I Cremated My Living Husband

On the morning of what should have been my golden wedding anniversary, I accidentally connected to a video call with myself from fifty years ago.

The girl on the screen was in a bridal boutique, slipping into a lace gown, getting ready to marry Kelvin Holloway.

My voice broke as I screamed at the screen: "Don't marry him! Take off that dress. If you put it on, you'll be a widow for fifty years."

"On your first morning as his wife, hell fake his own death and flee the country with his pristine, untouchable idealhis first love, Mandy Olivia."

"Three months in, hell have his mother drug your food to make sure you lose your babies. Its a pair of twins."

"Six months in, Mom and Dad will track him down overseas. To protect Mandy, he'll let them die in a staged car crash."

"And todaythe day of our golden anniversarythe news will broadcast that Kelvin has returned to the country as an esteemed research professor, with Mandy on his arm, basking in his glory. And he will cast you aside like a worn-out maid, after you spent fifty years caring for his paralyzed parents and raising his younger brother."

"I have swallowed this bitter pill of a life for fifty years. I am done."

I screamed at my phone again: "You stupid girl, Cathy! Every single piece of misery in your life starts the second you say I do to Kelvin."

From the screen, my own youthful, untouched voice filtered through: "Excuse me, ma'am... did Kelvin hire you to test my loyalty?"

The girl on the screen was only twenty-two. Her skin was flawless, radiant with youthfree of the deep-set wrinkles of labor, free of the jagged scar Kelvin's younger brother would one day carve across her cheek. Her eyes were bright, reflecting a pure, unruined love. She saw nothing in this world but Kelvin.

A girl like that shouldn't have to suffer for fifty years.

If I could rewrite the ending, I had to stop her from marrying him.

"Im not a test," I said, my voice raspy, holding back a sob. "Cathy, I am you. Fifty years from now."

Naturally, my twenty-two-year-old self didn't believe me.

I desperately held up my right hand to the camera. It only had four fingers.

"When Kelvin wanted to flee the country with Mandy, he took out loans from dangerous people. When they came collecting and couldn't find him, they took my ring finger."

I lifted my faded shirt, exposing the thick, puckered scar on my side.

"Kelvins little brother needed a kidney. His family starved and beat me until I agreed to donate mine."

I pulled out my old medical records, the yellowed pages clearly detailing a forced miscarriagetwins.

"This is what Kelvins love looks like."

The young Cathy looked bewildered, a flicker of pity crossing her eyes.

"Ma'am, I think you have the wrong number. If you're in danger, I can call the police for you."

At seventy, I was nearly driven mad by the sheer innocence of my twenty-year-old self.

"Do you see this psych-ward commitment slip?" I hissed, holding it up. "Kelvin is having me committed today so he and Mandy can finally live openly. If you marry him, this is where you end up. You won't even get to retire in peace with your best friend, sipping cocktails and laughing at bad reality TV."

Perhaps it was that last, absurd detail that caught her attention. Her posture shifted.

"Ma'am," she said slowly, "if you really are me from the future... can you show me your ID? Or your marriage certificate with Kelvin?"

I was always so careful, so cautious about everythingexcept when it came to Kelvin. I believed every lie he ever told, and it ruined me.

I froze. The screen was silent save for her breathing.

"If you can show me an ID to prove you are Cathy," she prompted, "I'll believe you."

The phone burned against my palm. After a long pause, I whispered, "I can't."

I had no proof.

Right after our wedding, Kelvin claimed he wanted us to belong to each other forever. He tore up our marriage license right in front of me, whispering that this meant nothing but death could ever part us. He confiscated my ID, my social security card, my passport. For fifty years, as the world moved online and grew modern, I lived as a ghost. A non-person.

Without papers, I couldn't get a real job. I couldn't even sign up to do food delivery. I had to take off-the-books workscrubbing greasy dishes in back alleys, doing hard labor in illegal sweatshops. My body gave out piece by piece. Now that I was old, I couldn't even afford a two-dollar bottle of generic painkillers. Every night had been a battle of endurance in the dark.

Suddenly, a male voice cut through the video. It was Kelvin at twenty-five.

He walked into the frame wearing a tailored suit, his eyes swimming with a deep, tender devotion that the young Cathy simply could not resist.

Panic flared in my chest. "Mandy is in the bridal shop right now!" I yelled. "Search the dressing rooms. One by one. You'll find her!"

The moment the words left my mouth, the screen went black. The call was still connected, but the camera was covered; only muffled, chaotic background noise filtered through.

I remembered that day so clearly. We were supposed to go to a local boutique run by a college friend, but Kelvin changed the venue at the last minute. He claimed his client owned a high-end, bespoke bridal salon, and he insisted I deserved the most expensive, hand-stitched gown in the world because nothing else was worthy of me.

I didn't know the dress had been custom-made for Mandy.

I didn't know that while I was trying on gowns, Kelvin and Mandy were tangled together in a back dressing room.

He only confessed it to me today, upon his return.

I clutched the phone, pressing it to my ear, trying to make out the noises over the static, but there was nothing. A heavy, suffocating defeat washed over me.

