Back to the wedding

Michał watched Kasia slip into her silk gown with mechanical precision. The pearls and lace that had just been scattered on the floor were now once again meant to symbolize purity. His gaze was cold, analytical, like a farmer assessing livestock.

"Straighten up," he said to me, his voice no longer a command but a statement of the obvious. "And wipe away those tears. No one wants to see a crying groom."

Involuntarily, obediently, I wiped my face with the sleeve of my shirt. The collar around my neck seemed to tighten with every breath.

"We'll be back at the wedding in a moment," he continued, pacing before us like a director before actors. "And you will act. You will smile, dance, kiss on the cheeks for appearances. You will tell your guests what a wonderful, intimate session it was. You will play a happy couple in love. And for the rest of your new, long lives, you will play a happy marriage. For the world. For your family. For each other, if I so desire."

His words were like ice poured into our veins. This wasn't just a temporary masquerade. It was a sentence for the rest of our lives. An eternal lie we were to wear like a second skin.

"But it's just a performance," he added, stopping and looking me straight in the eyes. His smile was thin and cruel. "Because in between, there will be no physical contact. No caresses. No sex. Her body doesn't belong to you."

He pointed at Kasia, who stood still, like a doll. "She belongs to me. And to my colleagues, when I see fit. We will use her. You will watch. This is your new role, Karol. Observer. Guardian of your own cage."

I felt something inside me finally crack, shatter into a million pieces. It wasn't anger anymore, it wasn't rebellion. It was absolute, bottomless emptiness. His next words filled it with icy, piercing horror.

"And your wedding night?" Michał laughed softly, a dry, rustling laugh. "You won't spend it in her bed. You will stand by the door and make sure no one disturbs you. Because that night, I will go in to your wife. I will lie with your wife. And I, Karol, will make a brat in her womb instead of you."

The words "instead of you" sounded like the final exclusion from being a human being, a husband. It was an act not only of ****, but of complete replacement, of erasing my role in her life at the most fundamental level. I was to be the father who would never be, looking upon a child who would be living proof of our enslavement.

"This child will be mine. And it will be your legacy. The legacy of your debt. And you will love it because I command it. And it will hate you because I decide it."

He walked to the door and opened it. The muffled chatter of a wedding came from the hallway, music that now sounded like music from another, distant world.

"Come on, my dears," he said, his voice laced with his usual, everyday indifference. "Smiles on your faces. Time to go play our beautiful family comedy."

Kasia was the first to approach him, her face suddenly lighting up with an unnaturally wide, radiant smile that was the most terrifying thing I had ever seen. Her eyes were still dead.

I took a step forward. Then another. My body moved on its own. I felt my own smile, artificial and painful, stretch across my face. I followed them out of the conservatory, back into the light and sounds, carrying within me the silence of absolute annihilation. Our marriage had just begun. And it was a marriage of three. He, she, and I—the eternal guardian of their monstrous union.

The wedding was now nothing but grotesque theater. I smiled until my facial muscles ached. I squeezed my hands, responding to toast after toast, feeling the **** mix with the bitterness in my stomach, offering no relief from the numbness. Kasia, trapped in her silk, was a consummate actress—her laugh was silvery and effortless, her glances at me filled with a tenderness that was the most telling lie. And the entire time, I felt Michał's gaze on me. He sat in the corner of the room, drinking a Coke, watching us with the cold satisfaction of a director.

At one point, as I was walking toward the restrooms to catch a breath from this murderous farce, he appeared beside me like an apparition. He wasn't alone. Beside him stood another boy, maybe twenty, slim, with platinum-dyed hair and a sly smile. His eyes, bright and penetrating, scanned me from head to toe with brazen curiosity.

"Karol, this is Tomek," Michał introduced, as if showing off a new gadget. "My friend. He has such... specific tastes. And he happens to be your type."

My heart pounded, not with excitement, but with a growing, mortal panic. I knew what was coming. I knew before Michał even opened his mouth.

"Tomek would like a small favor," Michał continued, his voice soft but unmistakable. "And you, as my newest acquisition, have the duty to entertain your guests. You will take Tomek to the men's room and pleasure him orally."

"No..." I whispered, and that single word was the last, **** shred of resistance. "Please... I can't..."

