The Monster in the Manor: Extended Epilogue (Part 2)

Rupert

There is no aphrodisiac in the world like knowing my woman is carrying my child. I hold her hair when she doesn’t feel well and bring her into the circle of my arms when she’s fatigued, keeping my raging desire at bay. Clearly, incubating our baby is taxing on her, and I wish I could share the burden. The best I can do is play her favorite shows when she needs to lie down, and bring her meals made of the select few foods she can eat comfortably.

After a dreadful three weeks, the sickness passes, and Peony feels almost as right as rain again. She says her sense of smell is different, making her more sensitive—in more ways than one. All I have to do is ghost my hand between her legs and she’s shivering with anticipation. The nubs around the head of my cock bring her great pleasure, so I fuck her shallowly, letting them tease her where she’ll feel it most. She falls apart in my arms, clenching and moaning so deliciously that I can’t help unloading everything inside her. Then, while she’s still soaked with me, I take her again, more wildly, imagining how our seed is growing in her belly.

Peony schedules nine months off for maternity leave, and I know it’s a great anxiety for her to leave all her responsibilities in the hands of someone else, but I’m proud of her for doing it. Nine months to spend together with our new infant, welcoming them into the world, sounds like paradise. I know it will be difficult, but I can’t wait to do it—trials and joys alike—with my wife.

And then I get to become a full-time parent. I’m already dreaming up what activities we could do together, what sort of schools I’d like them to attend. Peony swats me when I talk about it.

“Let them be a kid. Public school, normal life.”

I balk at this, but she’s firm in her belief that she wants our child to be raised like she was. Nothing fancy, no spoiling. Kellen agrees to keep me accountable in this, and I call him a traitor.

David is in my camp, though, excited about his future role as the grandfather who can give them sweets when they shouldn’t have them.

Soon, Peony starts showing, and she complains that it’s much harder now to spend all day on her feet. Cute dark lines spider across her belly, and she has me rub lotion on them often.

And then I have my way with her. As she swells up with my child, her breasts getting bigger and more tender, I’m absolutely infatuated with her. She, too, is carnal in a way she wasn’t before, desperate to be fucked into oblivion. 

Of course, I will oblige.

Peony is seven months along when I get a strange package in the mail from an unknown sender. When I unwrap the package, inside is a book—with an artist’s rendering of my face splashed across the cover.

The Hidden Monster, the title reads. The author’s name: Alan Spalding. I’m so stunned that I can’t begin to process what I’m seeing.

“What is it?” calls Peony, coming to look around me. “Whoa. What’s that?”

I’m trying to figure that out myself. It appears to be a kind of biography, perhaps. I’m flabbergasted as I open the front cover, and the blurb inside tells me everything.

He won’t take interviews. He’s never spoken his truth. So I went to find out what I could about the monster in the bank, and here is his story.

A low snarl sizzles in my throat as I flip through the pages. Mr. Rupert Edgewood, the book starts, is a British entrepreneur and investment failure.

Heat rises in my throat, filling my face. Humiliation—that’s what this feeling is.

“He had no right,” I grind out, throwing the book to the floor. “This is sick, is what it is. Digging into my past? Doing some kind of exposé?” I spit the word. “I didn’t do interviews for a reason!”

A gentle hand lands on my arm, bringing me back down to earth. Peony urges me to sit on the couch, then settles herself beside me.

“It was bound to happen,” she says gently. “The whole world is curious about you. Has been for a long time. I mean, remember when you were a meme?”

My growl is guttural. When someone gets between you and your sandwich, one of the popular ones said, with a picture of me standing in the doorway to the bank, blood trailing down my arm, my teeth bared in a feral snarl.

“I thought they had finally forgotten.” I stalk past Peony into the kitchen to pour myself a glass of wine. “That the novelty had worn off. It’s been five years.”

Peony watches me curiously as I drink it.

“Maybe you could look at this as an opportunity,” she says tentatively. “The baby will be here before you know it, and then in just a few years, they’re going to go to school. Who’s going to take them there?”

“Me, of course,” I answer without thinking.

“And go to parent-teacher conferences?”

“Both of us.”

She arches an eyebrow at me. “All those teachers, all those principals—you’re fine with them seeing you? What if they’re afraid of you?”

I furrow my brow. “I can’t control that.”

“You can. This guy isn’t you.” She picks up the book again, gesturing at the cover. “If you told your own story, people would listen.”

