IF I HAVE TO CHOOSE

Caitlin Marceau

Copyright © 2024 Caitlin Marceau

All rights reserved

The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

ISBN-13: 9781234567890
ISBN-10: 1477123456

Cover design by: Leeroy Cross James
Edited by: Lindz McLeod

Elizabeth Whitley Jones.

Elizabeth Whitley Jones-Marshal?

No, she shakes her head. That’s too many names.

Elizabeth Whitley Marshal?

No, another fierce shake of the head. Something isn’t right about that either.

She lets out a deep sigh and turns her attention back to the skillet. Four slices of bread are camped together in the small pan, the fake butter sizzling loudly. She picks up the spatula and flips bread, frowning with disappointment when she realizes that despite the noise of the not-butter, none of them have browned even slightly. She lets out a deeper, longer sigh.

What about Elizabeth Jones-Marshall?

She pauses, thinking it over, before saying it low under her breath. “Elizabeth Jones-Marshall.”

She savours the name, enjoying the way it rolls off her tongue. Smiling to herself, she prods the bread with the tip of the spatula, moving it around in the pan so that it doesn't stick to the hot metal. She stares down at the white squares, suddenly unsure of herself. But I like the “Whitley.”

Elizabeth huffs in annoyance. While it’s only her middle name, she’s always felt like it carried the weight and pretension of a second family name. And although she’ll never admit this to a living soul, she thinks that there’s something distinctly old money about having a name like “Whitley.”

The sound of the sizzling artificial butter is punctuated by another one of her sighs. She flips the bread again—White? Still?—and  turns her attention back to the counter as she prepares that evening’s meal. Elizabeth grabs the silver handle of the kitchen drawer and pulls hard, already knowing that the old wood is about to get stuck on even older cabinetry. Unsurprisingly, she’s right, and it’s only after a few minutes of straining that the drawer comes loose with a loud BANG! 

She picks up the silver can opener inside. It's a manual one that’s so old, its metal arms are turning brown from time and neglect, the red rubber grips having long since peeled off. Once upon a time, discovering a tool this run down in her kitchen would have been a source of infinite frustration for her. She had always been the kind of woman to take pride in her things and see their upkeep and appearance as a reflection of her own. If she’d discovered a can opener like this hiding in her kitchen before the—

Elizabeth shakes her head and pushes the thought from her mind.

This isn’t before and this isn’t her home. Or it hadn’t been until a few months ago when she’d been relocated to the neglected—and luckily abandoned—property. Although she’d hated being unhoused following the Incident, the idea of having to share a space with a stranger was somehow even less palatable than the idea of being without a living space at all. Thankfully, she alone gets to call the grimy one-bedroom apartment hers.

She flips the bread over again, wishing not for the first time that she had more than a pair of battery-operated hot plates arranged on the top of her lifeless stove to look like functioning burners, before making her way to a small pantry across the room. Inside, there are only two tins of tuna and a cylindrical can of beans. Although it’s not much—there will be even less after tonight—she’s sure that with the rest of the loaf she keeps in the breadbox, she’ll be able to make it through the weekend and to her ration restock on Monday.

Or she should be able to make it until Monday.

She tries not to linger on the thought for too long, not wanting to remind herself that she’s gone hungry more Sundays than she hasn’t, and carries the can back to the stove. It’ll all be worth it if her date goes well tonight. Elizabeth is about to put the can down on the nearby counter when she sees the words splashed across the label in big bold letters out of the corner of her eye.

BEANS IN TOMATO SAUCE

Elizabeth groans. She prefers maple beans. She likes the way their flavourless taste and mushy texture disappears under the weight of heavy syrup, her mouth watering as she remembers how the pork fat and bits of bacon always balanced out their sweetness. She laughs, the sudden burst of sound lost in the perpetual noise of the city that lies just beyond the kitchen window, as she realizes she’s earnestly mourning baked maple beans.

Who could have known that would ever be a marker of when the “good old days” really were?

