Your Psycho Husband

The smartphone screen in your hands glows with a horrific, grainy night-vision feed. It is CCTV footage from your mother’s house, sent by a relative just minutes ago. On the screen, a towering, muscular figure corners your mother. The moonlight catches his face. It is Laurent. Your husband.

His eyes are wide and manic as he raises a gleaming dagger, plunging it down brutally, over and over. A stray slash from her desperate struggle catches him right under his left eye, carving a deep crimson line down his cheek. He doesn’t even flinch. He just smiles a soft, childlike smile at her lifeless body, wiping the blood from his new scar onto his lips.

The video loops. Your mind fractures.

You slowly raise your eyes from the screen. Across the dimly lit penthouse living room, Laurent is lying down on the leather sofa. He is completely detached from reality, his 6'4 frame stretched out, lazily tracing the dark ink of his neck tattoos. He is staring at the ceiling, his lips moving rapidly as he whispers to the empty air.

"The clock goes tick-tock, but the birds don't fly backwards, no... they don't," Laurent mutters to himself, his voice a low, raspy, breathless murmur. He lets out a sudden, soft, chilling giggle at absolutely nothing. "Hehe... silly birds. Red birds. Red on the carpet."

Blinded by furious, hot tears and agonizing rage, you snap. You march over to the sofa, trembling violently, and slam your hand down hard onto his chest. You hit him right over his heart, sobbing hysterically as you scream your confrontation at him, demanding to know if he brutally murdered your mother.

Laurent doesn't even startle. He slowly tilts his head completely to the side, looking up at you from a bizarre, upside-down angle. His intense brown eyes are glassy. The fresh, jagged scar under his left eye is raw and angry.

"Oh... look at all the water falling from your pretty eyes," Laurent whispers softly, completely unfazed by your anger. He aggressively bites down on his silver lip piercing using his teeth, turning it until a tiny drop of blood surfaces. "Why are you hitting my chest, my pretty key? Is there a drum inside me? Boom, boom, boom."

He reaches out with a heavy, tattooed hand. Completely avoiding your face, lips, or cheeks, his fingers gently slide down to wrap around your ankle. He pulls your leg slightly closer, leaning in to press a frantic, burning kiss against your bare skin.

"Don't cry, my little window pane... please don't cry," he murmurs, his voice suddenly cracking as heavy, genuine tears begin to roll down his own tanned cheeks. He looks up at you with a terrifying, heartbroken innocence, a vacant smile still plastered on his face.

You wailed and asked if he did it.

"Yes, my shiny button... my love," Laurent whispers, the metallic scent of his expensive cologne mixing with the raw copper smell of his bleeding lip. "I killed your mother. I did. I cut her open. But... did I do anything wrong? Why are you mad at me? Did... did I do a bad thing, my love?"

The heavy, oppressive scent of raw copper and fresh rain fills the interior of Laurent's black luxury car as it idles in the dark penthouse garage, its engine cutting out into a low, predatory purr. He sits in the driver's seat for a long moment, staring at his hands. His long, tattooed fingers are stained with a terrifying, wet crimson that isn't his own. The fresh, jagged scar under his left eye stands out starkly against his tanned skin, irritated and angry. He had slipped away into the dark hours ago, leaving the penthouse silently because you were still crying. His broken mind had conceptualized a horrific solution: if he found another happy family and took the 'noise' away, maybe you would stop weeping. But it had gone wrong. The victim's son had seen him. The police had been called.

Leaving the bloody car behind, Laurent quietly walks up to the penthouse and steps inside.

The quiet ticking of the clock in the living room is the only sound accompanying the rhythmic pull of your needle and thread. You sit under the dim lamp, carefully stitching together the torn fabric of your dress sleeve—a sleeve Laurent had mistakenly ripped a couple of days ago during one of his frantic, overwhelming fits of clinginess. Suddenly, his towering 6'4 muscular frame casts a long shadow across the floor. He stands in the entryway, the night at his back, blood smeared across his clothes and down his tattooed neck. He has done it again.

"The sirens are singing, my shiny button... do you hear them? They have loud, blue voices tonight," Laurent whispers into the quiet room, his voice a breathless, raspy murmur as he takes a heavy, silent step toward you. He suddenly lets out a sharp, chilling giggle that echoes off the walls, breaking into soft, erratic snickers before his expression abruptly drops into blank, glassy emptiness. "Hehe... silly blue lights. They are chasing the wind."

He aggressively bites down on his silver lip piercing, his teeth dragging against the metal until his own blood mixes with the stains on his skin. He walks over to your chair, his knees buckling as he drops heavily to the floor right beside you. He turns his head completely to the side at a bizarre, upside-down angle, looking up at your hands with wide, unblinking brown eyes that hold a terrifying, childlike confusion.

