One Hundred Ways To Ruin You

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Ever since Madeline came crawling back to the family after her affair, Ive made it a ritual. Every single day, I post.

Is infidelity an addiction?

How much of a rush is the betrayal, really?

After the act, does a woman feel more guilt toward her child or her lover?

I tag her university in every single post. I make sure the algorithm does its job, pushing my words directly into the feeds of her students, her colleagues, and most importantly, her lover.

Everyone tells me to stop. They tell me its "undignified," that I should be the "bigger person," the "gracious husband."

Madeline was the only one who defended me at first. Shed shield me from their judgment, her voice soft and martyred: "Im the one who did wrong. Let Silas vent. He has every right to his anger."

That lasted until the ninety-ninth post.

Madeline burst through the door like a hurricane, eyes bloodshot, and smashed my laptop against the hardwood floor.

"Silas, for Gods sake, enough! Im back, aren't I? Im here! What more do you want from me?" she screamed, her voice cracking. "How much longer are you going to torture me before you're satisfied?"

I didn't give her an answer. I didn't even look up. I just finished drying the last of the dinner plates, set it gently in the rack, and turned to her with a calm, practiced smile.

"Are you hungry? I can fix you a plate if youd like."

Madeline stood frozen, her chest heaving with a fury that had nowhere to land. My question was a punch into a cloud of cottonsoft, yielding, and utterly infuriating.

When she didn't speak, I reached past her and picked up the silk dress she had discarded on the armchair.

"This is getting wrinkled," I noted idly. "Ill go iron it for you."

"Silas!"

She caught my arm, her voice vibrating with a frantic, suppressed edge.

"Stop the act! Stop pretending to be insane! Do you have any idea what those posts are doing to my reputation? To my career? Im a human being, Silas. Im exhausted!"

My hand stilled. My breath hitched, just for a second.

"Are you afraid of the impact on your career?" I asked, looking her in the eye. "Or are you afraid of what its doing to Tristan?"

That name was a landmine. It detonated between us, shredding whatever was left of the quiet.

"Why are you bringing up Tristan again?" she snapped. "I told you, I had him transferred to a different research group. I cut him off. You know this. Do you want to drive everyone around you as crazy as you are? Is that the goal?"

Her voice climbed to a shrill peak, but then she caught sight of my facegaunt, shadowed, the face of a man who hadn't slept in weeks.

Her anger vanished as quickly as it had arrived, replaced by a suffocating, performative guilt. She reached out, pulling me into a desperate embrace.

"Im sorry, honey. I shouldn't have snapped. You know the pregnancy makes my emotions go haywire. Im impulsive. Ill buy you a new laptop tomorrow, I promise."

I recoiled from her touch as if her skin were live wire. I stumbled toward the door, my stomach rolling, and began to retch.

"Don't touch me," I gasped. "Youre... youre covered in it."

Madelines face darkened. Her eyes welled with tears, her hands trembling.

"You think Im disgusting?"

Before I could move, she grabbed my wrists, shoving me back against the doorframe. She fumbled with my belt, her movements frantic and territorial. She leaned in, biting my lip hard enough to draw blood.

"The doctor said the second trimester is fine. Silas, lets just... lets just be us again."

"Get off me! Its nauseating!"

I shoved her away with a burst of desperate strength. I collapsed to the floor, frantically scrubbing at the skin shed touched, rubbing until it turned a raw, angry red. The room filled with the sound of my heaving.

"So dirty. I have to... I have to wash it off..."

"Silas! Do you hate me that much? Tell me what I have to do to make you forgive me!" Madeline shrieked behind me, her voice ragged.

I ignored her. I scrambled into the bathroom, locked the door, and turned the shower to a freezing needles-and-ice spray. I let the cold soak into my bones.

Outside, the bedroom door slammed with enough force to rattle the pipes.

I looked up, catching my reflection in the steamed-over mirror. A pale, ghost-like face looked back, eyes drowning in tears.

The grief hit me then, a tidal wave that stole the air from my lungs. I clutched my chest, sobbing until I couldn't breathe. I never thought wed end up herethe golden couple of the faculty, the high school sweethearts everyone enviednow reduced to this visceral, skin-crawling loathing.

We used to be inseparable. Now, her shadow felt like a stain.

I had tried. God, I had tried to be the "broad-minded husband." I tried to bury the images. But every time I looked at her growing belly, I remembered. I remembered that she had been with himthe student I had personally mentored, the boy I had helped with his tuitionwhile she was carrying a child.

I remembered that while I was at my fathers funeral, she was in our bed, in our home, doing things I couldn't unsee.