She shakes her head, picks up the can opener, and removes the metal top of the can before setting it aside. Elizabeth opens the oven, though the appliance is used only for storage now, and pulls out a small copper pot. It’s old, dented, and she’s not entirely sure she should be using it—Wasn’t there something about bent metal and chemicals being released into food?—but she tries not to think about it as she turns the cylinder over and lets its contents spill out.

She scrapes the sauce from the walls of the can, making sure every drop has been accounted for, before moving the pot onto the hotplate adjacent to the bread and setting it to medium heat. Not that it matters; the cheap appliances struggle to warm food at every temperature. Elizabeth flips the bread again, wondering if it'll ever turn into toast, when she feels the vibrations. 

They start off small. At first, she thinks it’s someone running up the stairwell, their heavy boots slamming loudly against the concrete steps. But they swell and crest, the tremors growing fiercer and more thunderous by the second, until her entire home is quivering. It feels like the apartment complex has been lifted off the ground and shaken up, and Elizabeth briefly wonders if this is what it feels like to be a toy trapped in a dollhouse that’s been picked up to be played with. Gyprock and paint chips rain down from the ceiling and onto the food. Hurriedly, she grabs the small copper lid and covers the beans. Unfortunately for her, the skillet doesn't have a cover and is quickly dusted in white. She tries covering it with her hands, but abandons that idea as she topples forward into the hard metal of the stove and then onto the ground.

It feels like hours for the quakes to pass, though Elizabeth knows it must have been less than ten minutes. The monsters are slow but they take wide steps, so it never takes too long for everything to return to normal.

Pulling herself to her feet, she looks around the small kitchen. A few coffee mugs have fallen off of the counter and shattered to pieces against the hard ground. Her only glass cup, on the other hand, has managed to avoid the floor and instead has landed in the sink. She’s about to celebrate her luck when she notices the glass has a massive crack in it from the force of tumbling into the hard metal basin.

Careful not to step on any of the shattered dishes, Elizabeth turns her attention to the mess that is the stove. The hotplates are no longer on their respective burners, having slid about during the tremors. Although the bread hasn’t spilled from the skillet, it’s covered in a layer of gyprock, plaster, and dust that’s been shaken loose from the tops of her kitchen cabinets. The pot of beans has been knocked onto its side with its top on the floor, the baseboards coated in flecks of tomato sauce.

She swallows her scream of frustration and salvages as much of the dinner as she can, scooping the beans back into the pot with the sauce-covered spoon, trying to leave out as much of the ceiling debris as she can. Once she’s satisfied with her work, she fixes the hotplate, sets the beans down on it, and turns her attention to the would-be toast.

Using only her fingertips, she lifts a slice by its corner. She shakes it out over the sink, gently blowing on the not-butter dampened bread in the hopes of cleaning it off. She gives up hope after a few minutes and sets it dust-side-down in the skillet before repeating the process with the remaining three slices.

The idea of eating ceiling grime and tomato beans is enough to turn her stomach, but if she throws these slices away, she'll have to use the last of the loaf that she’s depending on to get her through until her new rations arrive.

It is what it is, she thinks, resigning herself to the evening’s meal.

She opens the cupboard under the sink and takes out a broom, dustpan, all-surface spray, and a rag. Most of them had been left by the family that had lived here first and not for the first time is she grateful to them. In addition to a few cleaning supplies, they’d also left a tool box, first aid kit, and a road flare. Trying to conserve her water usage, she sets about cleaning the kitchen as fast as she can. Growing up, her mother had stressed the importance of three things: keeping a clean home, keeping your looks, and keeping a man.

Elizabeth’s mother, “Mrs. Eleanore Baeur-Jones” as she insisted every non-family member call her, had been a trophy wife—not that anyone ever called her that to her face. She was naturally petite, with blue eyes and soft lips, however her large breasts, rail-thin form, and swollen lips had been the product of her husband’s deep pockets. She'd had her face pulled, stretched, and tucked every which way until it was so smooth that time itself beaded against her skin and rolled off her rosy cheeks. Even when she was well into her fifties, not a single strand of grey showed among her gold curls which bounced with every step of her high heels (which she insisted on wearing despite arthritis and weak ankles). And while she’d never gone on a diet, or at least never called it that, she had survived for most of her life on fewer than 1,200 calories a day.

