In the sour, stench of London: a Victorian woman scurried out of a pallid building, like a cockroach from a dingy hole. Leaving behind the shards of broken dreams and false kisses. She hissed slightly, her heels accidentally plunging into a pile of chocolatey gloop.
Gas lamps glowed and flickered, illuminating the pools of vapour emitted by her breath. She turned to gaze back at the stony building and with a click of her heals, she was engulfed by the darkness.
Dear Arthur,
I simply cannot go on in this loveless marriage, we both know it has simply existed out of convenience.
I have requested an annulment, on the grounds that our marriage, despite it's age of three years has not been consummated. I have undergone a virginity test, so you have been spared a virility examination.
I am deeply sorry that we shall part on these terms, but I do hope that in the future: you shall be able to forgive my actions and meet a person who you will be capable of loving unconditionally.
Farewell,
He sat alone, in some foul-smelling pub. Bodies of the working-class pressed together, an odd fruity smell of perspiration and shit lingered in the air. He was rather conspicuous: A man of high class wearing an elegant dress-coat with liquorice buttons, only a pint of frothing amber for company. Upon his head sat tufts of dishevelled gold, and in his eye sockets lay emeralds worthy of a treasure chest.
Arthur crushed a piece of yellow parchment in his palm.
How dare that wretched strumpet thrust him into such scandal. As a successful writer and heir to his family's fortune, the papers were sure to have a field day. Within days, the whole of London would be questioning his competence as a man, all of them whispering, contemplating his apparent lack of virility. Old men, with sooty fingers would cackle and even the most demure of women would be forced the cover their faces with a fan.
This would be the end of him. He had to get far, far away, out of London. No. Out of the country. perhaps within time: the leering face of London would dissolve, but for now: He had to escape this humiliation with a little of his dignity intact.
It was out of convenience. A mere façade to mask his inability to sate himself with a woman.
Suddenly, he rose from his seat. He swung back an ancient oak door, and fled into the pearly moonlight, he passed the withered glow of the most unsavoury of establishments, and by morning his leather case would be stuffed with various essentials and knick-knacks, he would empty is bank account and he would be gone. Gone before the sun could kiss the reeking stench of London.
In the midst of Paris, midnight bloomed.
Crimson sheets were twisted, pale limbs flailed and a man with hair that trickled to his shoulders gasped and panted, attempting to emulate the sweet song of a siren. Yet his sailor was a plump man, a face purple with strain and a nose peppered with broken veins, and on his finger there was a dull gold ring, a symbol of a sacred covenant, though he was not with his wife, he was in bed with a whore.