My stomach cramped, a sharp, surgical pain that felt like a knife twisting in my vitals. Why did she get to walk around so unburdened? Why did she get to act as if nothing had happened, while I was rotting from the inside out?

Eventually, I stumbled out of the bathroom.

The house was deathly quiet. Madeline was sitting on the sofa, her eyes rimmed with red.

"Im sorry," she whispered. "I was out of line tonight. Its all my fault. I won't do it again."

"It doesn't matter," I said, cutting her off. "Thats your business."

I didn't wait for her response. I walked into the bedroom and lay down. My tears soaked the pillow as I thought of the life inside her.

Im sorry, little one. Daddys just tired.

As my eyes drifted shut, I began to count. One hundred days. Just one hundred more days until the baby was born. Then, I would be free.

I woke up to a screaming pain in my gut.

It was a jagged, rolling agony that made my vision blur. I tried to get out of bed to find my medication, but when I turned the handle, the door didn't budge.

It was locked. From the outside.

Panic flared in my chest, competing with the pain. I fumbled for my phone and dialed Madeline.

"Madeline... the stomach pain is back. The door is locked... I cant get out. Please, you have to come back."

Madelines voice came through the line, cold and saturated with exhaustion. "Silas, enough. The awards ceremony today is a massive deal for the university. Stop acting out for attention."

"Madeline!" a fresh wave of pain made me cry out. "Its real. I think its an acute flare-up. Please!"

"Again with this!" her voice rose. "Are you really trying to ruin the ceremony? Is this your plan? You were so quiet last night just so you could pull this stunt now?"

"Madeline, Im not"

The pain spiked, stealing my voice. I doubled over, and a warm, metallic liquid surged up my throat. I coughed, and a spray of blood splattered across the white duvet.

She started to say something else, but a younger, familiar voice broke in from her end.

"Is Professor Miller okay? Is your husband causing trouble again?" Tristan asked, his tone dripping with fake concern. "Maybe you should go home, Madeline. You don't have to stay for me..."

"Ignore him," Madeline said, her voice softening as she spoke to him. "The work comes first."

The sounds of the faculty loungelaughter, the clink of glassesswelled in the background. Then, she hung up.

I fought for breath. I dialed 911.

But as I tried to stand, my legs gave way. I collapsed into the pool of my own blood, tears streaming down my face.

The paramedics arrived fast. When they kicked in the door, they found me unconscious in a red sea.

I was out for an entire day.

The doctor told me it was acute gastritis complicated by stress-induced myocarditis. If Id been found an hour later, I wouldn't have made it.

Madeline was sitting by my bed when I woke up, clutching my hand, her face a mask of tears.

"Silas, Im so sorry. Im a monster, a complete idiot!" she sobbed. "I was just so scared that seeing me on stage with Tristan would trigger you... forgive me, honey. Do it for the baby."

The last time Id seen her cry like this was at our wedding. Shed held me tight and promised to love me for a lifetime.

Everything was different now. The woman in front of me was a stranger wearing the skin of the girl I used to love.

I stared at the ceiling, feeling a strange, sudden sense of relief. After coming so close to death, the need to force this marriage to work simply evaporated.

The buzzing of her phone broke the silence of her confession.

It was Tristan.

To prove her loyalty, she immediately hit the speakerphone and barked into the receiver, "Tristan, I told you! Stop calling me!"

The voice on the other end was shaky, hesitant.

"Professor... the results came back. The baby... its mine."

My heart didn't just skip a beat; it felt like it stopped entirely.

"I won't harass you," the boy continued. "But as the mother, I thought you had a right to know."

My hands curled into fists, my lips trembling so hard I had to bite them to stay still.

The child. It wasn't mine.

Madeline hung up instantly, her face a ghastly shade of grey. She looked at me, her eyes filled with a pathetic, desperate terror.

"Silas... the baby... hell only ever know you as his father. I swear."

I started to laugh. It was a jagged, broken sound. Tears leaked from the corners of my eyes.

"Madeline," I whispered. "I want a divorce."

"No! No divorce!" Madeline stood up, lunging forward to wrap her arms around me. "Silas, I love you. Don't say that. Please."

I ripped her hands away, the IV in my arm tugging painfully. "Then lets go. Right now. Were walking down to the OB-GYN wing, and Im going to watch you terminate that pregnancy."

Madeline closed her eyes, trembling.

"Tristan... he has severe clinical depression, Silas. He told me if I get rid of the baby, he... hell kill himself. I cant have that on my conscience."

"And what about me?" I grabbed a glass of water from the bedside table and hurled it at her. It shattered against her shoulder, soaking her blouse. "Im just supposed to wear the horns and raise another mans child? Im supposed to play house with the woman who let my mothers son rot while she chased a student?"

