MARRIAGE CONTRACT WITH THE MONSTER

People say that monsters do not knock on the door. Monsters just do what they want. They do not care about other people. Monsters are like that, they do not knock. People just walk in. The night my life ended it was raining. The rain was coming down slowly and heavily. This kind of rain makes everything quiet. I was sitting on the floor of our living room. I was counting the cracks on the wall. I do this when I am scared of something. I know it sounds silly. I do it anyway. I did it when I was a kid. I still do it now. My life ended that night. It is still hard for me to think about my life. The rain that night was very slow and very heavy. One Two Three There was a knock on the door at four. It was really calm. The voice was not all loud. It was not angry either. It was just firm. It sounded like the door already belonged to the person who was standing outside. My mother froze. She just stopped moving. My father stood up fast. His chair fell over backwards. Nobody got up to open the door for them. We all knew who was standing outside. Fear has a smell. That night it smelled like rain and metal. It was a smell. My father and mother were scared. We all were. The smell of rain and metal was around us. The door just opened by itself without anyone giving it permission. I mean the door was. Then it opened. The door. That is really weird because the door should not have opened without someone letting it open. Men in suits came into the room first. These men in suits did not look around at all. The men in suits did not smile either. The men, in suits, just stood there like shadows with their guns hidden under their coats. Then the man walked into the room. Dante Russo. I knew his name without anyone telling me. Everyone knew his name. In this city people did not say his name out loud. They whispered his name. His name was, like a prayer that people say quietly or a curse that people say when they are scared. This man was really tall. He seemed calm and clean. I did not see any scars on his face. There was no anger in his eyes. That actually scared me more than seeing blood would have. You see monsters, in stories always look wild and crazy.. The real monsters always look neat and normal. His eyes found me sitting on the floor. They did not stay on me for a time. I still felt really small anyway. His eyes made me feel like that. He walked in. Sat down like he owned the place. My father was not even shaking. My mother was not even holding her breath. He just made himself at home. My father and my mother were still not shaking and my mother was not holding her breath. The man said that your debt has finally caught up with you. He looked at you. Said your debt has come home. This means that the money you owe is now affecting your life and your debt has come home. His voice was really soft. That actually bothered me a lot. I just did not like the sound of his voice. My father fell to his knees. He kept saying sorry over and over. I felt like yelling at my father. I wanted to grab my father and pull him up. At that moment I just wanted my father and the whole situation to go away. Dante listened carefully like he did not have anything to do. He just stood there. Listened to every single word like he had all the time in the world to hear what was being said about Dante. The man said that he is not here for the money. He really meant it when he said that the money is not what he is looking for. The money is not the reason he's here, he said. The man looked at me again. He looked at me with his eyes. The man was looking at me again. My heart felt like it was going to pound out of my chest and hit my ribs. It was a scary feeling. My heart was beating fast and it felt like my ribs were going to hurt because of it. The feeling of my heart hitting my ribs was really uncomfortable. The war is terrible, he said. There is much blood being spilled. Many people are dying and being buried in graves. I am really tired of this war. The war is something that I wish would end soon. This war is exhausting. He put a folder on the table. The paper inside was white. The edges were really clean. The folder looked like it was completely harmless. The folder just sat there. He told me that it is a marriage contract. The man said this is a marriage contract. A marriage contract is what he called it. The word marriage really did not make sense to me. It was like smoke that floated around in my head. He pushed the folder closer to me. Your daughter marries me. This means the war will finally come to an end. As a result your family will be able to live in peace. Your daughter and I get married, the war. Your family lives. This is what will happen if your daughter marries me. My mother cried out loud. My father tried to say something. Dante raised one finger. The room became totally silent. The man told me that this is not something he is asking for, he said. This is not a request, he said. I stood up before I even knew what I was doing. My legs felt really weak. I could barely feel my voice. It felt like it was coming from far away from my body, from the music lessons, from the things I like, from my own life. My voice just felt far away. I said that I will do it. Everyone turned to look at me. My mother just shook her head. Then my father started crying harder. Dante looked at me closely like I was a puzzle that he was trying to figure out. He studied every part of me the way I moved and the way I talked and it was like he was trying to solve a big mystery. Dante was very interested in me and he wanted to know everything about me so he kept looking at me like I was a puzzle. He asked if you understand what you are saying. I nodded. My voice was not something I could trust at that moment. The man said that everything is good. That is how my life became a sentence. I mean my life was like a sentence that I did not know the meaning of. My life was a sentence and I was just living it that is all. My life, this sentence was all I had. The wedding happened fast. There were no flowers anywhere. No guests came to see us get married. It was not a time. All we did was sign papers. That was it. My hands felt cold when I was signing. I had on a dress but it did not feel right. Dante did not kiss me after we got married. The wedding was not special because Dante did not even look at me. He told me that I would live in his house. I have to obey the rules of his house. The rules are very simple. I am not allowed to ask him any questions about my life, in his house. I have to follow the rules of his house and do what he says. I nodded again. Those were the days when I did a lot of nodding. The man's house was really not a house at all. The house was a fortress. There were walls around the house. The doors of the house were locked all the time. The man had cameras over the house. There was silence everywhere in the house. Even the air in the house felt like it was being watched all the time. The house was a quiet and scary place. The staff did not say a word to me. They just looked down. Would not meet my eyes. I felt really weird like I was not there, just a person walking alone in these huge rooms that are meant for lots of people. Dante was always busy. He had a lot of meetings and calls. There were men coming and going all the time. I would see Dante and these men. Sometimes I saw blood on their clothes. It was really scary. Sometimes I heard screams at night when they were away but I could still hear them. Dante was always around these men. I did not know what they were doing but it did not look good. I was all by myself in a big bed. The sheets felt cold against my skin. I started thinking about monsters. I wondered if monsters actually sleep at night. You know if monsters sleep like people do if monsters sleep in beds, like my big bed. At night I just could not fall asleep. The house was really quiet. My head was full of thoughts and it was loud in there. I got up. I walked down the hall without putting on my shoes. I started to follow the voices that I could hear. I was standing behind a door. It was not closed all the way. The door was open a little bit. A man said that she will not make it for one year. Dante said that she does not need to do anything. When the contract is finished she will be taken out of the situation. The contract is what matters here and when it is complete she will be removed from it Dante replied. Removed. The word hit me like a stone. It was a big shock when I heard the word. The word was very surprising to me. I did not expect to hear the word at all. The word just came out of nowhere. Hit me like a stone. Clean. Simple. Final. I took a step back. My hands were shaking badly. I could feel the burn in my chest. I turned around. Ran back to my room as fast as I could. Then I locked the door even though I knew that locks do not really matter in this place. I locked the door to my room anyway. I was sitting on the floor just like I did that night when I was at home. I started counting. One Two Three I was not a wife. I was a sacrifice. I stood in front of the mirror. I looked at my reflection. My face was pale. I was really quiet. I was alive, for now. People said he was a person, a monster. I thought that was true, about the monster. The monster was what people called him. That is what I believed about the monster. Monsters are able to bleed. This is something that monsters can do. I was going to survive this person. Even if I had to become something dark myself.