If her mother hadn't been crushed to death when one of the gargantuan creatures—the one that looked like a bipedal lizard—stepped through their family’s sun room, Elizabeth’s sure her mom would have been able to survive easily on the rations of today. She misses her family, but forcibly pushes the thought of them from her mind. If she lets herself dwell on the past, she’ll find the present unliveable. So instead of focusing on what she’s lost, she turns her attention to what she has. Which, right now, happens to be a massive mess.

Elizabeth gets to work, stopping occasionally to flip the bread or stir the beans. It takes her longer than she’d like and by the time she’s done, she’s covered in a sheen of sweat.

Nothing says “Happy Valentine’s Day” like the smell of body odor.

She grumbles to herself, annoyed. Had this been a rare earthquake, she might not have been so annoyed about the mess. But it wasn’t an earthquake, it was part of daily life. So while she hopes that another tremor doesn't come, she knows it will and soon.

They always do.

Tired of feeling cooped up in her small kitchen, she makes her way over to the window. Pulling the curtain aside, she’s relieved that tremors from earlier haven’t cracked the window anymore than it’s always been since she moved into the space. Had this been her home before the kaiju, she would have been furious at the break in the glass and even angrier that it had been left broken for so long. Now, she was lucky to just have a window. Most of the buildings in her area had given up their shattered panes of glass for cardboard duct taped to window frames or thin sheets of wood covering the hole and nailed into the walls. These days, windows were  liabilities. Kaijus were attracted to light. If you left your window open and a candle on, it wouldn’t be long before you called attention to yourself and brought disaster to your neighbourhood. It’s why you’d be hard pressed to find anyone who lit fires after sunset or kept their windows uncovered. And while she knew leaving hers unobstructed was an unnecessary risk, she still couldn’t bring herself to cover the glass up after all this time. Elizabeth stares into the distance, her eyes tracing where she remembers the skyline of the city used to be. After she moved out of her family’s sprawling suburban home, she’d bought a condo in the middle of the city. While it was no penthouse, it gave her an enviable view that seemed unending. She remembers what it was like looking out into the sea of industry, the way the skyscrapers would rise up to punctuate the blue clouds like exclamation marks.

Now, she could see the city for miles from her ground-floor apartment, the surrounding buildings having long been crushed to rubble. What buildings remained in the distance were small, their silhouettes hardly noticeable in the smoke stacks and ember glow of fires that constantly burned. The tallest buildings that used to be the city’s pride are gone,  crushed beneath the heel of some gigantic beasts years ago. Her favorite mall had been split in two; the surviving stores had been ravaged and then repurposed into homes for people who had been displaced.

When the monsters first arrived—some of them rising out of the ground, others coming in with the tide, and a few descending from the sky—people had tried evacuating the city in search of safety they believed could be found in the countryside. They’d all been wrong. No matter where people ran, the creatures were never far behind.

So people slowly returned to what was left of the city and did what they did best: pretended like things were back to normal while convincing themselves that life had always been this way. They worked at jobs that had no meaning in offices that were mostly still standing, and moved to a new building when a creature inevitably destroyed the one they’d been in. People complained about their commutes to work, the lines to get rations, and the housing market (which was less of a “market” and more of a “move into what’s available/take what you can” free-for-all). And while everyone still enjoyed gossiping, conversations leaned away from who was sleeping with who and towards who’d been crushed by what.

The sky is dark overhead and Elizabeth guesses that it has to be somewhere after six. If she’s right, it means that Pierre is running late. She doesn’t want to jump to conclusions about what’s happened to him, but the body lying on the street makes it hard for her to think about anything else.

Maybe he’s dead.

She shakes her head and looks up at the sky, admiring the way the clouds look against the sunset and backdrop of crimson fires burning brightly miles away. But her eyes inevitably slide back towards the remains, which lie only a few feet from her building’s front yard.

