CHAPTER 2 – THE VIDEO
1240 Words
1 New Message — Unknown Number
Attachment: 1 Video
Mara stared at it for a full minute, the way a person stares at the sky moments before lightning strikes—aware, unsettled, but unable to name the danger.
Spam? A wrong send? Another blurry video from those strange numbers that sent nonsense at dawn?
She sighed, already exhausted by things that had nothing to do with the message. With a casual flick of her thumb, she opened it —completely unaware that this was the moment her life would cleave into before and after.
The video loaded. Static.
A muffled laugh.
Movement too close to the microphone. Then the frame steadied —and Mara felt her breath seize like a frightened animal inside her chest.
A hotel room. Muted lights. Half-drawn curtains. Clothes scattered on the carpet in careless, intimate abandon.
And two bodies. A man. A woman.
Silhouettes leaning into each other with a familiarity that had no business existing between strangers.
Her heart stumbled.
No.
No, she was mistaken.
No, this wasn’t— No.
She lifted the phone closer. The woman tossed her hair back, revealing the curve of her cheek. A laugh escaped her—soft, confident, unmistakable.
Lian.
Her best friend. Her constant. Her mirror. Her chosen sister. The same girl who once told her, half-serious, half-feral: “Whoever hurts you, I swear I’ll destroy them. I’ll smash their skull open!”
And now, here she was— laughing like betrayal had always been a private joke between the two of them.
The man pulled her in, hands firm, familiar. His face turned. And the world around Mara went silent.
Gabriel.
Her husband. Her home. Her safe place.
The man she once thought the universe handpicked for her—standing in another universe entirely, touching another woman as if Mara had never existed.
Her heart didn’t shatter. It froze. Turned pale. Turned still.
Shock numbed her from the outside inward— skin first, then flesh, then bone, until she felt like a statue sculpted from disbelief.
And then came the sounds. The ones she would later hear in her dreams.
Lian’s breathless whisper against Gabriel’s ear. Gabriel’s low chuckle, the same one he used only when he felt wanted, desired, chosen.
And then— Not the movements. Not the bodies. Not the act. But the familiarity. The ease of it. The fluency. The unhurried rhythm of two people who had done this more than once.
Lian said his name. “Gabriel…oohhh~ Gab…” Soft. Seductive. Fond. Possessive.
Gabriel answered— not with her name, not with apology, not with hesitation— but with a tenderness that once belonged to Mara alone. “Lian..ahhh~ Lian…” and with a mix of seductive tone: “..you’re sooo pretty..so delicious.”
The two bodies moved in rhythm, f*****g like there’s no tomorrow. Moaning loudly knowing they are the only ones inside the room. Gabriel’s hands touching Lian’s body – that shattered Mara’s chest. His hands traced the lines of her body the way a man only does when he believes he has a right to every inch. There was ownership in the way he held her, a terrible ease in the way their movements aligned
Her throat closed. The room tilted.
The video wasn’t evidence. It was violence— personal, intimate, surgical. A blade shaped precisely for her heart’s architecture.
When the clip ended, the silence in her living room felt cavernous, merciless. Mara didn’t move. Didn’t scream. Didn’t break anything. Didn’t fall to the floor the way betrayed women are expected to. She simply sat in a stillness so complete it felt like grief holding its breath.
“No…” she whispered. “No, this… can’t be real.”
She replayed the first five seconds.
Gabriel’s profile. Lian’s laugh. The shape of his hand around her waist —her waist— the exact way he held Mara when he wanted her close.
“It’s edited,” she said, voice brittle. “It’s AI..Someone’s messing with me.”
“It’s not real.” “It’s not—” The lie caught in her throat. Because a woman’s heart knows the sound of her own undoing.
Her denial wrapped around her like a dying blanket—warm enough to touch, too thin to save. With shaking hands, Mara deleted the message. Then emptied the trash folder. As if erasing the evidence could rewind time. As if deleting a video could resurrect loyalty. As if ignorance could revive a marriage that had already been dead long before it was buried.
Later, when Gabriel came home, Mara greeted him with a smile so thin it could have been made of glass.
“Long day?” he asked, leaning in to kiss her. She let him. Her lips barely responded.
“Yeah,” she whispered, her voice as fragile as the truth she was trying not to drown in.
“Missed you,” he murmured against her skin, his arms wrapping around her with devastating familiarity.
The worst part wasn’t the touch. It was the memory of seeing those same hands wrap around someone else with the same ease, the same hunger, the same warmth she once believed was hers alone.
It was the realization that love has muscle memory— and Gabriel’s had learned another shape.
Every time he moved, she saw echoes of that video in the corner of her vision, like afterimages burned into the retina.
His fingers brushing her arm felt like theft. His warmth felt like a lie wearing her husband’s temperature. A strange hollowness spread through her chest, slowly, like a quiet flood, the kind that rises inch by inch until you realize the water is already at your throat and you never learned how to swim in lies.
She forced her voice steady. “Let’s eat. I cooked.” But her voice cracked in places she hoped he wouldn’t notice. Her words felt borrowed, foreign, as if someone else had spoken through her mouth while she remained trapped behind her ribs, watching herself perform.
Pretending felt safer than truth. Pretending felt survivable. Pretending felt like breathing underwater— painful, impossible, the lungs burning, screaming, collapsing inward, yet somehow still convincing themselves they could hold on just one second more. Because facing the truth meant drowning for real.
And Mara wasn’t ready to die yet. Not when she was only beginning to understand
how thoroughly her world had already killed her without ever laying a hand on her skin. Inside her chest, something cracked— not loud, not violent, just a soft internal splitting, the kind of break that doesn’t echo because it happens somewhere too deep
for sound to reach.
That night, she lay beside him in bed, staring at the ceiling. Gabriel slept with his back turned—
a habit she used to find cute, now a wall she could not climb. If she reached out, she could touch him. Feel the weight of him. Feel the man she married still warm beside her. But touching him felt like touching a memory.
A lie. A ghost.
“No…” she whispered into the dark. “It wasn’t real… it can’t be…”
But the truth, cruel and patient, sat beside her in silence. And Mara learned something devastating:
The moment you see the truth, the loss begins— but the breaking? That comes later. This wasn’t the end. Not yet. This was only the beginning.
- Writer
