My Husband Was Always a Beast to Me

A short story

“I will toil for years and years
Give you muscle, tone and tears
Overcome and flay all fears
Leaving me
A beast for thee”

- A Beast for Thee, Will Oldham

My husband was always a beast to me.

When people ask how we met – which is never – I tell them that we matched online on a site for hirsute gentlemen. I was struck by how enigmatic his pictures were, in so far as there weren’t any. I thought it showed a disregard for the physical which greatly appealed to me because of my own lack of attractiveness, something I’m told I definitely don’t get from my mother. It wasn’t her fault I was so badly maimed in the accident, even though she was driving at the time.

Usually, I painstakingly edit my photos to look like the best possible version of myself. I apply heavy filters and only shoot from one very specific angle where I know the big parts will look small and the small parts will look big, but his lack of vanity was liberating. I used a picture where I was coyly turned to the side with my eyes cast down like Princess Diana to convey that I was modest and shy in certain settings but could bloom with some light encouragement.

We matched immediately, and I sent him a message that was both alluring and non-committal: HEY, HOW R U? He replied that he was good, just watching a show about hoarders called Hoarders. I didn’t hear from him again for five days and I knew I was in love.

I asked him his star sign and ran it through an online compatibility test. The results weren’t good, so I did another with his rising sign which cost me an additional $10. It’s fine. Peace of mind has no price, which is what insurance companies say. For a full reading I needed to input the time and place of his birth but a woman should never ask too many questions, especially not in the early stages, so I took a guess. He looks like a midnight person, on the cusp of something. The second test determined our compatibility was only 42% and I decided astrology was nonsense and sent them an email asking for a refund which I’m still yet to receive.

I would ask him questions and he was always elusive in his responses. He said people having details about his life made him deeply uncomfortable. I asked why and then realised this would likely prod a deep psychological wound, so I made a mental note to mind my business because people are entitled to privacy. At night I would fill in the blanks myself and create great, unprovable lives for him. I placed mental bets on what he would have eaten, or who he would have spoken to that day, his relationship with his family and ex-girlfriends.

After two months I asked to video chat but he said his camera was broken. I sent him money to fix it, but the next time I asked he said his electricity had been turned off so we’d have to speak in the dark. I didn’t mind. I always took pride in not needing much. I sent him $400 to pay his bills, which I hoped wasn’t emasculating.

He must have known that I loved him because I sent him so much money on cash transfer apps. He told me his mother was sick and needed harrowingly expensive surgery, but I’ve never seen her. I imagine her to be a very aloof woman. It seems strange to think of him being born at all, that something so big could have ever been a small, screaming, and bloodied baby. He seems like the sort of person that was never held which accounts for his emotional frigidity and problems with women. I told him that I needed to wait for pay day before I could send the necessary funds and hoped that she’d die in the meantime.

He said he’d spent a lot of his life alone, and it caused him a lot of pain that he found hard to talk about because he’d never been given the words to adequately explain himself. ‘You don’t need to tell me,’ I said. ‘I’m an empath, so I already know how it feels.’

Eventually, after much haranguing on my part, he agreed to meet me. He said that because of his work commitments and sick mother it would have to be very late at night when she was asleep, and that I would most likely have to come to him. I said it was against my better judgement to go to a stranger’s house on a first date and I’d rather meet somewhere public. I suggested a 24/7 diner that I knew would be quiet at that time. I sent him a long and detailed message letting him know how excited I was and he replied: K.

I booked myself into a hotel so I could freshen up after the drive and made a point to steal all their small soaps, which I sequestered in my glitzy pocketbook just in case I needed to make a run for it. I didn’t tell anyone where I was going. They’d only ask questions I didn’t want to answer, although I did leave a note with his identifying details on my kitchen counter, in case I was murdered and the police needed to break in and gather clues.

I arrived at the diner half an hour early so I’d have time to primp myself in my compact and move my hair back and forth until it was perfect, but he was already there. Even though I’d never seen a picture I could tell it was him. He had the odd, hunched posture that’s so often adopted by freakishly tall women (over 5’9”) who feel the need to minimise themselves and are embarrassed for merely taking up space in a world that has so much of it. I extended my hand and he patted it gently with a closed fist and I wondered at the size of his knuckles. He smelled wet and earthy, like damp clothes left in the laundry or the dirt after rain. We sat across the table and stared at each other. He had such big eyes. I didn’t know what to say so I showed him one of the bars of soap I stole from the hotel. ‘It’s scented,’ I said. He sniffed at it and wrinkled his nose. ‘It smells like soap,’ I explained, and he seemed satisfied.

I asked him if he thought I looked like my pictures. He cocked his head to one side quizzically, like he was looking at a painting he didn’t understand. ‘You look better when you’re still,’ he said. I tried my best not to move for the rest of the evening and maintain my Princess Diana pose. He ate three medium rare burgers without the bun but still using his hands, and I watched the rivulets of blood-tinted grease run down his forearms and danken his hair. It was the most profoundly masculine thing I’d ever seen.

