Chapter 1- I returned from the UAE longing to embrace my nine-month pregnant wife, but a climate-controlled glass casket awaited me in the living room.
I returned from the UAE longing to embrace my nine-month pregnant wife, but a climate-controlled glass casket awaited me in the living room. “She died in childbirth,” my mother said coldly, sipping a glass of wine. Trembling, I leaned over the glass lid—and saw a faint smudge of condensation forming from my wife's breath. “Call an ambulance immediately!” I roared. But as the wail of sirens pierced the night, my own brother slipped a heavy iron key from his pocket and locked the doors, trapping us inside...
The silence of the manor was the first thing that felt wrong before I had even set down my suitcase. My mother stood in the center of the living room in black silk, holding a glass of red wine, dry-eyed and calm. Beside her, my nine-month-pregnant wife lay inside a climate-controlled casket with a solid glass lid.
“She died in childbirth,” Mother said.
My knees nearly gave way. I had spent eighteen months supervising a construction project in Abu Dhabi, counting every day until I could return to Eleanor. We had spoken the previous evening. She had laughed, told me the baby kicked whenever she heard my voice, and begged me to hurry home. The nursery light had still been glowing when my taxi entered the driveway, and her favorite yellow scarf hung beside the door. Everything looked ready for a homecoming except the casket.
“There was no childbirth,” I whispered. “She was perfectly fine last night.”
Mother took a slow sip of her wine. “The baby died too. The doctor said it was a sudden complication. Her heart simply gave out.”
“What doctor?”
She looked toward my younger brother, Marcus, who stood near the fireplace holding a tumbler of scotch. He had always despised my marriage, especially after our grandfather left me the controlling interest in the family empire.
“Don’t start interrogating everyone,” Marcus sneered. “You were gone. We handled it.”
I crawled toward the glass. Eleanor’s face was pale, but lacking that terrifying waxy translucence of death. Then, my eyes caught something on the underside of the heavy glass lid.
A smudge. A faint, almost imperceptible patch of condensation.
A veil of fog. It faded, then slowly bloomed again.
“Call an ambulance immediately!” I roared.
Mother stepped forward. “Daniel, your grief is making you delusional.”
I grabbed the heavy brass latch of the glass casket, pulling with all my strength. The hiss of depressurized air filled the room. I shoved the glass aside and pressed my fingers against Eleanor’s neck. A weak pulse fluttered beneath her warm skin.
Marcus moved toward the door. “Leave her alone, you psycho! She’s dead!”
That was when I stopped trembling.
Before working in the UAE, I had served six years as a combat medic. I knew the rigid reality of death, and the warmth of living skin. I also knew my family had no idea that, while abroad, I had hired fraud investigators after noticing suspicious company transfers.
I called emergency services, then activated the discrete recorder on my smartwatch.
Mother’s voice sharpened, her mask slipping. “You will embarrass this family with this hysterical display.”
“No,” I said, lifting Eleanor from the silk-lined nightmare. “I’m about to destroy it.”
The wail of sirens pierced the night. As the red and blue lights painted the walls, Marcus slipped a heavy iron key from his pocket and locked the parlor doors, trapping us inside.
Mother stared at me with cold hatred.
For the first time, I saw the reptilian fear beneath her aristocratic confidence, and I understood that the glass casket had been prepared for more than just Eleanor.
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“You should have stayed overseas,” she whispered.
I met her eyes. “You should have made sure I actually died in Dubai.”...
