The Other Wives

The first thing that Lola noticed when she stepped inside Leonard’s countryside mansion were the portraits of his ex-wives lining the hallway. The oil paintings were rendered in lush, provocative strokes, and glimmered as though alive. It unsettled Lola that nearly a half-dozen faces watched her with their poised expressions as if they were waiting for her to make a mistake or say something incredibly stupid. Above them, the chandeliers glared, their lights dancing off the walls and glass windows. “Do you kill them like Bluebeard?” she asked Leonard, who had his arm possessively draped around her. She laughed weakly to indicate it was a joke. Leonard smirked, cradling his champagne glass. “Don’t worry, love,” he replied. “I promise you’ll meet most of them at our wedding.”

• • •

Leonard made good on his promise. At their lavish wedding, Lola wore a designer gown handstitched with crystals and semi-precious stones that made her feel less of a person and more of a work of art to be gawked at. And like intrepid visitors at a museum, all the ex-wives gawked at her, touched her bare arms, and caressed the crystalline embellishments that she wore. They all introduced themselves with long, lovely names. Esmerelda. Estella. Anamika. Helene. Sharmila. Katerina. Amongst their shimmering beauty, and her husband’s guests of honor—guests that included several doctors and lawyers—Lola felt puny. As an orphan, Lola was raised by a distant uncle who turned her out as soon as she had come of age, so she had no close family or friends whom she could invite to the wedding. She nodded as the guests all effusively greeted her, afraid to say anything in case she mixed up their names. Soon enough, the sea of guests parted, and Leonard was there with his customary swagger. His booming laughter filled the room, filled her ears, filled her heart with hope and adoration. He grabbed her wrist and pulled her out onto the ballroom floor for a waltz. The venue was alive with the smell of roses, and it all made Lola’s head spin. She laughed and drank and smiled and kissed Leonard, who looked at her like she was the most important work of art in his prized collection. It made her feel very proud of herself.

• • •

Before her marriage, Lola worked in a tailor’s shop. She sewed garments, measured suits, and stitched brassy buttons onto old coats. During a snowstorm, Leonard had stumbled in, seeking shelter. He’d surveyed the room with distaste, and she responded by making some pointed comments about his frayed Armani suit. For a few moments, Lola wondered if she would be the subject of this gentleman’s wrath, but instead of the snobbery that was a hallmark of his class, she heard only his laughter. “I wasn’t trying to be funny,” she said, now hiding behind the sewing machine. “You amuse me,” he replied, grinning. He asked her if she liked going to the movies. She nodded, then continued to thread a garment. He asked her what kind of movies she enjoyed—the science fiction types, or the sappy love stories. “Bit of both,” she said, smiling softly. He smiled back at her. His gaze was confident and kind.

• • •

They went to all kinds of movies, and afterward, they sat in the park to discuss them while sipping milkshakes. They held hands as he walked her to her tiny apartment in the seedy part of the town. She learned that he was a medical student with grand ideas about the evolution of the human race, and she listened intently as he talked about his laboratory experiments. When he asked her to marry him, she was utterly surprised. “Why?” she kept asking him. “I’m a nobody. Your family will never approve of me.” He laughed. “Lucky we don’t have to worry about them then. They’re dead.” She looked at him with consternation. Unperturbed, he leaned in close and kissed her on the mouth.

• • •

Following their wedding and a whirlwind honeymoon across Europe, Lola’s life settled down until it was a humdrum routine. As the lady of the manor, she had to oversee a small army of servants who cooked, cleaned the house, tended the gardens, and cared for their three Alsatian puppies, and took them for their daily walks. Lola tried being friendly with the maids, but they only looked at her dumbly when she talked about something other than housekeeping. She found their behavior to be rather robotic, but she was prudent enough to keep such harsh judgments to herself. On the nights he was home, Leonard made tender love to her and told her she was very, very beautiful. But he wasn’t home often. He was always off at some conference abroad, and when he did come back, he spent hours holed up in his study, talking in hushed tones to friends and colleagues who would often stop by. “These are medical things,” he told her kindly, after he found her eavesdropping. “You won’t understand anything, so no use worrying your pretty head over it.” Although he trusted Lola with the house keys, there were several rooms in the mansion for which the windows were shuttered and to which the keys did not work. When Lola asked Leonard about the odd rooms, he brushed her off. “Just guest rooms that we have no use for.” “Why don’t we rent them out?” she replied, gently folding his pants so that he could pack them for another trip. Leonard was incredulous. “Love, why on Earth for?” “For extra income, of course.” He laughed. “Darling, we have all the money in the world.” They didn’t have all the money in the world. Leonard did. He brought her gifts from all the countries he visited: silk scarves, antique curios, first edition publications by some of the greatest dead thinkers, an assortment of necklaces, even strange serums in glass vials with an ouroboros symbol stamped on the labels—serums that he promised to be the latest in “anti-aging” technology. “Say goodbye to wrinkles,” he’d tell her, kissing her cheeks. They were still very young, she thought. Too young to be worrying about wrinkles.

