Her Skin I Faked

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In the heat of our intimacy, Mary felt entirely different from my memories. The overwhelming intensity of it made me lose control, a muffled groan escaping my lips. Right at that moment, Mary let out a sudden, chilling laugh. It made my stomach drop. She tapped her manicured fingernails against the mattress beneath us, her tone dripping with dark amusement. "How does it feel? I just finished taking care of your stepbrother. He said he really loves how I am right now." "He was in this exact bed yesterday." She paused, making no effort to hide the absolute contempt in her eyes. "He moaned so beautifully. I figured it would have the same effect on you." I froze instantly. The blood in my veins turned to ice. My mind went entirely blank, stripping away my ability to form a single rational thought. Seeing my paralyzed state, Mary rolled her eyes, looking bored. she pushed herself off the bed. "William, Bruno has such a gorgeous body. Not a single blemish." She looked me up and down, her voice sharp enough to draw blood. "You two brothers are worlds apart. Looking at you covered in those hideous burns... it makes me sick to my stomach." "Just now, I had to keep my eyes squeezed shut. I had to pretend you were him just to force myself to finish."

1 I opened my mouth, but my vocal cords refused to work. I still remembered every agonizing detail of the fire five years ago. The Sinclair family estate had caught fire in the dead of night. Mary was trapped on the third floor. I charged into the inferno, desperate to find her. When a burning ceiling beam collapsed, I shoved her out of the way, taking the full brunt of the collapse myself. Sixty percent of my body was burned. I lay in the ICU for three months, enduring seventeen grueling skin graft surgeries. They managed to drag me back from the brink of death, but they couldn't take away the monstrous scars. They crawled over my flesh like ugly, thick centipedes, creeping from my chest down to my waist, wrapping around my arms and thighs. The trauma plunged me into severe depression. Countless times, I stood by the window, ready to jump and end it all. And every single time, it was Mary who pulled me back from the ledge. She would hold me, her eyes red with tears, swearing to the heavens that she would never betray me. "William, I will spend the rest of my life making this up to you." My voice came out as a broken rasp as I clenched my fists. "Mary... you promised me. You swore you would cherish me forever." Mary lazily tossed a silk robe in my direction. "William, you wouldn't even buy secondhand clothes. What gives you the right to demand that I cherish someone whose body is a ruined, charred mess?" My knuckles turned white. "Then why the hell did you propose to me in the first place!" I roared. She slipped into her custom tailored blazer, a flash of irritation crossing her features. "Back then, I honestly thought I could handle it. But every time we get physical, seeing those scars just grosses me out." "You are just too ugly now, William. I can't stomach it anymore." My jaw locked. My chest heaved with ragged breaths. Mary habitually held out a handkerchief for me, but I jerked my head away, refusing it. "But I do love you, William. I will always be grateful to you," she said, smoothing her lapels. "I just needed to blow off some steam. Give me some time to get used to it." I smacked her hand away violently. "No. That is twisted. Mary, I sacrificed myself to save your life... and you stabbed me in the back!" Her phone screen lit up on the nightstand. I caught a glimpse of Bruno's text message. "I put on those wolf ears you like. Are you seriously not coming over?" Mary buttoned her jacket and casually waved the phone in my direction. "If I keep him waiting, he is going to throw a tantrum." I vaulted off the bed, my eyes burning with rage, and slapped her hard across the face. "You are disgusting. This is sick. We are getting a divorce!" Mary touched her stinging cheek, the temperature in the room plummeting as her expression turned lethal. "I am disgusting? William, I did not call you disgusting when you were nothing but rotting, burnt meat." "And a divorce? Look at yourself. Who else would ever be desperate enough to marry a freak like you?" The bedroom door slammed shut. Inside my chest, something vital shattered completely. Through the haze of my own devastation, memories bled into my mind. I remembered my mother cheating, bringing some random guy into our home, which pushed my father to suicide. After that, I was trapped, endlessly bullied by my new stepdad and his golden boy, Bruno. It was Mary who pulled me out of that hellhole. She helped me reclaim my dad's belongings. She stood like a shield between me and the cruel world. She gave me the fierce, unconditional love that my father had meant to give me. A house, cars, custom watches, even cooking my favorite meals. She told me she was nothing like my mother. She swore she would only ever look at me. Right up until I turned twenty-four, when she planned a beautiful beachside proposal. I was wearing a perfectly tailored suit. But on my way to meet her, the Sinclair estate went up in flames. I ran in to save her and got crushed beneath the burning wood. When the fire crews finally dug me out of the ashes, the only things left to keep me company were the burns and the scars. Mary had dropped to her knees in the soot, her tears splashing onto my ruined face. "William, I will spend the rest of my life making this up to you." The nightmare ended there. I was jolted awake by a phone call. It was Bruno. "Bro, Mary and I are going at it right now. Wanna listen? It is the prize I won."

