The People of Dewbrook

Chapter Fourteen

Mildred could not bear the fact that her children were standing in the doorway like little porcelain dolls with abnormally wide eyes. She could not blame them, for even she, with her decades of existence, could not comprehend the situation. She knew very well that all vices were related in some way, just like she knew that her husband, having recently decided to experience every earthly pleasure, was an easy target for a woman like Caroline, but she refused to believe that such debauchery could be happening in her own home, and thus she kept staring at the scene like a corpse.

It was the most accurate comparison of all. At that moment, she truly felt like a corpse. He had pierced her heart the same way he had pierced Caroline's organ, eagerly and thoughtlessly. No matter the time, no matter the place, the hurt would never go away. The worst part was that he had no clue about it, not yet, but he would. Exhausted from the lovers' incessant kissing and moaning, she stepped forward, facing them directly, and then, just as they halted for a moment, believing to have heard something, she let out an ear-piercing scream as she grabbed a ceramic vase from the nightstand and threw it onto the floor.

"Are you mental, Mildred?!" he shouted, waving his hands in the air. "You are going to cause a commotion!"

She sniffled. "And what of it? Have I not the right to be mental in this situation? I have loved you and respected you as the light of my life for countless years, Stephen, but with this deed, you have become the darkness. I have tried my best to endure all your little treacheries, even as they slowly began to pile up, but this, this is the apex of shame. You have ruined all that we have lived through, so let there be a commotion about it. What can you do, anyway? Lock me up in the attic?"

He glared at her. "Mildred, do not tempt me to do such things. I am the head of this family, and I do not think that I should have to explain what it means. I believe that it is your fault that I am here in the first place. You have failed in your duty as a wife by sentencing me to a dull and passionless life, and thus I have had to seek out all sources of pleasure in the vicinity, because that is the meaning of life, no? To go after what brings us the utmost mirth? Not that you would know anything about it."

Up until that moment, Mildred had not paid Caroline much attention, and when she saw what the other woman was doing, she wished never to have looked in her direction. Her legs spread apart, the woman lay peacefully as a dove on the shoulder of her husband, a smirk of utter superiority drawn all over her face as she reached her right hand towards his chest, looking at Mildred with a devilish glint in her eyes, enjoying to observe the pain in Mildred's own eyes. She then proceeded to let out a theatrical sigh of pleasure, believing that the poor woman was going to be very disgusted by that, and she was. She looked as if she was going to vomit all the contents of her life out of her mouth. That made Caroline's smirk even wider.

"And you, Madam Proust," Mildred soon uttered, pointing at her damningly. "You truly have no shame at all. For decades, you have seduced men such as my husband, luring them to break their families through your beauty and passion, and it is rather clear that you are rather proud of yourself for doing so. I would not be if I were in your place. Why should anyone wish to do such wicked things? Does it not weigh on the heart, my dear sinner?"

Caroline laughed, her laughter sounding like a birdsong. "You moralists are all the same. You toil away to find a villain on who you can pin all the troubles that you are facing, failing to consider the possibility that there might be no true villain in the first place. It is not my fault that men enjoy the sight and exploration of bodies like mine so much. Who am I to deprive them, and myself, of the pleasure of intercourse? Societal issues are not my blame, for I play a different game."

"And what of the women who have been hurt by the behaviour of their husbands? Is that not your fault?" Mildred asked, weeping desperately at the sight of her nonchalance.