She opens the book and flips through it while I stew over her words. I hate the idea of what she’s implying, that I “tell my own story.” That would mean associating with the media, showing my face, and who knows what else?

But she’s also right. With our child on the way, I’ll be forced to be out in the world more and more often. I imagine driving our teenager to the cinema and dropping them off, waving at their gaggle of friends. It would be much better for all of us if I weren’t feared at every turn.

“Hm,” Peony says thoughtfully as she reads. “He did his research.”

“You’re reading it?” I ask, aghast.

“Sure. I want to know what it says about you. If any of it is true.” She shrugs. “Can’t hurt. And besides, it’s not like it’s going to actually say ‘he was cursed by an old wizard.’ Right?”

I shrug, not wanting anything to do with the book. She rubs a hand over her belly absently as she sits down on the couch and continues reading. Annoyed, I pour myself another glass of wine.

But I can’t help wondering what this man knows about me, what he put in those pages with such authority.

“Well, he’s wrong about that,” Peony mutters to herself. “Not so far off here.”

I flip on the telly, but she’s fully absorbed as our favorite show comes on. Well, I’d be lying to myself if I said it was hers. I know Peony mostly tolerates my obsession with bad television. By the end of the night, she’s still engaged and even brings the book to bed.

I put my foot down at that and insist she leave it in the living room. But then she tells me what she’s learned—that this man can only make “educated” guesses about how I became what I am. His conjectures are all ridiculous.

“I can’t believe people believe this stuff,” I mutter as I turn the lights out.

“The worst part is he said you’re a Man City fan.”

I turn to her, gaping. “That couldn’t be farther from the truth! They’re the worst in the league! Bought their way in, if you ask me.”

She simply chuckles as she pulls me down to the bed with her. Peony’s always been excited to take my cock, but she’s even more eager since getting pregnant. What she likes has changed, as have the positions she prefers. She seems to enjoy being in charge more, when she used to let me dominate her.

As we fall asleep together, I consider my plan—thinking that perhaps, she’s right, and I do need to tell my version of my story so that our child can flourish without my specter hanging over them.

---

Peony

The interview is scheduled for two days later.

The moment I sent in my tip to The Evening Show, they called to have Rupert on. All I had to say was his name, and that Alan was wrong about so many things.

“Tell them I hate Man City,” Rupert barked as I filled out the form.

Usually the show is booked out months in advance, the recruiter said, but they decided to scoot things around and fit Rupert in. It’ll be his first public appearance ever—a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for the host, Reggie Cooper, to interview the monster in the bank.

Rupert paces back and forth leading up to the big night, giving me sample interview questions to ask him.

“I don’t think they care that you’re actually a Chelsea fan,” I tell him, going over the index cards he wrote up.

“I need to set the record straight.”

Then it’s time, and we make the drive to New York City. I’m expecting people to be surprised when they see Rupert, like they always are, but not a single person in the entire studio bats an eyelash when he steps through the door, horns and all. A stylist sets him in a chair and cleans him up, styling his mane in a way that I think is quite handsome. Then I sit in the viewing room as Rupert is called on stage.

He’s clearly nervous as he takes his seat across the desk from Reggie, fiddling with the buttons on his nice jacket.

“So fabulous of you to join us tonight,” Reggie says. “Is it tricky finding clothes that fit you?”

I nearly forgot that Reggie was a comedian.

“Can’t wear anything that goes over my head,” Rupert responds gamely. “For obvious reasons.”

The audience laughs, and Rupert’s shoulders relax.

“So why are you really here?” Reggie asks after some back-and-forth. “Was it the new book?”

“That was what triggered it, yes.”

“Is Alan wrong about you?”

Rupert rolls his eyes. “I didn’t read it. My wife did, though. And that is really why I’m here.”

“She’s watching, isn’t she?”

My monster turns his head so he’s looking into the camera, then bares his teeth in a charismatic smile. “She is. And, well… the thing that isn’t in the book, I know for sure, is that she’s pregnant.”

Gasps go up from the crowd. Reggie leans forward in his chair.

“Yours, I assume?”

Rupert scowls at him, and Reggie holds up his hands in surrender.

“And why did that prompt this?”

“Whatever my child looks like, they deserve acceptance. Understanding. It’s my hope that telling my story will give them a better life.”

Reggie nods thoughtfully. “So what is your story, Rupert?”

“You won’t believe it, but it’s the truth,” he says. And then he begins.

