Better than the Original

This post is FREE until 30th June 2026.

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Trigger Warning: Domestic Abuse

It’s seven. I’m stuck in slow-moving public transport, dreading the cold silence of the place I should call home. Only, no one ever taught me how to call a place like that “home.”

Like every day, I grit my teeth as I walk towards the place. There will be taunts. Do you really need the job? It’s not like you are earning too well. Why don’t they let you go early? You should tell them that you travel a lot to get to work. You should switch to a job that offers remote work.

My husband opens the door and smiles. A smile? No—he doesn’t smile. He smirks, sarcastically. I must have misread it. I smell something delicious and look around to find hot sambar, rice, and gravy.

“You ordered food?” I asked with a frown. Surely, I am not that late. Now the bill would be another taunt on my housekeeping skills, a topic of gossip for his siblings and parents at next weekend’s dinner. I repressed a shudder.

“Ah, no,” my husband replied calmly. The porch light flickered; he rolled his eyes at it as he added, “I cooked.”

He cooked? Did hell freeze over? I didn’t even know he knew how to. I tried to remember when he last cooked. He never did, not when I was dead-on-foot tired, not when I am on periods, and definitely never when I am sick… Then why now?

I turned around. He was already looking back at me…

My gut clamped down.

I loosened my shoulders before they could betray me. “I am glad then.”

He nodded and smiled. Smiled again, an expression so foreign on my husband’s face that I stared. It had to be a miracle that he cooked. He never does anything nearly as thoughtful. His face does a twitch when he sneers, and that’s the only detail I seem to remember precisely. His taunts have now become a voice in my head. All you know are five dishes that you repeat every week. Now what? Should I give you an award for being a bare minimum woman? I stared at the person in front of me until my eyes blurred. The silence without the taunts is too loud.

“Go… Wash up… I will set the table,” he says softly.

I look down so he doesn’t see the alarm on my face. My feet start moving before I start hyperventilating in front of him. Retreating to the shower as if hot water will scald this feeling off.

But what… I couldn’t quite point it out. Should I call Mom or my sister?

I could imagine how that would go. “No, Mom… It’s just a vibe all right… The guy in the house is not my husband… Why? Why? Ok, for starters, he is warm, while my husband is not… He made the freaking dinner… my husband never does that… He is currently setting the dinner table… Did you ever see my husband do that? Like ever?” I would say all that, and then what? Nothing would really happen except that I’d be outing my unhappy self. All that I kept under a tight lid will spill out.

The fogged mirror in the shower squeaked as I wiped it. My eyes glazed over my own reflection. Every time I look in the mirror, I close my eyes to find myself already running through the wilderness, a spectre chasing. Him. The husband. A breath behind my neck. His hands are at my throat. Today, the nightmare shifted.

There is no breath behind me.

I stop running.

I stand there, listening for something that isn’t there.

I step out of the shower lightly, as if the floor has turned fragile.

“Oh, you are back…” he says, with that smile again.

I keep my breath shallow, afraid that if I inhale too deeply, the silence might crack.

We sit at the table. I serve the food. He didn’t start eating. I exhaled slowly. Now it will begin. A barrage of complaints.

I brace and look at him. He is silent. Watching me. Is there something I am supposed to do?

“Why aren’t you eating?” I ask, expecting the snap.

“You try it first…” he says. I nod.

The tubelight in the hall flickers overhead. I stare at it longer than I should. I should get its replacement. There is no shouting news channel filling the room. No background noise to cushion anything.

His parents are away. Usually, that means he stays out until midnight.

We eat in near silence. I glance at him once. Then again.

He is still. Almost too still. My husband’s eyes never stayed in one place. They darted, searched, hunted for fault. Today, they did not.

An idea hit so hard I almost said it aloud, “Did you kill somebody?”

No. No. That surely shouldn’t be the approach, even if it’s in the realm of possibility. So. Tact.

“Are you ok?” I asked in the softest voice possible. The one that keeps things from tipping.

“Yes…” He said, looking at me. I brace for the usual defensiveness.

Why? Do you think something is wrong with me? I have known the man for five years, not in the most flattering ways. When it did not come, I faltered.

Rather, he was looking back at me without the twitch.

“You look beautiful today,” he said, almost a whisper. I would have missed it if I hadn’t been studying his face. My stomach gave a jolt.

“What?” I spluttered on the unholy remains of sambar and coughed. Quite violently.

He immediately got up from the table, poured water into a tumbler, and handed it to me. He then methodically tapped my head.

Without a single word. My scalp tingled at the coldness of his palms. Wait. His hands had always run hot.

I was pulled back into a memory of what happened nearly five years ago. We were sitting at a table in an open-air restaurant. He lit a cigarette casually. I stifled my discomfort. It wouldn’t matter anyway. So, I zoned out of what he was saying and focused on breathing through the smell. He must have realised that I zoned out. And probably took it personally. He tapped on my hand, and I turned towards him, and he took the chance to blow a full puff of cigarette smoke on my face. I coughed until I wheezed. I coughed until my weak lungs hurt and tears streamed down my face. Without my inhaler, I might have died that night.

Through blurred eyes, I watched him lean back in his chair and ask, “Why are you overacting so much?”

I didn’t answer. I couldn’t. I wheezed until the room steadied.

This cough was nothing. So why did it earn his attention?

Kindness could be another tactic. I felt no relief. Only a slow wave of exhaustion.

I jerked my head away. “Enough.”

“Hmm… talking while eating seems dangerous to humans,” he said, resting his hands on the table.

Humans.

