“You and I, we both know that I can rip you to shreds and do my nails, at the same time.” A female voice came, rolling over from the corner of the Mystic Grill. On peeping you will see, champaign bottles on the floor, freshly smashed.

A man is lying on the ground, with a high heel on his throat marking its outline on his thick, snarky skin. The heels belong to a pair of legs that almost goes on forever, clad in a fitting black short dress, that ends around her mid-thigh.

The dress is beautiful, with a V neck, giving a slight view of the valley of her breasts, mounting down to the cleavage that peeps out, of the little black dress in its full pride. The lady has deep black hair, falling to almost her waist, with blond highlights in certain strands of her hair. She looks in her early-thirties but, she is forty, sitting with a glass of margarita in her hand, her body slightly bend towards the man under her high transparent heels.

“Would you mind getting up on your own? Mister… Uh, what was your name, again?” She sounded, as though she had ever bothered asking his name before beating him up.

Someone whispered “Emanuel”, from somewhere behind her.

“Emanuel, huh? ”, she says with a wry laugh. By this time Emanuel was on his feet and moving away from the lady. As he exits, the lady starts collecting her car keys. It wasn’t much late, just about to strike at 8 pm, but tomorrow was a big day for her.

There goes off the 8 o'clock bell on the town clock. The lady stands up, not even wobbling on her high heels, which you won’t be wrong to expect, given the amount of her alcohol consumption. But her feet never faltered in the last six years, that I have been seeing her.

The people don’t even wait for her to exit the door before they can start talking about her. It isn’t anything new, that a person as unapologetically characterized as she is, would have harsh words and gossips following her.

Her name, thus known, was Alison Devereaux, also known as the “ Wife Of Bath”. Alison belonged to the famous and affluent Devereaux family residing in the neighborhood of Mystic Falls. She is the only daughter and the youngest sibling of her five brothers. About twenty- four years from now, she was married to a man, four times her age, who was rich and influential as a part of a business deal etched between the two families. Her first husband ruled the Alleys of Bath at that time. Alison was sixteen then.

She was married and assigned the name of “The Wife of Bath”. About 4 years later she divorced him, citing her unsatisfactory married life as the reason for the same. She never shied away from telling the Church how she just agreed to marry him for his land and money alone, but now even his money fails to interest her. This bold character of her made the Church of Bath despise her. Her own family, upon knowing about the same didn’t want anything to do with her anymore either. Her grandfather loved her very dearly, so when he died, he had mentioned a certain sum of money in his will, which was a huge sum, by the way, given solely to her, for her monthly expenses. Thus she left her hometown and moved to Jerusalem within one month of her divorce.

There she met her second husband, Emanuel Forbes, a nasty, corrupt Sheriff by profession. He was a charming man, is what Alison found him to be during the first few months of their meeting. while talking to Alison, outside a Church, the first night they met. Alison was always an epitome of beauty, boldness laced in her nature. From Emanuel, she learned her fighting skills.

From kickboxing, to, Judo, she is a fighter to behold in every aspect. She believes that a woman should be independent and to be so being able to defend herself physically, is very important, because she proudly says, ‘ Only a woman can truly protect her honor’. Within six months of her arrival in Jerusalem, Forbes marries Alison, and because he wants to show off his beautiful wife to his friends and the people around him, their marriage turns into a lavish ceremony.

About four months, after their marriage, she describes Forbes as a person who loved ‘alcohol more than his married wife, and alcohol made him incompetent in bed’. Thus she breaks off her second marriage, just a while before her marriage anniversary.

She married Kol Michaelson, at the age of twenty-eight, in New Orleans. Kol was a frivolous young man in his early twenties then, and the son of a royal family who owned farmhouses and would scatter money anywhere they could just to show off their wealth. Alison learned horse-riding in one such farmhouse that Kol owned.

Alison also got herself trained in sword fighting, on being coached by Kol himself. Kol was a popular ladies' man, you can call him a Casanova, both charming and rich. Kol was about seven years younger than Alison when they got married. Kol was a ‘beast in bed’, as described by her, but also was a cheater in the bar. The popularity of Kol among women didn’t dry up even after his marriage,

Kol didn’t seem to want it to dry up either. In the evenings Kol used to attend galas at the local bar, there were loads of dancing and fooling around, all initiated by Kol himself. On one such night, Alison hops into the bar, finds Kol flirting with one of his many mistresses. Alison plans her revenge in which she decides to give Kol the ‘taste of his own medicine’. She flirts with a man twice her age also a rival of the Michaelson family, all to make Kol jealous.

