Chapter 1. Unhinged
Tanya arrived back on the island approximately five thirty PM island time. She slept most of the way, but was haunted by what she saw in her dream. She was awakened by the captain telling the flight attendants to prepare for landing. But deep down she felt despair and fear as if something terrible was about to happen or had happened.
She did not often get these feelings, but when she did it was almost always certain that something bad was about to happen or she was about to hear bad news. She prayed a silent prayer that Eric was ok and she prayed all her family members were ok too. She was scared that something bad had happened to Eric. She did not think she could survive another tragedy.
As she walked from the airport, she saw Eric standing there and she sighed with relief that he was ok, but then as she got closer she noticed that something seemed off. After not seeing her for several weeks she thought he would be in a rush to greet her.
He had one hand in his pants pocket, donning a pair of dark glasses and smoking a cigarette. Tanya wondered when he started smoking. She could tell immediately that something was very wrong. As she reached up to him she hugged him, but he did not return the hug or speak to her.
Tanya watched him as he stepped pass her and tipped the porter who brought out her bags. He took one last pull from the cigarette, dropped it on the ground and stepped on it. He then picked up her bags and headed to the car. He did not open the door for her like he always do. He was so very serious. He tossed her bags in the car. And Tanya’s heart sank.
'He knows, he knows what I have done. He knows about Luke. I have betrayed him; he will certainly kill me, she thought to herself.
“What’s wrong Eric?” Did something happen?” Tanya cautiously asked him.
“Why don’t you tell me what the fuck you did in New York?” He said in the most chilling tone that she did not recognize. He didn’t even sound the same. The accent was different. Every once in a while she could detect the American New England accent he picked up while going to school in the United States, but that day it was very pronounced.
“Do you have anything to tell me Tanya?” Eric asked.
“Only that I love you and I missed you,” she said.
“Miss me?! And don’t ever talk to me of love again if you want to live!” He said with the most callous tone that sent chills down her spine. He looked like Eric, but this was not her husband. Tanya felt raw fear. Eric was acting crazy and not at all like himself. He asked her what she did in New York. She told him what she did with Julia and her friends.
He looked straight ahead as she spoke. “Don’t fucking lie to me! Were you with another man?!”
“No,” she lied as she recalled all the time she spent with Luke.
Eric got so very angry. “You lying bitch!”
Bitch?!
She had never been addressed as such by him or anyone.
He was so enraged. “I have worshiped you all these years thinking you were different from all the rest. I risked my life to save your ass and ended up in jail. But it was all for nothing. Wasn’t it? because you are nothing but a fucking cheat and a liar!”
Tanya hated to be in the car with him. She had seen him angry before, but never like that. She was sure they were going to die in an accident at the speed they were going and with the cliffs below.
“One more lie out of your mouth and I drive this fucking car right over the fucking cliff!” He threatened.
Eric told her that driving the car off a cliff with them in it was the only thing he knew would ease the pain he was feeling. He was talking a lot of crazy things. He said that if they both died together maybe the pac that they made together would still stand, but he was afraid that even in death he would not find peace, because he would still be mad at her.
Tanya had never felt such fear before. He yelled at her. He kept asking what she did in New York. Tanya tried to tell him that she did nothing wrong, but he called her a fucking liar. He kept asking her questions after questions, but when she tried to answer he got angrier and told her to shut the fuck up.
So she kept quiet and prayed that they reach home in one piece. She couldn’t wait to get home , and out of the car but at the same time she dreaded what would happen once they were home...alone.
Tanya wondered what could have happened since she last spoke to him that morning. She tried to recall their conservation earlier that morning.
He was in a good mood. He told her how much he missed and needed her and that he couldn’t wait to lick that honeycomb. Tanya recalled laughing and asked him when he started calling it that. He told her he upgraded it because it was so damn sweet. Tanya responded and told him to keep her candy cane under wraps until she got home.
That cracked Eric up. He couldn’t stop laughing. He couldn’t believe that was his Tanya talking shit to him. “Gal you bruk out,” He laughed. He told her he was busting as he put it, but that she shouldn’t worry because he had been a good boy; and could never touch another woman, not after being with her. He said he wanted to keep their marriage and what they had together pure. Tanya recalled feeling guilty after his last statement. So what happened after that conversation? Tanya wondered.
Tanya concluded that someone must have told him something about her and Luke after they spoke that morning, but who? Julia? Luke? They could not be so diabolic. Eric pulled into the driveway at such a speed Tanya was sure that he would crash into the house and killed them both. He stopped just inches from the porch.
Tanya quickly got out of the car. She was so glad to be out of the car with him. Eric got out of the car and left her there struggling to get her bags from the car. She pulled the bags to the side of the house and took her time pulling them onto the porch and then into the house.
Eric was inside pacing back and forth. The house was a mess. It looked like someone broke in and trashed the place. There were beer and rum bottles all over the room and chairs overturned. She couldn’t believe he could have drank so much in a few hours so she concluded that he must have had his band practice at the house the night before. Under normal circumstances Eric would never want her coming back home to the hiuse in such condition. She also concluded that something pulled him away preventing him from cleaning up.
