The Beginning of the End
Muriel and Eustachy Gremlin emerged almost instantly.
The elderly couple looked as though they had wandered straight out of a grotesque Victorian horror novel. Muriel was painfully thin, wrapped in layers of black lace despite the summer heat, while Eustachy carried himself with the theatrical dignity of a retired undertaker who had forgotten he was no longer at work.
Instead of asking the terrified stranger who he was or why he was there, they rushed toward Andrzej with tears of joy, embracing him as if he were a long-lost member of their family.
“My future son-in-law!” Muriel squealed.
“I knew destiny would send you to us.”
Andrzej struggled to free himself.
“There must be some misunderstanding...”
“There is no misunderstanding,” Elżbieta interrupted before he could finish.
“There is only fate.”
She circled him like a predator inspecting newly acquired prey.
Without pausing for breath, she launched into a spectacular recital of her supposed accomplishments.
“I hold a master’s degree in Polish literature. I’m an investigative journalist, a licensed private detective, a respected social commentator...”
She raised her chin proudly.
“...and, above all, I’m the famous internet personality known as the Queen of Hate.”
She pronounced the title with such solemn pride that one might have mistaken it for a royal honour bestowed by Parliament.
Andrzej blinked.
He had never heard of her.
That insignificant detail failed to discourage Elżbieta in the slightest.
Eustachy cleared his throat and stepped forward with the air of a seasoned businessman preparing an irresistible proposal.
“Young man,” he said warmly, “every successful marriage deserves financial security.”
He produced a cheque.
“Sign this.” Andrzej stared at the blank paper.
"What is it?"
"A blank cheque."
The old man smiled.
"In return, I'll buy you a luxury flat and support you financially for the rest of your life."
The proposal sounded so absurd that Andrzej briefly wondered whether he had accidentally fallen asleep standing up again.
Yet one thought immediately overwhelmed every other.
Ania.
The burned living room.
The unbearable guilt.
"I..." he murmured.
"I need fifty thousand pounds."
The room fell silent.
"For my sister."
"I destroyed her home."
"I have to rebuild it."
Eustachy did not hesitate for even a second.
"Done."
No negotiations.
No questions.
No suspicion.
Only one simple condition.
"Sign."
With trembling fingers Andrzej took the pen.
His signature crawled clumsily across the paper.
At that very moment, without realising it, he surrendered the remainder of his adult life to a woman whose appetite for domination far exceeded even his own capacity for self-deception.
Elżbieta shrieked with delight.
Within minutes she announced that the engagement celebrations would begin immediately. The festivities lasted three full days.
There seemed to be no distinction between day and night.
Champagne flowed constantly.
Music blasted through the studio until dawn.
Camera flashes erupted every few seconds as Elżbieta documented every embrace, every forced smile and every staged kiss for her online audience.
To her followers, it looked like the perfect modern fairy tale.
To Andrzej, every forced smile, every toast, and every congratulation felt like another shovelful of earth falling onto his grave.
Whenever he attempted to explain that he had never actually agreed to become engaged, someone shoved another glass into his hand or dragged him into yet another photograph.
By the end of the third day, he could barely distinguish memory from exhaustion.
The wedding arrived with terrifying speed.
From the very beginning, Andrzej understood that he was no longer the groom.
He was merely another prop in Elżbieta's grand theatrical production.
She wore an enormous wedding gown which she loudly claimed had been imported directly from Milan.
Whether or not that was true hardly mattered.
Every time Andrzej failed to display sufficient admiration, she discreetly kicked him in the ankle under the table.
He quickly learned to smile on command.
The journey to Saint Peter's Church took place in an antique horse-drawn carriage.
Elżbieta waved majestically to a tiny crowd lining the streets.
Most of them, Andrzej eventually realised, had been hired simply to create the illusion of a royal wedding for her livestream.
Even the priest seemed deeply uncomfortable.
Young, pale, and visibly nervous, he displayed an unmistakable hostility toward the bride from the very beginning.
He deliberately walked across the ceremonial carpets with muddy shoes, repeatedly mispronounced both their names, and seemed to prolong every prayer as though hoping divine intervention might somehow cancel the ceremony before it reached its conclusion.
Andrzej, meanwhile, had consumed so many sedatives prescribed for his anxiety that remaining conscious required almost supernatural effort.
The church blurred around him.
Reality slowly dissolved.
Once again his mind escaped into fantasy.
He no longer saw himself standing inside a small English church.
He stood instead upon a magnificent celestial throne.
Before him stretched an endless kingdom of radiant light.
As King of the Pleiadians, he knelt before the Saviour Himself, who gently lowered a golden crown onto his head.