Is this really how my life had to end?

A knock rattled the bedroom door.

Kelvin, now an old man, stood in the doorway. He threw a cheap, oversized plastic woven bag at my feet.

"You've played the role of Mrs. Holloway long enough," he said, his voice devoid of warmth. "Its time to give the house back to Mandy. She has waited for me for fifty years."

Beside him stood Mandy. She was draped in an elegant, silk cheongsam, her posture graceful. Even in her seventies, she looked remarkably preserved, her skin smooth and her hair dyed a soft silver. Wealth keeps a person young. But the wealth that sustained her all these years was drained directly from my veins.

When I didn't answer, Kelvin grew impatient.

"My parents are gone," he said coldly. "You have no purpose left in this house."

He was right. His parents spent their last ten years bedridden and paralyzed. I was the one who bathed them, turned them, and fed them spoon by spoon. The doctors had given up on them, but I kept them alive, giving them one more day, one more afternoon in the sun. In Kelvin's eyes, my only worth was that of an unpaid, glorified nurse.

But I had no strength left to fight him.

The phone vibrated in my pocket. I closed my eyes, taking a long, shaky breath.

"Give me one day," I said quietly. "Just twenty-four hours, and I will pack my things and go."

Kelvin nodded curtly, taking Mandys hand as they turned away.

I pulled the phone out. The call was still active. The young Cathy was standing right outside a row of dressing rooms.

"Are you saying..." her voice was hushed, trembling with a fragile innocence. "Kelvin and Mandy are in there? Right now?"

"Yes," I whispered. If she believed me just this once, everything would change.

"Okay," she whispered back. "I'll trust you this one time."

She reached for the brass handle of the fitting room door, her fingers shaking. If I were right, how would she survive the truth?

But before she could turn the knob, a bridal consultant pushed the door open from the inside.

"Miss Wen, are you ready to try on the next gown?"

The door swung wide, exposing the room to the bright showroom lights.

Time seemed to freeze. I held my breath, staring at the screen.

The room was empty.

No Kelvin. No Mandy. No secret, breathless affair.

It was completely empty. On the screen, I heard my younger self let out a long, relieved sigh.

"See, ma'am?" she said, her tone light and airy again. "My Kelvin would never do that. I don't know how you know Mandy, but shes my senior from college. Shes been so good to me. When those thugs cornered me last year, she was the one who stood up to protect me. Please don't say these things about them. It makes me angry."

A bitter, hollow laugh escaped my chest.

"Did you ever stop to think that those thugs were hired by her? That the whole thing was a setup to make you trust her?"

The young Cathy frowned deeply. Because my first warning failed, she was convinced I was just a delusional old woman.

"Ma'am, if you keep talking like this, I'm going to hang up."

In that moment, I finally understood why my best friend, Lucy, used to say she wanted to shake some sense into my younger self. I wanted to reach through the screen and shake her too.

How could I have been so incredibly blind?

"Don't hang up," I pleaded, my voice cracking. "Please. Just keep me company for a little while. As long as you don't hang up, you can do whatever you want. Just let me stay on the line."

Maybe I looked too pathetic, or maybe the sheer misery in my eyes touched her. She didn't disconnect.

After trying on the dress, she accompanied Kelvin to the county registrar's office. During the drive, through the shaky camera angle, I caught a glimpse of Mandy slipping out of the bridal shop's back exit. So that was it. They hadn't been caught because they used the service door.

At the registrar's office, Kelvin held her hands, his face a portrait of solemn devotion.

"I swear, Cathy, I will buy you a beautiful home one day. No one will ever say I'm just living off my wife's family."

"And thank you, my beautiful girl, for letting me put my name on the deed."

The house was bought entirely by my parents, paid in full. When Kelvin faked his death, he sold it overnight, pocketing the cash along with the high-interest loans before vanishing into thin air.

I wanted to scream at her to stop, but they were already sitting in front of the clerk.

The clerks voice was monotone: "If you both could just sign here to finalize the deed transfer..."

"Thank you," Kelvin smiled.

I made frantic, desperate noises through the phone. Finally, the young Cathy stood up, walking over to a quiet corner of the lobby to look at the screen.

"Ma'am, what lies are you going to tell me about Kelvin now?"

In the background, I could see Kelvin sitting on the bench, his fingers flying across his phone screen. He was texting Mandy. I knew the rhythm of his thumbs.

"Check his phone," I said urgently. "Hes already booked two plane tickets to London for next weekone for him, and one for Mandy. And check his bank statements. Hes already taken out three million dollars in loans using your name as a co-signer."

"Ma'am, Kelvin and I aren't even legally married yet. How could he use my name for a loan?"

Kelvin's voice called out from across the lobby, impatient. "Cathy? I'm all done. Just waiting on you."

"Coming!" she called back.

I wanted to reach through the pixels and grab her shoulders. "Don't sign! Just check his phone first. I am begging you."

"If I check and find nothing, I swear I will never bother you again."

She hesitated, looking at the phone, then looking back at Kelvin, who offered her a warm, perfect smile.

"Fine," she whispered. "One last time."

She walked back over to him.

