I will be the perfect wife this time-Chapter 66: The Hunger of the Damned

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​[CONTENT WARNING: This Chapter contains highly disturbing content, including graphic depictions of violence and themes of cannibalism. Reader discretion is strongly advised.]

Olivia offered no reply. Instead, she bolted toward the bathroom, her movements fueled by a frantic, desperate energy. She scrubbed at her mouth with such violence that her lips began to crack and weep blood. Isabella lunged forward, catching her wrists to still the madness.

"Olivia! You’re bleeding... what on earth are you doing?"

For a fleeting, terrifying moment, Olivia’s eyes looked as though life itself had been extinguished within them—two hollow voids that struck a primal chord of fear in Isabella’s heart. Then, as quickly as it had vanished, the light flickered back.

"Oh," Olivia murmured, her voice thin. "It’s nothing. I suppose I just... scrubbed too hard."

"Olivia, look at yourself," Isabella whispered, her own voice trembling. "You’ve turned as pale as a corpse."

She took a long, shuddering breath and slumped onto a seat.

"I’m fine. It’s just..."

Her gaze drifted toward the meat on the plate, staring at it with a chilling intensity, as if she were watching an ancient, grisly memory play out across the table. Isabella shook her shoulder, breaking the trance.

"Hey! Where did you go? I’ve been calling your name for ten minutes. Is it... is it because of the meat?"

Olivia looked up. She didn’t speak, but her eyes were screaming. Attempting to steady her own nerves, Isabella poured two glasses of wine and pushed one toward her.

"Here... drink this. It will wash the taste from your mouth."

"Thank you," Olivia replied.

The word "thank you" didn’t shock Isabella as much as the delivery—it was uttered with a glacial indifference. Olivia sat there, expressionless and cold, radiating the stillness of a cadaver. Isabella hesitated, her throat tight.

"I know this isn’t the right time, but... I have to know. How did you know it was human flesh? I mean, as wild as you can be, you’d never... you’ve never actually eaten a person, right?"

Olivia met her gaze with terrifying steadiness.

"I have."

Isabella choked on her wine, coughing as the liquid burned her lungs.

"You... you did what?"

Olivia remained silent, her eyes locked onto Isabella’s face.

"Answer me! Why are you just staring at me like that?" Isabella cried, her composure crumbling.

"I’m trying to decide if you’re worth the story," Olivia said flatly. "But then again, it doesn’t matter. I’ll tell you anyway. It’s not as if anyone would ever believe you."

Isabella nodded slowly, trying to mask the creeping dread that Olivia’s gaze inspired.

"Fine. Tell me."

"I was eleven, I think. Or perhaps twelve," Olivia began, the words dragging the weight of a long-buried past. "I was a sweet girl then. Not like this."

The memories surged back without mercy, a tidal wave from a distant, dark shore. The young Olivia was flung onto the cold, unforgiving stone. The impact echoed through her fragile bones, a sharp, broken cry escaping her lips. She was a slip of a girl, nearly weightless, her platinum hair falling in a chaotic veil over a face stained with tears.

"Father... please," she gasped, her voice splintering through a suffocating sob. "I didn’t mean it. I only wanted to play with Elvira’s doll for a moment. I won’t touch it again, I swear! Please... don’t put me back in the cellar."

Her small, trembling fingers clung to his boot, a desperate anchor in a sea of terror.

"I’ll be good. I promise, I’ll be so good..."

But mercy was a foreign tongue to him. With a cold, rhythmic indifference, his boot kicked her hands away, breaking her grip. In one fluid motion, he unbuckled the leather belt from his waist.

"Of course you won’t touch it again," he purred, a lethal edge to his voice. "I shall ensure your memory is quite... vivid. Remember, Olivia: you have no one but me. Even your mother discarded you like refuse."

Then, the storm broke. The belt descended again and again upon her frail frame. The sound was not merely the crack of leather; it was the sickening wet thud of tearing flesh, the sound of innocence being systematically unmade. Her screams pierced the stagnant air, rising in a jagged crescendo until her voice finally snapped, dissolving into a ragged, broken whimper.