She wished he would come out and tell her what he knew although from how angry he was she realized it must be really bad. But then again Eric was jealous of her and it did not take much to tick him off, so she simply going to dinner with Luke could set him off into a fit of rage.
"I have to know what he knows before I admit to anything," Tanya thought.
Eric paced the floor with his fists clenched tightly in his pockets. He was afraid that if he took them out of his pocket they would find their way around her neck. Tanya commenced to pick up the trash from the floor, but that only made him angrier.
"Stop!"
He asked her again if she had anything to tell him and again she said no, which only infuriated him more.
“How could you Tanya? After all we have been through together?! I went to jail for you. I almost died protecting you and you betrayed me?” He cried.
“I have never looked at another woman since we got married, never. I had eyes only for you!” He shouted.
Tanya didn’t know how to respond without admitting to doing something wrong.
“Nothing happened, I swear.” was all she could say, because she did betray him in the most profound way.
“Nothing happened? Tell me I am dreaming Tanya, tell me any fucking thing and I will believe you,” he cried.
He cried like a baby. “How could you Tanya?” He kept saying.
“What are you talking about?” She kept asking.
“You fucked him, didn’t you?!” He yelled.
She was scared of what he would do to her. “Did you fuck him?!” he yelled. Things were quickly escalating and she wanted to get away from him. If he thought that she had sex with someone, that would be it; there is no telling what he might do.
“No Eric, no, I could never do that, not with anyone else but you,” she quickly told him.
“Liar!” He yelled and slapped her so hard across her face, that she lost her balance and fell onto the sofa. He ripped the necklace that he always wore from his neck and tossed it on the floor.
Tanya gave that necklace to him. It had her name spelt out in bold golden letters and he always wore it to show the world of his love and devotion to her.
“I should fucking kill your rass right now! But you will live to regret the day you cross me. Do you have any idea who I am Tanya? Do you know who the fuck you dealing with?” He shouted.
Obviously not
Tanya was stunned to say the least. Who was this? This was not the Eric she knew and love. That day was the first time he had ever hit her or curse her. He cursed just about everyone else, but never her until that day. She had never seen him so angry. She held the side of her face as the tears rolled down her cheeks.
Eric kept her in the living room like a detective interrogating a suspect and wouldn’t let her leave, not even when she begged to use the bathroom. He told her to admit to what she did in New York. But she held her ground and told him nothing happened.
He punched the concrete wall so hard...several times, she was afraid he would break his hand but he didn’t even flinch. It was as if he was numb to all the pain he was inflecting on himself. Tanya was afraid he would kill her.
She thought that maybe if she admitted to messing up he would give her a pass after all she had given him several passes over the years when he had done something wrong.
“Eric...I screwed up and am so sorry, please forgive me,” she cried.
Eric looked at her with the coldest eyes and in a split second Eric changed into something else. Tanya didn’t recognize the man she loved standing in front of her. He looked different as if he had aged right before her eyes. At her confession to messing up, Eric closed his eyes. He did not want to see her face.
There was a saying that there is a thin line between love and hate, and at that moment he understood what that meant. He was hovering on that line at that moment. He relaxed a bit as if a load was lifted from him, but Tanya was not fooled. Then he turned to her and smiled, but it did not reach his eyes.
“Sorry? You don’t know what sorry is, but you will before I am through with you,” he calmly told her.
He turned his back and Tanya ran to the bedroom and locked the door. She could hear him bashing stuff and tearing up the place. Tanya cried. It was all over. He would never forgive her, she knew Eric. He would turn off his feelings for her and stop loving her. She did not know what to do. Life as she knew it with Eric was over. It would be over for a long, long time.
She heard the door slammed shut and soon after she heard him start the car. She heard the car took off at warp speed down the driveway. He was gone. She was scared, what if he left her? What if he never came back? He was driving that car way too fast. What if he got into an accident and died. What would she do? He was all she had. How could she have been so stupid? All these questions kept going over and over in her mind on repeat.
Tanya walked slowly out to the living room to examine the damage to their once beautiful little home. It was a mess, as if a tornado had hit. And at that moment she thought that her husband was a human Tornado. She looked for the necklace that Eric ripped from his neck, but she could not find it. She started to clean up the house and then she saw them. Tanya gasped. Her jaw almost hit the floor.
“What the fuck,” she cursed out loud. She didn’t even realized that she cursed.
Photographs...lots of them of her and Luke...together at the club, at the restaurants, when they were out shopping, almost everywhere they went. It was as if someone had followed her around. And the photographs looked professionally done...clear and crisp as if it was telling a story with nothing left to the imagination. They held hands, they kissed and she was laughing and looking up at him. They looked like two people in love and she then understood how much she had hurt Eric.
There was one photograph at the pool. "Shit! I don't remember being in that position."
The tears rolled down her face. She knew Luke was as good as dead. For Eric to hear about her and Luke was bad enough, but for him to see them together like that, displayed in colorful photographs meant someone was going to die. Tanya felt sick to her stomach and she ran to the bathroom to threw up.
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Well, Well...Wellcome to Book 2 We are going to see a different side to Eric going forward...a side that you may not like. Well not that any of you liked him before, but you are really going to hate him now. He is about honor as it relates to his Eastern culture and drilled into him by his mother. He is not a forgiving man as Tanya will find out shortly.