2 The obscene, wet sounds echoing through the speaker felt like icepicks in my eardrums. Mary's breathless, erratic voice drifted through the line. "I made a bet with Bruno. We wanted to see what you would do when you found out about us." "I bet you would swallow your pride and take it. He bet you would ask for a divorce." "I won, so he had to wear the outfit I like. But he also won... because now you know." "Sorry about that. I guess I just did not expect you to actually bring up the D-word." My grip on the phone tightened until the plastic creaked. I hung up. But the notifications didn't stop. They kept pinging, one after another. A relentless stream of highly explicit photos flooded my screen. "During those two years when your depression was at its worst, when you wanted to die every day?" Bruno texted. "She was sleeping with me the whole time she was playing nurse with you." "She said the only way she could forget your grotesque scars was by letting me wreck her." Word by word, the messages butchered my heart. I yanked open the nightstand drawer with trembling hands. I didn't care if they were my antidepressants or sleeping pills. I grabbed handfuls of them and shoved them into my mouth. When I finally opened my eyes, the harsh fluorescent lights of a hospital room blinded me. They had pumped my stomach. The door pushed open. Mary walked in. I stared at her, totally hollowed out. "Mary, I want a divorce." She pulled out a slim cigarette, lighting it with utter indifference. "Request denied. I admit I took it too far last night, and I am sorry." "But you love me so much. Surely... you can understand the pressure I am under?" I stared at her through the haze of medication, and suddenly, the ugly truth clicked into place. She wasn't looking for an escape. She genuinely believed that staying with me was a grand, tragic sacrifice on her part. She felt wronged by my ugliness, so she decided she had the right to punish me for it. Even though I looked like this because I saved her life. Mary walked out. She stopped visiting. She ignored my texts. Instead, Bruno started messaging me. "Hey bro, Mary let me move into your house while you're stuck in the hospital." "We broke your bed. She said she's never had it this good in this house." "Oh, by the way, do your gross scars flare up around pets? Mary bought me a puppy..." That final text detonated whatever sanity I had left. I took the explicit photos and chat logs and leaked them to the press. I even dragged myself to the offices of Mary's top clients, desperately trying to force her hand to sign the divorce papers. But the real world gave me a brutal reality check. The Sinclair family was a titan in the corporate world. No media outlet dared to run the story. Her clients, eager to kiss her feet, immediately pulled their funding from the research lab where I worked. They blacklisted me. My lab director cornered me, demanding I apologize to Mary immediately, or I would be fired and blacklisted from the scientific community forever. My colleagues begged me with tears in their eyes. If I didn't grovel, the lab would shut down, and they would all lose their livelihoods. I became a walking punchline. Mary was the one who cheated, but I was the one forced to swallow glass and apologize. I dragged my broken body back to the Sinclair mansion. The words "I'm sorry" barely left my lips before Mary shot me a look of freezing disdain. "William, did you really think you could throw a tantrum and force a divorce?" "Divorce hurts my feelings. Don't throw that word around." Maybe it was to teach me a lesson. Or maybe she resented how deeply she had once cared for me. But she took the very first gift she ever gave me, and she handed it to Bruno. It was an ancient, black obsidian binding stone. Once Bruno fully infiltrated my life, I lost everything. My father's life, my mother's love, my bedroom, my clothes, my career prospects. Bruno stole it all. Years ago, right after I was kicked out of my house, delirious with a fever, I had rested my head on Mary's shoulder and asked her in a broken whisper: "Why can't I ever keep the things that belong to me?" Mary had climbed three thousand stone steps at a highland monastery, scraping her knees bloody, just to get that obsidian stone for me. She had told me: "I got this to bind my soul to yours. Even if you lose everything else in the world, I will always belong to you." I had clenched my jaw back then, fighting back tears, stupidly believing she was mine forever. Now, she had violently ripped her heart in two, feeding half of it to Bruno. And that obsidian stone was currently hanging around Bruno's neck.