"Kelvin," she said, trying to sound casual. "Give me your phone. I want to check your messages."

She was so transparent, so painfully naive. Not a single defensive bone in her body, not a single drop of cunning. No wonder Kelvin played me like a fool for fifty years. A blank sheet of paper stands no chance against a charcoal heart.

Kelvin was visibly taken aback, but he recovered quickly, pulling the phone from his pocket.

"The password is your birthday, sweetheart. Look through whatever you want. Call history, search engine, anything."

Even now, his charm was effortless, defusing the tension with a light laugh. My younger self giggled. "I knew you were the best."

She glanced at the screen, a triumphant look in her eyes, as if to prove to me that her Kelvin was no villain.

The search took less than ten minutes.

Texts, emails, search history, banking appsshe went through them all, and found absolutely nothing. It was a masterclass in erasing tracks.

Cathy wrapped her arm around his, leaning in. "I'm sorry. I don't know what got into me."

"Let's go sign."

My heart dropped into a cold, dark abyss.

Even with a lifeline to the past, was I still powerless to change my fate? Was Kelvin simply too clever to beat?

True to my word, I didn't say another word. But she didn't hang up either. Perhaps out of pity.

Time on her side of the screen seemed to warp, moving faster than my slow, agonizing day in this locked room.

The next time I looked at my screen, it was her wedding day. She was radiant, a picture-perfect bride in white lace.

My parents were there. They looked at her with tears in their eyes, and my own eyes welled up with tears of grief. My beautiful, loving parents, whom I condemned to a horrific death.

I cared for Kelvins parents for fifty years, but I was never even able to bury my own.

It all started with this wedding.

This was my last chance. I could not give up now.

But before I could speak, the door to my room was pushed open. Kelvin, now an old man, stepped inside. The fake warmth was entirely gone from his face, replaced by a cold, calculating sneer.

"The reporters are downstairs," he said coldly. "Youre going to tell them that you forced me to marry you, that you stole my birth certificate and threatened suicide to lock me down. Do this, and Ill give you enough money to rot in a decent nursing home. Otherwise..."

I have spent my whole life being a coward. I won't bend my knee to him again.

Seeing my silence, his tone softened into a manipulative plea. "If you don't say this, Mandy will be branded a homewrecker. Have you forgotten that she saved you from being assaulted in college? You should show some gratitude, Cathy."

Mandy was innocent, and I was the villain? What a sick joke.

"No," I said.

On my phone screen, the wedding was over. The young Cathys phone rang. It was the police.

"Is this Cathy Wen? Your husband has been involved in a fatal car crash. We need you to come identify the body and sign the cremation papers."

I screamed at the screen: "Hes not dead! Its a trick! Take his body to the crematorium on the east side, not the west side"

Before I could finish, the old Kelvin wrenched the phone from my hand, his face contorted in rage.

"You're insane," he spat. "Out of your mind."

I don't know if the young Cathy heard me. Because minutes later, the orderly arrived to drag me to the waiting ambulance bound for the asylum.

At the county morgue on the west side of town.

Cathy held her breath. A week ago, she received a bizarre video call from an old, scarred woman claiming to be her from fifty years in the future.

The woman had warned her that Kelvins death would be a hoaxa grand performance staged so he could escape to Europe with Mandy, leaving Cathy to slave away for his family for the rest of her life.

She hadn't believed it. The previous warnings had yielded nothing.

But now, she stood before a sheet-draped body. The cold fabric covered the man she loved more than life itself.

Kelvins parents were weeping on the floor. The old woman on the phone had also mentioned a younger brother, but Kelvin was an only child. How could he have a brother?

Kelvins mother clutched Cathys hand, her face wet with tears. "Our family owes you so much, Cathy. My boy is gone..."

"I have no son left."

"You're all I have now. You wouldn't leave us to rot alone, would you?"

Cathy pulled her hand away slowly, staring at the white sheet. What if the old woman was right?

"I want to see him one last time," Cathy said.

Kelvins father immediately stepped forward, blocking her path. The grief on his face flickered into sharp defensiveness. "The coroner said the injuries are severe. Its too graphic, Cathy. You shouldn't see him like this."

"Is that so?"

His mother chimed in, grabbing her arm again. "Yes, sweetheart. Don't look. Let him go in peace. We should cremate him quickly so his soul can move on."

Their urgency sends a chill down Cathys spine.

If their only son had just died, wouldn't they be clinging to his body? Why were they so eager to turn him to ash?

"I need to see him," Cathy said, her voice steadying. "I can handle it. He was my husband. I don't care what he looks like."

She sidesteps Kelvins father and reached for the edge of the sheet.

The room grew dead silent. Every eye in the room was pinned on her hand.

She pulled the sheet back.

Underneath was indeed Kelvins face. There were deep lacerations, dried blood, and bruising across his skin. His arms and legs were covered in horrific, raw cuts.

His mother let out a loud, wailing sob. "My boy! Why did it have to be my boy?"

As she cried, she shot a tense, furtive glance toward her husband. The father stepped in to pull the sheet back up. "That's enough, Cathy. Let him rest."

"Wait," Cathy said.