Tomek's smile widened, revealing sharp fangs. "Don't be afraid, teddy bear. I don't bite. Unless you really ask."

Michał placed his hand on my shoulder. His touch burned like a red-hot iron. "Karol. Remember the terms? *Total obedience*. Either you go to the bathroom with Tomek and do your thing, or I order Kasia to come to that table"—he nodded toward the table where her old, pious parents were sitting—"and take off her dress in front of them. The choice is yours."

This wasn't a choice. This was an execution. A choice between my own degradation and the complete destruction of my wife's last vestiges of dignity and soul, which no longer had a place in this new world. This was the ultimate lesson: my body was no longer mine. It was a tool, a shield, a currency.

I closed my eyes. I felt my legs carry me towards the restrooms. Tomek walked beside me, whistling. His hand rested on my lower back, provocatively, possessively.

The bathroom was empty, lit by a bright fluorescent light that reflected off the shiny tiles. The smell of disinfectant mingled with the scent of urine and someone's cheap cologne. Tomek leaned against the sink, crossed his arms, and looked at me expectantly.

"Come on, honey. Show me what you can do."

I knelt down. The floor was cold and damp. I cried, but the tears brought no relief, only blurred the ugliness of the moment. His hands tangled in my hair, not caressingly, but with a **** that left no doubt of his control. I was an object. A tool. His breathing quickened, and I, locked in this bright, sterile hell, performed another horrific act in a series of endless humiliations. And I knew, deep in this place where Karol had once lived, that this wouldn't be the last.

When Tomek pulled away from me, his breathing was heavy, his face alight with mocking triumph. He shook himself, straightening his pants, and his gaze, still hungry and full of sinister curiosity, fell on me again. I was still kneeling on the cold floor, feeling the sickly, foreign taste in my mouth and the overwhelming shame that burned from within.

"Not bad, honey," he snorted, his voice empty of gratitude, only the satisfaction of a job well done. "But that was just an appetizer. Now it's time for the main course. I want your ass."

That word, so vulgar and dehumanizing, jolted me to my feet. I took a step back, leaning against the cold wall. A scream rose in my throat, violent and full of disgust.

"No!" My voice trembled, but this time there was no plea, only a spark of **** defiance. "No! Michael didn't order it! This is beyond... This wasn't in the deal!"

The thought of giving myself to him like this, of allowing such a complete invasion, was unbearable. It was the last boundary my mind, even enslaved, tried to set.

Tomek laughed softly, dryly. His smile didn't fade, only narrowed, more dangerous. He stepped closer until I could feel his breath on my face.

"Deal?" he said, his voice now soft and razor-sharp. "Miś, you don't seem to understand. You don't have a deal. You have a master. And I'm his buddy."

He raised his hand and shook his finger right in front of my nose. "Listen, and listen carefully. Either you agree now, politely, and it will be our dirty little secret... Or I'll go to Michał and tell him you're disobedient. That you're resisting. And then..." His eyes flashed ominously, "...then I'll ask him. To lend you to me. For a week. I think the club 'Le Paradis' would be perfect. I have a lot of... friends there. With different tastes. You'd share a room with different men for a week. You wouldn't get out of there in one piece, honey. Neither mentally nor physically."

The words "Le Paradis" sounded like the name of the worst hell. I imagined it: being an object, a toy, passed from hand to hand in a place where no one could hear a scream. It wasn't the threat of ****. It was the threat of total annihilation, the gradual, systematic destruction of what was still left inside me.

And again, as before, there was ****. There was only a difference in the scale of suffering. A swift, yet monstrous act here, in this relative privacy, or a slow, public destruction there.

My shoulders slumped. The body that no longer belonged to me stiffened, and then, in an act of final surrender, relaxed. I no longer looked at Tomek. I stared into the void behind his head, toward the bright lamp that now seemed dim, as if obscured by our sin.

"I agree," I whispered, and those words were an epitaph for my manhood, for my dignity, for what remained of Karol.

Tomek smiled, satisfied. His hand rested on my shoulder again, this time not with ****, but with a certainty of ownership.

"Good boy. I knew we'd get along."