3 "It is just a cheap trinket. What is the big deal if I give it to him?" "After all these years... haven't I given you enough?" She was doing it on purpose. She knew exactly where to insert the knife to make it hurt the most. No amount of medication could numb the agony ripping through my brain. If I just disappeared, everything would be fine. My hands moved on their own, dragging a blade across my wrist. Five years ago, right after the accident, I used to do this. But back then, for every cut I made on my arm, Mary would take a knife and match it on her own skin. "William, if you don't want to live in this world, then I am leaving it with you." She had physically dragged me out of that suicidal pit. But this time, as I lay bleeding out onto the bathroom tiles, she never showed up. A housekeeper found me, screaming in terror as she called Mary. Mary didn't bother coming home until the sun was up. She crouched beside me, letting out an annoyed sigh as she looked at my heavily bandaged arm. "You didn't die when you were roasted alive, and you haven't managed to die after all these pathetic attempts. If you were really going to die, you would be dead by now." "If you keep throwing these childish tantrums, I am going to have you locked in a psych ward." With one sentence, the fragile peace I had scraped together shattered again. As soon as she left, I picked up a fresh blade, pressing it right against my carotid artery. But as I raised my hand, I caught sight of myself in the mirror. I couldn't find a single trace of the boy I used to be. The old William was a prodigy, headhunted by a world-renowned lab in his early twenties. He was brilliant, ambitious, and unstoppable. Look at me now. I was gaunt. Hollowed out. A dead, rotting tree. The burn scars practically glowed a sickly, angry pink under the bathroom lights. The uneven, raised tissue looked like a hundred little mouths laughing at me. Hideous. I was a monster. I dropped the blade, my jaw trembling, my throat tight. That wasn't me in the mirror. It couldn't be. I wanted to get better. I really did. I forced myself to cooperate with my doctors. I swallowed my pills. I even contacted a lawyer to quietly draft divorce papers. For a little while, my mood genuinely stabilized. The suicidal urges faded to a dull hum. Until Bruno's birthday rolled around. Mary insisted on taking me out to "clear my head." "Your depression is acting up because you rot in that room all day. You need fresh air." But when we arrived, I realized Mary had rented out an entire seaside amusement park just for Bruno. Exactly like she had done for me when she proposed. She brought me here purely to rub my face in it. And her birthday gift to Bruno was a very familiar ring. I didn't even realize she had taken my custom blue diamond engagement ring off my dresser. My stomach cramped so violently I doubled over in physical pain. When Mary proposed to me, it was during the darkest year of my depression. I used to push her away, telling her with dead eyes that I was a freak and she should leave me. She had flown across the globe. She spent a fortune tracking down the purest blue diamond in existence, and she dropped to one knee right in front of me. "No matter what you look like, to me, you are just like this diamond. Flawless." Now, she had taken that diamond and resized the band to fit Bruno's finger. Right in front of my eyes, she slid the ring onto his hand. "A diamond this pure belongs on the finger of the most pristine person I know." The mental dam I had built over the last few weeks violently collapsed. A strange, whispering voice slithered into my ear. "You are so filthy. You don't deserve to breathe." "Go find that blade. Put it against your throat. Do it." My hands started shaking uncontrollably. After putting the ring on Bruno, Mary walked over and grabbed my arm. "Does it hurt? Is it eating you alive?" she whispered dangerously. "Because every time I look at what that fire did to you, every time I see the monster you became, it eats me alive." So this was her twisted logic. She had to lavish someone else with love, just to watch me suffer the exact same pain she felt. But I couldn't hear her anymore. All I wanted was to find a knife. Just one quick thrust, and all this noise would stop. Right as the panic attack peaked, my phone buzzed in my pocket. It was my lawyer. "Mr. Bennett, the divorce agreement is finalized." "I wish you the best of luck. Here is to your new life."