Then, a heavy silence fell. It wasn’t the silence of peace, but the hollow stillness of exhaustion. When Olivia finally pried her swollen eyelids open, her vision blurred by a veil of tears and blood, she saw him cinching his belt back into place. He had continued the flagellation even after she had drifted into unconsciousness, beating her until her nerves had simply surrendered to the numbness.

The monster’s mask slipped away, replaced by a tenderness that was far more chilling than his rage. A soft, paternal smile curved his lips—a smile that had no right to exist on the face of the man who had just delivered such carnage.

"Elvira, my darling," he murmured, the very same lips that had been snarling moments ago now dripping with honeyed affection. He turned to the younger girl, his gaze poisoned with a sickening warmth. "What are you doing on the floor, petal? You’ll soil your lovely dress."

He scooped Elvira into his arms, cradling the child and her doll against his broad shoulder like a devoted father from a storybook. It was a twisted tableau—a dream warped into a nightmare where love and cruelty were woven so tightly they were indistinguishable. Olivia remained frozen on the cold stone, a heap of broken pride and bleeding skin.

A tidal wave of grief rose in her chest, but she choked it down, unable to utter even a whisper of comfort to herself. From the safety of her father’s shoulder, Elvira peered down. Behind her teary, deceptive eyes, a practiced, innocent smile bloomed.

"Father," Elvira chirped in a voice so soft it was almost playful. "Are you really going to leave my sister all alone? How dreadfully sad... perhaps Peter could keep her company?"

The Duke’s eyes glinted with a sudden, sadistic amusement.

"Mmm, yes. A companion to teach her the manners she so clearly lacks."

Olivia’s eyes widened, her pupils dilating in pure, unadulterated horror.

"Father... please. Not Peter. Please... mer—mercy..."

Her plea was met only by the rhythmic, cruel harmony of their laughter as they walked away, leaving her to the darkness. A moment later, the servants obeyed. They brought Peter—not as a living soul, but as a grisly offering to the dark. He had been executed that very morning for treason, and his presence was now reduced to a headless trunk. The jagged stump of his neck was dark and sodden, infecting the air with a pungent, metallic stench of copper and decay that burned the back of Olivia’s throat.

Olivia’s body went rigid with a terror that transcended physical pain. She was only eleven, yet she stood before a horror that would haunt the architecture of her mind forever. This headless thing, like a marionette with its strings severed, was tossed into the cramped, foul-smelling cell beside her.

With a forceful shove, the Duke thrust her into the gloom. The heavy door groaned on its hinges, and the screech of the iron bolt locking into place signaled the end of her world. The Duke turned to his servants, his voice a cold command:

"She is to have nothing but water. Anyone who defies this order shall share the prisoner’s fate."

In that darkness, the silence was not empty. It pulsated. It breathed. Beside her in the shadows, the corpse became a living nightmare.

"Let me out! Please... Father, please! Elvira! Anyone!"

Olivia’s voice splintered as she hammered her small, bloodied fists against the wood, her nails carving deep furrows until they bled. Her screams tore through the frigid stone hallways, echoing like waves of pure despair. But no answer came. No mercy was granted.

Only the silence remained.

The servants passed by often. She could hear the rhythmic thud of their boots and their hushed whispers as they moved through the corridor beyond her tomb. They lingered just long enough to hear her pleas—long enough to know she was still drawing breath—yet they never uttered a word. Their silence was more jagged than cruelty; it was a quiet, crushing complicity.

One day bled into another. Two. Three. A week passed.

The air grew thick and viscous with the scent of putrefaction. The corpse in the corner, once a man she had seen walking and breathing, now slumped against the wall, decomposing into something unrecognizable. The stench clung to her hair, her skin, and even her tongue when she tried to swallow the meager water they provided. Every breath was a battle against bile, yet there was no escape. He was her constant, silent companion.

She screamed until her voice died, until her throat was a scorched, bloody ruin. The door never opened except to slide in a pitcher of water—as if she were a beast to be kept alive, not a child to be saved.

Then, the foundations of her mind began to fracture.