---

The audience is rapt, Reggie leaning farther forward over his desk as Rupert describes how he came to the States, cash in hand, trying to make it big. How he destroyed his fortune, as the book had accurately described. How he asked Giancarlo for help—leaving out his name, of course.

How he met the man on the bridge in Jersey, which made the audience laugh.

“You’re saying an old man… cursed you?” Reggie repeats as Rupert finally crosses that bridge. “In the twenty-first century?”

Rupert shrugs. “What other explanation makes sense, Reggie? I’m not a genetic experiment. Once, I was a man. Now, I’m this. And the man who cursed me is dead.”

Reggie slaps a hand on his desk. “Dead! A real, honest-to-god wizard, dead.”

“I’m stuck like this, I suppose.” Then Rupert does something I never would have expected: he winks at the camera. “Good thing my wife prefers me this way. I think she might be horrified if she saw how I used to look.”

The audience laughs at this, and then Reggie wraps up his interview. There’s a band, and we wait off-stage eating donuts and drinking lemonade until he’s done.

“You’re the wife?” Reggie asks, grabbing a donut as he loosens his tie. He glances down at my belly, quirking a brow.

“Indeed I am. Peony Edgewood.” We shake hands with the hand that’s not full of donut. “Thanks for having him on.”

“It was a pleasure. Thank you for trusting us with your story.” He turns to Rupert and slaps him on the arm companionably. “You were great to have on the show. Even if I still don’t quite believe you.”

“Really?” Rupert asks. “After all this?”

“Magic?” Reggie shakes his head. “I just don’t know what to think anymore.”

With that, he takes a bite of his donut and passes us, waving as he leaves for his dressing room.

---

Rupert

As Peony gets bigger and rounder, the calls for interviews grew at first, and then tapered off when they realized I had done my one term in the spotlight, and now it was over.

I hope that guy’s book sells like shit.

Peony’s newest restaurant is doing wonderfully and getting rave reviews. It looks like the timing will be perfect for the baby to be born. Still, I am anxious as to what they will look like. I knew when we embarked on this quest what might happen, and I embraced it. And yet every day I wonder if I made the right choice.

My wife is even more sensitive now, and her breasts are as big and ripe as her belly. I like to look at her as I fuck her, to observe her sweetly bouncing belly with every thrust. She always rewards me with her cries of bliss.

We take classes together and make arrangements for the birth. We’ve decided to have it at home, rather than going to the hospital and risking strangers seeing our infant before we do. We’ll have a doula on hand, and Peony is intent on doing things her way. She has even hired a lactation consultant to help her once the baby is born.

It’s when Peony’s at the restaurant that I get the call.

“I think I had a contraction,” she says in an urgent tone. “I’m coming home.”

Then it’s all hands on deck, and my heart is racing a million miles a minute when she arrives back at our house. It’s more uncomfortable than painful right now, she says, knowing full well this is only the beginning.

The rest of that night, and the following morning, are a blur. The contractions get closer together, and Peony is in far greater pain. Not being in a hospital, she had decided against an epidural, which is a decision she now bemoans as she clutches my hand and pushes harder.

“I’m never doing this again,” she sobs, and I nod fervently in agreement.

More miserable hours pass, and then, movement happens. When the pushing begins, I hold on to Peony as tightly as I can, wiping the sweat from her forehead as she screams. And then, her wailing is met by someone else’s wailing.

Our baby.

I rush to the doula’s side as she draws the infant away, still attached to its mother by the umbilical cord. And what I see takes my breath away.

A tiny human baby, not a speckle of hair on them.

I’m dumbfounded when I sit down next to Peony on the bed, and the doula brings us the baby.

“It’s a girl,” she says softly as she settles the infant in Peony’s arms. I curl around them, holding my wife close as the doula walks her through latching.

And then we’re alone again, just the three of us.

“All human,” Peony says in wonder as the infant sucks. “I suppose we should finally settle on a name now.”

We’ve been tossing out names for months, neither of us able to agree. Now that we’re faced with her, though, the choice feels natural.

“Chloe?” Peony asks, stroking the baby’s tiny head. “What do you think?”

“I love it.” I kiss her hair, holding them both as close as I can.

---

Thank you so much for reading The Monster in the Manor! I hope you enjoyed Peony and Rupert's story. It was my absolute pleasure to write it and go on this adventure with you.

More to come! I'm so excited about In the Embrace of Dragons, and I hope you are, too!