The Honeymoon Effect

For R.M.

They had only been married for six days.

As the ocean sighed against the shore, Michelle lay beneath a white canopy on the Boracay beach and checked under her bikini strap for signs of too much sun. Her husband, Aaron, was caught up in animated conversation with the young island bartender, ordering another round of umbrella cocktails. The sky was an impossible pink, the kind that no matter how hard you try, you just can’t capture it properly on camera. She could still feel the gold band on her finger, the small weight of it, the symbol that after fifteen years of chaos, of breakups and reconciliations, of promises that fell apart and were built again, they had finally arrived at forever.

Michelle floated in the water just offshore, the sea warm around her body, the air smelling of salt and coconut oil. Aaron waved from their cabana, his white shirt open, his grin wide enough to look real. After fifteen years of breaking and rebuilding, of promises made under tears and thunder and always taken back. Now here they were, on their honeymoon in the Philippines, the picture of serenity.

Aaron strolled towards her, smiling. His teeth gleamed in the dying light. “To us,” he said, holding up two pina coladas in hollowed out pineapples.

“To us,” she echoed, though she said them softly, it felt like she was signing her own confession.

He leaned closer, his voice smooth as warm whiskey. “You look incredible, you know that? Though maybe we should ease up on the island food soon. I don’t want my wife getting too fat and happy.”

Michelle laughed, though it came out thin. “I didn’t realize coconut rice was a sin.”

“It’s not a sin,” he said. “Just a slippery slope.”

He said it with a wink, playful enough that no one else would have noticed the blade beneath the charm. But she felt it. She always felt it.

That night, as waves folded over themselves in the dark, Michelle lay awake beside him. His breathing was steady, deep, too calm. She watched the ceiling fan spin, her heart moving with the rhythm of its blades. The honeymoon was supposed to be the beginning of peace, yet she already felt that old familiar tension tightening inside her.

When she slipped away for a swim at dawn, he followed her down to the beach, barefoot, shirtless, the perfect husband. “You shouldn’t go alone,” he said, though she had been doing so every morning since they arrived. “The tide’s tricky. You could get pulled under.”

His hand brushed her shoulder as if to steady her. The contact sent chills down her spine. They returned home two weeks later, tanned and beautiful in every picture, but beneath the smiles the calm had cracked, leaving only silence where warmth had once been.

The riverside house they shared in North Kamloops felt colder than before. Aaron began to pick away at small things. The way she folded towels. The scent of her shampoo. The softness of her stomach when she bent over.

“I just want you to look your best,” he said one night, standing in the doorway as she brushed her hair. “You were so disciplined before the wedding.”

“I’m still disciplined,” she replied. “I just don’t want to live on kale and protein shakes forever.”

He smiled, the kind of smile that never reached his eyes. “We’ll see.”

In the beginning, the changes were subtle. Her water bottle tasted strange, metallic. She assumed it was the pipes in the older house. She began waking with frequent headaches, her skin dry, her muscles heavy. Aaron would hold her hand and whisper that stress can do strange things to the body.

“You’re too sensitive,” he said when she started keeping notes about her symptoms. “You’ve always had an anxious mind. And a tendency to overreact.”

When she suggested seeing a doctor, he encouraged her, almost too eagerly. “Absolutely,” he said. “I’ll even drive you, sweetheart.”

The doctor found nothing serious, only low electrolytes. “Drink more water,” she was told. So she did. Her symptoms were not improving. If anything, she seemed to have to pee every five minutes. Over the next few months, Michelle’s energy levels worsened. Her face hollowed. Aaron began recording her moods on his phone, claiming it was to help the doctor track her behavior. She caught him once, filming her with his cell phone as she cried in the kitchen, her head buried in her hands – voice raw from frustration.

“Don’t make everything so dramatic,” he said softly, setting the phone down. “You haven’t been yourself lately.”

She felt dizzy during her morning runs. Her weight dropped quickly. Her skin grew papery and dry. Aaron said she was dehydrated, told her to drink more, and made a show of filling her water bottle for her before bed.

