Her Cruelty, His Code

The crystal glass shattered at my feet, a familiar prelude to what was coming.

Chloe, my wife, surveyed the mess with cold disdain.

"Useless," she spat, her voice cutting through the dinner party silence.

Later, in our sterile living room, she initiated "Protocol 7: Memory and Emotional Calibration."

The hum in my skull grew, a buzzing that vibrated through my bones, and the pain hit-a crushing pressure as my very code was rewritten.

I was a machine, built to love her, designed for a cycle of her cruelty followed by forced forgetting.