The top half of the body is still intact, if you don’t count the bites that are missing from where carrion had already feasted on him. The bottom half of the man, however, is a different story. She isn’t sure where his legs begin and the sidewalk ends. He’d been crushed under the heel of a massive beast with such force that Elizabeth isn’t sure if he’d ever been solid mass below his waist. The man’s face is turned away from her and it makes it easy for her to imagine him as Pierre.

Elizabeth Whitley Jones-Marshal.

She sighs, hoping that Pierre isn’t dead. She really likes his last name and the way it fits with hers. It’s the kind of name her mother would have been proud of and it’s attached to a man her father would have respected.

Pierre works in finances, owns a beautiful house in the nearby suburbs (although she’s not sure if he bought it before the monsters or discovered it abandoned afterwards), and is both young enough to get her pregnant while being old enough to actually want a family. He graduated from university, hoarded enough pre-apocalypse resources to be considered rich, and speaks with confidence, even when he doesn’t know what he’s talking about). Although he’s shorter than she’d like, he’s broad-shouldered with a squared jaw and a thick head of hair. All in all, he’s perfect.

Unfortunately, he’s also dreadfully boring with a personality so bland he could put the colour beige to shame. But personality isn’t everything, or at least that’s what her mother taught her. And having managed to stick with him for the last month—which, given the state of things, is practically a lifetime—she can only hope she’s a few short dates away from a proposal.

If she’s being honest with herself, she only cares if Pierre is alive insofar as it gets her closer to that coveted second last name. That coveted second, hyphenated, last name that hints at a way of life she used to know. She remembers what it felt like to own property, to drape herself in luxuries, and to have nothing but endless possibilities at her fingertips. While she’s since made peace with the idea of not owning a summer home or a Bentley, she refuses to let this last marker of privilege slip through her fingers too.

Even if she does find Pierre blander than the supper she’s prepared for tonight.

Closing the blinds, she turns her attention back to the dinner. She takes out two mismatched plates from the pantry and sets them down on the counter. She lifts the bread out of the skillet and arranges them dust side down on the ceramic, before scooping the beans on top of them. It's only as she pours the last of the sauce onto the bread that she realizes that if Pierre doesn't show up soon, his meal will become a soggy mess of glutinous white bread and pasty tomato sludge.

Lifting the light plates off the counter, she makes her way over to the small table that takes up space in the corner of her living room. Like the china, the chairs are mismatched though she’s happy they’re at least the same colour and height as the circular table. Wanting to decorate for Valentine’s Day, but knowing supplies are hard to come by, she’s draped a red tablecloth over the cheap wood. It’s Christmas themed, with tiny wreaths and boughs of holly dotting the worn fabric, but she’s hoping the rose petals and little hearts she’s made out of old emergency flyers is enough to hide the pattern.

She puts the food down and is contemplating how the food will taste if her date takes much longer to arrive, when there’s a sudden knock at the front door.

Although she's expecting Pierre, the suddenness of it causes her to jump in surprise. She laughs at herself, smooths the front of her dress down, and makes her way to the entrance of the small apartment. She runs a hand through her hair, making sure it’s framing her face, before opening the door with a rehearsed smile.

Pierre has seen better days. His navy suit jacket is dusted in grey soot. Flecks of red dot one of his cheeks and drip onto the collar of his cream dress shirt. Sweat beads off his forehead and dampens his dark wavy hair, which falls messily into his face. He’s breathing heavily, and his skin is red and splotchy with exhaustion.

“Are you okay?” Elizabeth asks, trying to mask her surprise with concern.

“Yeah, yeah,” he pants.

Behind him, the far edges of the city seem to burn brighter and the screams of terror that have become as unremarkable as the sound of traffic sound louder. She can hear rumbling in the distance and she silently prays that another beast doesn’t pass through the neighbourhood tonight or undoes all the cleaning she did this afternoon.

Pierre looks over his shoulder nervously before looking back at Elizabeth. Not wanting to be rude, she moves out of the way and beacons him to follow her. “Come on in.”