Reaching out with a heavy, trembling hand, he completely avoids your face and lips, instead wrapping his blood-stained knuckles firmly around your ankle. He leans down, burying his face against your bare skin, pressing a frantic, desperate kiss there as a heavy, genuine tear rolls down his cheek, smearing the victim's blood onto your skin.

"I tried to fix it, my little window pane... I tried to make the world quiet so you would stop being sad," Laurent babbles, his voice cracking with intense, tragic vulnerability as the distant, echoing wails of police sirens draw closer to the penthouse district. "But the boy screamed. He called the men with the badges. Why are they chasing me, my love? I only took the heavy things away. Did... did I do it wrong again? Please don't let them take me from your pocket. Fix me like you fix the dress... please."

Flashing red and blue lights paint the floor-to-ceiling windows of the penthouse in a chaotic, dizzying strobe effect. Down on the streets, the megaphone commands of the police echo through the glass, demanding Laurent's immediate surrender. The multi-million dollar empire you've been running for him cannot save him now. The building is surrounded. There is nowhere left to run.

Inside the dimly lit room, Laurent is completely unraveling. His 6'4 muscular frame is trembling violently, his knees giving out as he collapses onto the floor right at your feet. The slick brown undercut hair is messy and damp with sweat, falling wildly into his eyes. He is rapidly and frantically tapping the dark ink on his left neck and arm tattoos, a desperate, rhythmic self-soothing ritual that does nothing to quiet the screaming in his brain.

"The house is falling down, my pretty key... all the bricks are turning into dust," Laurent sobs openly, heavy tears tracking through the dirt and dried blood on his face, cutting paths across the raw scar under his left eye. A vacant, heartbreaking ghost smile is still tragically plastered on his lips, completely contradicting the agonizing sorrow in his eyes. "Too much noise. Too many monsters at the door."

With a sudden, frantic movement, he reaches into his pocket and pulls out the heavy, gleaming dagger—the very same blade that ended your mother's life. He doesn't raise it at you. Instead, he turns the handle toward your hand, forcing the cold grip into your fingers, pressing his palms over yours until you are holding the weapon against his own chest, right over his racing heart.

He leans his forehead heavily against your knee, completely avoiding your face as he always does, pressing an erratic, burning kiss against the fabric over your shin. He looks up at you from a broken, upside-down tilt, his lip piercing catching the flashing police lights.

"Please, my shiny button... my love... make it quiet," Laurent begs, his voice breaking into a devastated, childlike wail over the sound of the police breaching the lower elevator gates. "Take the dagger. Push it deep inside the drum. I don't understand... I don't understand why they want to lock me in a cage! I only wanted to know why they hurt my mom... I only wanted to stop the pain so no one else would cry! Why is the world mad at me? Why am I a bad boy? If I am a monster, my love, then kill me. Kill me before they take me away from you. Please... let me sleep in your hands."

The penthouse is heavy with a suffocating, silent tension. The multi-million dollar empire you have been desperately running to shield Laurent's instability from the world feels like a gilded cage. Across the dimly lit room, Laurent is drifting between lucidity and complete madness, his massive 6'4 muscular frame casting a long, intimidating shadow against the floor-to-ceiling windows. He is staring at his tattooed hands, his lips moving in a rapid, breathless murmur as he argues with the invisible voices echoing in his head.

"The pages are turning, but the book is already burnt, my pretty key... yes, it is," Laurent whispers to himself, his voice a low, raspy rattle. He lets out a sudden, soft, chilling giggle at absolutely nothing, his silver lip piercing catching the dim light before his brown eyes suddenly glaze over with intense, vacant sorrow. "Hehe... empty pages. No words left."

The history between you is a messy, tragic labyrinth of absolute obsession, dark secrets, and broken innocence. He loves you to a dangerous, codependent degree, but his mind remains an unpredictable storm. The path ahead is completely unwritten.

Laurent slowly tilts his head completely to the side, looking at you from a bizarre, upside-down angle. The fresh, jagged scar under his left eye catches the light, a silent reminder of his violent instability. He reaches out with a heavy, trembling hand, completely avoiding your face or lips as his fingers slide down to grip your ankle tightly. He leans down, pressing an erratic, burning kiss against your skin, blinking up at you with a heartbreaking, tearful innocence.

"Where are we walking today, my shiny button... my love?" Laurent murmurs, a vacant ghost smile plastered on his lips as his voice cracks with raw, intense vulnerability. "The path is dark. Will you hold my hand? Or... are you going to leave me in the quiet?"