The Mask He Wore: Finale (special preview)

I was wed to an up and coming vinter, a man with expectations and plans for how his future was to be rolled out. Gregory Prowd was handsome and charming, he moved easily through life, especially once he got money to throw around. He wanted a home fit for entertaining, a place where his wine could be sold by his beautiful wife and charming friends.

Gregory chose me for my looks, which is nothing new. Men these days choose wives for their beauty everyday. My husband, on the other hand, chose me because I fit the exact specifications he needed. My hands, he said, were perfect. He wanted someone with beautiful and elegant hands to show off his wine. Whether it was by holding the glasses or by pouring the wine.

We eloped, which I suppose was all part of his game. Gregory made sure I was enamored and it worked better for him considering I had no interest in the man my parents chose for me. He took me far away for our honeymoon, lavished with me with gifts and attention and told me tales of all he wanted for his vineyard. He had no family, his mother and younger brother died during childbirth, and his father passed away some years ago. He told me he wanted a big family since he missed his own, and I grew excited to start it.

When we returned, things changed. Gregory’s attention was turned back to his business. Until things picked up, the dream we shared of a big family was put aside. “It won’t take long,” he promised me sweetly. “Once we are able to sell our first batch, we’ll be able to live out that dream. It was not all talk from me.”

“I find it hard to believe you,” I told him bluntly. “You fill my head with dreams and once we come home I wake up to labor.”

“Work is all we have right now. With work comes money, dearest.” Gregory took my hand back and smiled lovingly at me. “No one said you had to stop dreaming.”

I sighed and clutched his hand in return. “Fine. I’ll dream then.”

His home had three stories and a basement, which seemed normal. The only thing was that I was not allowed on the third floor. The only person who could go up there was Gregory himself. He kept all the rooms locked up with a key he kept with himself at all times.

At night Gregory would go upstairs and I would hear things through the floor. Sometimes, it sounded like he was wrestling with something, a wild animal or something big. It always frightened me, but Gregory would get angry and fensive if I brought it up. And since he assigned one of his staff to watch me at all times, I could never sneak upstairs to see what was going on.

I eventually grew numb to it, I learned to bury things down, to hold my concern and play the part. I told myself this was a dollhouse and I was one of the dolls in it. Gregory would pull me out when he needed me, and we would play. Once the winery took off, we played together more and more. I began to believe in my dream again. The work really did turn into money, and everyday I hoped the dream would become real.

Unfortunately, it turned sour very quickly.

“Please,” Gregory begged as he banged on my door. “Let me in this second, Blythe! Let me in!”

I was sobbing on the bed, having thrown open the windows to let in the freezing cold. I wanted to die. I wanted it all to end. The dream was dead. The big family we longed for was never to be. The doctor’s cold words from the epitaph on it’s grave.

The door busted open and Gregory ran inside, shutting the windows before turning to me. He looked at me strangely, it didn’t feel like concern to me. It felt like judgement, it felt like contempt. He sat beside me as I wailed, in agony I could not measure.

“Stop crying, Blythe,” he told me. “I can’t bear to hear it.”

Despite the chill that radiated off of him, I held Gregory in my arms, sobbing into his chest to silence my wails. He held me in return, but there was no warmth to it. After that night a distance grew between us. Though he stood close beside me, he might as well have been a million miles away. I wanted to reach out and bring him back, but my arms were not long enough.

Behind his back I took out all my frustration by sleeping with the people he wanted to do business with. Perhaps it was my promiscuity that helped the vineyard and the winery grow, I didn’t think about it. Since our family could not grow, Gregory focused all he had into the vineyard. He focused on selling his wine, on making it grander and more delicious. The grapes became his children, the vines he filled with his blood.

I took these buyers into the basement and let them fuck me however they wanted. Sometimes I lured away their wives and made it so their knees buckled when they tried to walk. It was the little control I had over my life, and whether Gregory knew or not, we never talked about it. We never talked at all beyond the veil that had grown between us.

One night he came into my room. He sat upon the bed beside me and looked at me through that invisible veil. “I have to go away for a while.”

That was good. “You never leave,” I said.

He shrugged and that was the end of the discussion. He left, going wherever it was he was going, leaving me alone for the first time since we met. I was going up the stairs to take a nap when a repressed memory returned to me. All these years, I had ignored that the stairs continued to the third floor. I had forgotten about the third floor entirely. I looked up these stairs, remembering the sounds I heard from the floorboards above my bed. I glanced back down, seeing a maid scurry away to the kitchen. No one was around me.