Her phone buzzed again. A text from Tristan. She looked at it, her face going pale.

"Madeline, I cant do this anymore. Im ending it. Goodbye..."

Madelines composure shattered. Without a word to me, without a second glance, she grabbed her coat and sprinted out of the hospital room.

I watched her go. The silence she left behind was heavy.

My mother, who had been waiting in the hallway, came in and took my hand. Her eyes were full of a mothers fierce, protective sorrow. "My boy. No more. We aren't taking this anymore."

"Divorce her, Silas," she said firmly. "Im going back to the house to pack your things."

But the next time I heard my mothers voice, it wasn't a call for help. It was the sound of her soul breaking over the phone.

"Silas! The house... Madeline sent people. Theyre tearing down the old cottage in the valley!"

My heart felt like it had been lanced. That cottage... my father had built it with his own two hands, stone by stone. It was all my mother had left of him.

"Shes demolishing it, Silas! She says its 'unsafe'!"

I called Madeline, my hands shaking so violently I nearly dropped the phone.

"How dare you?" I screamed. "How dare you touch that house? My parents treated you like their own daughter!"

Madelines voice was ice-cold.

"If I had been one second later, Tristan would have swallowed a bottle of Xanax, Silas. Your mother called the Dean. She tried to get him expelled, tried to destroy his life. She almost killed him!"

"The cottage is gone. Its for the best. Now your mother will have to move into the city, where I can keep an eye on both of you."

Ten years of marriage, and I finally understood her. She wasn't just cruel; she was a warden. She wanted to cut off every exit, to force my family to live under her thumb, beholden to her "mercy."

"Madeline," I hissed, "I hope you rot with him."

"You're being hysterical," she said, and hung up.

I was still in the hospital, tethered to machines. My mother, overwhelmed by the shock and the loss, suffered a massive heart attack an hour later.

The blows kept coming, one after another, until I felt numb. I opened my phone and posted the hundredth message.

My wife is carrying her lovers child. How do I make them burn?

The post went nuclear.

Within hours, it was trending on every major platform. The internet, in its beautiful, terrible collective rage, found Madeline. They found her university profile, her Instagram, her LinkedIn.

Shes a predator. A disgrace to the profession.

Check out the 'happy couple.' Hope they enjoy hell.

Seeing the tide turn was the only thing that gave me a spark of life. I felt a grim, dark satisfaction.

Until my account posted a new statement.

Im so sorry, everyone. All of my previous posts were fabrications. I was suffering a mental breakdown. My wife and her student, Tristan, are innocent victims of my delusions. I am deeply sorry for the harm Ive caused.

I tried to log in to delete it. Incorrect Password.

Then I remembered. The smashed laptop. Madeline had taken it. Shed used my synced accounts to rewrite the narrative.

Then, Madeline posted from her own verified account:

Since my pregnancy began, my husband has struggled with paranoid delusions. Hes obsessed with the idea that Im involved with one of my students. Ive done everything to help him, including transferring the student to another department, but his condition has worsened. He will be making a public apology soon. Thank you for respecting our privacy during this difficult time.

The reversal was instantaneous. The vitriol that had been aimed at her turned on me.

You sick old man. Get help and stop ruining a womans life.

This is pure misogyny. He can't handle her success, so he invents a scandal.

If you're sick, just die quietly and leave her alone.

Before I could process the messages, Madeline called.

"Silas. Come to the university tomorrow. You're going to apologize to Tristan in person."

I was shaking with rage. "Over my dead body."

"Hes innocent in all of this, Silas," she said, her voice hard. "And the baby is coming whether you like it or not. If you want your mothers heart surgery to stay on the schedule, if you want her to have a room in this hospital, you will do exactly what I say."

She was using my dying mothers life as a bargaining chip for her lovers reputation.

I bit my lip until I tasted copper.

"Fine," I whispered. "Ill be there."

I settled my mother as best I could and took a car to the campus.

Tristan was standing behind Madeline, his eyes red, looking like a kicked puppy. When he saw me, he actually had the nerve to rush forward and slap me across the face.

"You almost ruined me, Silas! Youre a sick, pathetic man!"

The surrounding faculty and students watched with sneers of disgust. Someone was filming, the red 'Live' dot glowing on their phone.

Madeline looked at me, her eyes warning. "Silas. Apologize."

I swallowed the blood in my mouth. I went to speak, but someonea student, probablykicked the back of my knees.

I hit the pavement hard, kneeling right at Tristans feet.

In the scuffle, my shirt caught and tore, exposing the jagged, ugly scar across my back. Id gotten that scar years ago, shielding Madeline from a mugger with a knife.

