Their Marriage by Sofia Kolbasovskaya

Their marriage had been arranged,
before they were born. Nothing unusual – just a deal, just one of the three things that will happen anyway, if you are a part of a human world (the first is going to school, and second – being betrayed).  He was tall and thin. She was tall and thin too. They united their fates in one of the most expensive tall and thin office buildings. From that day till “life do us part” they had to share many expensive things, they started to handle. They shared bed too, but just an appropriate amount of times.
He never expected something different. He never expected anyone but Zoey, since he got six years old and father told him. The love cult, the bloody butterflies – what had it to do with him? They were twenty-four years old, already had been in marriage for three years, when they got to get on business trip together. They had done such things separately before, and were going to do such things separately again.  It was summer. Hot air was heatedly crushing into the lungs making you thought, you would suffocate. They stopped in the hotel which was situated near the sea, and the water in the sea was boiling making you thought, you would burn. He was out for the evening drinks one night to notice her standing near the sparkling sea. She was the same as every other day before. She turned around somehow looking exactly at him, and he felt his heart doing a painful clip. The sea was mockingly laughing at him. That’s how he fell in love with his wife.
They lived as a couple for two years, when on the telephone she said they would get divorced soon, even the deal couldn’t keep her with him now. He felt as the bloody butterflies, she gave him, became really bloody – they tore his stomach, heart, lungs apart. If you fall in love together, why one has to wake up earlier? If it was only about him, but who all his body betrayed him fighting this thought of not being loved any more. Powerless. Alone. In love. In love that nobody needed, nobody would care to take, even as he gave it for free. That’s how he fell in hate with his wife.
He had to be in one of the offices three days later – for the divorce official confirmation. 15th floor, 123th cabinet. He was in the lift. Later he was in the corridor greeting his workers. Before he opened the door, he absently checked his watch, than his hand went to his pocket to find his gun. He wouldn’t be in love any more.