It started with simple deceptions; a trick of the light, a passing shadow. She imagined she saw the corpse move—a slight shift of a limb, as if gravity were not yet finished with him. She would blink, and he would be still. She told herself it was her mind unraveling. But it happened again. And again. At night, when the dim flicker of torches seeped through the cracks in the door, she became certain he was inching closer. Inch by agonizing inch. Always when she looked away. She stopped sleeping, paralyzed by the fear that she would open her eyes to find him looming over her.

Soon, the hallucinations found a voice. She heard it: a soft scraping against the stone. A wet, drawn breath where no lungs existed. The silence of the cell transformed into something sentient—teeming with whispers, alive with sounds too delicate to be named, yet too heavy to be ignored.

One night, the darkness itself became teeth. Olivia awoke clawing at her own throat, gasping for air that wouldn’t come. Cold, invisible fingers seemed to clamp around her windpipe, squeezing the very life from her. She thrashed in the shadows, her own nails tearing at her skin in a frantic bid for breath. When the pressure finally vanished, she sat trembling, her heart drumming a frantic rhythm against her ribs. In the corner, the corpse remained as still as stone, yet she was certain—it had been him.

Hunger began to sharpen her visions. As her stomach withered, the horrors grew vivid, crystalline. By the third week, the boundary between wakefulness and nightmare had dissolved. She no longer knew if her eyes were open or closed. In the flickering gloom, she saw his missing head return, floating in the shadows, tilting toward her with sightless eyes. She heard his voice—low, guttural, a rasping whisper from the void:

"Eat. Eat. You must eat."

Her body had dwindled to a ghost of itself—pallid skin stretched tight over fragile bone, a hollow shell of a child. She whispered into the dark with the last of her strength:

"Please... just a crust of bread. I’m so hungry. Please, I’m dying..."

In the fourth week, the mind finally surrendered. The gnawing in her belly became a ravenous beast, screaming louder than her fear, louder than her shame. She crawled across the cold stone, dragging her leaden limbs with trembling arms. Near the wall, she found a shard of glass—jagged and dull, yet sharp enough for a soul lost to despair.

She gripped it, the glass quivering between her bloodless fingers, and turned toward the corpse. Tears blurred her sight, but she saw him clearly: the body that had haunted her, choked her, and poisoned her nights. Her lips trembled; her chest heaved with a fractured sob.

"I’m sorry," she whimpered, a tiny, broken sound as she begged forgiveness from the dead. "I’m so sorry... I just... I can’t. I’m so hungry. Just a little. Just a little, and then I’ll stop."

The shard tore into the decaying flesh. The sound—a sickening, wet slide—brought bile to her throat, but she forced herself not to look away. A piece of the meat clung to the glass. She gagged, her entire frame convulsing in revolt, yet she raised it to her lips.

The taste was rot. It was filth. It was death itself. She nearly retched, the darkness spinning around her, but she swallowed. Because the alternative was the void of starvation, and the hunger had become a god she must obey. Through a veil of tears and a soul-crushing regret, she began to chew, consuming her own humanity to save her life.

"Olivia, stop! Please... that’s enough."

Isabella’s voice was a frantic whisper as she lunged across the table, grabbing Olivia’s hand. Her own skin was cold, her fingers shaking uncontrollably.

"Don’t say another word. I understand... I understand your story now. You don’t have to go on."

"Understand?"

Olivia’s head tilted slightly, a ghostly, mirthless smile playing on her lips.

"What is it you think you understand? Who told you the story ends there?"

Olivia’s face transformed, settling into a mask of such profound, hollow indifference that it was more terrifying than any scream. She spoke as if she were reciting a legend that belonged to someone else—as if the trauma had been etched so deeply into her soul that she could no longer feel its edge.

"I see it now," Olivia mused, her gaze drifting to the centerpiece on the table. "I see why Elvira chose to send me the head today. Years ago, she gifted me the body... and now, she sends the rest to complete the set."

She let out a short, bitter laugh, but her eyes betrayed her—they were wells of an ancient, unbearable agony that no laughter could drown. She turned her gaze back to Isabella, locking her eyes with a stare that felt like a physical weight.

"Shall we continue our tale, then? It would be such a pity to leave the tale unfinished, wouldn’t it? After all, the second course is always the most... flavorful."