Polite society and happy endings do not live here. Only the heavy stillness, the shadows, and the rot in the ribcage and the floorboards. Nothingness. Proceed with caution.

She carried herself with the air of a displaced princess, convinced the world must bow to her every whim simply for the grace of her breathing — for special was her birthright.

The moment she laid eyes on him in the sterile, fluorescent halls of her father’s office, he was already hers.

She weaponized her beauty and sexuality with a Cyprian grace, a devourer who felt only a dark thrill at the thought of dismantling the sanctity of his engagement.

To her, the law was simple: what Lenore wants, Lenore gets.

He knew the look in her eyes and sensed her hunger. Playing along with curated perfection, walking right into her arms, feigning a surrender.

All that she wanted in life, Lenore had never been denied.

His presence flooded her senses; she was pulled right into the heat of a forbidden affair.

She was his only sanctuary; among all the other sweet nothings he whispered. That his life would have no meaning remained trapped in the dull cage of his own engagement.

His liberation could be her ticket to an ultimate acquisition, if she bailed him out. He would be indebted — a debt that would bind them together.

Born of a dark possessiveness, it only had the surface appearance of a simple display of devotion.

In the feverish heat of their siren tryst, they pillow-talked their future underneath the sheets.

He placed the words into her mouth with his master touch watering the seed until the plot began to take root in her own mind.

She was convinced that the other woman owed them a commission for the time spent — a tithing for his companionship, or his termed loyalty.

Should another woman be ruined to clear the path, so be it — a consequence met with absolutely no guilt or second thoughts. It would not keep her up at night.

There’s no crime in fighting for love.

Everything and everyone in Lenore’s orbit — even the woman she had just displaced — were merely disposable props and shifting stages for the grand production of her life.

It was both a curtain call and a good riddance.

They were Antony and his Egyptian Queen, two titans for whom the world was but a playground to be plundered.

She believed she held him captive between her legs for she is a conqueror who had won her prize through the sheer merit of her own desire.

She was holding a leash attached to nothing, oblivious that she was already right where he wanted her — deep in his pocket.

No disguises were needed when they finally cast the fiancée aside; they simply walked over her and out the front door.

He practically cleaned the place out, auctioning off anything with the slightest bit of value. The house was bare. Now the cold floor was her bed, where she lay like a piece of worthless furniture left behind in the rush.

Her bank account scraped down to the absolute minimum balance.

Her gaze fixed on the empty space where the masterpiece had been ripped away, the ache pulsating with every beat of her heart.

It was a crumbling manor, now a ruin exposed to the elements — but it was the house from the painting that used to house generations of fortune.

A leaking roof, an overgrown garden, and the smell of wet earth were now fixtures of this abandoned luxury haunt.

They dressed the carcass of the house in velvet and gold, throwing money at the walls as if luxury on the surface could cancel out the rot beneath.

Under the eyes of the Heyerdahl painting, children ran through the foyer while, upstairs, lavish parties were thrown for a court of crooks and vultures celebrating an undeserved happily ever after.

A trophy from the life they had unseated in such cruel wicked way. It took the rain of betrayal to finally wash away everything before the silent joke was fully understood.

The wonder of their early days didn’t last, dissolving quickly into days of quiet nightmare.

His early morning start gave him the perfect window to slip his hand into her purse for the cheque book.

He would tear the blank cheque from the very back to keep the sequential numbers intact.

He kept a close watch on the pages. A fresh book from the branch would always conveniently replace the old one long before she reached those tell-tale stubs.

The dust of his heist had already settled by the time he brought breakfast up to her in bed.

Never could a thing like this be rushed. To liquidate an inheritance without leaving a single ripple took a slow hand and a patient, careful sort of execution.

He was strategically siphoned the pieces she rarely wore, pocketing just one or two at a time, focusing on the priciest pieces. She had so much jewelry that a slow, quiet thinning of the collection didn’t even register.

He would ship off her valuable antiques and even the family heirlooms from around the house while she was still asleep.

He used the excuse of redecorating to keep the house in chaotic flux so she could never quite tell if a missing piece had simply been boxed away, or if it was gone for good.

Then came the instant cash from the major investments he managed to trick her father into signing away.

It was a perfect illusion…

She woke up that morning to an eerily silent house. The other side of the bed was cold, the shower bone-dry. Downstairs, the kitchen was completely still. When she dialed his number, the line didn’t even ring — it went straight to a dead tone.

An ugly unease settled in. She looked through their things, finding the watch box cleaned out — both his and hers were missing.

Then she checked the safe. Important documents, including his passports, were gone. She kept finding new gaps everywhere she looked, until the reality finally hit her.

He had siphoned the last of the family’s credit and run. It was the exact same way they had fleeced his former fiancée.

She had helped him ruin another woman, and now the art of their con — or more precisely, his con — was turned, with a cold, incisive edge, upon her.

He had made her a co-conspirator specifically for this moment.

There was no honest goodbye from a man whose entire existence was a stage of lies.

He had likely already found his next special one by now, off to his new life in the new horizon.

Sitting in the dim foyer, she stared at Heyerdahl’s Idyll.

Truth settled upon her like cold soil on a coffin — like the damp earth beneath the floorboards.

She hadn’t won a man; she had simply been the next mark in a long-running play.

An idyll was never meant to last. How naive she was.

Faceless as the man in the painting, soulless as he had always been.

A cold, gray ruin was all that remained of the place once the stage went dark — only this time, the joke of the curtain call was entirely on her.

She had made her own bed, and now she would have to sleep in the cold, silent house by herself.

The ruins showed their gray, dirty cement flesh where the gold leaf had peeled away.

The music had stopped; there would be no more champagne, no more lavish galas.

Gray porridge was all that waited for her now. No seasoning to it, save for whatever she would weep into the bowl.

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✍️Previously published: 7th April 2026
📖 Selected Winning Entry | Concurso de Arte y Escritura

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