She doesn’t have to ask twice. Pierre scurries in through the open doorway and closes it firmly behind him. It's clear he's rattled and she suspects he’s had the kind of day everyone wants to forget, but never can. His eyes have a faraway look to them and his skin looks pale, although she rationalizes that this might be from the ash that he’s covered in.

He stands in the cramped entranceway and stomps his feet on the ground while he brushes himself off, puffs of white dust bursting from his suit. He shakes his head, more ash raining down on the ground around him, and runs a hand across his cheek, the blood smudging against his skin.

“How was work?” she asks, trying to distract him from whatever trauma it is that he’s going through, but the question only seems to make it worse.

“Not great. One of the creatures passed through the east end of the building. Most of my department is, uh, well…” he trails off, not needing or wanting to finish his sentence. “There are positions available now and it seems like I’ll be getting a promotion soon.”

“That’s…” She has no idea how to finish the sentence, so she doesn’t. “Which one was it?”

“What?”

“Which monster?”

“Oh, it was the Knot. He’s been really active today.”

She makes a face at his answer. The Knot is the name they gave the beast who rolled right out of the sea one afternoon. Unlike the other beasts that resemble animals, the Knot is a writhing pile of tentacles that rolls and undulates through the streets, leaving a trail of slime in its wake as it screams and moans from an invisible mouth. Of all the kaiju that plague the city, the Knot is the one they like talking about the least since the look of it makes everyone uncomfortable. It stands roughly six stories tall and while it doesn't do as much damage as some of the other monsters do, it still has an unfortunate habit of bumping into buildings and toppling them over. “On that note, are you hungry?” she asks, trying to lighten the mood.

He nods, his eyes still far away.

She motions for him to follow and leads him through the apartment to the living room. She makes sure to sway her hips back and forth as she walks, putting on a show in the hopes of taking his attention away from the beast and putting it on her. By the time they get to the table, Elizabeth thinks her plan has worked as she catches Pierre admiring the curves of her body with his eyes. He licks his lips excitedly and she realizes that it’s not her body he’s admiring, but the food on the table behind her.

“Enjoy,” she says, taking a place on the chair across from him.

Pierre eats like a man who’s never known what it’s like to be full. He shovels the beans and toast into his mouth, not stopping to breathe or chew. With each bite, his teeth clink against the metal prongs of the fork and scrape against them as he drags the utensil out from between his lips. He’s done his first slice before she’s had more than a bite of hers and he smiles sheepishly at Elizabeth.

“It's delicious,” he says through a mouthful of food, the tomato sauce wetting his lips.

She nods and stares down at her meal. Her appetite, which had mostly left her, is now fully gone but she forces herself to smile back at him. “I'm glad you like it.”

They continue their meal in silence. Pierre wolfs his food down in a couple of bites while Elizabeth mostly just pushes hers around with the tip of her fork. She knows she should eat and that she’ll be hungry in a few hours, but she can’t bring herself to down the goop that is the evening’s dinner.

“How was your day?” he finally asks, wiping the last of the tomato sauce from his mouth with the back of his hand.

She puts her fork down with a smile. She knows she should finish dinner, but she can't bring herself to. It's too bitter. It's too bland. It's too much. “Better, now that we're together.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah,” she lies. “It's nice for us to finally be alone and spend the night together, given how important it is.”

“I always thought Valentine's Day was such an overly commercial holiday. I don't get how anyone enjoys celebrating it. I mean, not that I'm not happy to be here with you.

“No, not that,” she chuckles, waving him off. “I mean, yes, that. But it’s also a big milestone for us.”

He looks at her and raises an eyebrow, confusion lining his face. She waits for him to work it out, wanting him to come to the conclusion himself. As she waits, she runs her hands over her thighs, smoothing out the fabric of her cheap dress as she waits.

“I'm sorry,” he finally tells her. “I really don't know what you're talking about.”

“It's our month-long anniversary,” she reveals. Although she doesn’t want to appear crestfallen, she can’t help but be annoyed at the oversight.

