Jilted at the Altar My Fiancée Chose Her Fake Brother

Oswald leaned in and murmured something in Michelle's ear, and she took him and left at once. She didn't even bother to glance at me on her way out. Once the guests had scattered, I went back alone to the wedding suite we'd decorated so carefully and started packing. Not long after, Oswald updated his social media feed. The video showed a dim bar booth, lights blurring, the music deafening. In one hand he held a wineglass; the other was locked tight around Michelle's waist as he mugged for the camera. Her veil hung crooked, a faint flush of tipsiness on her face, her eyes unfocused. “Celebrating my sister getting her freedom back! Best big-brother-little-sister time ever. Certain worthless dogs can stop dreaming.” It wasn't the words that stung. It was the picture. That wedding gown I'd spent half a year choosing looked like a joke. A few minutes later, Michelle texted me. “Joseph, Oswald's still really worked up. I have no choice but to stay with him a while longer.” “Everything I said at the wedding, I didn't mean any of it. I only said it to calm him down, because I had no other choice.” “You know how sick he is. I can't afford to be soft.” “Don't be angry, and don't take it to heart.” “Once he settles down, I'll come back and we'll talk about a new wedding date.” Reading it, I could almost picture the look on her face as she typed. I picked up my phone, let my fingertip rest on the screen a moment, then slowly tapped out three words. “No need.” Just as I was nearly done packing, the lock rattled. Michelle came in, supporting a drunken Oswald. “Oswald had too much to drink. He kept insisting he had to sleep in our wedding bed, and I couldn't talk him out of it.” “Joseph, try to understand.” Try to understand. Those words turned like a rusted key and unlocked the gate on a memory. Half a year ago, this suite had just been finished. My mother came to see it, so happy, wanting to sit on the brand-new wedding bed, to test how soft the mattress was. Michelle stopped her without a shred of courtesy. “Auntie, back home we have a rule. No outsider can touch the wedding bed. It's bad luck.” I still remember exactly how embarrassed and crushed my mother looked. But now, in front of Oswald, that rule counted for nothing. I couldn't be bothered to look at her, couldn't be bothered to argue over even a single word. I zipped the suitcase shut, turned, and walked for the door. Michelle seemed not to have expected this reaction. She froze for a beat. Then, almost without thinking, she asked “Where are you going?” I said nothing. I didn't even slow my steps. There's nothing to say to someone that blind. But the instant my hand touched the door handle, air whipped in from the side. Crack! A loud slap landed on my face before I could react. The force was heavy; my cheek flared with a hot, stinging pain. At some point Oswald had wrenched free of Michelle, and now he glared at me with eyes bloodshot from alcohol, jabbing a finger my way. “My sister asked you a question! You dog! Are you deaf?!” At first I hadn't meant to bother squaring off with Oswald. Over seven years, scenes like this had stopped being anything new. But my silence only fed the arrogance on his face. He suddenly swung the half-full bottle in his hand and smashed it at me! I turned my head on instinct, but it came too fast and too hard, and the bottle still slammed into my temple. A sharp pain burst open. And that wasn't the end of it. He jabbed his finger at my nose and, in that voice mixing malice with madness, screamed “Get out! You dog! Just as much an eyesore as that dead mother of yours! She deserved to die early……”

The thread that had been pulled tight in my mind all this time finally snapped. I didn't even think. My right hand clenched into a fist and I threw everything I had into his face. Ah!! Oswald let out a short, ugly scream, stumbled back several steps, and crashed hard to the floor. He clutched his nose, and blood welled bright red between his fingers, dripping onto the boards. For an instant the world seemed to stop. "Oswald!" Michelle's cry went up, shrill. She threw herself down beside him, catching hold of him in a panic, wiping the blood off his face with her sleeve. The look she turned on me was full of shock and fury. "Joseph! What did you do! Have you lost your mind?!" "You know Oswald has a condition. How could you hit him that hard?!" I looked at Michelle. Her whole heart, her whole gaze, was on Oswald groaning on the floor, and she never once saw the wound bleeding on my head. I wanted to demand it of her. So the moment he had an episode, arson and murder would all be understandable? So in her heart, I was forever meant to be the one sacrificed, the one required to understand? But before I could get out a single syllable, a tearing pain ripped through my skull, as if something had gone off inside it. Everything in front of me began to spin, and then I went out completely. ...... When I came to again, the first thing I registered was that particular smell of disinfectant, cold and sharp in my nose. I forced my heavy eyelids open, and my blurred sight slowly pulled into focus on the plain white ceiling of a hospital room. "You're awake?" I turned my head a little and saw a doctor in a white coat standing by the bed, looking down at the chart in his hand. "How are you feeling?" He stepped closer and checked the gauze on my head. "Mild concussion, plus a laceration on your forehead. Five stitches." "You got lucky. The glass didn't hit anything vital." He paused, and his tone took on a note of seriousness and puzzlement. "The girl who brought you in. That's your girlfriend, isn't it?" "What happened here, to leave you like this?" "Her younger brother seemed extremely worked up. He was crying and carrying on over in the ER." "She's been calming him down the whole time. Didn't even have a moment to come see you while you were in surgery." I pulled at the corner of my mouth and said nothing. Seeing me like that, the doctor sighed and asked no more. In the evening, the door to the room was pushed gently open. Michelle walked in. Her makeup was smudged, and there was exhaustion in her eyes. She came to the bedside, looked at my gauze-wrapped head, and was silent for a few seconds. "What did the doctor say?" I answered calmly. "I won't die." Michelle knit her brows. "Joseph, don't talk like that. Oswald, he—" "How is he?" I cut her off and lifted my eyes straight to hers. Michelle pressed her lips together. "You cracked the bone in his nose. They're still treating it." "The most important thing is that he was terrified. He's been unstable this whole time, and his condition's getting worse." Cracked the bone in his nose. I listened to the verdict without the slightest ripple inside me. If anything, I thought that punch had landed too soft. "So?" My cold response stopped her short, and her tone slid, out of habit, into that familiar lecturing note. "Joseph, I know you're angry, but can't you be a little more reasonable?" "Oswald had too much to drink, and then he had an episode. He couldn't control himself at all!" "You're a normal person. How could you stoop to his level and hit him that hard?"

