Let Mountains and Rivers Witness My Hatred Novel – In the fifth year of our marriage, my husband, General Adrian Hale, got badly injured on an overseas counterterrorism mission and supposedly lost his memory. When he woke up, he remembered everyone except me. In just two years, he filed ninety-nine divorce petitions. The food was not to his taste, so he wanted a divorce.
He found a single hair on the floor, so he wanted a divorce. Even when I caught a cold and could not stop coughing, he wanted a divorce again. I threw away my dignity and knelt to beg him. I let him put me through one cruel, humiliating punishment after another, just to make him withdraw each petition like he was tossing me a bone. Until the day of his promotion ceremony.
I wore a gown that happened to be the same style as the one on his precious childhood sweetheart, Vivian Lane. Adrian completely lost it and slammed the hundredth divorce petition in my face. “If you want me to withdraw this one,” he said, “then donate your uterus to Vivian’s dog.” This time I did not cry or throw a fit. I simply nodded. Adrian had no idea that the night before, I had finally discovered the truth.
He had never lost his memory. The divorce petitions were nothing but a loyalty test, a long experiment on my heart. In that case, there was no need for him to withdraw anything. *** When the folder hit my face, the sharp corner split the skin over my eyebrow. Adrian did not even glance at me. He slipped an arm around Vivian’s waist and got into the military jeep. The soldiers under his command swarmed me. They tore my formal gown to shreds. “Look at yourself.
You really think you’re good enough to wear the same dress as her?” one of them sneered. Someone hesitated. “She is still General Hale’s legal wife. At least leave her in her underwear.” Another snorted. “Didn’t you see the divorce papers? She’s already out. ‘Mrs. Hale’—that’s a joke.” Exactly. One hundred divorce petitions. Two years of clinging to him like a curse. I had been dragged out into the main square on base with a sign around my neck calling me a whore.
During drills they had stripped me down to my underwear. They had made me bark like a dog on the loudspeakers, fight a stray dog over the same bone, and jump from a hundred-foot training tower ninety-nine times. All of that, just so I could stay by Adrian’s side. Across the entire base, I had become infamous, the clingy piece of gum no one could scrape off. The title “Mrs. Hale” was not an honor. It was a punch line. I was still in a daze when the toe of a combat boot slammed into my stomach and kicked me into the glass display case at the gate of the compound.
The impact exploded in my ears, glass flew everywhere, and blood spread across my torn gown. The young soldiers finally scattered in a panic. I tried to push myself up. Through the haze of pain, I saw the military jeep not far away. Adrian’s long fingers tapped idly against the window like he had all the time in the world. The guard by his side lowered his voice. “General Hale, should we take your wife to the hospital first?” The window slid up. His cold voice cut through the glass. “Leave her.
Take Vivian to the mall and buy her the best gown you can find.” I stood there, clutching my chest as the jeep disappeared down the road, and tried to hold my heart together while it felt like it was tearing in half. Blood and tears blurred my face until I could not tell which hurt more, my body or my heart. Hugging what was left of my clothes around me, I walked back to the general’s quarters like a ghost, stumbling under the wary gaze of the sentries. Mrs. Green, the housekeeper who had watched Adrian grow up, saw me stagger in and gasped. She rushed over and wrapped me in a blanket.
While she disinfected my wounds, her hands shook. “How could Adrian be so heartless?” she whispered. “He used to adore you. He will regret this one day, you will see.” Regret? Maybe. I no longer cared. Seeing I stayed silent, she hurried to explain, “He only treated you like this because of the injury. He forgot things. He will remember you again.” I thanked her and went upstairs without answering. In Adrian’s study, I keyed in the code to his safe. Our wedding anniversary. The lock clicked open. There were no classified files inside.
Neat rows of photo albums filled the shelves. Over three thousand photographs, all of me. Me laughing, me crying, me asleep, me a mess, me hurt. The last album on the bottom shelf had a special label. Inside were ninety-nine photos. Every single one captured the moment after I finished one of his degrading punishments, when he finally agreed to withdraw a divorce petition and I looked absurdly happy.
On the back of each photo, he had written a line in his own hand, along with a countdown. [Baby, I’m always on your side. You know that.] [Test ninety-nine. One more to go.] The last page had one empty slot. Even though I had already guessed the truth before this, my fingers still trembled so hard I could barely hold the album. I couldn’t imagine what kind of satisfaction Adrian took from it—two years of watching me debase myself, begging, crawling, trading my dignity for the chance to pass another one of his twisted “tests.” The whole base knew.
They laughed, they judged, they looked down on me. And still, I waited—stupidly clinging to a promise, hoping he’d remember we were once in love. Reality slapped me awake. The amnesia was fake. The torture was real. A hundred divorce petitions in two years were nothing but his experiment on my loyalty. I slid down to the floor, laughing and crying at the same time, my chest so tight that even breathing hurt.