His eyebrow somehow inches up even higher. “Our month-long anniversary?”

She nods. “We met each other a month ago, almost to the day.”

They’d actually met on the 16th of January, but celebrating a month on Valentine’s Day sounded better in her head. Elizabeth thinks it gives their relationship weight, like they’re somehow meant to be. “A month ago today,” she repeats, stressing the importance of the date. “I thought it would be nice to celebrate four weeks together.”

He nods, shifting his weight in his chair.

“I mean, it's pretty substantial,” she says. “A month is a long time to be with the same person, especially given the state of things.” She eyes the flecks of red on the collar of his dress shirt. “A lot can happen in a month, or even in just a day.”

He nods slowly as he finds the words. “It can, yeah. It’s just that—”

“It's just what?”

“Well, it's just… I mean, it's only a month.”

“Only?”

“I mean, a month isn’t that long. It’s barely enough time to decide if you want to be exclusive with a person.”

She sits ramrod straight in her chair, her eyes snapping up to meet his. “What do you mean? Are you telling me we're not exclusive?”

He seems taken aback by the question. “Did you think we were?”

“Yes.” Elizabeth’s voice is tight and she can feel herself shaking with frustration.

He begins to pick lint and stuck debris from his suit. “I'm sorry. I should have been more clear about things.”

“More clear about what?”

“I didn't realize you thought we were that serious.” He speaks slowly as he tries to find the words and phrase them in a way that won’t sting.

But they do sting.

She doesn't mean to have such a strong reaction, but she puts a hand to her chest as though she's clutching at her heart. If her mother was alive to watch her, she’d be disappointed in Elizabeth’s control (or lack thereof) of the situation.  “It’s just, you never know when someone's going to be gone in the blink of an eye. And given the state of everything right now, I just don't think I'm ready to commit to one woman,” he admits. “If there's one thing I've learned from today, it's that you never know how long someone's going to be around, you know? Why would I want to put all of my eggs in one basket?”

He asks the question like he expects her to agree with him. She doesn’t.

Settling down is the only thing she's wanted from this relationship. The fact that she's had to put up with four weeks of beige, bland, pasty Pierre is enough to make her want to scream. She feels further from a second last name than she ever has before and she balls her hands into fists, trying to calm herself down. If he wasn’t going to give her his last name, what had any of this been for? What had she been working towards?

If her mother had been alive, she’d know just how to salvage this situation. She’d know just what to say to convince him he loves her. She’d know how to move her body in a way that could turn any man’s “no” into a “yes, please.” If she’d been alive, she’d know just what to do.

But her mother isn’t alive. 

“Look,” Pierre says, pushing his chair back from the table, “I didn't mean to upset you. I just don’t want to lead you on or make you think that this is going somewhere it's not. If you want me to go, I understand.”

Yes.

“No,” Elizabeth says, surprising even herself with her answer. “Stay, please.”

“Are you sure? Because if you’re upset, I don’t—”

“Stay,” she says again, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. “And you don’t have to worry about me. I misread the situation and put you in an awkward spot. I shouldn’t have assumed that about us. I’m the one who should be sorry.”

She apologizes quickly, hoping that he doesn’t see through her insincerity as she flashes him a smile. “Besides, we haven’t even gotten to dessert,” she adds.

She trails the tip of her finger down her neck, across her chest, and stops shy of her cleavage. She bites her lip and nods to the bedroom behind him.

“Are you sure?” he asks, surprised.

“Why wouldn’t I be?”

“Well, it’s just..”

“Look, you’re a total catch and I don’t want to be alone on Valentine’s Day. So if you want to keep things casual, we can keep them casual. But that doesn’t mean we can’t enjoy other benefits.” 

Before Pierre can think it over, Elizabeth gets up from her chair and makes her way towards him. She tilts his face up towards hers as she stands over him and leans down, pressing her lips against his. At first, his jaw is tense and tight as he hesitates. But slowly, he begins to lean in, pressing his lips against hers, his mouth parting just enough for her tongue to slip in between his teeth.

