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Not Even in Death Will We Part Printable Version PRINTABLE VERSION
by Sylvia Akeyo, Kenya Nov 10, 2004
  Short Stories
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For the first time in her life, Marie felt really free. She was standing at the foot of a hospital bed and had just watched Dr. Mutua switching off the life-support system that had hitherto sustained her husband, Mark, in a vegetative state. Wasn’t she supposed to feel some form of pain? Her husband was dead. But instead of grief, relief washed over her tired aching body and she might just have smiled if she had the energy. She felt her legs go weak at the knees, and everything around her just seemed to fade away as she exited into a pitch black realm of her very own.

When she came to, Dr. Mutua was leaning over her with a bottle of a foul-smelling substance. He was telling her something about how the shock of seeing her beloved husband finally pass away must have caused her to faint. He would think that, wouldn’t he? To the doctor and the rest of the world Mark and Marie’s marriage had been as close to perfect as they came. However, beloved wasn’t a word Marie would use on Mark… but there was a time when she had loved him with all her being.

Funny the way a woman’s first love is always so very special, so very right. But most women don’t marry their Mr. Right… they break up with him, meet Mr. Right-Now, Mr. Almost Right and his best friend Mr. Wolf-in-Sheep-Clothing…and at the end of it all, they get married to Mr. Responsible (someone they can trust to be the father of their children).

But Marie had cheated fate, hadn’t she? She had met and married her Mr. Right within a year of their first meeting. And for a while she was happy…ignorance is indeed bliss. Marie cursed the day that she had accidentally walked in on Mark’s business meeting in the study of their home. She did not think to knock on the door as she usually did, but instead pushed the door open only to come face to face with a scene that would change her life forever. Mark had a pistol shoved literally half way down a man’s mouth and had this devilish glint in his eye. When their eyes met, Marie came face to face with a complete stranger. She couldn’t speak, but her eyes spoke volumes to him. It must have hurt Mark a little to see his fall from the pedestal Marie had placed him on, but if he was in pain, he must have had some form of relief from it, because he did not even flinch when he flatly asked her to shut the door behind her.

That very evening, Mark summoned her into his study for with all intents and purposes could have been a boss-employee discussion. Mark was the boss, and it was slowly dawning on Marie that she had unwittingly become his employee. It took just one hour for Mark to explain his family’s involvement in the drug-smuggling and distribution industry, but at the end of it all Marie had aged drastically. She had so many questions to ask him, but all she could manage was a feeble “Why?” Mark countered her question with a rhetorical one of his own: “Would you still have married me if you knew then what you know now?”

From that point on, Marie lived through the agony of watching her perfect life fall to pieces. Her husband no longer had to bother himself in trying to shield her from the horrors that his line of business entailed. She never questioned the late-night meetings in his study, the sudden business trips to undisclosed locations or even the suspicious briefcases Mark was always carrying in and out of the house. They lived in the same house for a year without ever really speaking to each other. Even when they passed by each other in the hallways or staircases of their massive home, not even a simple greeting was exchanged between the two of them.

What she hated the most was having to maintain the charade of their “perfect marriage” to the outside world. She smiled at the camera men at all the public functions her husband dragged her to but anyone who had known her before her marriage could see that her smile had become rather shallow…her eyes no longer lit up as they used to. Her smile was perfectly rehearsed for the camera.

She had toyed with the idea of running away from Mark, escaping to some unknown island in the middle of nowhere, but deep down she always knew that would remain her personal escapist fantasy. Mark had assigned two body guards to her in the day that she had moved into his house. At the time he had insisted that she needed to be looked after because of how rich they were and because of all those poorer people who might want to hurt her. But in retrospect, Marie now understood that her bodyguards also watched her every move. They were well paid to spy on her, to be sure that she wouldn’t want to run off to the police or the media to tell them of his family’s illegal dealings.

At times Marie would sit by a window overlooking the city and watch people as they passed by. With time, she became acquainted with a few of the regular passers-by. There was an elderly woman who would pass by at around 8.00 am every morning with a toddler in tow. One morning she happened to catch a few phrases of their conversation: “Grandma, who lives in that big house over there? Is that a castle? Does a queen live there?” The young girl was assailing her grandmother with a tirade of questions. Obviously she was asking about Mark’s house.





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Comments


Not Even in Death Will We Part
Samuel-Malachi Odekunle | Nov 17th, 2004
This is a very powerful and emotional story. One could only wonder of the potential it posesses. It is a Story that is so true to many people out there.



Not Even in Death Will We Part
Maryanne C | Jul 2nd, 2009
Very touching story. Leaves us with questions at the end, too, like all good writing should.

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