And once again, in that sterile, lighted morgue of a bathroom, I took another, final step into the abyss, knowing there was no bottom, and each fall could only be deeper. The boundary I had tried to establish didn't exist. It was merely an illusion they had deliberately shattered, leaving me with a sense of complete, irreversible loss of self.

The walk back from the bathroom to the bustle of the wedding hall seemed to take forever. Each step was heavy, as if I were wearing leaden boots. I felt a strange, bitter-salty taste on my tongue, and a deep, internal chill in my body that had nothing to do with the temperature. Tomek's scent—cheap cologne and sweat—seemed to seep into my clothes, into my skin, becoming part of my new, hideous identity.

When I returned, the first thing I saw was Kasia. She was standing alone by the buffet, holding a glass of champagne she hadn't been drinking. Her gaze was fixed on a spot on the wall, but when our eyes met, I saw not sympathy, but an animalistic, shared terror. She knew too. She knew what had happened. Maybe Michał had told her. Or maybe she simply read it in my posture, in my face, in the way I avoided her touch.

Then he appeared. Michał stepped out of the shadows like the master of this whole damned spectacle.

"Time for the main event," he announced, his voice calm, almost joyful. "The wedding night. Follow me."

There was no discussion. No questions. There was only obedient silence. Like sheep led to slaughter, we followed him through the corridors of the rented villa, away from the sounds of merrymaking. Our "marriage suite" was in a distant wing, elegant and secluded, now transformed into the arena of our ultimate degradation.

As the door closed, cutting us off from the rest of the world, Michał turned to us. In his hand appeared the same smartphone, our personal chronicler of nightmares.

"Karol," he said, handing me the phone. "Your task for this night is to record. You will record every second. I want to have beautiful memories of our first night with my wife."

I held in my hand that small, black box that felt like a guillotine. My role had been finally defined – not as a participant, not as a husband, but as an archivist of my own shame.

Michał approached Kasia, who stood motionless in the middle of the room, her beautiful silk dress now a ridiculous costume.

"Well, my dear," he whispered, touching her cheek. "Time to fulfill our marital duties."

What followed wasn't an act of love, passion, or even simple sex. It was a ritual of domination and cruelty. Michał undressed her not with lust, but with the precision of a butcher. His movements were efficient, emotionless. And all the while, he commented, mocked, and humiliated.

"Look, Karol, make sure you record this properly," he said as he pinned her to the bed. "See how your wife whimpers? This isn't for you. This is for me."

"Oh, yes, Kasia, show everyone how **** you are. Your husband can't even give you that, can he? I had to replace him."

He laughed as he kissed her, or rather, bit her lips. He laughed as she, despite herself, let out a moan that my own body couldn't even respond to with jealousy. I was empty. I stood with my phone in my hand, filming the scene, my eyes dry and wide, capturing every detail like a camera.

"Look, Karol, how her body reacts to me," he sneered, looking straight into the lens. "I'm her first real man. You're just… a witness. A servant. And soon you'll be the father of my child."

The words "my child" cut through my numbness, cutting like a whip. This wasn't just a physical invasion. This was an invasion of the very essence of our marriage, of our future, of everything.

Kasia lay beneath him, her eyes closed, but tears streamed down her temples, mixing with the sweat on the pillow. Her body reacted, betraying her, but her soul, like mine, was elsewhere, broken and trapped.

And I, phone in my trembling hand, stood and filmed. I was a guardian, a chronicler, and a co-participant in this horrific ceremony. When Michał finally let out a guttural growl and then collapsed on top of her, silence fell over the room, broken only by his heavy breathing and Kasia's quiet sobs.

Michał rose and looked at me and my phone.

"Excellent," he panted. "The first night is behind us. And now, Karol… you can go to sleep. On the floor in the hallway. Your wife needs rest. Tomorrow is a hard day for her."

I moved away, placing the phone on the dresser. I didn't look at Kasia again. I couldn't. I left the room, and the door closed behind me with a soft but final click. I leaned back against the wooden panels and slowly sank to the ground. Down below, the sounds of dancing and laughter still echoed from the wedding hall. And I, the groom, sat alone on the cold hallway floor, guarding the door to the bedroom where my wife was spending her wedding night with another man. And I knew this night would never end.