I asked if he’d like to go back to my hotel and he nodded, and I loaded him into the boot of my car and drove him there. He howled and whined a little at first, but he soon got used to it. I think the rumbling of the engine soothed him because he only defecated once. I ran him a bath and lathered up his coat with all my tiny soaps until he was gleaming and fresh and the grease and shit ran off him. He asked if I would get in with him and I said I was embarrassed by my deformities, and he laughed and said he didn’t mind. That night was the first time I had ever been naked in front of a person. He ran his hand along my arm and saw some of the thicker scars there, and said ‘Did you make these?’ I nodded and he took my hand in his and said ‘You will never hurt yourself again.’ I gave that power to him that night. We moved in together the next day. He told me he’d been lying about his mother and I said, ‘I know.’

Sometimes he would bite me, leaving little indentations on my thighs. ‘I’m only playing,’ he said. He never broke the skin, but only because he chose not to. I hadn’t been good, or bad, enough for that. ‘One day, sooner or later,’ I said, ‘I’ll bare my teeth,’ but he just laughed and rolled onto his side so I could scratch his underbelly. Then I would get on all fours, and we would make love for a sensual thirty seconds after which he would collapse, heavy and fulfilled upon me.

In the evenings I would make him watch reality TV shows about couples in crisis and point out the various flaws of the female cast members to see if he agreed, and also those of the men to see if he identified with their wrongdoing. He never did either and I considered this a failure on his part. Men are terrible at tests, because they don’t know that there’s always a correct and an incorrect answer.

I asked him why he loved Hoarders so much and he said ‘They are all in so much pain, and they show it so clearly,’ and we sat in silence and watched as an elderly woman’s house was cleared of 47 years’ worth of old newspapers in which she’d delicately wrapped her faeces. ‘They are her talismans,’ he said, and I felt like he was trying to tell me something profound, although I didn’t understand what. It made me feel stupid and deficient, and I felt a little coal of hatred flare up in me, because he’d never shown me the same kindness as he did that elderly newspaper addict.

That night I tried to shock him by telling him all the terrible things that happened to me in a great rush of misery. He looked at me for a long time then said, ‘All that in a week?’ and I nodded and let one perfect tear run down my cheek. He blew out his cheeks and said ‘Wow,’ and rolled over to sleep.

As the months wound on I grew to hate him more and more. There’s nothing worse than being disappointed by a person, which is something my mother would often say to me. He was dirty and refused to clean up after himself. The house was a blanket of hair and bones and the detritus of things that he’d shredded, even though I always left the radio on to keep him entertained. Sometimes I would catch him using the computer at night and demand to know what he was doing but he was always evasive, always cunning. I knew he was likely talking to other, better women. I felt the change in us before I felt the change in him. Like I said, I’m an empath.

Over time I grew to feel that our relationship would benefit hugely if he could be humbled in some way. Like so many women, I had done too good a job bolstering him and accidentally convinced him of his own brilliance so that an underserving trollop called Sharon who worked in the perfume section of a department store could benefit. “We should go out,” I said. I wanted the world to see how ugly he was, and that I chose to stay with him anyway because I am perfect and self-sacrificing. I wanted him to be scorned and ridiculed, and then have his own shame and self-loathing drive him back to me like a loose sheep.

I attached his leash and led him out into the sun. He was nervous at first. He squinted in the light and quickly stress urinated on the nearest patch of grass. I tugged at him to let him know that he should follow me, which he did. As we rounded the corner on to Main Street I became aware of a stirring all around us. People – women especially – were stopping and turning, leaning close to each other to whisper. ‘They’re gossiping about my disgusting beast husband,’ I thought. Soon everyone in the vicinity was staring. We were the eye of a hurricane of horrified eyeballs, and I felt intensely satisfied and I gave my husband a stroke to soothe him and let him know that he was safe with me and only me. A woman broke away from the pack, walking hesitantly towards us. She crouched down next to my husband and looked up at me with huge, imploring eyes. ‘May I pet him?’ she asked, and reached out her hand, twirling her fingers in his lush, dense body. Soon other women were emboldened. They all gathered round him and whispered in awe, marvelling at my fine, hairy beast. His coat glowed in the sun in a way it didn’t at home. I never realised how many colours he was until that moment, and I hated him all the more for showing them.

I shooed the harlots away and dragged him home.

That evening I found an online forum for women who were in abusive relationships with terrible men and typed out my dilemma in a frenzy. ‘It’s his beautiful clothes,’ one responder said. ‘You need to throw his beautiful clothes into the fire. The way to control a narcissist is to destroy the root of their narcissistic power.’ I was amazed at how simple it was to dismantle a person.

I waited until he was asleep, and then I went to work.

I was surprised at how easily it came away from his body. It slid, like a skin sloughed from a tomato in the sauces I would make for him when we still cared about doing things together, when we were pretending to be the thing we thought the other wanted. I was disappointed that it didn’t hurt him more. The work should be difficult, after all. That’s what my therapist said.

