Chapter Thirty-One:

By the time Glinda had reached the Emerald City it had already been declared throughout the entire land of Oz that Elphaba was dead. The city was, Glinda observed as she snuck her way through town, full of celebration and relief. The citizens of Oz couldn't have been happier with the news of the Wicked Witch of the West's demise. Glinda, on the other hand, was feeling wretchedly and horribly guilty and far more depressed than anyone truly realized. She traveled through the city, thankfully not recognized by anyone, and stood at the doorstep of the house that she and Chuffrey owned. Feelings that she couldn't pinpoint an exact emotion to fluttered in her stomach as she reached for the door handle. She told herself that it was out of necessity and desperation that she was here.

She hadn't wanted to come back to him, she didn't want to grovel at his feet for forgiveness but she had no other choice. She would be ruined if she didn't make sure that Chuffrey told no one about the relationship between Elphaba and her. She had by now convinced herself that the main reason that she was back with Chuffrey was to protect Elphaba's memory and her own reputation.

Pausing ever so slightly, Glinda prepared her fragile state of mind for what was to come after she was welcomed back, if she was even allowed back.

After a few moments of silence, Glinda knocked on the door. It opened and revealed Chuffrey on the other side, dressed in a silver military uniform adorned with badges and medals.

He didn't look as surprised to see her as Glinda wanted him to be. Instead Chuffrey looked at her like he had been expecting this all along.

"You're back," he said simply opening the door a bit wider to allow her to pass.

Glinda said nothing to him as she made her way past him with a cold shoulder and the silent treatment.

The blonde woman walked to her room and was followed by Chuffrey who hadn't said anything else other than what he had spoken at the door. Glinda knew he was waiting until they were alone, for the corridors and halls were filled with their servants, for him to speak and yell at her.

"Did you hear the good news?" he asked as he shut the door to her room behind him. Glinda kept her back towards him and remained silent. Her mind was too preoccupied with going over the details of Elphaba's death.

"She's dead," Chuffrey said gleefully, a smile taking over most of his face. Glinda breathed in deeply if only to keep the tears and sobs at bay.

"I know," she said in a faint voice as she made her way over to her bureau. She was slightly confused when she saw a stack of papers on her desk that was labeled, "Glinda's Speech."

Papers in hand, she turned around to Chuffrey, "What is the meaning of this?"

"Oh that…" Chuffrey made his voice sound bored, "The Wizard sent it over. He said that it would be best if you made the proper declaration that Elphaba was dead, being the Good Witch and all."

Glinda's face paled, "He said that or did you suggest it?" her voice was as hard as steel.

For an answer Chuffrey merely smiled at her with a tight, secret keeping grin.

"That doesn't really matter now, does it? The point is that you have to say it today out on the balcony for all of Oz."

Glinda turned her head back around to read the speech and after a few sentences Glinda found herself enraged, disgusted and sick with the fact that she would be the one who had to say those words about her dead lover.

"I'm not making this damn speech! I won't pretend to be happy about her death!" screamed Glinda as she threw the papers Chuffrey had placed on her desk on the ground and stomped her high heels on them as she tried to walk away.

"Oh yes you will!" shot back Chuffrey as he stepped in front of her and grabbed both of her wrists. He forced her physically to turn around and he held her against him while she tried to get out of his grasp.

With her back against his stomach Glinda tried to turn her neck around in order to spit on her husband's face but by that time she felt extreme pain from her right wrist and focused her eyes on that.

"Stop it," she managed to get out, "I think you're breaking my wrist!"

"No, no I won't stop! I will do what I want with you!" Chuffrey said gruffly as he let go of her wrists and shoved her to the marble floor.

Glinda fell forward and landed on her knees and palms. Her whole body stung from the impact and she felt tears of pain well up in her eyes.

Swallowing the tears back, Glinda slowly looked up at Chuffrey with the most reproachful and hateful glare that blonde could give him.

"I hate you!" she said reverently as she tried to catch her breath. She meant every word and he knew it too.

But instead of retaliating like Glinda thought he would have, the older man she called her husband just smirked at her and shook his head.

"Do you know what I did when I first heard the news of her death?" he asked as he paced around the broken blonde in circles, "I drank in celebration. And then I thought for a minute of our last encounter… and how you said you were going to visit her." At this point Chuffrey kneeled down, grabbed Glinda's chin and forced her to look into his eyes, "You were there, weren't you my dear? You saw the girl kill her and you knew that there was nothing you could do stop it. And now…" he smiled at her cruelly as his other hand was placed on her side and traveled upwards towards her breast, "You've come back to me."

