked her eyes once, her lips drooping a bit more before she spoke again.
"There is no such thing as a perfect wife. There's not even a perfect man. There are however, two types of men in this world: those who bring pain, and those that actually have a heart," she finished.
Her eyes shut.
The picture on the screen flickered and died.
The end.
Some in the audience even cried.
"So how was it?" one of the filmmakers asked a woman sitting in the back room by her lonesome.
"Truthful," she said simply. "It was very honest."
The director gazed at her, his boyish face stricken with sadness. He hesitated for a minute, but before she could get up to leave, he asked her the question he really wanted to know the answer to. The one he almost held himself back from asking, to spare her the recollection.
"So...how did you get out?"
"He was shot through the heart by one of the patients who'd escaped from the psychiatric ward. He was a doctor you know. Healing people everyday from nine to five, and then when he got home, he'd just break people. I guess in a way it's oddly fitting of him...creating patients for those of his profession," she answered wryly, but no smile passed her lips.
"Anyway, I'm just waxing poetic. Truth is, he died...and that's how I got out of it. It's just that simple. Had he not been shot, I probably wouldn't be out of it. We might have had kids by now, and he would have raised them in his beliefs. After all, I'm just their mother, a vessel for their creation, not to teach them any nonsense like conscience or morals."
The director shook his head miserably.
"I'm truly sorry Bella."
"It's okay Mike. This film will probably get your career started, and well...I got closure. It's enough," Bella answered.
"How'd you like more? I could maybe...take you out sometime, show you a man who isn't concerned with perfection," he suggested.
"Mike, I..." she began, her face wrinkling slightly as she tried to let him down easy. He meant well but she wasn't nearly ready for any sort of relationship, and doubted she would for a long, long time.
"How about a friend then?" he amended, smiling gently at her.
She returned it with a ghost of a grin, her lips turned up only the tiniest bits at the corners.
"I'd like that very much, thank you."