I took his dripping furs and dumped them onto the open fire where they hissed and crackled. Then I heard him screaming. Screaming like his skin was melting. The underside of the fur blistered and popped on the coals and he kept screaming. It was agony, and in that moment I was so profoundly sorry that my own body felt wrenched apart with sorrow at the pain I was causing him. The room smelled of meat and the screams kept coming. They were everywhere. Every inch of space and sense was filled by my betrayal of him. It clung to my own clothes and to the wall and the curtains and the furniture. He wailed like he was dying, or wanted to die but couldn’t. I grabbed a poker and tried to drag the crackling furs out of the grate but they tore and crumbled and stuck to the metal like a brand. Clouds of smoke and steam billowed up from their wetness and stung my eyes. I heaved them out and stamped on them until they were just black and not burning.

I heard a crash and ran to the bedroom. The window was smashed and my husband was gone, just a black smear on the bedclothes where he’d been.

I called and called but he wouldn’t come. I walked up and down the street but there was nothing. That night I cried myself to sleep and would do the same for many nights after that. I was very depressed, you see.

As the months rolled by without my husband, I sought to make things better. I decided to make him a new coat to replace the one I’d destroyed. I would stop by the side of the road and pick up the small animal bodies I found there and collect their little pelts. I started working at an animal shelter with a high kill rate, and even though it pained me to gas them, I knew their skins would make something beautiful, something meaningful. It was a gift, after all, and I only chose the softest ones. When I had enough skins I took a night class in sewing under the auspices that I wanted to make a pillow, so I could learn the rudimentals of seaming and hand stitching. There wasn’t any point in studying tailoring. This wouldn’t be for any measurably human form and besides, I didn’t know how much of him was left.

And still, he wouldn’t come back to me.

I trawled endlessly on the dating sites, hoping I’d see a bent shape in the half-dark or a meme from Hoarders, but there was nothing. Sometimes a person would try to match with me but that wasn’t what I was there for. I hadn’t come for a good time. I had come for my penance, and I would wait for as long as it took.

I put up MISSING posters in the local neighbourhood but no one responded bar two pranksters and the Church of Latter Day Saints asking if I was interested in hearing more about the Lord, which I wasn’t at that time. I consulted Reddit forums about the best ways to contact a person who didn’t want to be found and asked for clues and information as to his whereabouts. He must have been very distinctive, after all. A flayed man is hard to miss. I hired private detectives who turned up nothing but dead ends and cold trails. They didn’t understand the manner of person they were looking for. My husband was never like other men.

One day in the summer I bought a pair of sneakers recommended by the world’s best endurance athletes and began to walk. I didn’t know where I was going, only that I had the most appropriate footwear to take me there. I was following a kind of psychic scent trail that I was sure he would have left. After two years the soles came off, and so I bought another pair. And another. And another. I walked so far trying to find him that I wore out countless pairs of shoes, little rubber breadcrumbs marking the path where I’d been. Always hunting, always looking, always hoping.

My own fur grew out but I didn’t care. My hair was long and matted and by this time quite grey, but I’d long since left any sense of a normal world where hygiene mattered. I had my own particular musk that travelled with me. Sometime a toenail would come loose and I would gently pry it away from my skin, like plucking a petal from a flower. I kept them all to give to him, to prove what he was worth to me in flesh and bone.

All the time I carried his coat and kept it beautiful.

Then one day, fifty years later, I found him. A small, seared and misshapen thing, hunched at the table in a diner much like the one where we’d first met. I didn’t know he’d be there, but I’ve always been drawn back to places that are familiar. I sat in the booth behind him and watched him for a while. I needed to know he was real. Across his shoulders I could see the marks I’d made with the poker when I tried to pull his furs from the flames, and where the shards of the window pane had cut him as he fled from me. He was so much littler than I remembered, but I reminded myself that I too was very changed.

I got up and sat across from him. At first he barely noticed me. I imagined he hadn’t seen another person in quite some time, because no one would bear to see him. Eventually he raised his eyes to mine, and I saw that he still knew me, because pain always remembers. I placed the coat of furs I had made on the table between us.

‘Why have you come?’

‘Because now we finally deserve one other.’

He snarled and raised his hackles. I pulled up my skirt and let him bite me until the blood ran freely and I could catch it in pools in my hand like a birdbath. When he saw what he’d done he said he was sorry, and I said it didn’t matter, because hurt people hurt people.

I gave him the coat I’d made him from a hundred tiny dead skins, and we both sobbed as I draped it gently over him because it was a tenderness and because we knew what we had both lost, and that this coat now meant something different, that things had changed and we could never go back, and in that moment that we were new. I asked if he would marry me, and he said, ‘In time.’

That night we lay together and I ran my fingers through his fur and felt sorry for all the women who’d come before and would never come again, because they would never truly know how soft he was.

My husband was always a beast to me.