• • •

Not long after first using the serum, she began to hear voices in the walls. Without Leonard there to share the four-poster bed with her, or to ease her fears, she slept terribly and often woke in a cold sweat, convinced she had heard the voices screaming. Sometimes she would walk the empty house, the place alive with soft sounds, and creaks, and reverberations. At times, she was almost convinced she could hear her husband and his friends talking in hushed whispers behind the locked doors. She mentioned her experience one time over breakfast, but instead of his usual laugh, Leonard became concerned and called in a doctor to check on her and treat her for possible hallucinations. The doctor jabbed her with a number of different needles, took a few pints of blood, and gave her a bottle of large pills that made her feel all loopy within minutes of taking them. “I wasn’t hallucinating, I swear,” she protested. The doctor and Leonard exchanged glances. “Your mind is playing tricks on you,” one of them said. That night, Leonard invited Esmerelda and Helene over for dinner. The two ex-wives were gay and flirty, and they continued to chit-chat with Leonard long after Lola had left the table, complaining of a headache. A few days later, when Leonard asked her if she would like to go shopping with Anamika, Lola lost it. “I don’t like any of them!” “That’s a pity. They quite like you, and I thought you were feeling lonely.” “I am lonely! I am your wife, but you barely spend time with me!” “That’s not fair, my love. You know how important my work is to me—” “Yes, so important. So important, in fact, that you can’t even talk to me about it.” He sighed. “You wouldn’t understand, my dear. The science is just too complicated.” “Try me!” she cried. He shook his head, saddened, and got up to leave. “Is that why you divorced them? All your other wives. Because they asked you too many questions?” Leonard paused, then turned to her somberly and said, “Why don’t you ask them yourself?”

• • •

A few days later, Lola invited each one of Leonard’s ex-wives over to the house, either for tea, or for an evening stroll in the gardens. She asked them all about Leonard. They all had nice things to say about the man, but none knew anything about the work he did. So, Lola changed tactics and asked them about their lives instead. Once she got them comfortable and talking, she asked them why the marriage failed. Estella said they broke up because he wanted kids and she didn’t. Sharmila had slept with another man. Anamika was bored of being a housewife and wanted to start her own business. “You could still do that while being married!” Anamika twiddled her curls nervously. Her answers were beginning to feel rehearsed. “I could…but I like my independence more.” “Then why did you marry him?” “I was young and in love.” She looked at Lola with a newfound intensity. “Rather like you.” Lola learned nothing about Leonard’s work. She debated selling the expensive silverware and running away to a cottage far away.  Meanwhile, the voices in the walls grew louder.

• • •

Curiosity would not let Lola sleep. From the garden shed, she took a large axe and kept it hidden beneath her bed. She noted the license plates of the black vans sometimes parked in the driveway that Leonard said made necessary deliveries for his research. She searched into Leonard’s friends online and learned they were leading scientists in their fields, all related to genetics. She even hired a locksmith to change the locks on the sealed doors, but the locksmith canceled at the last minute under mysterious circumstances. Whenever she tried to leave the mansion, she found herself unable to do so. The servants would quickly surround her and prevent her from exiting. They would insist that with Leonard gone, it was Lola’s duty to stay home and take care of things. When Leonard returned from his business trip, she promptly asked for a divorce. “Why?” he asked. His voice was tired and ragged from travel. “Because all you do is lie to me. Either you tell me what I want to know, or I leave.” He stared at her for a long time. “Okay,” he said. “What do you mean, okay? I gave you two options.” “I heard you. I’ll speak to my lawyer. We’ll have the divorce finalized within a month.” He took leave of the bedroom without a backward glance at Lola’s tear-stricken face.