Glinda shook her head and her blonde locks blocked her view and that of which she was thankful for. She opened her mouth to protest but Chuffrey didn't let her speak.

"You did and don't deny it. Now that she's dead, now just a puddle of green liquid, you had no one else to return to. No one else would take you in. Your parents would send you right back to me, your real friends are dead or missing, and you had no one to turn to."

He looked at Glinda with a knowing smile on his face and she didn't respond.

"I will never love you like I loved her," said Glinda finally.

Chuffrey nodded at that and he suddenly seized a fistful of her dress and dragged her towards him on the ground.

"I know… but that doesn't make any difference to me," he hissed in her ear.

His lips were quickly forced upon her own lips and Glinda felt more used and hopeless than she ever had before in her life. As he pressed his body against her Glinda rendered that it was useless and too exhausting to fight back. She slowly fell back onto the floor as Chuffrey's hands made their way to the back of her dress and undid the strings of her attire and corset.

Glinda was tired, too dreary and faint to even protest as she felt his hands slide down against her bareback.

All she could think about was Elphaba. Even as Chuffrey raised her skirts to her thighs and entered her, the bewitching green woman was still on her mind.

Keeping the whimpers of pain inside, Glinda bit on her bottom lip so hard that she drew blood as Chuffrey continued to have his way with her.

His hands roughly dug into her shoulders and his breath was hot on her neck.

If Elphaba were still alive Glinda would have fought against him. She would have slapped him straight across the face and kicked him until he got away from her. But now, now that Elphaba was dead, Glinda had nothing and no one to fight for.

"Elphie…" Glinda's whimper was supposed to only stay inside of her head but it managed to escape her tightly pressed lips into the air.

Immediately Chuffrey stopped and the blonde woman could hear his rapid breathing even though she refused to look at him. With her head turned to the side now, she was more than relieved when he got off of her.

"You can say her name all you want when I do this to you but it won't change the fact that she's dead and you're still alive," reminded Chuffrey in the coldest manner anyone had ever spoken to her.

Glinda's lips quivered and her vision went blurry. Silent clear tears slowly made their way down her cheeks as she lay there on the ground, not even attempting to move and rearrange her clothes that had been pushed up all around her. She felt void, like just another empty life taking up space in this world. Even still Glinda would not like her horrible husband see her cry like this.

"If you don't do this speech, and any other speeches you are asked to do in the future," Chuffrey paused in his speaking, "I will tell everyone that you and the Wicked Witch of the West were lovers. I will tell everybody the truth about what you two really were. You were freaks, the both of you!" He cleared his throat as he stared at her, almost as if he were disgusted, "Now… do you understand that, dear?"

The blonde woman on the floor made no movement or agreement or of refusal so her husband took her silence as a yes.

"I thought you would agree to that," were his parting words.

Glinda cringed, as the door was slammed shut, signaling that he had finally left her alone. Once she was sure, Glinda slowly and with severe aching in her body moved off of the floor. She stood up unsteadily and clutched at her abdomen in more pain than she had ever experienced. This pain though, was not all because of what had just been done to her, it was the pain of being forced to obey, forced to hide her true self from the world and conform to what Chuffrey expected of her.

As Glinda thought of her options, she realized that she had no other choice. Chuffrey had made her stuck and she felt as if she was in a black box that was enclosed on all sides and she was suffocating.

Stumbling most of the way, Glinda went to her medicine cabinet where the numerous bottles of pills had been replenished inside. She grabbed two, four, six, seven bottles in the end and lined them up along the sink. She knew that the only way she was going to get through this speech was as if she was barely conscious for it. It would be better on her soul if she didn't remember saying the horrid words she had to speak about her friend and lover.

She took ten pills from each of the seven bottles and swallowed them ten pills at a time with a glass of water. After she had swallowed the seventy pills, Glinda gripped the edges of the sink with pinching hands. Her stomach churned and felt like she would throw up. Her body started shaking in spasms from the excess medicine she had forced into her small figure.

Glinda looked up into the mirror to see the woman reflected back at her. Her blonde hair shone in a tangled mess around a ghost-like pale face with lips that looked like smears of blood. The icy blue in her eyes was bright and was the most shocking and alluring thing on her face. The black dress that she wore was in disarray on her body. Parts of the dress were ripped from Chuffrey and others were dirty from the walk to and from Kiamo Ko. In the reflection the woman looking back at Glinda looked severely haunted and weary.