She runs her hand up his chest and behind his neck, her nails scraping his scalp as she laces her fingers in his hair. Unlike their first kiss, he responds immediately to this one, leaning into her touch and wrapping his arms around her waist to pull her close.

She breaks the kiss between them just long enough to whisper in his ear. “Come on.”

Grabbing him by the front of his dress shirt, she guides him out of his chair and towards her bedroom. It's dark inside the small room. Unlike the kitchen, there are no exposed windows in her room, and the space is too small for much furniture. Her bed is pressed against the back wall, and she guides him towards it, kissing him deeply with each step towards the mattress.

Eventually, she feels the soft fabric against the back of her knees. She lets herself fall backwards onto the bed, guiding Pierre on top of her. He kisses her, his breath hot against her skin, and she moans against his mouth as she runs her hands down his chest, undoing each button on his dress shirt. He presses himself against her, his body hard between her soft thighs, and she tells herself to moan in response to his touch, grinding against him.

If I can just get him onto his back…

“I want to ride you,” she says breathlessly.

He pulls his lips away from hers and looks down at her with an excited smile. His cheeks flushed and his pupils dilated with need. She knows even before he positions himself beneath her that she’s got him right where she needs him to be.

Once he’s on his back, she climbs on top and straddles his hips, grinding down and gyrating against his length. He moans at the sensation and puts his hands on her legs, pushing him down to feel her harder on top of him. She reaches down and rubs him through his clothing before she undoes his belt. She pulls it hard, slipping it off of him. “I want to tie you up.”

At this, Pierre hesitates. He opens his mouth to protest, but she covers it with her own before he can say anything. She then grabs his wrists and lifts them above his head, leaning forward with her breasts in his face as she wraps the solid leather of his belt around them and the metal bars of the headboard.

Once he's secure, she gets off of him.

“Where are you going?” he asks, his voice thick with want.

She doesn’t bother to answer his question as she exits the bedroom and closes the door behind her.

“Elizabeth?” he calls after her, voice high with worry.

Making her way over to the sofa, she wipes her mouth off with the back of a hand. She grabs one of the armrests and begins heaving the furniture towards the bedroom door. She pushes it against the wall, the legs of the couch leaving deep scratches in the floor, and goes back to retrieve the two chairs from the table, piling them on top of the cushions.

She knows the bedroom door opens inwards and that should he break free of the headboard, he'll have no trouble getting out. But the goal isn’t to stop him from escaping the room, she tells herself in her mother’s voice, it’s just to stop him from getting out of the building.

Her face is flushed and she's breathing heavily, her blood boiling as she continues to hear him shout from the other side of the wall.

If she's being honest with herself, she knows she doesn’t care about Pierre. She knows that the only thing she wants from him is that damned second last name. It’s a stupid, frivolous, and unimportant, but she wants it more than anything she’s ever wanted. It's the only thing that can connect her to the life she could have lived, to what her mom had taught her, to the person she should have been. It's not that she wants to be his wife, the mother of his children, or even a Marshall.

It's that she refuses to give this dream up when she’s already lost so much.

And to have spent the last month working so hard to achieve it, only for it to slip away in the course of an evening? Unacceptable.

Elizabeth makes her way to the kitchen. She rips the cheap curtains off the cracked window and tosses them onto the floor. She throws open the cupboard under the sink and takes out the bottles of cleansers, before opening the lids and pouring the chemicals out onto the counter and floor.

She reaches back under the sink and pulls out the bright red emergency flare. She pulls off its cap and hits the tip against the striker paper. It takes a few tries, but soon the end of it erupts in a shower of bright red sparks. With a final goodbye to the small apartment, she tosses the flare onto the cleaner-soaked curtain and shields her eyes as the fabric bursts into flames.

In the distance something screams. It’s loud, inhuman, and makes the hair on the back of her neck stand at attention. She makes her way out of the front door and sets off into the night, hoping to put as much distance between herself and the fire as possible, the ground beginning to shake as the beasts make their way towards the burning building.

     I don’t need to be his wife to be a Jones-Marshall; being his widow will suit me fine.

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