• • •

That night, Lola once again stalked the darkened halls. With her ears pressed against the filigreed wallpaper, she followed the faint sound of voices all the way to the west wing, near where her husband’s locked study was located. She spotted a shadow creeping towards her and she screamed. “Lola? What the hell are you doing out here?” The voice belonged to Leonard’s friend, Benny. He was dressed in a white lab coat, and amid the surprise, he had dropped his clipboard to the floor. The top paper contained words like “patient” and “experiment.”  Even in the dark, it was apparent that something was tucked in Benny’s elbow. It was an arm! A human arm, she was certain. It appeared to be freshly amputated despite there being no sign of blood. Lola blinked and the arm was gone. Stranger yet, Leonard had suddenly appeared at the end of the hall, and was now rushing toward his wife. Lola screamed at her approaching husband. “What is Benny doing here? And in the middle of the night!” Leonard was now beside Lola and talking softly in an effort to comfort her. “He had a nasty row with his wife,” he explained. “So, I let him stay over.” “And you didn’t think to tell me?” Benny just stood there, looking confused and embarrassed. Leonard walked Lola back to their room and locked her in. He apologized profusely for not informing her about Benny’s situation and begged her forgiveness. “You’re lying to me again. You’re both lying. You’re hiding something. I can tell.” She was now speaking through clenched teeth. Leonard had filled a glass of water and was coaxing her to drink. “Stop it!” she cried, smashing the glass to the floor. She was certain it contained a sedative. But the glass was merely a distraction. Suddenly, she felt the sharp pinch of the syringe in her arm and saw her husband’s expressionless face grow dark with the world around her.

• • •

She woke the next morning feeling sick. She recalled the strange appearance of Benny and the amputated arm, and wondered if it was all a dream. One of the maids informed her that her husband had to leave urgently for a conference, but that a lawyer would be arriving sometime in the afternoon with the divorce papers. She knew she couldn’t wait that long. Once the maid had left, Lola retrieved her axe from beneath the bed and marched with it in trembling hands towards the west wing where the voices were always the loudest. Once at the door of her husband’s study, she raised the axe and brought it down upon the locked oak barrier. She struck the door again and again, until finally, the destroyed wood fell away and Leonard’s secret was revealed to her. The wives, whose portraits all hung so pristinely in the main hallway, stood naked in glass cages looking older, thinner, and more frail than was possible. Their bodies were scarred and some were even mutilated. Two wives were awake (Lola recognized the open eyes of Anamika and Helene) but the others appeared to be asleep, even though they were standing, almost as if being held in a state of suspended animation. “What…what is this?” she whispered. The living corpse of Anamika was closest to her. “Why did you come here?” she cried. “Now he will never let you leave!” The sleeping wives stirred at the sound of Anamika’s shrill voice. Lola gaped in horror. “But…but I saw you…a few days back. You came over for tea. You said you’re starting a business to help young women find jobs!” “Rubbish! I’ve never seen you before in my life, and I’d rather never see you again! Run away! Run away as fast as you can!” “Looks like you discovered our secret,” said a familiar voice from behind Lola. It was Benny. Lola tightened her grip on the axe. She thought of the servants, all dead-eyed and mindless, following every instruction without complaint. She thought of the wives she’d met, and how their responses felt so rehearsed, as if they had memorized a script. She thought of Leonard and their early conversations back when they’d just begun dating, all his grand talks about evolving the human race. Then she looked at the real wives in their cages, vulnerable and afraid. Leonard was harvesting their tissue for his experiments. He was using their bodies to make clones. Benny took a step closer. Lola raised her axe. “Now before you do something foolish, take a moment to appreciate all that we have achieved. All the lives we will save with organ donation. Cloning is the future, and—” “RUN!” Anamika cried from her cage. “RUN before they turn you into one of us!” She turned to run, but Leonard was now standing in the busted doorway. Lola fought back her tears. “I loved you,” she whispered. “I did too,” he answered. “In a way. How do you think I choose my subjects for cloning? You all are the best the world has to offer, I would know. And now the world shall have more of you.” “You monster!” The bodies in the glass cages shivered, and the two men drew their concealed tasers. The axe in Lola’s hand suddenly felt very heavy, but she wouldn’t let go. And for the first time in his life, Leonard looked at his wife with fear in his eyes.   Originally Published in 2022 in Human Monsters: A Horror Anthology by Dark Matter Magazine, edited by Sadie Hartmann and Ashley Saywers.