And, Kol was furious with her attempts just like she had expected. All were well for six months or so, after this, incident at the bar. But one night while returning home, Kol met with a fatal accident in which he lost his life. A while, after this incident happened, Alison decided to leave New Orleans.

In her about forty years of life she had had multiple marriages. The last husband that she had, was her favorite one. Jankyn was his name and he hailed from Mystic Falls. Not rich enough, just a painter by profession, but a marriage she calls ‘more than just satisfactory’. They were in love. And it was that kind of a love that can force a woman like Alison or The Wife of Bath, or whichever name you might want to call her, recall Jankyn to be the person who molded her into a better version of herself. Jankyn and Alison married each other about six years ago.

Alison was thirty-five and Jankyn was twenty-three. And as guessed it was a marriage, not so well accepted by society, even in the 21st century. But, they married and they were happy, that glow on their faces on that day, and even the glimmer of love in their eyes, on the day that Jankyn lay on his hospital bed, fighting for a few more breaths as if to just look into Alison’s eyes for one last time, and Alison looked right into his with endless words and promises, words they didn’t have enough time to be said. So all they could do was just stare into each other’s eyes, while Jankyn breathed his last, with a smile etched on his lips, even when he was dead.

I hadn't seen my brother that happy ever. Jankyn and I were twins. I was younger than him by two minutes. We lost our parents in a train accident when we were ten, and had been inseparable since then, till his death a year back. We were twenty-eight when he died. And tomorrow is our twenty-ninth birthday. Alison calls it her big day tomorrow. She might be forty, but she is, as if, getting younger by the day. Right now, we are heading towards the Jankyn club founded by Alison, a few days after my brother’s body was claimed by Anaemia. Here, she teaches self-defense to young ladies. There is a children’s park too.

Alison pulls the breaks of the cars, as the car halts to a stop outside Jankyn Club. Then she is out of the car in seconds. Just as her door slams shut, she appears at the car window, “ Get some air, looks like you need it.” And her lips curl up into a smile. I return her a smile too, and then I get off of the car.

Outside, a cool breeze brushes my skin. I smile, to myself. I look up at the sky, gazing up at the stars, I whisper, “I miss you, brother”.

“He’s gone nowhere. He will always be with us”, Alison whispers into my ears, and turns me towards her, and brushes off a lone tear from my cheek, which I didn’t realize, must have fallen. It must have been a while, that I was standing there looking up at the sky and I didn’t even realize when Alison had come back after locking up the Club.

She hugs me tight. “Don’t you cry baby girl” she whispers, and just like that, I start whimpering like a child. ‘Baby Girl’ is what Jankyn used to call me, Alison picked it up from him, while she promised to Jankyn to always, look after me, always and forever, after Jankyn left us.

After a while, she soothed me up with a back rub and opened the car door for me to get in. I hopped in. She closed the door. She waited for a while, brushing off her tears. I sat on the car seat reminiscing our lives from a while back.

Alison Devereaux, a teenager, married off as a part of a business deal, been all over the world trying to find a way out of her life. She is the person who is straight out of every man’s fantasy dream, elegant and wild, bold and yet so beautiful, caring and yet so strict, whenever needed. She is the idol for so many women and the reason for jealousy for so many others.

She was ‘ The Wife of Bath’, not by choice, but then she had no say, but later as an adult, She never changed her name while she remarried multiple times. Until she changed into, Mrs. Alison Jankyn Salvatore, Wife of Mr. Jankyn Salvatore, sister-in-law, friend and guide to me, who is a boring high school teacher, Miss Sylvia Salvatore. And without Alison, my life would have been as boring as my teaching life is. She is my best friend, she is my savior and she saves my drunken ass every time just like the way she saved me from tonight at Mystic Grills. Being drunk, I don't remember much about the night.

Alison Salvatore is the angel to our dark lives, she is unapologetically herself, she is the spark of happiness to our otherwise dull life. And now, she is the only person I can call family.

Unapologetically Herself