The vision felt infinitely more real than the ceremony unfolding around him.
Half asleep, smiling blissfully, Andrzej leaned forward...
...and passionately kissed the person standing directly in front of him.
Unfortunately...
it was the priest.
The kiss lasted only a second.
Long enough to silence the entire church.
Every guest stared in speechless disbelief.
The priest froze as though struck by lightning, his eyes wide with horror. Andrzej, still trapped halfway between reality and his hallucination, smiled dreamily, convinced he had just kissed the Saviour Himself.
Elżbieta was the first to react.
“You filthy idiot!”With a furious scream, she ripped off one of her high heels and brought it crashing down onto Andrzej’s head.He stumbled sideways, completely bewildered.
What... what's happening?"
"You kissed the priest!"
"I... I thought..."
"You thought?" she shrieked. "You don't think! You ruin everything!"
The priest suddenly raised both hands.
"Enough!"
His voice echoed through the church with surprising force.
"There will be no wedding today."
The congregation gasped.
Elżbieta's face slowly turned white.
"What did you say?"
"I said," the priest replied, now trembling with years of suppressed anger, "that I refuse to marry you."
Silence swallowed the church once again.
Then the young clergyman took a deep breath.
"You destroyed my life."
Confused murmurs spread through the pews.
Years of buried resentment poured out of him all at once.
"When I was a seminarian," he said, pointing directly at Elżbieta, "you seduced me."
The bride's confident smile vanished.
"You promised we'd spend our lives together."
"You told me I was the only man you had ever loved."
"You convinced me to abandon everything."
His voice cracked.
"And then..."
"...you disappeared."
"No explanation."
"No goodbye."
"Nothing."
The guests exchanged bewildered glances.
The priest laughed bitterly.
"I spent years believing there was something wrong with me."
He looked at Elżbieta with a mixture of heartbreak and disgust.
"But today I finally understand."
"There never was."
"You simply enjoy destroying people."
Without another word, he snatched the wedding rings from the altar.
"I'm leaving."
His cassock billowed behind him as he sprinted down the aisle.
For several seconds nobody moved.
Then Elżbieta screamed with such fury that the stained-glass windows seemed to vibrate.
"STOP HIM!"
The priest burst through the church doors.
Outside, a gleaming red Lamborghini Temerario waited in the car park.
He leapt inside, started the engine, and accelerated away with tyres screaming against the asphalt.
Elżbieta stared after the disappearing supercar.
Then, slowly, an unhinged smile spread across her face.
"If that's how he wants to play..."
She turned toward the road.
At that exact moment a municipal refuse truck happened to rumble past the church.
Without hesitation she sprinted after it.
The bewildered driver had barely enough time to shout before Elżbieta yanked open the cab door, dragged him onto the pavement, and climbed behind the wheel herself.
"Move!"
The enormous garbage truck lurched forward.
Moments later it was roaring through the streets of Milton Keynes in pursuit of a red Lamborghini.
Traffic dissolved into chaos.
Cars swerved onto pavements.
Drivers abandoned roundabouts in panic.
Street signs, flower beds, traffic lights and bus shelters disappeared beneath the truck's unstoppable advance.
Police sirens wailed from every direction, yet no one could stop the bizarre chase unfolding across the city.
The Lamborghini was fast.
The garbage truck was relentless.
Eventually the priest misjudged a sharp turn.
His sports car spun out, mounted the kerb and slammed into a row of industrial waste containers behind a shopping centre.
Before he could escape, Elżbieta was already there.
She dragged him bodily out of a rubbish skip by the collar of his cassock.
"You are finishing this ceremony," she hissed.
"I refuse."
She smiled.
It was not the smile of a bride.
It was the smile of an executioner.
"We'll see."
Terrified, bruised and covered in refuse, the priest was hauled back to Saint Peter's Church under police escort and family pressure.
An hour later he stood once again before the altar.
His expression was utterly defeated.
Beside him stood Andrzej, wearing a torn suit streaked with soot and dust.
On his other side stood Elżbieta, smiling triumphantly as though nothing unusual had happened.
For the first time in his life, reality pierced through the protective shell of Andrzej's fantasies.
He finally understood where his endless flight from adulthood had led him.
Not to freedom.
Not to eternal childhood.
But into the most toxic marriage imaginable.
The true nightmare had not yet begun.
The years ahead would bring domestic imprisonment, humiliation, psychological manipulation, and relentless abuse at the hands of his new wife.
And when every hope of escape finally vanished, Andrzej would once again seek salvation from another self-proclaimed guru—
one even more dangerous than the last.