Here it was again. I looked at her, this woman I'd loved for seven years, the woman who had almost become my wife. And she felt like a total stranger. "Michelle." I spoke slowly. "He can't control himself, so that makes it fine for him to crack a bottle over my head?" Her eyes flickered. "That was unconscious, he didn't mean—" "And insulting my mother, was that unconscious too?" I held her gaze and wouldn't let her look away. "He was raving!" Michelle's voice climbed. "What's the point of holding it against a sick man?" "Why shouldn't I hold it against him?" My own voice dropped cold. "Just because he's ill, my dignity, my feelings, my dead mother's name dragged through the mud, all of it deserves to be trampled?" "Michelle, the wrong you did back then, the guilt you carry, why should I be the one paying for it?" She froze. She had never heard me speak so sharply, so plainly. "That's not what I meant, Joseph. Can't we both just calm down first?" "I'm sorry. Once Oswald is stable again, we'll sit down and talk it through—" I cut her off. "There's nothing to talk about. And you don't need to apologize." I closed my eyes. The cut at my temple still throbbed faintly. "We ended a long time ago. The day you left in your wedding dress and went to a bar with him." Michelle's brows knotted tight, and her voice shot up. "I told you, that was to calm him down!" "Joseph, can't you show me a little understanding?" "I'm stuck in the middle, and it's hard for me too!" I looked at her, my eyes calm and still. "Don't put yourself through it. Go, Michelle." "Go take care of that adopted brother who can't live without you." "He matters more than I do." Her mouth opened as if she still had something to say, but in the end she only pressed her lips shut, turned, and walked out of the room. Over the next few days, she didn't come back. After I was discharged, I went to the cemetery alone. I wanted to say goodbye to my mother, and then leave this city. When I got there, the sight in front of me sent the blood rushing to my head and left my arms and legs cold. It was Oswald! He had a shovel in his hands, from where I had no idea, and he was digging up my mother's grave like a madman! Dirt was flung everywhere, and the headstone lay tilted on the ground. "Stop!" My mind went blank, and I threw myself forward without a second thought. But before I could reach Oswald, two huge bodyguards in black rushed out from the side and pinned me hard, one on each arm. No matter how I struggled, I couldn't break free. "Let go of me! Oswald! I'll kill you!" My eyes were splitting wide, my voice torn to a rasp. Just then Michelle came hurrying over and put herself between me and Oswald. "Joseph! Don't lose it! Calm down!" "Calm down? You're making me watch this lunatic dig up my mother's grave, and you want me to calm down?!" I glared at her, my eyes so bloodshot they felt ready to burst. Michelle looked away from me, that same tired note in her voice. "That punch of yours made Oswald's condition worse. He can't take any kind of shock right now! Show some understanding!" And Oswald, hearing what Michelle said, only grew smugger. He stopped, leaned on the shovel, and grinned at me, a grin full of malice and madness. Then he brought the shovel down hard on the ash urn he'd uncovered. "No!" Everything in me shattered. There was a dull clang, and the hard urn split open. Like a child who'd found a fun new toy, he struck again, and again, until the urn was smashed to pieces. The white ash spilled out across the ground. Oswald flung the shovel aside, lifted his foot, and stamped down on the ashes, grinding them into the dirt. "Mom!" In that moment, I heard my own heart break. Rage, despair, and a grief without end tangled together, and blood and tears slid down my face before I could stop them. From start to finish, Michelle never once looked at me. Every ounce of her attention was on Oswald. When she saw him stop, she stepped up carefully and asked in a soft voice, "Oswald, is that enough? Do you feel a little better now?" Oswald brushed the ash off his hands and nodded, grinning. "Yeah, sis, I feel a lot better now!" Then he turned to my mother's ashes on the ground and spat on them, deliberate and vile. "Let's go. Your sister will take you home." Michelle said it gently, and signaled the bodyguards to let me go. Then she shielded Oswald and left without a backward glance. I crawled forward on my knees and reached out with shaking hands to gather the ashes, mixed now with dirt and spit. The fragments cut into my palms, blood dripping into the soil, but I felt no pain at all. Just then, the phone in my pocket buzzed. Numbly, I pulled it out. The screen showed a message from Michelle: "Joseph, I promise this is the last time." "I've already booked the specialist. Tomorrow I'm taking Oswald overseas for treatment." "Once he's well, all of this will be behind us." "Don't worry." "Everything you suffered today, I'll make it up to you twice over someday." I looked at the message, no expression on my face. I peeled off my jacket, soaked through long ago, and wrapped the ashes in it, careful and slow. I buried the phone in the dirt and staggered to my feet. One step at a time, I walked away and did not look back.