At night, she watched him sleep, perfectly still, his face serene. She tried to remind herself that she was imagining things, that after all their years of chaos, maybe she was the problem. That’s what he always said.

By the time her hair began to thin, Michelle could barely stand for long periods. Aaron’s concern grew theatrical. He brought her tea and told friends she was struggling with depression. Sometimes, while she slept, she woke to the faint sound of him softly sobbing in the next room.

It was almost enough to make her believe he loved her.

Then one afternoon when he forgot his gym bag at home, Michelle opened it to put it by the door and found a prescription bottle buried beneath a towel. The label read Hydrochloridzaphine, a diuretic. It wasn’t hers.

Something inside her went cold. A little voice told her something was very very wrong. Aaron really loved her, didn’t he?

That night, she pretended to drink from her water bottle, tipping it just enough to wet her lips. She told him she was feeling better. He smiled, kissed her forehead, and said he was proud of her for staying positive. It was getting harder and harder to try to ignore the warning hum that had lived inside her for years. He began to monitor her habits again. Asking what she ate, commenting on how her jeans fit, telling her she looked “puffy” after sleeping in. It all sounded like concern, disguised as love.

“You’d want me to be honest, wouldn’t you?” he said. “Most husbands wouldn’t even notice.”

Michelle smiled, because that was what he expected, but her chest felt tight. But one afternoon, as she cleaned the kitchen, a thought struck her so suddenly it made her heart stutter. She opened her laptop and Amazon ordered two nanny cams. One for the bedroom, one for the living room.

She told herself it was paranoia. She told herself she wouldn’t even check them.

Two nights later, she did.

She sat in bed, her hands trembling as she scrolled through the video footage. The bedroom looked ordinary in the grainy black-and-white glow. For several minutes, nothing moved. Then Aaron appeared. He was wearing a plush white bathrobe, his hair damp from the shower. He glanced toward the door, then crossed to her bedside table. Michelle leaned closer to the screen, her breath caught.

Aaron picked up her water bottle.

He looked around once more, then reached into the pocket of his robe. A small orange bottle glinted under the soft light. He shook out two pills, dropped them into her water, and swirled the bottle until the tablets dissolved. He held it up to the lamp, nodded once, then placed it exactly where it had been. He crossed to the window, parted the blinds with two fingers, and stared out into the dark for several long seconds. Then he left the room.

Michelle sat frozen in shock, her body chilled and vibrating. The silence in the house pressed against her like a wall.

She called the Kamloops RCMP with shaking hands. Her voice was almost calm as she explained what she had just witnessed. When the officers arrived, Aaron tried to laugh it off. He said she was unstable, said she had been losing weight because of anxiety, that she needed help. But they found the prescription bottle in his robe pocket, half empty.

He was taken away in handcuffs, his face still perfectly composed.

When the door closed behind him, Michelle sat on the edge of the bed, staring at the water bottle. That was when the full force of realization hit her—not just what he had done, but what it all meant. He had sworn to protect her. He had stood before her in a tuxedo in front of their families, smiling as he vowed to love her, to honor her, to keep her safe. And all along, he had been watching her die slowly from his own hand.

Her stomach turned, her heart tightening with disbelief and grief that felt endless. The betrayal was not just in the act, but in the quiet intimacy of it. The way he had looked at her each night, tucking her hair behind her ear, whispering goodnight as poison dissolved inches away.

Michelle pressed her palms to her face. The sob that came out was not a sound she recognized. It was raw, animal, the kind of grief that tears through the walls of the self.

Outside, the sirens faded. Inside, the silence returned, heavy and waiting.

Later, she would replay the footage once more, not to see the act, but to study his face. The calm precision. The faint smile. The ease of it.

And, in horror, she realized that monsters don’t always lurk in the dark. Sometimes they sleep beside you, whispering that they love you, while quietly deciding what you should eat, and how you should die.

Sometimes now, in nightmares, she still sees him. The way he smiled across the bar in Boracay. The way his voice could turn her heart to ash with a single word. And in the mirror, when she catches her reflection just right, she still sees what he left behind: the shadow of his gaze, patient and poisonous, waiting for a way back in.

(Based on a true Story.)