Illustrated by Anmish Nadimvalsa

I watched him as he resumed eating. Five years have blurred at the edges. Details bleed into one another. But his face, I know it. The twitch before a sneer. The dart of his eyes, always searching for fault.

He is still. Too still. This wasn’t how he moved.

I set the glass down harder than I meant to. This was leading somewhere. It always did.

“What happened?” he asked, his gaze on me again. I shook my head. At least some things were unchanged. He addresses me as a non-entity.

“Nothing. I am just tired.”

I didn’t know how to brace for this version of him.

---

It’s been three days since I came home to stillness. I exhaust myself, so I don’t have to think.

I watch the ceiling fan wear itself out. My in-laws snored in the hall.

Most nights, he leaves the house to return only at midnight, reeking of perfume I recognise way too well. Shirt crumpled, hair messed. I never questioned. Never needed answers. It’s a relief he doesn’t touch me anymore.

The person beside me. The husband. Slept. Or pretended to. Husband was an inconsiderate sleeper, occupying most of the bed, leaving me with only a sliver of space to rest. This one slept like he was on a train berth. Straight, hands folded over his chest.

The “beautiful” comment still rankled in me. Like a misplaced word in a song. The last time he called me beautiful, he used it as permission. Forced himself on me in a moving bus. I clenched the edge of the bed until the bus faded in my head. I turn slightly to see if the husband is still sleeping.

1, 2, 3, 4… His breaths align with the ticking clock. I keep counting.

---

A week later, I walk beside the husband. The night didn’t hum around us like it used to. I never enjoyed the walks with him, then, either. Now, it’s just too still. And cold.

A year into the marriage, on this same stretch of road, he told me he had a rape kink.

The word lodged somewhere behind my ribs.

I remember the streetlight then. The smell of damp dust. My tongue is heavy in my mouth. I said nothing.

I would know, wouldn’t I?

He pressed his kinks into my skin. Into my silence. Into the part of me that stopped resisting.

What else is a wife for?

The memory tightens around my spine.

“Are you cold?” he asks now. The present folds over the past. The street light flickered as we moved past it.

I shake my head. But he notices the tension in my shoulders.

“We can skip this route,” he says suddenly, eyes scanning the street.

His affair partner lives here.

“What,” I say, my voice sharp, “afraid you’ll see her again? Can’t resist?”

He is already looking at me when I turn.

Let it crack.

Before he can answer, a scream splits the quiet.

Kamala. Across the street. Pale, shaking. She stared at him as if she had seen a ghost.

He stared back at her. Absolutely no reaction on his face. It should have looked absurd.

But someone else saw it too.

I turned back to Kamala. Her eyes found me, then slowly returned to him. She was shivering, her face shining with sweat, making her look a little eerie in the moonlight.

She bolts.

I turn around to look at the husband. He isn’t there. And I did not hear footsteps. The illusion cracked around the edges.

I follow her, right into the courtyard of her house. The rickety old gate creaked as I pushed it aside. The night presses closer.

She’s stiff as a statue in her courtyard. When she turns to me, her eyes dart past me, as if checking who followed. “I’m sorry I couldn’t come…” she says, wringing her chiffon saree, “to your husband’s funeral.” Funeral… when did we ever hold one?

She scrutinised her toes peeping out of her sandals.

“Funeral…” I muttered, trailing off.

“Yeah… I am sorry… I thought I saw your husband beside you just now… and panicked,” Kamala said, trying to somehow breathe while she spoke, wheezing a little, “You understand why I couldn’t… When he died… it was hard to digest…” And added almost as an afterthought, “I am sorry for your loss.”

She says it like a fact. Why so sure?

“I didn’t contact you… about the funeral,” I say. The word burns on the way out.

She looks up. Then pales.

“How did you know?” I step closer. My voice lowers without my permission.

She shakes. Tears spill.

“Please… you need to understand. He died. In my bed… My husband could have come home at any time. I didn’t know what else to do…”

I stare at her.

“Died?”

“That night… I think it was a cardiac arrest. He just—” She chokes on the memory. “Midway—” She swallows. “He slumped. I couldn’t… I didn’t know what to—”

“So he died while having sex with you,” I say.

The words feel detached from my mouth.

She nods. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

The air feels thinner. I fight down a wave of nausea.

He had died. Something came in his place.

“So you dumped him,” I say quietly.

Her silence answers for her.

“Please… don’t tell my…”

“Your husband?” I cut in, “I don’t waste time on your shamelessness.”

She looked up at me, still restless, wringing her hands, nodding. As I turned and started to walk out, she said in a small voice, “Is it possible that I saw a ghost?”

The street light flickered in time.

“It is,” I say. I leave her to it.

---

The husband sat on the bed, back against the headboard. Perfectly calm. It didn’t add up.

I walk to the mirror and smooth my face flat. I learned that well. My original husband made sure of that.

I clenched my hands to stop the slight tremor from running through me

I pick up the comb and draw it through my hair.

“You met her,” he says. Not a question.

My hand trembles. I grip the comb tighter.

His eyes look darker than I remember.

“Mm.”

“Answers or life?” He says it gently.

The clock ticks above the mirror. I watch him through the mirror until my eyes glaze.

He waits.

“Life.” My voice is hoarse.

“Wise choice,” he says.

“How long?” I ask.

He tilts his head and smiles.

“Does it matter?” he says softly. “Am I not better than the original?”

I meet his eyes in the mirror, this time steady. His eyes were dark, still smiling, still calm.

---

Credits

This contribution is written by Laasya Kannepalli, reviewed by Nikhila Kotni, edited by Aastha Agrawal & illustrated by Anmish Nadimvalsa.

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