4 Divorce. New life. Those words hit me like a bucket of ice water. I violently yanked my arm out of Mary's grip. I ignored her shouting my name as I bolted. I ran so fast my shoe flew off, but I didn't stop. I drove through the night to pick up the printed papers, and I slammed them onto the table right in front of Mary. "We are getting a divorce. You can keep the assets." Staring at the legal document, Mary finally realized this wasn't a bluff. Her eyes locked onto mine, dark and searching. "You seriously want a divorce?" I nodded, my posture rigid. Surprisingly, she didn't tear the papers up. She looked down and let out a soft, mocking chuckle. "Fine. We can divorce. But you will come crawling back." "Because you have absolutely no one else in this world... but me." I acted like I didn't hear her. I packed my bags at lightning speed and walked out of that mansion. I thought the nightmare was finally over. Until a few days later, walking home from a job interview. My phone blew up with a trending notification. #WilliamBennettScars A high-pitched ringing echoed in my ears. With trembling fingers, I clicked the hashtag. It was a flood of photos and videos from the immediate aftermath of the fire. Photos of me lying in the sterile hospital bed, my skin charred black, my body covered in raw, bloody skin grafts. It was grotesque. When I arrived at the research lab to clear out my desk, the entrance was swarming with reporters. They used to interview me about my breakthroughs in biochemistry. Now, they shoved microphones into my face, their eyes gleaming with morbid curiosity. "Dr. Bennett, are the rumors about your severe burns true?" "We heard you have sixty percent burn coverage. Are the scars as terrifying as people say?" "Your wife allegedly cheated on you because she was repulsed by your body. Care to comment?" I felt like someone was strangling me. Black spots danced in my vision. Security had to physically drag me inside. My phone vibrated violently. I was the victim of that fire, yet the top comments online were pure venom. "You can't even tell from his face! He dresses so sharp. Bet he set the fire himself for insurance money and failed." "A grown man covered in scars like a horror movie monster? No wonder his wife cheated. Gross!" "He always acts so arrogant in his interviews. Doesn't act like a trauma victim to me." "Nine out of ten burn victims did it to themselves by being stupid, and then they blame their wives for leaving them. Pathetic!" My mother, who hadn't spoken to me in years, called me just to verbally sever our ties. "William, you are an absolute embarrassment. Don't you ever tell anyone you are my son!" The final email was from the lab's board of directors. "Dr. Bennett, the current media circus surrounding your personal life is damaging the lab's reputation. Your employment is terminated immediately." My nails dug into my palms until they bled. The endless stream of hatred dragged me right back into the inferno. I could feel the crushing weight of the burning beams on my chest again. The blistering heat. The absolute agony. I hid in the lab until nightfall, waiting for the vultures to leave. But when I finally hailed a cab, the driver took one look at my face and the name on his app, and stopped the car. "Wait... are you that burnt freak from the news?" "Get the hell out! Don't infect my car with your ugly ass!" He shoved me out onto the pavement and threw his half-empty glass bottle at me. It struck my forehead, shattering. I collapsed onto the concrete, warm blood trailing down the side of my face. I don't even remember how I ended up back at Mary's mansion. She was sitting on the living room sofa, swirling a glass of wine, as if she had been waiting for me. I stared at her, my eyes dead. "You did this?" Mary smiled. "William, look at reality. I told you, I am the only person who can tolerate you." "If we actually divorce, the rest of the world will eat you alive." A wave of pure, suffocating despair crashed over me. I opened my mouth, but my vocal cords were paralyzed. From the upstairs bathroom, Bruno's voice echoed loudly. "I'm all clean! You can do whatever you want to me tonight." He leaned over the balcony railing, a towel draped loosely around his waist, his chest covered in fresh hickeys. I grabbed the wall, hunching over as my stomach violently rejected everything in it, dry-heaving until my ribs cracked. Mary watched me vomit, her fists clenching momentarily before she forced a cruel laugh. "After the amusement park, I was actually going to call it even. But now... I think you need another reminder of your place." She stood up, walking upstairs and wrapping her arms possessively around Bruno's waist. The sprawling, empty mansion amplified the sounds of wet kissing and heavy moans. "You're being so loud. Do you want your brother to hear us? You're so bad..." Bruno teased. "Let him hear. It is not his first time." The grotesque sounds clawed their way into my brain. I clamped my hands over my ears, pressing until it hurt. But the room started to spin. The voices melted together into a demonic choir. "You are so filthy..." "Nobody will ever want you..." Nobody. I couldn't save myself. Through the blur of my tears, I saw my father. He had been dead for over a decade, but he was standing there, waving at me. "William, come here... Daddy loves you. Daddy will protect you..." I reached out to take his hand. I followed him, walking like a ghost. He led me all the way up to the third-floor balcony, right to the edge. "Come to me, William. There is no more pain here..." I didn't hesitate. I threw myself forward into his embrace. As gravity pulled me over the railing, I saw Mary burst out onto the second-floor balcony. Her eyes were wide with primal terror. "William! NO!"