"Glinda…"

The whisper that Glinda thought she had escaped at Kiamo Ko had now returned in her own home. Glinda felt the hairs of the back of her neck prick up as she breathed slowly and tried to ignore the whisper.

"Glinda… I love you…"

The voice seemed to swirl itself around Glinda's body and into her heart.

"Stop it!" Glinda shrieked at the voice that seemed to be coming from all around her, as it grew louder and louder, "You're dead, Elphie so stop haunting me! I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry I couldn't save you! Just… please Elphie let me be for once…"

Glinda knew that what she had just said could never be true. Elphaba would never be out of her thoughts anymore for another second of her life.

"I love you too, I love you so much… I just- I just can't do this without you!" screamed Glinda as her own reflection in the mirror turned into one of Elphaba. The blonde woman, whether she was delirious from the pills or from sheer madness she could not tell, skidded back away from the image and collapsed onto the tile floor of her bathroom.

The image of her dead lover began to slowly fade away and Glinda reached out a trembling pale hand to keep her here.

"No, no don't leave me!" Glinda shrieked at full volume and her voice cracked and split with raw hurt and pain, "You know I can't live without you!"

When the image finally disappeared for good Glinda slammed both her palms into the mirror and began to cry. She didn't hear or see that Chuffrey had come into the bathroom to see what the screaming had all been about. She didn't care that she had knocked the pill bottles onto the floor, the numerous contents in each spilling all over the tiles.

She let Chuffrey lead her out of the bathroom and into her room. She even let him strip her and then redress her body in a gown of shimmering blue. She stayed silent while he did all of this and had quiet tears rolling down her cheeks consistently while he did so.

Lastly Chuffrey placed a dazzling, sparkling tiara in her now combed out curls.

"Here is the speech," he said as he stuffed the papers in her hands, "Now don't you dare mess up or go off track, or even refuse to speak for you know what will happen if you do."

Glinda's fingers moved slightly across the paper while it was held in her grasp. Her eyes and soul seemed void of all emotion now like that encounter in the mirror had zapped her of her humanity and feelings.

"She was here… she was in the mirror," whispered Glinda tearfully, "Chuffrey, she's still alive!"

A crazed, mad look now came into those blue eyes of hers and Chuffrey found himself disturbed at the way she was acting.

Finding that no other way except abuse was effective with her, Chuffrey thought for a brief moment and then slapped Glinda across the face on both sides.

The blonde reeled from the blows with her hands at her face and she looked at Chuffrey with the saddest look he had ever seen on her face.

"She's not alive… she's dead. She's a puddle of liquid now and don't you ever forget that again, Glinda!" he hissed at her as he picked up the papers that she had dropped and returned them to her.

"Now go!" he commanded as he pushed her out of her room and out onto the balcony where her advisors and counselors stood on either side of her. A crowd of buzzing excitement to hear what she had to say had emerged and gathered all around the house.

A podium with a microphone was placed in front of her. Glinda tapped on it with one finger as she put the papers in a neat pile on the podium's slant of wood.

Her hands were now placed on the sequins of her gown and Glinda felt as if she would pass out or throw up or maybe even both as she felt the eyes of the citizens of Oz on her.

Gulping and sneaking a backwards glance at Chuffrey who merely nodded her on in encouragement, Glinda felt like this life that she led was all too false and fake.

Wringing her hands together nervously and looking out at the crowd, Glinda's mouth was suddenly dry. It felt like a sun was scorching its ray on her like a spotlight and Glinda was feeling more faint with every passing second.

"F-f-f-fellow-fellow Ozians," she stuttered. She looked down at her paper, not even trying to smile radiantly at them like she had in previous speeches. Glinda had never stuttered or even faltered with her words before this speech and the crowd grew uneasy when she remained silent for a long period of time.

"Glinda…" Her name was being whispered over and over again by the same voice, by Elphaba's voice. The noise was everywhere to Glinda, it seemed like it was even inside her head at times.

The blonde woman that everyone in Oz adored raised her golden head and opened her mouth to speak but she found to her and everyone else's horror that no words could escape her lips.

Poor Glinda. I just love torturing her... So um... the next chapter is going to be the last one and then an epilogue. I can already tell what the reviews are going to be like so in advance: please don't kill me! :(

PS. Antiwicked, I am going with the ending that we talked about a while ago so don't be surprised when it happens. :)

Until I upload again...

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