"Look at him," someone jeered. "Ugly inside and out. Imagine being married to that."

"Disgusting. No wonder she looked elsewhere in his fantasies."

Madeline looked down at me, a flicker of embarrassment crossing her face. She wasn't moved; she was just ashamed to be associated with someone so broken.

"Silas, don't look so indignant. You posted a hundred lies. Tristan gave you one slap. Consider it a bargain."

"Ive wired money to your account for your mother's bills. Now, were even. Don't ever mention this again."

I hauled myself up, my eyes burning as I looked at her. Even? We would never be even.

I suppressed the scream in my throat and rushed back to the hospital to see my mother. When I arrived, the nurses were frantic. She had been moved to the ICU.

"She fell," the nurse told me, her voice trembling. "Down the stairwell. Internal bleeding, multiple fractures. Were doing everything we can."

The security footage showed it all.

It wasn't a fall. Tristan had been there. Hed pushed her.

The blood in my veins turned to liquid nitrogen. I called Tristan, my voice a low, vibrating growl. "You pushed her. I will see you behind bars if it's the last thing I do."

But it was Madeline who answered his phone.

"Don't blame Tristan for this, Silas. He went to the hospital to check on her, and she started screaming at him. He was scared. It was an accident. He barely touched her."

I was past the point of reason. I screamed into the phone, "Shes in surgery for a brain bleed, Madeline! Youre defending a murderer! Do you have a soul?"

She hung up. When I tried to call back, I was blocked.

I sat outside the ICU for hours, a ghost in a plastic chair. Finally, the surgeon walked out. He didn't have to say a word. The tilt of his head said it all.

"Im so sorry, Mr. Miller."

The world tilted. The lights blurred into long streaks of white. I doubled over and retched blood onto the hospital linoleum.

My mother was gone. The last person who loved me was gone.

The hate that surged through me then was more powerful than the pain. I got into a cab and headed straight back to the university.

They wanted a madman? Fine. I would give them a goddamn lunatic.

When I arrived at the auditorium, Tristan was on stage giving a speech about "resilience." I didn't wait. I stormed the stage, grabbed him by the hair, and slammed my fist into his face.

"Murderer! Ill kill you!"

The audience erupted.

"Ah! Madeline, help me!" Tristan wailed.

Madeline charged onto the stage, and before I could move, she kicked me squarely in the stomachright where my gastritis was most inflamed.

"Silas! What is wrong with you? Have you lost your mind?"

She shielded Tristan with her body, her face contorted with loathing.

"Youre ruining the symposium! Youre destroying everything!"

Tristan started sobbing, throwing himself onto his knees, wailing for the crowd. "I can't do this anymore! He won't stop! Ill just kill myself, Ill end it right now so he can be happy!"

I saw the flicker of triumph in his eyes as he ran toward the roof access.

By the time the crowd reached the rooftop, Tristan was standing on the outer ledge, swaying.

"Tristan, baby, don't do this," Madeline pleaded, her voice cracking. "Im here. Ill fix it."

Tristans face was a masterpiece of manufactured tragedy. "I can't, Madeline. Hes driving me insane. Im just a kid from a trailer park, I worked so hard for this, and hes taking it all away..."

From the back of the crowd, I barked out a laugh. "Then jump! Do it!"

Slap.

Madelines hand caught me across the face again. "Shut up, Silas! Are you trying to kill him?"

She grabbed me by the hair, dragging me to the edge where Tristan stood.

"Kneel," she hissed. "Kneel and apologize. Swear youll never touch him again, or so help me God..."

"In your dreams," I spat.

Madeline pulled out her phone. She pulled up the live feed from the funeral home where my mothers body had just been delivered.

She looked at me, her voice a flat, robotic monotone.

"Ill give you ten seconds. If you aren't on your knees, Im calling the morgue. Ill have them dump her body on the sidewalk like trash."

I stared at her, looking for a shred of the woman Id married. There was nothing. Just a machine.

"Five... four..."

I looked at the screen. I saw a van pulling up to the back of the morgue.

I broke. I fell to my knees in front of that sniveling boy.

"Im sorry," I choked out, the words like glass in my throat. "It was my fault. I won't do it again. Please."

Tristan smirked, then looked at Madeline with wide, watery eyes. "Professor... I don't think he means it."

Madeline grabbed the back of my head and slammed my forehead into the gravel of the roof.

Warm blood began to mask my vision. She whispered in my ear, "Just take it, Silas. Just get him down, and then its over."

I banged my head against that roof ninety-nine times.

When Tristan finally stepped down and wrapped his arms around Madeline, he looked over her shoulder at me with pure, unadulterated venom.

But then, the rooftop door burst open. Not with students, but with police.