The Monster I Once Married And Loved

My life was a fairy tale.

At twenty-five, I had it all: a loving husband, Liam, my childhood sweetheart, a beautiful home, massive success, and our two perfect children, Leo and Lily.

They were our everything.

The night before their third birthday, I tucked them in, their excited giggles filling the room.

Just half an hour past bedtime.

But when Liam walked in, his face was a mask of cold fury.

He dragged Leo and Lily from their beds, out into the raging blizzard, for the sin of staying up late.

"They need to be punished," he said, his voice flat, his eyes empty.

I screamed, pleaded, grabbed his arm, but he flung me away, locking me in the basement while my babies wailed outside.

Darkness enveloped me, and their terrified screams were swallowed by the storm.

I pounded on the door, begging, promising anything, until his icy voice pierced the wood: "This isn' t about you, Ava. It' s about your parents."

He unleashed a horrifying tale of my family supposedly destroying his, a twisted vendetta culminating in my children' s lives for his father' s death.

It was a lie, a monstrous fabrication, but the next morning, as I pushed past his mother and burst outside, the silence was deafening.

On the porch, curled together, lay Leo and Lily, pristine and still under a thin dusting of snow, their faces blue, their lips purple, like two broken dolls.

They were gone.

The world went black.