Seeing Duroy again at the weeping brook felt so strange and jarring. I had not thought, in all these years, that I would ever see him again.

He was part of something that I had buried deep in that spring long ago. We were too young back then to survive the pressure of the world around us; our circumstances were just too volatile.

I still think of how it ended for us. For me to leave like that, without a single word, without so much as a goodbye.

Por Suricatem - Trabajo propio, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=50105527

That one evening, while awaiting their table, they happened to run into Duroy and his female companion. In a moment of misplaced confidence, her husband suggested they dine together - a flourish of forced gallantry he would soon come to regret.

The more he observed Duroy, the more he felt himself recede into the architecture of the room. He could feel himself getting smaller with each passing minute.

Duroy was suave and good-looking; he moved with such a lethal grace that her husband felt his own movements were but a palsied jerk by comparison, and even the vehicle he had stepped from whispered of a privilege her husband knew he would never have.

It was as if he were struck by an undeniable, dirty truth: that he was merely a stand-in. Had Duroy remained in the picture back then, it was he - the husband himself - who would have been naught but a shadow in his wife's periphery.

He felt like a second-choice winner - someone who got the prize because the real contender had been disqualified.

But the true strike was the atmosphere; his wife and Duroy fell into a conversation that seemed to exclude the rest of the world. They spoke in the rhythmic cadence of a secret language, with the shards of their shared past - references to the weeping brook and buried jokes - acting as a barricade against the uninitiated.

This left her husband and Duroy's companion adrift in a heavy, awkward silence.

Worst of all was the scent - the sharp, woody cologne Duroy wore was the very same one he used himself; the uncanny coincidence was just so repulsive to him.

In that moment, as he sat marooned at his own dinner party, he realized he had become nothing more than a placeholder for the man across the table - like a cuckolded idiot.

That encounter changed everything; from that day forward, his peace was replaced by a constant, gnawing suspicion. The domestic altar his wife had so painstakingly adorned - her love nest - was transformed into a court of accusation, the very air thick with the hostility of his doubt.

Poisonous thoughts were taking root rapidly: Duroy had been playing house while he was away - lounging in his favorite armchair, drinking from his mug, and defiling the sanctity of his bedroom.

He mocked at everything she did; when she brought home fresh violets to fill the vases, he would sneer, asking if she was decorating for a visitor or if the flowers were a signal for the man at the brook.

These violets - trifles light as air to any others - were to his poisoned mind confirmations strong as proof of holy writ.

His paranoia drove him to become a profane trespasser in her things - rifling through her drawers and old yearbooks in a frenzied search for a ledger of her sin. The lack of evidence only feed his mania; he was convinced she was simply better at hiding her sin than he was at finding it.

The breaking point came when he had gone to the store for cigarettes. He was reaching for a few cans of beer at the back when the sound of familiar names stopped him cold.

A group of locals had cornered Mrs. Page near the checkout, in their poor attempt at whispering about the history between his wife and Duroy, back when they were the golden couple of the town.

There was no discretion at all; instead, they clutched their pearls, circling like vultures starving for the scandal of it all. Everyone else's private matter was merely a source of cheap entertainment to them.

These self-serving gossips were no different than the man who stood on the corner supposedly collecting alms for heaven, only to trade those coins for a flashy ride the moment he turned his back.

He was seething, the blood rushing to his face as he listened to them wonder aloud how things might have been had they stayed together.

He slammed the heavy glass chiller door with a violence that made the bottles rattle and the shelves groan. The sound rattled through the false ceiling like a thunderclap, silencing the chatter until only the dull hum of the chiller remained.

The women froze, mouths hanging open, staring at the gloomy figure looming in the shadows of the aisle.

He walked out without his cigarettes or beer. That was it. From the secret language of the dinner to the poison on the lips of the towners, it was as if they had confirmed the dark speculation in his head.

As the door swung shut, the silence of the street was drowned out by a riotous swell of mocking laughter playing in his mind's ear.

It was the green-eyed monster, which doth mock the very meat it feeds upon.

Concurso de Arte y Escritura #185 y Ganadores de la Edición #184/ Art and Writing Contest #185 y winners de la Edición #184

Inviting @dreeyor to write his story.

©Britt H.

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